Environmental peacemaking[1] (EP) suggests that mutual knowledge of resource depletion and a positive aversion to such depletion leads to cooperation (Ali, 2003 & Conca & Dabelco 2003), and that there are attributes of environmental concerns that lead acrimonious parties to consider them as a means of cooperation. Therefore, environmental issues could play an instrumental role even where conflict does not directly involve environmental issues (Ali, 2007 & Conca & Dabelco 2003). To the extent social vulnerability may be affected by environmental issue management and education, social vulnerability, and therefore social resilience, may be components of EP efforts. Given that analysis of vulnerability of social groups and the institutional architecture determining resilience in the context of environmental change is an emerging research issue (Adger and Kelly, 1999), and given the role of both social and ecological resilience in understanding socio-ecological systems, a deeper understanding of peace parks and EP within complex adaptive systems is needed.

In the edited volume Peace Parks[2], Spenceley and Schoon (2007) superficially suggest that applying the “social-ecological system” framework might help understand peace park functioning and lead to more constructive management regimes. However, the author is unaware of efforts to (1) describe how a peace park may be construed or imagined as a socio-ecological system and what that means, and (2) to what extent EP and its attendant attributes contribute to either social and/or ecological resilience. This gap in analysis is addressed.

Results/Conclusions

This paper provides a context for rethinking peace parks as socio-ecological systems by first providing background on EP and the complex adaptive systems and resilience literature. We explore multiple ways in which peace parks can be thought of as socio-ecological systems, as well as drawbacks and downsides to this conceptualization. We attempt to tease out of the EP literature key commonalities with Adger’s efforts to understand and describe the relationships and links between social and ecological resilience, as well as other ways of thinking about human endeavors at EP as resilience enhancing. We discuss the concept Civic Ecology as an emergent property in resilient socio-ecosystems, especially those socio-ecological systems where EP as a Civic Ecology practice is occurring. Finally, we conclude with implications for EP as a resilience enhancing civic ecology practice when applied to other scales (other than geopolitical, regional, nation state level) and other areas where nature or environmental issues might play an intervening role.