148 Andrew Light
These criticisms stem directly from what has been the principal concern of environmen-
tal ethicists since the inception of the fi eld in the early 1970s, namely to describe the
nonanthropocentric (non-human-centered) and noninstrumental value of nature (see
Brennan 1998; Callicott 2002; Light 2002a). One of the basic presumptions of the fi eld
has been that if nature has some kind of intrinsic or inherent value, then a wide range of
duties, obligations, and rights may be required in our treatment of it similar to the obliga-
tions owed to humans when they are described as entities that have intrinsic rather than
only instrumental value. This is much the same way that we think about the reasons we
have moral obligations to other humans according to many ethical theories. Kant’s duty-
based ethics argued that humans have value in and of themselves such that we should
never treat them only as a means to furthering our own ends but also as ends in
themselves.
Setting aside for the moment the validity of this general claim, one immediate observa-
tion we can make is that it seems to rely on a discernible line between those things in the
world possessing this sort of value (natural things) and those things that do not have this
value (nonnatural things, namely artifacts). Without such a distinction, then, it would
appear to be the case that we have some kinds of moral obligations to all environments—
natural or nonnatural—incurring a very large set of confl icting moral obligations to those
environments. Here, then, is the source of one of the chief worries of environmental ethi-
cists such as Elliot and Katz about restored environments: they would appear to be mar-
ginal cases that test our ability to draw this kind of line because they may be hybrid objects.
They look like naturally evolved things, maybe even act like them, but they are made by
humans and so must be artifacts. Elliot and Katz reply, however, that restorations can never
duplicate the value of original nature because, by defi nition, they are not natural things.
They are artifacts made by humans and that is the most important thing to recognize in
determining their value. In Elliot’s terms, restorations lack the “originary value” of natu-
rally evolved entities and systems that are derived from having evolved separately from
us as the product of autonomous biological, geological, and ecological processes. Instead
the origins of restorations are human and, like other things made by humans, their value
is instrumental; they have value for us. For Elliot, the value of a restored environment is
more akin to a piece of counterfeit art than an original masterpiece.
But such a view is the best-case scenario for restorations on such accounts. Katz argues
that when we choose to restore, we dominate nature by forcing it to conform to our prefer-
ences for what we would want it to be even if what we want is the result of benign intu-
itions of what is best for humans and nonhumans. Katz puts the point quite bluntly that
“the practice of ecological restoration can only represent a misguided faith in the hege-
mony and infallibility of the human power to control the natural world” (Katz 1996:
222).
While there are many objections that one can raise to the criticisms of Elliot and
Katz, here I want to make an attempt to reset the terms of the debate as they have