The first lecture of the series, From Eden to Earth Day: Landscape Restoration as Mission and Metaphor will be given by Professor David Lowenthal, University College London.
David Lowenthal will discuss the religious roots of landscape restoration, and show how it morphed from a theological to an environmental agenda, while retaining the fervour of a sacred mission. Perceived analogies with archaeology, art, architecture, and medicine additionally shaped the aims and conventions of landscape restoration, enforcing and widening an enduring and probably unavoidable gulf between precept and practice. In the aftermath of Lynn White, Jr.’s 1967 ‘Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, convergent redemptive philosophies have realigned ecotheology and landscape restoration, with benefits and burdens for both realms.