Why “Social Justice-Centred” Ecological Restoration is a Recipe for Disaster, By Paul Walker

The latest paper in Nature Sustainability (December 2025) insists that global ecosystem restoration will only succeed if "social justice" is placed "at the heart" of every project, deeply, not superficially. The authors, led by the University of East Anglia's School of Global Development, reviewed case studies and concluded that short-term, ecologically focused efforts are doomed unless they are reoriented around local institutions, Indigenous knowledge, land-tenure security, cultural identity, and the usual litany of justice demands.

On the surface it sounds noble. Dig one millimetre deeper and you discover a political landmine that has already blown up countless conservation and development initiatives worldwide. Forcing every restoration project to clear the endlessly shifting, ideologically charged hurdle of "social justice" is not a path to success — it is a proven fast-track to paralysis, corruption, elite capture, and ecological stagnation.

1. "Social justice" is an undefined, infinitely elastic term

Ask ten academics what "deep social justice" in restoration means and you will get fifteen contradictory answers. Is it redistribution of carbon-credit income? Return of ancestral lands with no legal title? Veto power for self-appointed community representatives? Prioritising the poorest households or the most historically oppressed ethnic group? The UEA paper itself refuses to pin it down beyond vague calls for "transformative" practice and "revitalising communities."

This vagueness is not a bug; it is the feature that makes the concept so politically useful, and so dangerous in practice. The moment a restoration project must satisfy an undefined justice criterion, it hands unlimited blocking power to whoever shouts "injustice" the loudest.

2. History is littered with the wreckage of justice-first conservation

The EU's Natura 2000 network has been gridlocked for decades by "social impact assessments" and local justice claims.

In Madagascar, carbon-funded mangrove projects collapsed when "equitable benefit-sharing mechanisms" turned into endless renegotiations and accusations of elite capture.

Kenya's community conservancies, once the darling of justice-centred conservation, now routinely fail to pay members because governance structures designed around "traditional institutions" resurrected pre-colonial patronage systems instead of democratic accountability.

Even the poster-child in the new paper, the Haida Gwaii kelp restoration, required years of negotiation and remains tiny in scale compared with top-down efforts elsewhere.

When justice is the primary lens, ecological outcomes become secondary bargaining chips.

3. Speed and scale are being sacrificed on the altar of process

We need to restore or protect roughly 1 billion hectares by 2030 if we are serious about climate and biodiversity targets, according to the Left. That is an area the size of China, every five years. The projects that actually deliver at continental scale (China's Grain-for-Green, Ethiopia's mass mobilisation reforestation, Saudi Arabia's state-led greening, or even the private-sector driven Trillion Trees initiative) all have one thing in common: they are ruthlessly outcome-focused, hierarchical, and willing to ride roughshod over endless consultation if necessary.

Contrast that with the justice-first approach: years of participatory mapping, free prior and informed consent processes, gender audits, and grievance mechanisms before a single seedling is planted. By the time the "transformative" project finally starts, the forest is gone and the carbon is in the atmosphere. Not an issue for us, but the Left should take note.

4. Justice rhetoric is the perfect tool for vested interests to capture projects

Experienced field practitioners know exactly what happens when large restoration funds are filtered through "locally led, socially just" governance:

Local politicians and NGOs position themselves as gatekeepers of "community consent."

Benefits are diverted to connected elites while the poorest, supposedly the priority, see almost nothing.

Projects stall indefinitely because someone always has a new historical grievance or a better claim to justice.

The academic literature is strangely quiet about these failures because admitting them would undermine the entire justice-centred paradigm.

5. Ecology does not negotiate with ideology

A degraded mangrove does not care whether the person planting the propagule feels historically oppressed. A dryland watershed does not need its "cultural identity" respected before it can hold water again. Ecosystems recover (or fail to recover) according to measurable biophysical parameters: hydrology, soil carbon, species composition, fire regime, grazing pressure. Justice theatre adds zero hectares of functional habitat.

Yes, people matter. Property rights matter. Local buy-in matters. But these are pragmatic means, not moral ends. Securing tenure, paying fair compensation, and minimising displacement are all sensible risk-mitigation strategies, exactly the kind of "superficial" measures the UEA authors dismiss.

A better way: pragmatic restoration with clear guardrails

1.Set hard, measurable ecological targets first (hectares restored, species recovered).

2.Use transparent, competitive tendering so the most efficient actors — state agencies, companies, or genuine local groups — actually deliver.

3.Enforce simple, non-negotiable safeguards: no forced displacement, fair market compensation, independent grievance mechanisms.

4.Let communities opt in with real money (payment for ecosystem services) rather than forcing them to opt out of "injustice."

This model has delivered the only large-scale restoration successes we actually have on the planet.

Putting contested, academically fashionable notions of "deep social justice" at the heart of global restoration is not progressive — it is a luxury Leftist belief that only tenured researchers in safe countries can afford. Out in the real world, where forests are burning and soils are washing away right now, it is a recipe for endless delay, captured funds, and continued degradation.

Restore ecosystems first, with ruthless focus on outcomes, and deal with the (very real) human fallout through straightforward, enforceable rules, rules that do not require a PhD in critical theory to understand. Anything else is not justice. It is self-indulgent, Leftist sabotage dressed up as virtue.

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-social-justice-global-ecosystem-success.html