Research: Geopolitics of green spaces in Israel: the role of afforestation
Nicola Fatone obtained his Master’s Degree in International Relations at La Sapienza Università di Roma on 2015, presenting a final thesis focused on the relevance of territory and conflict in the Colombian State-building process. Furthermore, he attended a master course on Geopolitics, developing a research methodology through the study of main theories and authors of the spatial turn and scenarios analysis.
The research proposes an analysis of afforestation politics in Israel, representing the historical and cultural sight which interested the first local communities settled in the Ottoman Palestine. In the XX century forestal ecosystems have been a constant territorial feature in the urban and rural planning of Israeli’s political space. Nonetheless, within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, green spaces projects both worked as a functional defensive tool and a strategy of spreading presence on territory while containing the space of Arab communities. Afforestation politics are currently considered as a solid and usual institutional practice, it has been just in recent time that this expertise has been oriented to be a significant strategy opposing to increasing climate change’s effects in the region. The analysis aims to show how spatial politics can respond to different goals in a given case-study, focusing on innovative, sustainable technologies and several practices such as urban-gardening and drylands afforestation.