Making Parks out of Making Wars
Making Parks out of Making Wars
Transnational Nature Conservation and Environmental Diplomacy in the Twenty-First Century
An unexpected outcome of the global environmental crisis is the emergence of conservation as an important aspect of conflict resolution. “Peace parks,” nature conservation areas that abut or cross international frontiers, are trumpeted by such prestigious institutions and personages as the United Nations Environment Programme and Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, as a new panacea to solving longstanding internal conflicts. Over less than thirty years, environmental issues in general and peace parks in particular have gone from relative insignificance to command a prominent place in matters of conflict resolution. This chapter explores the provenance of peace parks from the perspective of Paul Martin and Christine Szuter’s notion of “war zones” and “game sinks,” areas where frequent conflict ensures game is plentiful and where the lack of hostilities encourages human predation. Frontier zones or border areas historically have often been contested spaces with transitory or sparse human populations, no-man’s lands where wildlife prospers since it is only periodically disturbed by human activities.
Keywords: peace parks, international relations, buffer zones, wildlife
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