Abstract

“If the gap between our ambitions and impact is ever to be narrowed, it won’t be through declarations of our principles. We must rethink how landscape architecture engages with social and political movements.” - Billy Flemingx

“Conflict in democratic societies cannot and should not be eradicated since the specificity of modern democracy is precisely the recognition and the legitimation of conflict. What democratic politics requires is that the others are not seen as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries whose ideas would be fought, even fiercely, but whose right to defend those ideas will never be put into question. To put it in another way, what is important is that conflict does not take the form of an ‘antagonism’ (struggle between enemies), but the form of an ‘agonism’ (struggle between adversaries). We could say that the aim of democratic politics is to transform potential antagonism into an agonism.” - Chantal Mouffex

Agonism: a controlled, productive conflict

DEFINITIONS

Primary forest A forest undisturbed by land clearing, harvesting and other destructive human behaviours. Old-growth forests are one example. Exhibits unique ecological function.

Coupe An area of forest designated for harvest by forestry bodies or the responsible government authority.

Environmental justice is a cause championed widely throughout the discipline of Landscape Architecture, though the ability of practitioners to effectively combat current ecological collapse is significantly constrained within the late capitalist context.

Recouped Losses finds that the ongoing narratives of intractible conflict between activists and industry operating in extraction landscapes are obfuscating the severity of the ecological crises in the public sphere. A significant hurdle in protecting large-scale threatened landscapes is communicating the threats posed by current extraction practices, as well as the imminent risk of biodiversity loss and the possibility of devising new land-use typologies to protect them. To this end, Recouped Losses proposes three landscape architectural approaches to activating public support for the conservation of threatened ecosystems. This research focuses on native forest logging sites in the Toolangi State Forest in the Central Highlands region of Victoria, Australia. Each of these approaches is directed at a different group of stakeholders and each proposes a suite of interventions on the ground, as well as procurement systems to see them from inception through to construction.

The first, deemed the Civic approach, examines Mouffe’s theory of agonistic pluralism and analyses opportunities for productive discourse around contested land-use. It proposes new civic landscapes in the town of Toolangi at the edge of the montane ash ecologies in Toolangi State Forest, a significant old-growth forest ecosystem threatened by clearfell timber harvesting and changing fire regimes. This proposes a council-led initiative to invest in the democratic infrastructure of the town to facilitate visible public participation in Victoria’s timber economy. The second, the Citizen Science approach, proposes legal avenues for landscape architects to engage with the specific needs of activist and research groups, and support their inclusion in the communities already at work protecting environments. This position leverages a scientific grant scheme to arm citizen scientists with the tools needed to delay habitat destruction and seek legal avenues for institutional change. The third approach is a Silviculture approach, which proposes avenues to publicise new growing and harvesting techniques that take a greater consideration of threatened ecosystems.