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Short abstract

Notions of ecological repair are central in the development of techniques for managing water ecosystems but strategies differ in their underlying principles and sociomaterial implications. We argue that different approaches force us to reconsider the role of humans as agents in aquatic environments.

Long abstract

Aquatic environments are increasingly framed through the language of resilience, restoration, and techno-fixes, as ways to reimagine aquatic futures. However, the specific strategies to achieve them remain contested and raise questions about what exactly should be sustained or restored, for whom, and through which forms of anthropogenic intervention. Drawing on ethnographic research on approaches to the management, conservation, and restoration of Finnish lakes and coastal areas, our research sheds light on diverse knowledge practices and their contribution to imaginaries of aquatic futures. We approach knowledge broadly, including scientific research, environmental management practices, and historically embedded cultural and economic relations with water bodies. These different modes of knowing involve sensory engagements, temporal care, or evaluative frameworks, which are linked to diverse approaches to the responses humans offer to threats to (and from) water ecosystems, such as traditional conservation practices or radical ecoengineering. The different tools, frameworks, and traditions that different knowledge communities have at their disposal do not only yield diverse evaluations about the urgency of the current ecological crises but also radically different imaginaries of what a desirable future looks like. By tracing how these sometimes-conflicting approaches are grounded in specific practices and imaginaries of care, we highlight the frictions that characterize the protection of aquatic ecosystems. Attending to the care dimensions of environmental management, the presentation argues that the current crisis, and the foretold change of geological epoch, force us to reconsider the role of humans as agents in and of nature in aquatic environments.