Provincializing ecology: Anthropocene futures from ecological restoration to eco-developmentalism

Abstract

This paper examines the philosophical, historical, and practical differences between two dominant paradigms of human-nature relations: restoration ecology and eco-developmentalism. Restoration ecology, rooted in Euro-American environmental thought, emphasizes historical fidelity, ecological integrity, and human responsibility toward community-based ecosystem relations. In contrast, eco-developmentalism, exemplified by China’s large-scale ecological engineering projects, prioritizes human development goals, such as modernization and sociospatial optimization, through mechanistic interventions that transform ecosystems for specific functional outcomes. Comparatively analyzing these frameworks allows us to provincialize ecology—that is, to demonstrate how ecology is shaped by sociocultural milieus. We argue that, far from universal, different approaches to human-nature relations affect the material practices that alter ecologies, as well as power dynamics, forms of dispossession, landscape aesthetics, and biodiversity. While both ecological restoration and eco-developmentalism have reinforced state power and displaced local and Indigenous land relations, they nonetheless represent two distinct pathways for governing nature-society relations in the Anthropocene. In provincializing these paradigms, we move beyond a critique of ecological universalism to situate eco-developmentalism as a powerful, alternative epistemic and political project. As both paradigms circulate across the Global South, they reconfigure not only environmental practice but also the geopolitics of sustainability.

Introduction

The present moment of biodiversity loss, climate change, and environmental degradation compels critical assessment of how human societies relate with the natural world. As we navigate the Anthropocene—the geological epoch defined by humanity’s dominant influence on Earth’s processes (Crutzen, 2006)—the need to explore multiple forms of human-nature relations has become increasingly urgent, including the uneven relations and environmental impacts embedded in the global spread of capitalism (Moore, 2016) and its racialized formations (Vergès, 2017). In light of this, there is a need to reconsider how different societies conceptualize nature. Central to this paper are analyses of two approaches to human-nature relations—restoration ecology and eco-developmentalism—and how they offer divergent pathways for environmental governance in the Anthropocene.

Restoration ecology emerged in response to the growing recognition of the significant impact human activities have had on ecosystems. Rooted in 20th-century US environmental thought, it calls for an eco-centric view that emphasizes ethical responsibility for the land and its nonhuman inhabitants, acknowledging the interconnectedness of life (Leopold, 1949). By advocating for the restoration of ecosystems to their predisturbance conditions, restoration ecology underscores the importance of historical fidelity and ecological integrity (Davis and Slobodkin, 2004; Egan and Howell, 2005; Martin, 2022). Yet, this view fundamentally overlooks long-standing Indigenous relations to land, which shaped ecology for generations. Consequently, the pursuit of a “prehuman” wilderness baseline has historically undergirded management practices that have resulted in widespread Indigenous dispossession (Spence, 1999). Although influential, this focus on restoring socially-produced historical ecological baselines is increasingly challenged as ahistorical and out of sync with deeper timelines of human-nature co-constitution (Fletcher et al., 2021; Marris, 2013).

In contrast, eco-developmental approaches, particularly as seen in China, are predicated on a more mechanistic and utilitarian orientation. Rooted in the imperative to reconcile socialist and ecological thought, this framework tends to view ecosystems as systems to be engineered for specific social and development goals, such as modernization and sociospatial optimization (Ma and Wang, 1984; Rodenbiker, 2021; Ye, 1988). It emphasizes large-scale interventions designed to yield predefined ecological functions, targeting issues like desertification, biodiversity loss, and other perceived socio-natural inefficiencies (Rodenbiker, 2023a; Zhu, 2022). Unlike restoration ecology, which advocates for the restoration of ecosystems to their predisturbance states, eco-developmentalism takes human intervention as a given, showing little concern for historical fidelity or the protection of nature for its own sake. It operates under the assumption that correct socio-technical interventions can align ecological processes with state-defined development goals.

Despite their divergent philosophical underpinnings, eco-developmentalism shares with restoration ecology a tendency to dispossess and displace. As eco-developmental projects materialize on the ground in China, they strengthen state resource control and result in highly uneven socioeconomic and socioenvironmental outcomes for people and nonhuman forms of nature, including such prominent projects as large-scale ecological redline zoning (Lin and While, 2022; Rodenbiker, 2023a), grassland management and displacement (Mao et al., 2023; Nyima and Yeh, 2023; Yeh, 2005, 2009), afforestation projects (Zhu, 2022; Zinda and He, 2020), and the South-North water transfer project (Sheng et al., 2021). Both paradigms, therefore, foreclose Indigenous and local land relations, instead legitimizing new human-nature orders that have been scaled and exported globally.

Rather than offering a normative assessment of these dominant forms of environmental thought and practice, this paper provides a critical examination of their philosophical roots, historical trajectories, practices, and implications for displacement, power, and biodiversity. In doing so, we build on and deepen efforts to provincialize ecology—interrogating the universalizing claims of ecological paradigms by attending to a multiplicity of ecological epistemologies and practices. We do so by extending conceptual frameworks that provincialize socio-culturally dominant epistemes (Chakrabarty, 1992, 2000) and socio-politically situate forms of scientific knowledge production (Haraway, 1988). We bring these conceptual frameworks in conversation with works that problematize the historical formation of ecological epistemologies and the effects of certain human-nature epistemologies on human displacement (Davis and Slobodkin, 2004; Egan and Howell, 2005; Fletcher et al., 2021; Marris, 2013; Martin, 2022). We argue that differing epistemological foundations directly inform material practices, which in turn configure specific forms of displacement, power dynamics, landscape aesthetics, and biodiversity outcomes.

Our analysis illuminates the spatial politics and power dynamics embedded in different ecological epistemes, particularly the ways in which ecological interventions are framed, implemented, and contested. In this, we treat ecology as a historically specific form of knowledge, which differs across social and political contexts (Walker, 2005; Zimmerer, 1994). We demonstrate that Euro-American ecological restoration approaches are not alone in displacing communities and expanding globally; eco-developmentalism produces similar processes and outcomes. By comparing these frameworks, however, we highlight the uneven power relations embedded within certain ways of understanding, valuing, and intervening in nature. Crucially, we also trace the critical differences between them that shape their global reception and deployment. Although both are provincial in origin, restoration ecology and eco-developmentalism are now scaling globally, actively shaping the imagination and governance of Anthropocene futures. Our comparative approach critically interrogates the socio-political contexts and spatial inequalities embedded within these environmental approaches.

The article proceeds by first discussing our theoretical framework for provincializing ecology, which brings Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (1992, 2000) call to provincialize forms of knowledge assumed to be universal in conversation with Donna Haraway’s (1988) concept of situated knowledges. The next two sections then trace the emergence of the restoration ecology paradigm in Euro-American historical and political-economic contexts and the rise of eco-developmentalism in China, respectively. The fourth section provides a comparative analysis, provincializing each paradigm to show how, despite their differences, both tend to marginalize local ecological approaches and undermine certain aspects of biodiversity conservation. The penultimate section analyzes the implications of the global expansion of both paradigms as they circulate across the Global South. The conclusion reflects on the implications of these divergent ecological approaches for life in the Anthropocene.

Provincializing ecology: Situating epistemologies, values, and practices

Our effort toward provincializing ecology draws on Donna Haraway’s (1988) and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (1992, 2000) critiques of universalizing knowledge, emphasizing instead how knowledge production is sociopolitically-situated, power-laden, and historically specific. Provincializing ecology is not simply about acknowledging alternative perspectives, but involves critical examination of how knowledge production itself is shaped by power dynamics, political agendas, and social structures. This point of departure challenges the idea that ecological science, as understood and practiced in the West, offers a one-size-fits-all solution to environmental problems, particularly when applied globally. By “the West,” we refer to the (neo)colonial powers of Europe and the United States, whose foundational conceptions of nature as pristine wilderness—analyzed below—have shaped restoration ecology and the practice of national park-making. These ideas remain mainstream in international conservation today. Indeed, as Fletcher et al. (2021: 2) argue,

Despite decades of critique and resistance during the colonial era, a resurgence of the wilderness myth around the world has once again found traction among large international nongovernmental organizations, private philanthropists, major foundations, and corporations, and certain nation-states who seek to reimpose aspects of “fortress conservation,” whereby Indigenous and local peoples are excluded from land and the life it gives.

Given this resurgence, provincializing the universalist claim of a pristine ecology in need of restoration is important and timely.

Haraway’s (1988) concept of “situated knowledges” provides a crucial tool for this task by challenging the presumed objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge. She contends that all knowledge is situated—that is, produced from particular perspectives within larger constellations of power. This means that science, including ecology, is shaped by its social, cultural, and political contexts, alongside the values, interests, and biases of its producers. Applying this lens to ecology entails critically examining dominant narratives embedded within our two paradigms: the pristine wilderness ideal of restoration ecology and the mechanistic optimization of eco-developmentalism. The universalizing narratives contained in each often mask the underlying social, political, and economic interests that shape ecological practices and research. Haraway’s framework encourages us to critically engage with the power structures embedded in scientific knowledge, which privilege certain epistemologies while marginalizing others. This aligns with the long-standing work in political ecology that attends to the multiple, contested meanings surrounding “ecology” itself (Argüelles and March, 2022; Rodenbiker, 2023a; Walker, 2005; Zimmerer, 1994). Argüelles and March (2022), for instance, demonstrate how the very notion of a wanted or unwanted plant—the categorization of a plant as a “crop” or “weed”—is entangled with systems of social value, vegetal capabilities, and biological world-making.

This leads to a core premise: ecological knowledge is neither neutral nor universal. Paradigms like restoration ecology or eco-developmentalism emerge within specific historical, political, and social contexts, and their values and goals do too. Ecological restoration’s focus on historical fidelity reflects a particular worldview, deeply shaped by settler-colonial legacies and the nature-culture divide, as discussed below. The emphasis on restoring ecosystems to a “pristine” state overlooks millennia of sustainable coexistence, where Indigenous and local communities have lived in close relationships with their environments and employed sustainable practices aimed not at “restoration” but rather at utilizing resources in ways that enhance ecological resilience and redefine landscapes (Adams and Hutton, 2007; Daigle, 2024; Spence, 1999; Whyte, 2018a). Scholars of Indigenous environmental knowledge, for instance, have brought attention to the ways Indigenous fire management maintains diverse ecosystems (Yibarbuk et al., 2001; Zahara, 2020), shown how “right relations” with land are essential for ethical scientific knowledge production (Daigle, 2024; Hill, 2017; Liboiron, 2021; Palmer, 2024), and demonstrated how climate justice can be pursued through Indigenous knowledge and practices (Whyte, 2018b; 2020).

Similarly, eco-developmentalism harbors its own situated emergence that contrasts with local grassroots practices. For instance, political economist and activist Wen (2021) emphasizes small-scale production and the maintenance of traditional rural lifestyles, in an effort to achieve income parity between urban and rural areas in China, as an alternative to unchecked urbanization and industrialization. This form of local knowledge contrasts significantly with the Chinese state-supported approach of eco-developmentalism, which emphasizes large-scale mechanistic ecosystem intervention to maximize production and circulation of goods and optimize socio-natural and sociospatial relationships (Rodenbiker, 2023a).

Thus, both the ecological restoration and eco-developmental paradigms function as dominant narratives whose implementation often diminishes Indigenous and local perspectives. These marginalized knowledge systems typically operate on different principles—emphasizing ongoing, reciprocal ethical relations with the land rather than historical fidelity or mechanistic optimization (Ferguson and Weaselboy, 2020; Guernsey, 2023). Their existence fundamentally challenges the hegemonic assumption that either ecological restoration or eco-developmentalism should be understood in universal terms.

This challenge to universalism finds a powerful methodological counterpart in Chakrabarty’s (1992, 2000) project of “provincializing Europe.” Chakrabarty argues that European historical experience—along with its associated values of rationality, individualism, and linear progress—has been universalized, marginalizing alternative histories and epistemologies in the (post)colony. Provincializing, in this sense, entails challenging the Eurocentric framework that has shaped both historical analysis and contemporary understandings of modernity. It means recognizing the local and historically specific nature of knowledge production and its relationship to power in order to embrace a wider range of regionally grounded perspectives (Anderson, 2002; Burawoy, 2005; Vessuri, 2019).

We extend this project to ecology. The framework of restoration ecology, while influential globally, is a product of Euro-American historical, cultural, and socio-political milieus (Egan and Howell, 2005; Martin, 2022), as discussed below. The eco-developmental paradigm, in contrast, has been deeply shaped by China’s distinct historical, cultural, and socio-political milieu (Esarey et al., 2020; Harrell, 2023; Rodenbiker, 2023a). By provincializing these nature-society frameworks, we open space for comparison with other forms of ecological thought and practice that may not share the same assumptions about history or human-nature relations. This is especially important in the Global South, where ecological knowledge and practices have evolved differently, often emphasizing the integration of social development with state-led approaches to ecological management.

Provincializing ecology, then, involves a dual movement. First, extending Chakrabarty’s logic, it interrogates the universalizing claims behind dominant ecological paradigms. Second, applying Haraway’s imperative, it acknowledges alternative, situated ecological frameworks for addressing environmental challenges in specific locales. In this regard, it is essential to recognize that Euro-American environmentalism is not the only paradigm with universalizing ambitions. China’s eco-developmentalism—emerging from a distinct confluence of Marxian political economy, systems science, botany, and agricultural economics (Rodenbiker, 2021, 2023a)—presents a formidable, state-backed alternative. Through its emphasis on large-scale development, it is starkly different from both Indigenous ecological approaches and the restoration paradigm. In this sense, the global export of eco-developmentalism through South-South cooperation helps provincialize the hegemony of Western ecological models. Yet, as a dominant paradigm itself, eco-developmentalism must also be provincialized in turn to reveal its own situatedness, limits, and uneven power dynamics.

Our paper aims to execute this dual provincialization. We critically examine the situated and historically contingent emergence of two dominant ecological frameworks, which have captured the hearts of minds of powerful governments and nongovernmental actors globally. This involves acknowledging the multiplicity of knowledge systems and the cultural, political, and historical contexts out of which they emerge, as well as analyzing how each dominant approach can displace Indigenous and local practices. Our intervention builds on, yet also moves beyond, pragmatic debates about managing “novel ecosystems” intended to remake an ever-shifting anthropogenic world (Marris, 2013), instead critically examining the constitutive epistemologies, values, and practices of dominant paradigms that engage in such remaking. By opening up space to analyze the philosophical underpinnings of these dominant paradigms, we encourage a more dynamic environmental discourse, capable of grappling with the multiplicity of ways to understand and address the complex environmental challenges the world faces today. In this, however, our aim is not to adopt a normative stance privileging one approach or the other, but rather to foster critical dialogue on ecological knowledge that recognizes historical contingency and the efficacy of multiple perspectives in shaping Anthropocene futures.

Restoration ecology in Euro-American historical and political-economic context

Restoration ecology emerged in the early-to-mid-20th century from the growing recognition of humanity’s profound impact on natural ecosystems, coupled with an ethical duty to repair and restore damaged habitats to maintain ecosystem integrity. The field has foundations in the U.S. environmental thought, most notably Aldo Leopold’s (1949) “land ethic,” articulated in A Sand County Almanac. Leopold emphasized the moral responsibility humans have in relation to the land and its nonhuman inhabitants. He endeavored to enlarge the boundaries of ethical consideration to include “soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land” (Leopold, 1949: 192). His work calls for a shift in worldview to an eco-centric perspective where the land is not understood simply as a resource for exploitation but as a complex system of interconnected relationships.

Despite these eco-centric philosophical foundations, the historical realities of ecological restoration in practice have been strikingly anthropocentric, shaped by human values, aesthetics, and political economy. As Martin (2022) demonstrates, restoration ecology emerged through various trials and experiments of both amateur and professional ecologists seeking to restore damaged or degraded ecosystems to a supposedly more “natural” state. This restorative endeavor is both a method and a philosophy, premised on the belief that ecosystems can be restored to some semblance of their predisturbance condition through intentional human intervention. Martin (2022) characterizes the field as “a mode of environmental intervention that seeks to respect world-making, and even decision-making, of other species” (p. 5), noting that “restorationists, from the start, have grappled with the question of how to intervene in the lives of wild plants and animals, while also retaining their ‘wildness’” (Martin, 2022: 7). “Indeed,” she concludes, “ecological restoration challenges the idea that a place is either untamed or managed, wild or designed” (Martin, 2022). In this, the restoration ecology paradigm aims to reproduce ecological processes, species distributions, and interactions that existed in a given area prior to degradation, as the guiding principle for environmental intervention. The goal is not to recreate the past exactly, but to re-establish ecological processes that support ecosystem health, reverse environmental degradation, restore biodiversity, and return ecosystems to functional states that support ecological processes.

Of course, none of these efforts are divorceable from human values, epistemes, and power relations. In particular, the aesthetics of pristine landscapes and the economic interests of corporations, communities, and individuals loom large in the history of ecological restoration (Alagona et al., 2012; Egan and Howell, 2005; Lave, 2012; Pauwelussen and Vandenberg, 2024). Sayre (2010) demonstrates how restoration in the U.S. Southwest arose during a period of severe environmental degradation, when both Clementsian ecology and popular aesthetics promoted idealized, timeless visions of desert landscapes that obscured their historical change. While scientists have since rejected Clementsian climax models, the aesthetic ideals articulated in his scientific work continue to shape restoration debates and practices involving grasslands, riparian areas, grazing, and fire.

Beyond aesthetics, restoration ecology has its own political economy. The “Rosgen Wars,” as examined by Rebecca Lave (2012), represent a significant conflict within the field of restoration ecology, particularly regarding the adoption of specific methods for stream and river restoration linked to the political economy of scientific knowledge production and privatized practice. The controversy centers on the stream classification and channel design techniques developed by David Rosgen, such as his “Natural Channel Design,” which gained widespread popularity in the 1990s. Rosgen’s (1997, 2006) approach emphasized using standardized metrics to classify streams and applying geomorphic principles to reshape channels in a way that would mimic a “natural” state. While many practitioners lauded these methods for their apparent simplicity and practicality, critics—including Lave—argue that they oversimplified complex ecological processes and disregarded the unique historical and social contexts of each ecosystem. Moreover, Rosgen patented many of his techniques, enabling the privatized practice of stream restoration across the United States. The ensuing Rosgen Wars thus became a scientific and political-economic battleground over competing visions of ecological restoration. On one side stood Rosgen’s model advocating universal, proprietary techniques; on the other were calls for more adaptive, context-sensitive strategies that consider socio-political dimensions alongside ecological integrity (Davis and Slobodkin, 2004; Egan and Howell, 2005; Lave 2012).

Sayer’s analysis of Celementsian ecological aesthetics and Lave’s analysis of the Rosgen Wars underscore how technical debates are deeply intertwined with power dynamics, knowledge production, and political-economic interests. The conflict reveals the tensions between technical expertise and knowledge production, as well as between universal methodologies and grounded practices. Over time, core principles of restoration ecology emerged that underscore the belief that ecosystems and their services can be actively managed with an eye to restoration and maintaining ecosystem services. Market-based approaches that monetarily value ecosystems services, for instance, have been introduced into U.S. stream-restoration policies allowing for the destruction of a river in one place given its relative functional equivalent is repaired elsewhere (Lave and Doyle, 2021).

This signals a key epistemological shift from a goal of historical ecological fidelity to one of functional ecological equivalence. Indeed, the principle of historical fidelity has become the paradigm’s most contested tenet. It presumes a “natural” baseline, often ignoring long-standing human influence and anthropogenic change (Marris, 2013; Weinstein et al., 2014), as well as industrial and colonial influences on what are ultimately socially constructed baseline measures (Liboiron, 2021). As Marris (2013) notes, baselines “typically don’t just act as a scientific before to compare with an after. They become the good, the goal, the one correct state” (Marris 2013, 3; emphasis in original). This commitment to historical fidelity reflects a belief in the inherent value of a predisturbance ecological state and posits its restoration as the most sound and ethical path, thereby raising critical questions about which past is deemed “authentic” and whether these past states represent the most sustainable or resilient condition for contemporary ecosystems (Alagona et al., 2012; Egan and Howell, 2005).

Quixotically, this Enlightenment-based approach of reproducing a supposedly pristine wilderness—for all its provincial origins—retains a hegemonic global presence. The United Nations (UN) “Decade of Ecological Restoration” (2021–2030) represents merely the latest institutionalization of a paradigm inculcated worldwide for decades. As Fletcher et al. (2021) contend, it continues to dominate global conservation policy and public imagination despite growing dissonance with critiques from post-colonial, Indigenous, and environmental scholarship (2–4). Even China has adopted hallmarks of this paradigm, including a recently established national park system and long-standing US-inspired environmental laws. Yet, China is also the cradle of a powerful counterpoint—eco-developmentalism—which contrasts with restoration logics. Propelled by vast state investments, eco-developmentalism has emerged not just as an alternative, but as a rival universalizing project, advancing a distinct pathway for the Anthropocene.

The rise of eco-developmentalism in China

There are key epistemological differences between restoration ecology, analyzed above, and eco-developmentalism as it has emerged in China. One of the most notable distinctions lies in how ecological thought is aligned with political and economic ideologies. In China, ecological discourse has been explicitly integrated with socialist thought, emerging from the state-directed processes of sociospatial optimization, a project termed “ecological civilization building” (生态文明建设 shengtai wenming jianshe) (Goron, 2018; Hansen et al., 2018; Rodenbiker, 2021; Weins et al., 2023). The notion of “building” ecology—a seeming contradiction for a science focused on process-based relations in nature—stems from decades of intellectual debate following the post-socialist reforms of the 1980s. Chinese systems scientists (Ma and Wang, 1984), as well as Marxian political economists (Wang, 1986) and agricultural economists (Ye, 1988), emphasized functional land-use planning and the transformative role of greening Chinese industrial and agricultural production, framing ecological health as a desired outcome of state-led modernization (Rodenbiker, 2021).

Despite the rhetorical emphasis on socialist values and timeless harmony with nature, eco-developmental approaches in practice manifest through large-scale, engineered interventions aimed at achieving specific outcomes such as desertification control, land reclamation, and land-use optimization. Unlike restoration ecology, rooted in philosophies of historical fidelity and ecological integrity, eco-developmental epistemologies are mechanistic, operating under the assumption that human interventions can predictably optimize socioecological relations (Rodenbiker, 2023a). This logic defines an interventionist role for the state, frames urbanization and sociospatial optimization as moral progress, and thus lays an epistemological foundation for legitimizing state-led technocratic engineering while naturalizing resulting social inequalities (Rodenbiker, 2021). Consequently, eco-developmentalism reflects the centralizing power of the Chinese Party-State, its monopoly on violence and coercion, and the active erasure of other ways of being in and knowing the environment. The approach has manifested in numerous efforts to optimize resource use that contribute to uneven development, human displacement, and the dissolvement of long-standing environmental lifeways (Lin and While, 2022; Nyima and Yeh, 2023; Rodenbiker, 2025; Sheng et al., 2021; Yeh, 2009).

We define eco-developmentalism as a technocratic approach to human-nature relations that holds human intervention as a necessary and inescapable force to be harnessed for optimizing landscapes that deliver both ecological and development benefits. Rather than emulating a historical baseline, the eco-developmental approach resembles “designer ecosystems,” which aim “not to restore some notional and incompletely apprehended past but to design or engineer for specific measurable goals” (Marris, 2013: 125). Yet, the approach also moves beyond simply designing specific ecosystems toward the development of a centralized national vision for management across ecosystems, all while reinforcing state power (Esarey et al., 2020; Lin and While, 2022; Rodenbiker, 2023a). Rodenbiker (2023a) refers to this as “ecological state formation”—the biophysical, governmental, and aesthetic processes through which state power is expressed in relation to ecology. “Eco-developmental logics undergird China’s national sustainable development narrative,” he argues, which “hold that state intervention will produce ecological equilibrium in the biophysical world, a modern society, and an aesthetic sublime in physical landscapes” (Rodenbiker 2023a: 14).

Epistemologically, this framework imagines and values ecology as something to be managed synergistically with human developmental needs rather than preserved for its intrinsic value. While restoration ecology more often seeks to restore ecosystems to their historical, predisturbance states, eco-developmentalism prioritizes the engineering of ecosystems to fulfill specific utilitarian goals defined at a national scale. Philosophically, it holds that humans and nature form a unified whole (“human-nature harmony” or 天人合一 tian ren he yi), assuming no ontological separation between social and natural realms and positing humans as perpetual agents of change. Harmony, here, is conceived as the mechanistic integration of humanity within wider ecologies at a vast, state-managed scale—not as the harmony of small-scale subsistence communities that a restoration paradigm values. Indeed, from an eco-developmental perspective, localized lifeways not integrated into a larger state vision may be seen more as a form of “human-nature chaos” (天人混沌 tian ren hundun) to be ordered than harmony to be emulated. Thus, eco-developmentalism frames intervention as not only necessary but desirable for achieving state-defined objectives related to ecological functionality and development (Zhu, 2022, 2023), enabling mega-projects that transform socio-ecologies while forging distinct political economies and uneven power relations.

The practices and constitutive power relations of this model are evident in key national initiatives. These include ecological redlines that limit development in areas with critical ecosystem functionality (Jiang et al., 2019); afforestation programs linked to the development of cash crops (Zinda and He, 2020); and the Three North Shelter Belt (also called the “Green Great Wall”), an anti-desertification initiative spanning northern China (Zee, 2022; Zhu, 2023). Ecological redlines, covering over one quarter of China’s land area (Xu et al., 2018), delineate areas of ecological importance where development is restricted. They are designed not to preserve wilderness or uphold predisturbance baselines, but to safeguard critical ecosystem functions, often leading to the resettlement of populations into state-managed housing (Lin and While, 2022). Similarly, large-scale afforestation efforts, such as the Green Great Wall, involve planting millions of trees to combat soil erosion and desertification (Rodenbiker, 2023b; Turner et al., 2023). As one of the largest environmental engineering projects in history, China’s Great Green Wall covers more than a third of the country in the north and involves the resettlement of human populations and the restructuring of local livelihoods into state forestry sectors (Zee, 2022).

Witnessing such large-scale socioecological manipulations is a crucial means of reinforcing state power through demonstrations of landscape aestheticization and technical prowess (Rodenbiker, 2022; Zhang, 2025). While hailed globally as examples of innovative, large-scale environmental management that could potentially serve as models for other countries (Gao et al., 2020a, 2020b; You et al., 2020), such projects have also been critiqued as a “mask” or “expensive band aid” that glosses over the intrinsic tensions between environment and development and fails to preserve natural spaces (Marks, 2017; Ratliff, 2003). In the context of rapid urbanization and industrialization, these projects represent an attempt to achieve ecological goals in unison with the state’s developmental agenda at a national scale. Collectively, they are emblematic of China’s eco-developmental model, which simultaneously intervenes in nature in ways that strengthen state power and reproduce social inequality. The pursuit of tandem ecological and developmental goals reveals the model’s uneven political economy: high-altitude pastoralists are subject to regimes of both incentivization and threat to manufacture consent surrounding resettlement (Nyima and Yeh, 2023), while jurisdictional conflicts arise as state actors capitalize on projects like the South-North Water Transfer Project (Sheng and Webber, 2021; Sheng et al., 2021). Ultimately, eco-developmentalism operates as a mode of governance that legitimizes sweeping socioecological transformation in the name of sustainability, while its practices systematically reconsolidate state authority and distribute its costs unevenly across society.

Ecologies in comparison: On human displacement and biodiversity impacts

In this section, we compare restoration ecology and eco-developmentalism in terms of their underlying philosophies, practices, and outcomes, with a focus on human displacement and biodiversity impacts. While their stated goals and historical contexts differ profoundly, we argue that both paradigms are implicated in the displacement of marginalized populations and generate complex, contingent, and often contested, biodiversity outcomes.

Restoration ecology is rooted in Leopold’s (1949) land ethic, which emphasizes the intrinsic value of ecosystems and advocates for an eco-centric approach. Ecosystem repair is thus regarded as both a scientific and moral enterprise. However, as Lave (2012) argues, restoration ecology is far from apolitical; it is deeply embedded in the social and political contexts in which it is practiced. Decisions about what to restore, how, and to what end are shaped by a mix of corporate, community, and individual interests. Furthermore, the history of ecological restoration in the United States is intertwined with colonial and industrial capitalist processes, where efforts to preserve certain landscapes were predicated on the dispossession of Indigenous people from their lands, such as in the formation of the U.S. National Park System (Adams and Hutton, 2007; Spence, 1999).

The emergence of the ecological restoration paradigm, therefore, is predicated on settler colonialism, extra-territorial injustices committed in the name of scientific knowledge production, and the fundamental alterations of the biochemical world through atomic experimentation on Indigenous lands (Korodimou and Thornton, 2025; Kosek, 2020; Masco, 2004). Dispelling the myth of pristine nature, Martin notes, “Indigenous peoples managed American ecosystems long before European colonists did . . . To imagine precolonial lands as empty or pristine, as restorationists sometimes do, perpetuates a foundational and pernicious myth of settler colonialism, namely that Europeans came upon unsettled lands” (Martin, 2022: 11).

This historical context suggests that ecological restoration is not simply about restoring ecological balance but also about asserting control over land and nature. The veneer of scientific neutrality is further diminished when examining how the Odum brothers’ popularization of the ecosystem concept was predicated on injustices inflicted on Marshall Islanders, such as radiation poisoning from detonating atomic bombs used to test chemical flows in aquatic ecosystems (Odum and Odum, 1955; Martin, 2018). In addition to these atrocities, which undergird ecological restoration scientific knowledge production, aesthetic preferences, such as those rooted in Clemenstian ecology, have shaped restoration practices, often privileging visual markers over ecological complexity (Sayre, 2010).

China’s eco-developmental approach operates from a distinct philosophical and political foundation yet has its own displacement politics. Rather than seeking historical fidelity, it creates new socioecological landscapes that serve functional purposes. In other words, eco-developmental interventions in the landscape create novel landscapes (Dooling, 2015; Hobbs et al., 2014), which serve both explicit ecological functions and human developmental goals. In this framework, policies like “ecological migration” resettle populations in the name of socio-natural optimization and ecological security. Seasonal grazers, for example, have been moved from traditional grazing lands into sedentary living arrangements (Yeh, 2009) and high-elevation pastoralists have been resettled through a mix of incentivization and coercion (Nyima and Yeh, 2023), while peri-urban farmers have been relocated into high-rise apartments as part of green urbanization efforts (Rodenbiker, 2020). These forms of state-directed displacement and resettlement reflect a broader goal of state-led modernization, where the state plays a central role in dictating relationships between humans and nature. Here, human populations are managed as biopolitical resources alongside ecologies, reflecting a political economy where state power engineers both social relations and ecosystems to fit national developmental goals (Rodenbiker, 2023a; Rogers and Wilmsen, 2020). This state-driven approach to socioecological manipulation is instrumentalized to engineer both ecosystems and social relations. Thus, while restoration ecology dispossesses in the name of returning to an imagined past, eco-developmentalism displaces in the name of engineering an optimized future; both subordinate local lifeways to a larger ideological project.

Regarding biodiversity, the outcomes of both approaches are contingent and often contradictory. In China, results vary based on the type of project in question. For ecological redlines, biodiversity outcomes depend on particular ecological functions within in-patch and cross-patch dynamics (Gao et al., 2020a, 2020b). In areas where ecological redlines were selected specifically to protect critical habitats, biodiversity benefits are likely to emerge, according to the extent that enforcement is upheld (Choi et al., 2022). Beyond China, there is debate about experimenting with the ecological redline approach in Southeast Asia to further biodiversity benefits (Bai et al., 2021). Large-scale afforestation projects, such as tree plantations, generally demonstrate fewer benefits for biodiversity, creating mono-crop and dual-crop landscapes (Liu et al., 2017). In the north, for example, China’s Great Green Wall has tended to create mono- and dual-crop landscapes that produce economic crops without fidelity to desert ecologies while disrupting local land-based livelihoods (Bai et al., 2021; Turner et al., 2023). This project has, after 40 years, managed to entirely encircle the Taklamakan Desert—China’s largest desert and the second largest pure sand desert globally—with a 2700-km-long green belt (Xinhua, 2024). Yet, biodiversity benefits remain limited (Jiang, 2016).

In southern China, fast-rotation plantations for cardboard pulp also may undermine local biodiversity and strain water resources. “Such plantations,” Marks (2017: 340) notes, “cannot be considered ‘forests’ in the sense of preserving biodiversity.” Yet, more recently, provincial governments have incentivized moving away from short-rotation plantations toward higher value species, such as Chinese fir, sandalwoods, and rosewoods (Zhu, 2022). These plantations are more diverse with longer rotation cycles of 25 years or more. They also typically rely on “understory economies” (linxia jingji)—shade-grown traditional teas, organic free-range chickens, herbs for Chinese medicine, essential oils and incense for fragrance and health, artisanal honey and waxes, and so forth—to provide short-term returns to fund the long-term growth of the trees (Zhu, 2022). While understory economies further diversify plantation spaces, they do not aspire to biodiversity conservation as a goal in and of itself.

Restoration ecology, despite its explicit conservation goals, also faces significant critiques regarding its biodiversity impacts. Namely, the emphasis on historical fidelity—restoring ecosystems to their predisturbance state—can inadvertently overlook the complex, dynamic nature of ever-shifting ecosystems (Marris, 2013; Pearce et al., 2023). By focusing on recreating past conditions, restoration efforts often fail to account for current environmental realities, such as climate change or the introduction of invasive species (Hobbs and Cramer, 2008; Rohr et al., 2018). This is especially problematic moving forward in the Anthropocene, where it is increasingly unclear whether the goal is to recreate a natural past or build a new sustainable future. How to restore “nature” in a future indelibly altered by humans? In both paradigms, biodiversity outcomes are frequently secondary to other driving imperatives: aesthetic and (neo)colonial ideals in restoration and state-led functional optimization in eco-developmentalism.

In summary, both restoration ecology and eco-developmentalism, despite their divergent origins and rhetorics, function as powerful instruments of socioecological governance that frequently displace marginalized communities. Restoration ecology, cloaked in the mantle of scientific neutrality and a return to purity, has been a tool of settler-colonial land appropriation. Eco-developmentalism, openly technocratic and future-oriented, is a tool of state spatial optimization and social engineering. Both approaches demonstrate that ecological management is never merely technical; it is inherently political, reflecting and reinforcing the power of those who define what constitutes a “proper” relationship between humans and nature. An ecological approach that prioritizes equity must foreground justice in planning and decision-making, paying close attention to histories of human resource use and exclusion (Adams and Hutton, 2007; Primack et al., 2023), as well as the needs and historical conditions of marginalized communities (Costanza-Chock, 2020; Liboiron, 2021). These considerations are a starting point toward shifting ecological practices toward more just models of environmental governance.

Anthropocene futures in the global south

Provincializing ecology—recognizing ecological theories and practices as historically, socially, and politically situated—opens new ground for imaging and enacting ecological futures in the Global South. It affirms that citizens, states, and social movements are not passive recipients of ecological models but active agents shaping the ecological futures toward which they aspire. A vibrant literature documents these plural forms of alternative world-making. In Latin America, frameworks like Buen Vivir (good living), senti-pensar (feeling-thinking), and the peasant movement La Vía Campesina draw on Indigenous cosmologies and land practices to model communal, nonextractive futures (Escobar, 2020; Garcia-Arias, Cuestas-Caza, 2024; Martínez-Torres and Rosset, 2017). Across Africa, efforts to deconstruct externally imposed narratives of crisis or catch-up development have given rise to grounded, improvisational practices of futurity. These range from AbdouMaliq Simone’s concept of “people as infrastructure”—where social collaboration itself becomes a form of urban repair—to the speculative, liberatory world-making of Afrofuturism, a diasporic movement with profound resonance and distinct iterations across the African continent (Jon et al., 2024; Nathaniel and Akung, 2022; Simone, 2004; Womack, 2013 Iddris et al., 2026). Philosophically, these movements often resonate with relational ontologies such as Ubuntu (“I am because we are”), which directly challenges Western Enlightenment binaries (Aliye, 2020; Ramose, 1999). What unites these diverse epistemes is their rejection of preservationist models that seek to restore a prehuman “nature.” Instead, they emphasize productive, negotiated harmonies between human and more-than-human worlds, as well as community-building. Each, in its own way, does the work of provincializing ecology.

Standing in stark contrast to these often community-led, emancipatory alternatives is China’s model of eco-developmentalism. While fully embracing state capitalism and technoscientific mastery, and far less concerned with social justice or decolonization, eco-developmentalism nevertheless represents a challenge to the nature-culture binary underpinning restoration ecology. Its impacts cannot be dismissed as mere greenwashing: China leads the world in afforestation and global greening within its borders (Chen et al., 2019) and is undertaking history’s largest green energy transition (Yang et al., 2025). Eco-developmentalism may not fit neatly into the canon of “alternatives” traditionally celebrated in critical scholarship—it is top-down, authoritarian, and universalizing in its own right—yet it presents a formidable vision of socioecological transformation without clear analogue elsewhere. As we contemplate alternative world-making in the Anthropocene, we should not overlook such visions, which are gaining ground.

Today, the Global South is a key arena for the deployment of both eco-developmental and restoration approaches. Restoration ecology, with its embedded ideals of historical fidelity and wilderness, continues to circulate globally through multilateral agreements, conservation nongovernmental organizations, and scientific networks, as it has for decades. Simultaneously, China is systematically exporting its eco-developmental model as a core component of its global environmental governance strategy (Zhu et al., 2024). Since President Xi’s (2018) declaration that China will be “deeply involved in global environmental governance” and help “construct a global Ecological Civilization,” this effort has intensified (Xi, 2018). It is being operationalized through high-level diplomacy (e.g. hosting the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity), significant financial commitments (e.g. the Kunming Biodiversity Fund, South-South Climate Cooperation Fund), and the greening of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). ¹ Through these vast platforms, China is asserting its eco-developmental approach as a global alternative.

These investments are not divorced from geopolitics. China, for example, exports surveillance and control technologies to other Global South governments as part of environmental assistance, especially to governments seeking distance from Western democratic ideals (Li and Shapiro, 2026). For many nations in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond, the appeal lies less in the technical details of afforestation or redlining but more in China’s role as a counterweight to Western hegemony. Authoritarian or not, nations across the Global South generally favor multipolarity. Given the North-South tensions that have historically characterized the Cold War (Westad, 2005) and environmental diplomacy to date, Global South countries are interested in diversifying their collaborations. As China promotes its ecological models through green development projects and scientific exchanges, the reach of eco-developmentalism is expanding globally, intertwining ecological management with strategic influence (See Harlan, 2021; Sun et al., 2023; Zhang, 2021; Rodenbiker, 2023a). However, as this model proliferates, the banner of ecological civilization is used to justify intensified extractive practices in the name of green development that displaces environmental and social harms onto marginalized Global South communities—such as minority populations near uranium mines in Namibia—who bear the costs of sustainable energy transitions despite contributing least to climate change (DeBoom, 2021).

As our analysis shows, the ecological paradigms circulating across the Global South are not merely technical, but deeply philosophical and political. Integrating ecological pursuits within wider development aspirations, China’s eco-developmentalism contrasts with restoration ecology. China’s approach has less to do with “pristine nature” in the sense of that which remains untouched by humans and more to do with large-scale socioecological experimentation for living in the Anthropocene. It presents a future alternative where ecology is a domain of state-led mastery, not retreat. Global South countries more interested in large-scale development and resource utilization than restoring natural spaces are likely to be influenced by this model moving forward, just as they have been influenced by decades of shared experiences with restoration ecology (Xinhua, 2021).

Ultimately, our aim is to acknowledge the differences of each paradigm while provincializing both—to demystify restoration ecology as a situated project, not a universal good, and to highlight eco-developmentalism as a powerful but equally sociopolitically-situated environmental governance alternative. This, perhaps, clears space for more transparent ecological self-determination. We echo scholars who caution against exclusive reliance on imported models—whether wilderness-based or technocratically optimized—and instead advocate for initiatives that foreground justice and align with Indigenous and locally designed and implemented forms of environmental governance (Fletcher et al., 2021, 5). The ecological future of the Global South will not be decided by a choice between Westernization or Sinicization. It will be forged through the creative work of navigating multiple Anthropocene futures—drawing on, resisting, and hybridizing paradigms in pursuit of just and livable self-determined worlds.

Conclusions

The central message of this paper is that ecological thinking is not monolithic but multifaceted, encompassing a range of epistemologies and perspectives that reflect different cultural, ethical, and practical approaches to environmental challenges. Endeavoring to provincialize ecology, we have analyzed two dominant and globally circulating paradigms—restoration ecology and eco-developmentalism—to reveal how each shapes socio-natural relations, conservation practice, and visions of the future. By differentiating and critically examining these paradigms, we contribute to ongoing discussions on the political stakes of how ecological epistemologies shape approaches to global environmental issues, conservation, and development.

Our analysis disentangles these paradigms at their roots. Restoration ecology, with its ideals of historical fidelity, emphasizes the intrinsic value of natural ecological processes and strives to recreate nature’s past. Eco-developmentalism, in sharp contrast, is a state-led framework that engineers landscapes for development, integrating ecology within a technocratic vision of sociospatial optimization. Tracing their lineages, we provincialized both traditions: exposing restoration ecology not as a universal scientific ideal but as a culturally specific Euro-American project linked with settler colonialism, and situating China’s eco-developmentalism within its own historical and ideological trajectory as a state-led project of large-scale socioecological optimization. This dual framework reveals that both paradigms, despite their divergent origins and aspirations for the future, are deeply political projects that reshape landscapes, populations, and biodiversity in complex, often contested, ways.

This framework of provincializing ecology through comparative analyses has significant implications for future research on socioenvironmental relations and studies of environmental science and sustainable development. It challenges scholars to critically examine how all ecological practices—from seed banks to megaprojects—are embedded within histories of knowledge production, governance structures, and specific power dynamics. Future research is needed on how environmental technologies—whether restoration-based, large-scale ecological engineering, or otherwise—are deeply intertwined with governance structures, power dynamics, and cultural narratives surrounding sustainable futures. This is especially urgent in the Anthropocene, as adherence to pristine historical baselines becomes increasingly untenable in a climate-changed world experiencing rapid biodiversity loss.

Perhaps most importantly, our research helps uncover the political stakes of what it means for different ecological epistemologies and practices to gain traction around the world. For much of the 20th century, globally influential environmental models flowed predominantly from the West. Today, this dynamic is shifting. Across the Global South, emancipatory, community-led alternatives—from buen vivir to food sovereignty movements—are gaining attention and shaping practices. China’s eco-developmentalism presents a fundamentally different, non-Western alternative: one that is state-led, technocratic, and universalizing. It serves not as an emancipatory critique but as a formidable foil to both Western preservationism and Southern grassroots movements, advancing a vision of large-scale engineered life worlds.

This divergence points to crucial and underexplored frontiers for research. While critical geographic scholarship has productively engaged with grassroots future-making, the global rise of state-led eco-developmental models demands equal scrutiny. How are eco-developmental approaches influencing governments and environmental managers across the Global South? How might such paradigms reshape Southern environmentalism and approaches to sustainable development? And how will their integration with infrastructure diplomacy and green finance recalibrate global geopolitics? These questions signal the high political stakes of ecological thought in a multipolar world. They delineate crucial domains of inquiry for 21st-century environments, societies, and development.