Resilience: Virtue in the unexpected wilderness

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Theology and Religious Education

Document Type

Archival Material/Manuscript

Abstract

Wilderness is commonly understood as referring to areas significantly untouched by human modifications, even if indigenous peoples may have lived in these areas. In economically developed countries, wilderness also refers to “land where development is prohibited by law,” for a variety of reasons—aesthetic, biological, recreational, cultural, and scientific. The US Wilderness Act of 1964 further qualifies, that humans could have been in these places but only as a transient visitor. In the 21st century, a shift in wilderness theory occurred with the realization that wilderness cannot be defined by physical boundaries, since all landscapes are connected: climate change, for example, affects the national parks and other “protected” wilderness areas. Furthermore, wilderness ecosystems, like all ecosystems, are no longer thought to be static or stable, but instead are dynamic and in constant flu+* thus we need to re-evaluate what wilderness preservation means.

The context of this essay, however, is another type of “unexpected wilderness.” From an anthropocentric perspective, it is the wilderness that suddenly encroaches upon our existence; or from an ecocentric standpoint, it could be described as nature taking back its own (e.g., nature taking over coasts that should have been populated with mangroves and not peoples; or flood plains that should not have been made the site of subdivisions). This is the return of wilderness due to nature-related disasters—and these disasters are bound to increase with climate change.

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Disciplines

Environmental Studies

Keywords

Disasters; Climatic changes; Wilderness areas; Wilderness area monitoring; Resilience (Ecology)

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