The Social Ecology of Border Landscapes

The collection of essays in The Social Ecology of Border Landscapes defi nes borders and borderlands to include territorial interfaces, marginal spaces (physical, sociological and psychological) and human consciousness. From theoretical and conceptual presentations on social ecology and its agencies and representations, to case studies and concrete projects and initiatives, the contributing authors uncover a thread of contemporary thought and action on this important emerging fi eld. The essays aim to defi ne the territories of social ecology, to investigate how social agencies can activate ecological processes and systems, and to understand how the interactions of people and ecosystems can create new sustainable landscapes across tangible and intangible territorial rifts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: May 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781783086719

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The Social Ecology of Border Landscapes

The Anthem Series on International Environmental Policy and Agreements

The Anthem Series on International Environmental Policy and Agreements seeks to consolidate research on global environmental governance, providing a prescriptive policy-making agenda based on sound analysis and empirical insights. A planetary vision of environmental governance has been growing over the past several decades and is often operationalized through international environmental agreements. Even though such treaties are often nonbinding and have marginal punitive power against violators, they are gaining credibility in international relations. This series focuses on evidence-based research that helps strength the system of multinational environmental decision making and governance.

Series Editor

Saleem H. Ali—University of Delaware, USA and University of Queensland, Australia

Editorial Board

Bharath Gopalaswamy—Atlantic Council, Washington, DC, USA

David Leary—The University of New South Wales, Australia

Jose Puppim de Oliveira—United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), Yokohama, Japan

The Social Ecology of Border Landscapes

Edited by

Anna Grichting and Michele Zebich-Knos

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Anthem Press

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This edition first published in UK and USA 2017

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© 2017 Anna Grichting and Michele Zebich-Knos editorial matter and selection;

individual chapters © individual contributors.

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Grichting, Anna, editor. | Zebich-Knos, Michele, editor.

Title: The social ecology of border landscapes/edited by Anna Grichting and Michele Zebich-Knos.

Description: London; New York, NY: Anthem Press, 2017. | Series: Anthem series on international environmental policy and agreements | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017005635 | ISBN 9781783086696 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Social ecology—Case studies. | Borderlands—Social aspects—Case studies. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Environmental Policy. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography. | ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning.

Classification: LCC HM861.S626 2017 | DDC 304.2—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005635

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-669-6 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-669-6 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

2.1 The global distribution of transboundary protected areas (TBPAs)

2.2 An illustration of the evolving paradigms within the conservation fraternity over the past 50 years

2.3 The relationship between ecosystem goods and services emanating from healthy, functioning ecosystems and human well-being

4.1 Thethi National Park, Albania

4.2 Lake Plav, Montenegro

5.1 Crane Habitat Restoration and Sustainable Agriculture Project Area—Anbyon, DPRK

5.2 Photo of Red-crowned and White-naped Cranes in Korea’s Demilitarized Zone

6.1 Map of the binational San Pedro River watershed

6.2 Map depicting ejido property boundaries and private property boundaries in the Mexican portion

6.3 Groundwater concessions for the Mexican San Pedro

6.4 Privatization and sale of riparian land and water rights to Minera María

7.1 Structural representation of topology of the Rhizome

7.2 The Skulpturenpark Berlin Zentrum

7.3 Cyprus GreenLineScapes Laboratory

7.4 The Home for Cooperation in the Buffer Zone of Nicosia

7.5 (a) Flatro Bastion in Nicosia and (b) Flatro Bastion in Nicosia on Google Earth

7.6 From military buffer to laboratory of ecological planning and human reconciliation

8.1 Schematic drawing of the cover page of students’ workbook, representing the theme of remodeling harshscapes

8.2 Convoy of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrolling in southern Lebanon

8.3 An example of vacant structures funded by the Lebanese government to develop areas under Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon

8.4 Terraced hilly terrain showing shrubs, olive trees and the tobacco plantation in Marwaheen village

8.5 AUB students working hand in hand with local farmers in the rehabilitation of Marwaheen pond

8.6 A greenhouse atop a corrugated metal roof improvised to secure natural lighting and ventilation necessary for plants’ growth

8.7 High walls, barbed wires, metal fences and plastic sheets create a physical and visual buffer for the Women’s Vocational Training Center (WVTC)

8.8 Three-dimensional model of the Urban Agriculture Center

9.1 Israeli security wall surrounding Shu’fat camp

9.2 Garden inside the camp, opposite the settlement of Pisgat Zeev

9.3 Extension and improvements in the camp

10.1 Religious distribution and neighborhoods within Belfast

12.1 The great enclosure: Lines of the state of emergency enforced over the Peruvian Amazon in 2009

12.2 Life-zoning cartography: Mapa Ecológico del Peru

12.7 Resource terrain. Excerpt from the guide to the Mapa Ecológico del Peru

12.10, 12.11, 12.12 Political-legal enclosures

13.1 Imposing the space of the colonizer

13.2 Reappropriating the colonized space

C.1 Esperanza Base, Argentina’s research station on the Antarctic Peninsula

Tables

2.1 A record of data reflecting the extent and growth of transboundary conservation efforts across the globe

2.2 The recommended stages and steps necessary to take a TBC initiative from concept to implementation

5.1 Anbyon, DPRK experimental plots: Crop yields from organic versus chemical fertilizers

5.2 Anbyon, DPRK experimental plots: Actual 2011 yields from organic versus chemical fertilizers

10.1 Residential segregation and mixing in Northern Ireland, 2001–11

10.2 Interface structures in Belfast

10.3 SRRP performance indicators

Preface

The idea for this book came out of the 2011 Conference on Environmental Diplomacy and Security in International Relations organized by the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security (IEDS) at the University of Vermont (USA). Burlington, Vermont, is a small city nestled in the Vermont heartland and is also home to the founder of social ecology, Murray Bookchin. At the time, the university was also home to professor and IEDS director Saleem Ali, author of the highly acclaimed book Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution. Without his encouragement and support, The Social Ecology of Border Landscapes would surely not have materialized. I should add that these inspirational events, institutions and scholarship took place within very idyllic local surroundings. Vermont borders Quebec, Canada, and, in Burlington, I found French-Canadian influences everywhere, from the food (poutine) to the bilingual, English-French language signs at the airport.

While certainly different from my current living arrangement near the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, the area and the conference sparked my interest in creating a book about borders and their relation to both the built and natural environments, but it was Anna Grichting’s actions that turned this idea into reality. Selection for our conceptual framework was obvious—we would approach the topic from a social ecology perspective to illustrate that scholars and practitioners must never lose sight of the human drivers that shape borders, whether they abut a peace park, desert, fence or refugee camp. The book would be multidisciplinary and incorporate my perspective as a political scientist with Anna’s expertise in architecture and planning. Naturally, it would include scholars and practitioners whose background and knowledge base are different from our own. It would also challenge readers to think out of the box—which is why we felt compelled to include a cognitive-border case (Chapter 11) devoid of physical frontiers, but able to increase awareness that psychological barriers often result from conflict and serve as coping mechanisms.

One of my favorite natural environments in Southern California is the Tijuana Estuary National Wildlife Refuge and Tijuana Slough, a salt marsh plain with tidal channels that extends south from San Diego to the Mexican border. This area covers 2,800 acres and is home to more than 370 bird species. While not the most scenic spot in California, for me as a political scientist and scholar of global policy, this area represents the notion that nature knows no borders. The impact of Mexico and its ongoing brush with border poverty is something that the estuary must deal with on a daily basis. It is especially problematic when hard rains wash sewage and trash from settlements on the bluffs down Tijuana’s steep canyons on the Mexican side of the border and flow nearly unabated into the estuary and marshlands. While the marshlands happen to be on US territory, they are—first and foremost—marshlands within the area’s natural ecosystem. The cities of San Diego to the north and Tijuana to the south sandwich the marshland between two urban environments and reinforce its in-between status.

Not only is the Tijuana Estuary a sage scrub ecotone—or transitional area between two ecosystems—from a biodiversity standpoint, but it also represents a useful example of cross-border cooperation to manage the impact of Mexico’s pollution on US marshlands and coastal areas. Sewage contamination is an old issue and cross-border management began in 1934 when the United States and Mexico asked the International Boundary Commission to prepare a report on Tijuana’s sewage problem. Today the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant (SBIWTP), built in 1990 just two miles west of the San Ysidro port of entry on the US side, is a joint effort in which both countries share operation and maintenance. Initial costs were also a shared effort; Mexico and the United States contributed USD $16.8 million and $239.4 million, respectively, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The pollution problem does not stop at the marshlands, but extends onto San Diego’s beaches, especially Imperial Beach, where signs warn beachgoers about contamination on a regular basis. I wonder if the signs were there when my husband resided near Imperial Beach many years ago, and on one occasion walked his dog along the border only to have him (the dog) run carefree into Mexico. He returned after a quick whistle, for those were the days before the United States further securitized the area with an extended fence.

Cross-border pollution is a chronic problem as more people in search of employment opportunities cram into Tijuana’s colonias (slums), which often lack adequate sewage and solid waste disposal systems. This border example is one to which I hold personal attachment, but, more important for the reader, it represents the border-management theme of muddling through and a shared relevance with many of the chapters in this book.

Michele Zebich-Knos

Los Angeles, CA (USA)

2017

CONTRIBUTORS

Saleem H. Ali is Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware. He previously held the chair in sustainable resources development at the University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute in Brisbane, Australia. In addition he holds an adjunct professorship of environmental planning at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Natural Resources (USA). His research focuses on environmental conflicts in the extractive industries and how ecological cooperation can promote peace in international relations. He is the author of three sole-authored books including Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future (2010), and Environmental Diplomacy (with Lawrence Susskind, 2014) and more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. He serves on the board of governors of the nonprofit environmental organization LEAD-Pakistan. Professor Ali received his doctorate in environmental planning from MIT, a master’s degree in environmental studies from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Tufts University. Professor Ali can be followed on Twitter @saleem_ali.

George Archibald is one of the two cofounders of the International Crane Foundation (ICF) headquartered in Baraboo, Wisconsin. He received his undergraduate degree from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and completed his PhD at Cornell University. Along with Ronald Sauey, a colleague from Cornell, Archibald established the ICF in the spring of 1973, as the world center for the study and preservation of cranes. ICF’s mission is met through a creative combination of field research, help to local people living near the cranes, public education, habitat protection and captive propagation and reintroduction. Today, ICF has 50 employees and supports conservation projects in 45 nations. For 27 years, Archibald served as the president of ICF. He continues to be employed full time by ICF and works on programs of his choosing in Bhutan, China, India, Ethiopia, North Korea, South Korea and Russia. Archibald has used the charisma of cranes to help unite people from diverse cultures and countries to work together to preserve habitat necessary for the survival of both cranes and people. In 2016, he published his memoirs: My Life With Cranes, A Collection of Stories.

Carol Birrell is an artist, writer and academic who explores the interaction between an Indigenous and Western sense of place. She currently teaches social ecology at the University of Western Sydney and before this taught Aboriginal education at Wollongong University. Her land-based arts practice for the past 12 years, called ecopoiesis, draws together movement, painting, photography, environmental sculpture and poetry, along with Indigenous understandings, as a base for ecological writing and exploring ecological identity. Carol has strong long-term collaborative relationships with several Australian Aboriginal communities such as Yuin (south coast NSW) and Worrorra (west Kimberley) and researches the role of Aboriginal Elders in contemporary Australia. At present, she is writing a book on the life and teachings of distinguished Yuin Senior Lawman and Elder Max Dulumunmun Harrison. Recent published articles include In the Belly of the Whale, which tells the story of cultural revitalization through a whale dreaming ceremony not enacted on Australian soil for at least 100 years; Slipping Beneath the Kimberley Skin, a probing journey with an Aboriginal Elder into some of the most remote country on this planet; and Crocodile as Teacher, which reexamines the critical crocodile experience of environmental philosopher Val Plumwood through the lens of Aboriginal understandings of country.

Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, LLB (Aix-en-Provence), MA (Paris I—Sorbonne, and Virginia Polytechnic and State University), PhD (University of Western Ontario) is Jean Monnet Chair in European Urban and Border Policy and a professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Brunet-Jailly is also the editor of the Journal of Borderland Studies. His key research areas are comparative urban governance and the governance of cross-border regions, with a specific focus on comparative decentralization, horizontal and vertical governance, and the theorization of cross-border regions. His research work has appeared or is forthcoming in nine books and edited scholarly journals and in more than 50 articles and book chapters.

Sylvaine Bulle is an associate professor of sociology and a member of the Laboratoire Théorie du Politique (Université de Paris 8). Her fields of research include the sociology of conflicts and public problems, and pragmatist sociology. Bulle has conducted numerous surveys and research programs in Israel and Palestine concerning intercommunity violence, transformations of the state and neoliberalism. Her latest research focuses on political violence and radical protests, and her recent publications include A Conflict of Spaces or of Recognition? Co-presence in Divided Jerusalem and L’État nous quitte. Question sociale, question urbaine et culturelle en Israël (The State Is Leaving Us: Social, Urban and Cultural Questions in Israel).

Verena Andermatt Conley teaches comparative literature and Romance languages and literature at Harvard University. Conley’s research focuses on ecology and technology, and her major book publications include Ecopolitics: The Environment in French Poststructuralist Thought (1997) and Spatial Ecologies: Urban Sites, State and World Space in French Culture (2012). She is interested in the Mediterranean basin and teaches courses on the relation between Europe and North Africa. She is currently a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, where she works on a project titled From Colony to Ecology: Theory and Practice of Le Jardin d’Essai (Algiers).

Hilary Cunningham is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her research explores boundary-making as a multifaceted encounter with nature and focuses on gated ecologies, that is, those nature-borderscapes in which human and nonhuman marginalization (and destruction) unfold as a contingent, interconnected reality.

Anna Grichting is a Swiss architect, urbanist and musician and holds a doctorate of design degree from Harvard University. She is currently assistant professor at the University of Qatar, and a fellow at the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security, University of Vermont. She has lectured worldwide and taught theory and design studios at the Universities of Geneva and Harvard, as well as holding a position with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Her teaching and research focuses on blue and green networks, landscape and ecological urbanism, public art and public space, food urbanism and water-sensitive urban design. Her work on borders focuses on areas of conflict and their transformation as biological and cultural landscapes of memory. It began with a design project for the landscapes of the Berlin Wall, and she is working on a digital and dynamic atlas of ecological cooperation and is directing the GreenLineScapes Laboratory on the Buffer Zone of Cyprus. She is currently on the advisory board of the Korea DMZ Council, a board member of the Friends of Humanity Foundation in Switzerland and a fellow at the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security, University of Vermont.

Hall Healy is a director and past chairman of the Board of the International Crane Foundation, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to preserving the 15 species of cranes and their habitats, and enhancing the lives of people residing near them, on five continents. He is a professional environmental facilitator, conducting training, facilitation and planning projects in the United States, Russia, China and Korea. Healy earned a BA degree in political science from Colgate University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He has written two publications: Environmental Management for the American Management Association’s (AMA) Manufacturers Handbook and Packaging and Solid Waste, coauthored; he has written numerous papers on conservation of natural resources in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Korea and on planning issues. He is past president of the DMZ Forum, an NGO dedicated to preserving species and habitats of Korea’s DMZ; a past director of the board of trustees of the Illinois Chapter of The Nature Conservancy; and is on the governing board of the Chicago Zoological Society. He also is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Task Force of Transboundary Protected Areas (TBPA) Committee, and of the IUCN Crane Specialist Group.

Stuart B. Hill is Emeritus Professor and foundation chair of social ecology in the School of Education at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Prior to 1966, he was at McGill University (Montreal, Canada), where he taught and established Ecological Agriculture Projects, Canada’s leading resources center for sustainable agriculture. Hill has published more than 350 papers and reports, and his latest books include Ecological Pioneers: A Social History of Australian Ecological Thought and Action (with Martin Mulligan, 2002), Learning for Sustainable Living: Psychology of Ecological Transformation (with Werner Sattman-Frese, 2008) and Social Ecology: Applying Ecological Understanding to Our Lives and Our Planet (with David Wright and Catherine Camden-Pratt, 2011). Hill was a member of more than 30 regional, national and international boards and committees, and was on the editorial board of five international refereed journals. Hill has worked in agricultural and development projects in the West Indies, West Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines, China and the Seychelles, as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Lily A. House-Peters is an assistant professor of sustainability science at California State University, Long Beach, USA, and also serves as the university’s resilience commitment coordinator in the Office of Sustainability and Planning. House-Peters earned a PhD from the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona and is a broadly trained human-environment geographer interested in qualitative and quantitative approaches to water resources research and the human dimensions of environmental change. Her research interests draw into conversation current debates on natural resource conservation policy, drought and climate change adaptation strategies in dryland environments, and the translation of resilience and adaptive capacity into specific water resource governance logics.

Brendan Murtagh is a reader in the School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering at the Queen’s University Belfast. He has researched and written widely on urban regeneration, conflict and community participation, and his recent books include: The Politics of Territory (2002); Authentic Dialogue (with Murray, 2004); Segregation, Violence and the City (with Shirlow, 2006); and Understanding the Social Economy (with Bridge and O’Neill, 2013). He has held a number of recent research grants on urban regeneration from the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust.

Stephen Scharper is an associate professor with the School of Environment at the University of Toronto. He is coeditor of The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment (2012) and author of For Earth’s Sake: Toward a Compassionate Ecology (2013).

Rabih Shibli is the director of the Center for Civic Engagement and Community Service at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Landscape Architecture. In September 2006, he founded and directed Beit Bil Jnoub, a nonprofit civil organization that was heavily involved in the reconstruction process in the aftermath of the July War. Shibli has supervised the design and implementation of community-based projects that tackle pressing challenges facing local and refugee communities in Lebanon. His research focuses on community-based design as a tool to upgrade underserved areas and to alleviate tensions in contested landscapes. Shibli holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in urban design.

Paulo Tavares (Quito/London) is an architect and urbanist from Brazil and is currently a visiting professor at Princeton University. He teaches architecture at the Universidad Católica de Ecuador—Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Arte, Quito, Ecuador, and has previously held teaching posts at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, and at the Visual Lab of the MA in Contemporary Art Theory, also at Goldsmiths, UK. His writings have appeared in many publications worldwide and his work has been exhibited in various venues including Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), Glasgow, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Portikus, Frankfurt and the Taipei Biennial 2012.

Todd Walters is the executive director of International Peace Park Expeditions, which applies experiential learning to environmental peace building through teaching accredited academic expeditions and fellowships. Walters has adapted Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment methodology to transboundary protected areas and has produced short documentary films in the Transcending Boundaries series that portray multiple stakeholder perspectives concerning environmental peace building in transboundary protected areas. Walters is the first fellow at the Policy Center for Environment and Peace at Conservation International, a member of the Transboundary Conservation Specialist Group at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and a fellow at the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security. Walters is a National Outdoor Leadership School certified adventure guide, has led expeditions in dozens of countries around the globe and has published a number of chapters and articles on environmental peace building.

Arthur H. Westing holds a BA degree in botany from Columbia University, and MF and PhD degrees from Yale University. A forest ecologist, Westing has been a research forester with the U.S. Forest Service, taught forestry, ecology and conservation, and served as dean of natural science at Hampshire College. He was twice a research fellow at Harvard University and a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) as well as at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). For eight years, he directed the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) project on Peace, Security, and Environment. Westing is the author of numerous publications in that subject area. He has also been on the faculty of the European Peace University (EPU), a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas, vice president of the International Society of Naturalists; and he has served on the board of the Korean DMZ Forum and on the DMZ Commission of the International Crane Foundation. He has been a consultant in environmental security since 1990 to the World Bank, UNEP, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Government of Eritrea and other national and international agencies.

Michele Zebich-Knos is Professor Emeritus of political science and international affairs, and was founding director of the Master of Science in International Policy Management Program at Kennesaw State University/University System of Georgia (Atlanta, Georgia). She served on the external advisory board of The Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security (IEDS), University of Vermont, and is currently a research fellow at IEDS. She is author of numerous publications on environmental policy, including the chapter Conflict Avoidance and Environmental Protection: The Antarctic Paradigm, which appears in Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution. Her research on Antarctic tourism and global regulation appears as a chapter in Diplomacy on Ice: Energy and the Environment in the Arctic and Antarctic. Her current research interest includes security and environmental policy in the Arctic and appears, with coauthor Rebecca Pincus, in the 2016 volume of Polar Geography.

Kevan Zunckel is an ecologist and environmental scientist with an MSc in Environmental Science from the University of Cape Town and 30 years of experience. He is cochair of the IUCN WCPA Transboundary Conservation Specialist Group and was part of the team who compiled the recently published IUCN Best Practice Protected Area Guidelines Series No. 23: Transboundary Conservation: A Systematic and Integrated Approach. Closely following this was the endorsement of the Transfrontier Conservation Guidelines for the Southern African Development Community, which he authored in collaboration with practitioners from the region. He is also the Africa representative for the International Conservation Connectivity Network, which has strong parallels with transboundary conservation.

Introduction

SOCIAL ECOLOGIES AND BORDERLANDS

Anna Grichting

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

—Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder¹

Even in the most stressed border areas, humans can find solace and comfort in what nature offers us. While we, as scholars, methodically define and conceptualize our thoughts and research in dispassionate ways, those caught in the thick of conflict/post-conflict border spaces often abandon such pretentions to savor nature and grasp the small pleasures that make life bearable. Healing power manifests itself in the form of gardens for Palestinian refugees in the Shu’fat Refugee Camp along the Israeli wall, or in swatches of land along the former Iron Curtain that gave way to the Pan European Green Belt open for everyone to enjoy. When nature is in short supply, especially in compact refugee camps like Shu’fat, local residents find other ways to add meaning to their lives. The Palace, or Shu’fat marriage hall, enriches camp life and also serves as a multipurpose location for shows and other ceremonies. And, when encountering not a physical border, but a cognitive one, allegories, replete with birds and waterways, sustain hope and comfort as they blend into Australia’s Aboriginal storytelling.

In my travels and research along conflict borders, the most telling was that visionary and practical plans for the future transformation of these liminal spaces were seeded and imagined by nature lovers, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and passionate planners. Through direct interaction with nature and ecosystems, and with the intention of softening these hard borders, projects and visions such as the German Green Belt, the Korean DMZ Peace Park, the Cyprus GreenLine Scapes Laboratory and the Balkans Peace Park Initiative were born. It is the intent of this book to show how ecologically based, mutualistic social structures can overcome borders and barriers, and create resilient spaces and communities.

Increased securitization of borders since 9/11 has amplified interest in finding ways to soften borders and to avoid the kind of discrimination, marginalization and other negative consequences that come from inscribing hard divisions between peoples, ecologies and societies. This volume brings to this debate the theoretical frames of social ecology—i.e., nature and society—and presents environmental mitigation strategies in the form of conservation corridors, peace parks and other activities that enhance exchanges and constructive interaction leading to conflict resolution. The social ecological perspective is proposed in terms of how it can suggest opportunities for solutions that would otherwise not be apparent, and to generate innovative approaches for softening hardened or conflicted borders.

Border Landscapes: Charting New Territories

Social ecology addresses the complex and interrelated relationship between nature and society and offers a perspective on how environmental issues are embedded in a social context. Border landscapes are loosely defined as interstitial spaces between territories or societies, in conflict or in competition, with fixed or moving boundaries. Social ecology as a critical social theory was originally founded by Murray Bookchin and emphasizes the complexity of relationships between people and nature and the importance of establishing more mutualistic social structures that take account of these relationships. It is within this context that the contributors to this book believe peace can thrive.

Other proponents of a social-ecological approach such as Samantha Stone-Jovicich and Fabinyi, Evans and Foale observe that the world systems approach, with its stress on capitalism and the political economy of global–local interconnections, has become an incomplete means for understanding change within the environment. Using a less idealistic approach to social ecology than that of Bookchin, these scholars urge us to consider the important role of space and its bio-geophysical characteristics that spur both ecological and social change.² This attention to locally defined spaces—be it along the Israeli wall, the former Berlin Wall or the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)—yields important human–environmental interactions and consequences that form the basis for a social ecological interpretation of environmental adaptation and change. Much like Stephen Wheeler, who uses social ecology as a new frame for the challenges of climate change, this volume approaches borders with a socio-ecological lens in order to uncover new visions or interpretations for positive transformation of margins, edges or interstices, especially where they are the result or source of conflict and separation.³

Social ecology as a framework has expanded to include social-ecological systems (SES), which emerged from critical social and resilience theories as a means of addressing the adaptive and complex structures and processes of the social and natural world.⁴ A social-ecological system consists of a bio-geophysical unit, and its associated social actors and institutions, which regularly interact in a resilient, sustained manner, and that are defined by Singh and colleagues as having several spatial, temporal, and organizational scales, which may be hierarchically linked.⁵ Singh and colleagues define a social-ecological system as a set of critical resources (natural, socioeconomic, and cultural) whose flow and use is regulated by a combination of ecological and social systems; and a perpetually dynamic, complex system with continuous adaptation.⁶ The social-ecological system thus becomes our unit of analysis, and each case study in this book represents a different SES.

Throughout its chapters, this book examines examples of conflict related to the concept of border environments in a comprehensive and multidisciplinary manner that facilitates new approaches to constructing, managing and preserving our environment. This book holds useful implications for resolution of political conflicts and environmental management of ecosystems and aims to provide those involved in peace processes, whether practitioner or scholar, with concrete cases of how attention to the border landscape and its human–nature interaction can foster peace. It also provides those involved in the study or practice of border ecosystem planning and management with a more robust, integrative approach that encourages