Rehabilitation | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Rehabilitation is a process which is being applied more frequently to the environment.It aims to reverse the deterioration of a national resource, even if it cannot be restored to its original state.

Attempts to rehabilitate deteriorated areas have a long history. In England, for example, gardener and architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown devoted his life to restoring vast stretches of the English countryside that had been dramatically modified by human activities.

Reforestation was one of the common forms of rehabilitation used by Brown, and this method continues to be used throughout the world. The demand for wood both as a building material and a source of fuel has resulted in the devastation of forests on every continent. Sometimes the objective of reforestation is to ensure a new supply of lumber for human needs, and in other cases the motivation is to protect the environment by reducing land erosion. Aesthetic concerns have also been the basis for reforestation programs. Recently, the role of trees in managing atmospheric carbon dioxide and global climate has created yet another motivation for the planting of trees.

Another activity in which rehabilitation has become important is surface mining. The process by which coal and other minerals are mined using this method results in massive disruption of the environment. For decades, the policy of mining companies was to abandon damaged land after all minerals had been removed. Increasing environmental awareness in the 1960s and 1970s led to a change in that policy, however. In 1977, the United States Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), requiring companies to rehabilitate land damaged by these activities. The act worked well at first and mining companies began to take a more serious view of their responsibilities for restoring the land they had damaged, but by the mid-1980s that trend had been reversed to some extent. The Reagan and Bush administrations were both committed to reducing the regulatory pressure on American businesses, and tended to be less aggressive about the enforcement of environmental laws such as SMCRA.

Rehabilitation is also widely used in the area of human resources. For example, the spread of urban blight in American cities has led to an interest in the rehabilitation of public and private buildings. After World War II, many people moved out of central cities into the suburbs. Untold numbers of houses were abandoned and fell into disrepair. In the last decade, municipal, state, and federal governments have shown an interest in rehabilitating such dwellings and the areas where they are located. Many cities now have urban homesteading laws under which buildings in depressed areas are sold at low prices, and often with tax breaks, to buyers who agree to rehabilitate and live in them.

Environmental Degradation; Environmental Engineering; Forest Management; Greenhouse Effect; Strip Mining; Restoration Ecology; Wildlife Rehabilitation

Moran, J. M., M. D. Morgan, and J. H. Wiersma. Introduction to Environmental Science. 2nd ed. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1986.

Newton, D. E. Land Use, A–Z. Hillside, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1989.

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