Greening in the Red Zone

Disaster, Resilience and Community Greening

List of ContributorsForeword- Lance GundersonPreface and AcknowledgmentsSection 1- Foundations1.      Introduction: Greening in the Red Zone2.      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 PrinceSection 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 Processes8.      Children’s Engagement with the Natural World as a Ground for Healing9.      GRZ Vignette Three- 8,000 Trees- A Refuge From Ruins in Afghanistan10.  Topophilia, Biophilia and Greening in the Red Zone11.  Urban Gardens: Pockets of Social-Ecological MemoryStephan Barthel, John Parker, Carl Folke, and Johan Colding 12.  GRZ Vignette Four- Reconstructing village groves after a typhoon in Korea13.  Nature Engagement to Foster Resilience in Military Communities14.  Garden for Victory! The American Victory Garden Campaign of World War II 15.  GRZ Vignette Five- The Korean DMZ: from Red Zone to Green Zone16.  Green Zones from Above and Below: A Retrospective and Cautionary Tale17.  Reflections on Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in WartimeSection 3- Cases & Practices18.  Restoration of the urban forests of Tokyo and Hiroshima following WorldWar II19.  Valuing Urban Forest: Lessons to Learn from Hurricanes 20.  Trees, Rebirth and Resilience: Community-led Reforestation and Recovery in Post-Katrina New Orleans21.  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 Herzegovina23.  The Re-greening of the Grey: Some Practical Considerations for the Urban Forest24.  GRZ Vignette Seven- Trees and Tree Planting in Southern Madagascar:  Sacredness and Remembrance25.  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 Russia27.  Beyond the Bars: Landscapes for Health and Healing in Corrections28.  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 Farmers33.  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 ZonesAfterword 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 UniversityGreening 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, Yale UniversityThis 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 UniversityGreening 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