Preface: Handbook of Research on Transitional Justice and Peace Building in Turbulent Regions

In the classic tale “The Little Prince” appears the following remark about the only human inhabitant of a very small planet which is prone to a kind of instability or danger in form of gigantic trees: … Indeed, as I learned, there were on the planet where the little prince lived--as on all planets—good plants and bad plants. In consequence, there were good seeds from good plants, and bad seeds from bad plants. But seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the heart of the earth’s darkness, until someone among them is seized with the desire to awaken. Then this little seed will stretch itself and begin—timidly at first--to push a charming little sprig inoffensively upward toward the sun. If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it might wish. But when it is a bad plant, one must destroy it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it …Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them. A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces …”It is a question of discipline,” the little prince said to me later on. “When you’ve finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care. You
must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rosebushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth. It is very tedious work,” the little prince added, “but very easy” … (De Saint-Exupéry, 2015)
The current world population is 7,361,062,100 and this huge number is increasing with dreadful velocity every second. Some experts in demography affirm that: “…At the dawn of agriculture, about 8000 B.C., the population of the world was approximately 5 million. Over the 8,000-year period up to 1 A.D. it grew to 200 million (some estimate 300 million or even 600, suggesting how imprecise population estimates of early historical periods can be), with a growth rate of under 0.05% per year…A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years(1930), the third billion in less than 30 years (1959), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), and the fifth billion in only 13 years (1987)… Population in the world is currently (as of 2015-2016) growing at a rate of around 1.13% per year. The average population change is currently estimated at around 80 million per year…” (Worldometers, 2015).