Greening in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience and Community Greening

List of Contributors

Foreword- Lance Gunderson

Preface and Acknowledgments

Section 1- Foundations

1.      Introduction: Greening in the Red Zone

2.      Resilient Green: the role of greening in social-ecological system resilience in red zones  

3.      GRZ Vignette* One- An urban park in earthquake stricken Port au Prince

Section 2- Motives and Explanation

4.      Urgent Biophilia

5.      Sowing Seeds of Resilience: Community Gardening in a Post-Disaster Context

6.      GRZ Vignette Two- Transforming Degraded Space into a Community Asset – The Soweto Mountain of Hope

7.      The Role of Nature in Children's Resilience: Cognitive and Social Processes

8.      Children’s Engagement with the Natural World as a Ground for Healing

9.      GRZ Vignette Three- 8,000 Trees- A Refuge From Ruins in Afghanistan

10.  Topophilia, Biophilia and Greening in the Red Zone

11.  Urban Gardens: Pockets of Social-Ecological Memory

Stephan Barthel, John Parker, Carl Folke, and Johan Colding

12.  GRZ Vignette Four- Reconstructing village groves after a typhoon in Korea

13.  Nature Engagement to Foster Resilience in Military Communities

14.  Garden for Victory! The American Victory Garden Campaign of World War II

 

15.  GRZ Vignette Five- The Korean DMZ: from Red Zone to Green Zone

16.  Green Zones from Above and Below: A Retrospective and Cautionary Tale

17.  Reflections on Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime

Section 3- Cases & Practices

18.  Restoration of the urban forests of Tokyo and Hiroshima following World

War II

19.  Valuing Urban Forest: Lessons to Learn from Hurricanes

20.  Trees, Rebirth and Resilience: Community-led Reforestation and Recovery in Post-Katrina New Orleans

21.  GRZ Vignette Six- Conservation in the Red Zone:  Creating Afghanistan's First National Park in the Midst of Conflict

22.  Destruction and Replanting of the urban forest of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

23.  The Re-greening of the Grey: Some Practical Considerations for the Urban Forest

24.  GRZ Vignette Seven- Trees and Tree Planting in Southern Madagascar:  Sacredness and Remembrance

25.  Community-based memorials to September 11, 2001: Environmental stewardship as memory work

26.  GRZ Vignette Eight- Six Ares of Land for the Resilience of Urban Families in Post-Soviet Russia

27.  Beyond the Bars: Landscapes for Health and Healing in Corrections

28.  GRZ Vignette Nine- Wildlife: The Catalyst for Peace in Northern Kenya

29.  Sustainability-oriented social learning in multi-cultural urban areas: The case of the Rotterdam Environmental Centre

30.  Developing a Safe, Nurturing and Therapeutic Environment for the Families of the Garbage Pickers in Guatemala and for Disabled Children in Bosnia and Herzegovina

31.  GRZ Vignette Ten- Reforestation Activities at a Chadian Refugee Camp in Northern Cameroon

32.  Growing Hope: How Urban Gardens are Empowering War-Affected Liberians and Harvesting a New Generation of City Farmers

33.  Cyprus. Greening the Dead Zone.

34.  GRZ Vignette Eleven- The Berlin Wall Trail - a cycling and hiking route on the traces of Berlin's Cold War Divide

35.  Synthesis and Conclusions: Applying Greening in Red Zones

Afterword
Index

Creation and access to green spaces promotes individual human health, especially in therapeutic contexts among those suffering traumatic events. But what of the role of access to green space and the act of creating and caring for such places in promoting social health and well-being? Greening in the Red Zone asserts that creation and access to green spaces confers resilience and recovery in systems disrupted by violent conflict or disaster. This edited volume provides evidence for this assertion through cases and examples. The contributors to this volume use a variety of research and policy frameworks to explore how creation and access to green spaces in extreme situations might contribute to resistance, recovery, and resilience of social-ecological systems.

This book takes important steps in advancing understanding of what makes communi­ties bounce back from disaster or violent conflict. The authors’ findings that creating and caring for green space contributes positively to recovery and resilience add to the toolkit of those working in disaster and conflict zones. W. C. Banks, Director, Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, Syracuse University

Greening in the Red Zone is a highly relevant book. At a time when society is more separated than ever from the natural world, it offers additional reasons why our ongoing experience of nature is essential for the human body, mind and spirit. This book is both instructive and inspiring. S. R. Kellert, Tweedy Ordway Professor Emeritus, Senior Research Scholar, YaleUniversity

This is a fascinating book that greatly elevates our understanding of how the perspective of humans as an integrated part of nature may contribute to the resilience discourse. I warmly recommend this book to anyone interested in how we may prepare ourselves for an increasingly uncertain future. T. Elmqvist, Department of Systems Ecology and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University

Greening in the Red Zone is an important contribution to science and security policy and practice. This edited volume provides unique and novel approaches from a participatory, transparent, ecosystem-based perspective that puts those affected by disasters and conflict into positions of empowerment rather than weakness and dependency. This book is an interesting and timely contribution. C. Ferguson, President, Federation of American Scientists