COS 121-4 - Restoration can further equality: reframing restoration with environmental justice, the human hierarchy of needs, and the breath of life.

Abstract: Environmental justice involves ensuring all people have access to environmental benefits such as green spaces and have protection from environmental health hazards such as air pollution. Restoration can and should play a key role in mitigating current environmental injustices. Determining restoration goals while considering the psychological concept of human’s hierarchy of needs will help restorationists better address the needs of underserved and vulnerable populations. Further, the hierarchy of needs was based upon First Nations’ ‘breath of life’ theory, which places human experience in an interconnected web of reality with an ultimate goal of cultural perpetuity. Considering restoration utilizing this framework will help restorationists simultaneously accomplish successful and enduring restoration activities, achieve environmental justice goals, and further society.