In 2007, the Chinese government committed to “ecological civilization” as a policy objective of the government, and in 2012, it was incorporated into the constitution as a framework for environmental policies, laws, and education. The Chinese version of an ecological civilization is set in a largely command economy designed to further the development of socialism, whereas Gare (Philosophical foundations of ecological civilization. A manifesto for the future. Abingdon, Routledge, 2016, p. 201) indicated that the task is not to make people governable in an ecological civilization “but to be self-governing by inspiring them to embrace the perspectives” of the traditions in which they participate in a democratic society. In each version, it is important that the participants embrace the perspectives of their tradition and be educated in order to do so. Both versions depend on people at the local level engaging in appropriate tasks in an informed and effective way to make ecological civilization work. This paper describes a local project that depended for its success on the participation of volunteers to apply scientific understanding of the issues, at the direction of the owner of the land (the local government), for the rehabilitation of the land and the local society. A distinctive aspect of the approach taken in this paper is the assumption that it is more productive to conceptualize knowledge as justified trust relations in a shared tradition rather than universally justified true beliefs. The story told here is of the rehabilitation of Lake Claremont in Perth, Western Australia. An assumption of the participants is that the land that nurtures us in the long term is to be respected rather than, as is the case in the now dominant tradition, treated as a resource to be exploited for short-term gain. Schooling and education have a central role in bringing about an ecological civilization in both a disciplined monoculture and a managed biodiversity.