Restoring landscape means restoring communities
Just as people are essential to the concept of landscape, they are also essential to landscape restoration, not least because fundamentally, landscape supplies the needs of the recovering communities, sometimes while hostilities continue to rage around them. In Gaza, driven both by necessity and as an expression of connection with land and place, farming is carried out on the less than 4% of land still available following the past two and a half years of bombardment.
Landscape is the logical setting for environmental peacebuilding between conflicted groups. However, whilst Co-design and Nature-based Solutions have been used to aid communities facing resource scarcity following conflict, documentation concerning participatory approaches in post-conflict reconstruction is perhaps more limited, if not entirely absent.
It may not be surprising that grassroots-led recovery processes are less visible than the multitude of highly resourced and well-publicised initiatives spearheaded by international agencies. This is not to suggest that top-down approaches do not have a place in landscape planning, especially where conflict-hit communities have been denuded of basic resources and the social infrastructure necessary to begin the process of rebuilding under their own strength. However, if environmental recovery is to be both sustainable and meaningful for the communities at the heart of the landscapes concerned, in each case sooner or later their interests, concerns, knowledge and expertise need to be foregrounded. Otherwise, the landscapes that result will be missing the crucial relationship that ensures they thrive in the presence of people: the connection with the people themselves.
