Introduction

This chapter highlights a shift toward human-centered conservation practices, in which nature conservation benefits from the inclusion and empowerment of human communities instead of their exclusion and marginalization and examines two cases: the Cyprus Buffer Zone and the Berlin Wall. In both cases, nature and landscape have played a role in bridging communities across the divide — in Berlin, communities from both sides of the Wall collaborated to bring the Mauer Park into being, while in Cyprus, biologists collaborated on a biodiversity survey in the Buffer Zone. Ecosystems and landscapes must be seen as coupled social-ecological systems whose ability to respond to stresses and change derives from ecological and social characteristics, as well as from the link between these natural and human components. Additionally, many recent studies and literature examine the importance of nature in physical and psychological recovery through practices of active engagement. Contemporary research in neuroscience also demonstrates the effects of settings on the brain, leading to significant developments in healing approaches enhanced by design and access to nature.

The United Nations Buffer Zone (hereafter referred to as UNBZ) that divides the Mediterranean island of Cyprus is examined and proposed as a future shared social and ecological space for the Cypriot communities — a third space or thirdscape that must risebeyond the polarized sphere of the binary and of bicommunalism to embrace the mosaic of social and ethnic groups that inhabit and produce the landscapes of Cyprus. Creating a shared space also implies a shared process, toward co-creating a landscape for the future coexistence of multiple ecologies and social groups. Addressing the contemporary theme of the spatial redevelopment of a post-military zone, it also refers to other borderlands that are undergoing or have undergone similar transformations — in particular in Germany and Berlin — and that have, as precedents, informed this speculative research.