TRANSCRIPT 🔗
1
00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:05,250
Good afternoon, everyone. And it's it's a great pleasure to be here today.
2
00:00:05,940 --> 00:00:13,760
And welcome to the People Line and many thanks to the discussion group and the law
3
00:00:13,880 --> 00:00:21,290
faculty for inviting me and to Natasha for organising this talk and my visiting expert.
4
00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:32,740
So in this presentation, I want to give a brief overview of my book, The Ecology of War and Peace, which was published last year with COPD.
5
00:00:33,180 --> 00:00:36,930
In order to have a more informal conversation during the Q&A session.
6
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:41,430
I will highlight the key concerns underpinning the book.
7
00:00:41,820 --> 00:00:49,500
Say something about the literature I engage with and the methodology I use and point out the main intervention
8
00:00:49,950 --> 00:00:58,680
arguments and finally sketched the contour of a future research agenda which builds upon the findings of the book.
9
00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:11,880
So early. In 2004, the journal Science published a rather controversial article by Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser.
10
00:01:12,510 --> 00:01:18,870
In that piece, King repressed the Bush administration for its failure to acknowledge the seriousness of
11
00:01:18,870 --> 00:01:24,749
anthropogenic climate change and its unwillingness to take steps to kerb its country.
12
00:01:24,750 --> 00:01:34,140
Disproportionate share of greenhouse gas emissions in light of mounting scientific evidence and the growing severity of extreme weather events.
13
00:01:34,530 --> 00:01:43,740
He argued We need to acknowledge that climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today more serious even than the threat of terrorism.
14
00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:47,970
Although King did not push the comparison any further.
15
00:01:48,150 --> 00:01:54,900
Its message was clear the world's richest country had failed to confront the threat of global warming
16
00:01:54,900 --> 00:02:00,660
warming with the same political urgency it had accorded to the lesser threat of terrorist violence.
17
00:02:01,620 --> 00:02:09,779
In the following weeks, King's article provoked strain to support the damage control within the Blair government and fuelled a stream of
18
00:02:09,780 --> 00:02:17,880
invective from there from climate change sceptics and conservatives who accused them of alarmist environmental rhetoric.
19
00:02:18,270 --> 00:02:23,220
And that diminished the importance of the war on terror and the tragedy of those who died in it.
20
00:02:24,420 --> 00:02:32,520
Yet King's assessment of the relative dangers posed by climate change and terrorism was based on uncomfortable evidence,
21
00:02:33,240 --> 00:02:36,840
according to the United States National Counterterrorism Centre.
22
00:02:37,230 --> 00:02:42,600
Only nine Americans were killed in terrorist attacks outside of Iraq in 2005.
23
00:02:43,260 --> 00:02:49,590
That is approximately the same number of people that died in the US that year of whooping cough.
24
00:02:50,490 --> 00:03:02,920
The National Counterterrorism Centre also calculated that 14,600 deaths from Paris attacks occurred globally in 2005, of which 55% in your neck.
25
00:03:03,660 --> 00:03:09,090
And as noted by the concern, that means that outside of western Iraq,
26
00:03:09,360 --> 00:03:19,380
the total number of people who died at the end of Paris in 2005 was less than the number that died each day that year of HIV aids.
27
00:03:20,730 --> 00:03:28,590
So in 2019, the World Health Organisation estimated that between 2013 and 2050 climate change is
28
00:03:28,590 --> 00:03:35,610
expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition,
29
00:03:35,610 --> 00:03:47,640
malaria, diarrhoea and stress. Further, according to the latest report by the IPCC published just a couple of weeks ago, between 2010, 2010 and 2020,
30
00:03:47,940 --> 00:03:56,730
human mortality from floods, droughts and storms was 15 times higher in vulnerable regions compared to the rest of the world.
31
00:03:57,180 --> 00:04:04,680
This region are located in West, Central and Eastern Africa to South Asia, Central and South America, small island developing states.
32
00:04:05,790 --> 00:04:12,989
Only this summer, the devastating monsoon floods in Pakistan resulted in the death of nearly 1007
33
00:04:12,990 --> 00:04:18,600
hundred people in floods from the torrential rains wiped out entire villages,
34
00:04:18,750 --> 00:04:23,550
devastated millions of acres of crops and made millions of people homeless.
35
00:04:24,450 --> 00:04:29,370
The U.N. secretary general, who visited Pakistan in September, said,
36
00:04:29,400 --> 00:04:35,790
I have seen many humanitarian disaster in the world but have never seen climate carnage on this scale.
37
00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:39,540
I have simply no words to describe what I have seen today.
38
00:04:40,790 --> 00:04:45,680
So when confronted with the disproportionate effects of climate change upon the most vulnerable,
39
00:04:46,100 --> 00:04:50,030
the imbalance between the moral gravity we attribute to direct,
40
00:04:50,450 --> 00:04:53,780
limited forms of violence such as terrorist attacks,
41
00:04:54,110 --> 00:05:03,650
and the casual expediency with which we accept the systemic harm inflicted upon millions by climate change and ecological collapse is striking.
42
00:05:04,820 --> 00:05:11,660
Part of this imbalance, I would suggest, derives from dominant, legally sanctioned definitions of violence.
43
00:05:12,630 --> 00:05:20,130
Terrorist acts and other monetary atrocities understood this direct and premeditated infliction of physical harm
44
00:05:20,490 --> 00:05:29,670
by identifiable perpetrators upon identifiable victims fit precisely within our common sense notion of violence.
45
00:05:30,180 --> 00:05:40,080
Whereas the manifold forms
Load full transcript
of destruction and suffering associated with climate change, toxic pollution and environmental degradation do not.
46
00:05:41,010 --> 00:05:47,129
So why is it so? This puzzle or the question of the relationship between violence,
47
00:05:47,130 --> 00:05:56,459
disability and international law has been a key concern of my research for the past few years and is at the core of my recent book,
48
00:05:56,460 --> 00:06:04,800
The Ecology of War and Peace, which I am presenting today. Professor and now a judge at the ICJ, Ellery Charlesworth,
49
00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:09,629
has famously argued that the discipline of international law often develops in
50
00:06:09,630 --> 00:06:15,420
response to crisis writing in the context of the military intervention in Kosovo.
51
00:06:16,230 --> 00:06:21,180
She observes that one problem with the crisis model is that it leads lawyers
52
00:06:21,390 --> 00:06:26,640
to concentrate on single events or issues while missing the larger picture.
53
00:06:27,540 --> 00:06:37,470
In turn, this attitude results in a poor understanding of the complexity of global concern and therefore in unsatisfactory approaches.
54
00:06:38,910 --> 00:06:48,870
Notably, she points out how the crisis model is silent on structural injustices which remain sidelined in mainstream legal discourses and practices.
55
00:06:49,780 --> 00:06:55,559
International deployment of the crisis narrative is therefore, according to Judge Charlesworth,
56
00:06:55,560 --> 00:07:03,240
never neutral by elevating certain crisis international or distracts from other pressing issues.
57
00:07:04,470 --> 00:07:09,300
While of course, there are many implications of understanding international law as a crisis discourse.
58
00:07:09,990 --> 00:07:14,700
This presentation I want to draw attention to what that discourse obscures,
59
00:07:15,270 --> 00:07:21,630
namely the less visible but more pervasive socio ecological dimensions of militarism and warfare.
60
00:07:23,340 --> 00:07:34,169
In thinking about these issues, I built upon two theories that originate from legal fields of study and are concerned with understanding the normal,
61
00:07:34,170 --> 00:07:41,790
unexceptional, anonymous and often scrutinised violence woven into the routine workings of power structures.
62
00:07:42,870 --> 00:07:49,170
The first is the concept of law violence developed by the American political scholar Robert Nixon.
63
00:07:50,420 --> 00:07:53,630
In his little violence and the environmentalism of the poor.
64
00:07:54,260 --> 00:07:59,660
Rob Nixon claims that there are forms of violence, notably those associated with climate change,
65
00:07:59,720 --> 00:08:08,370
deforestation and the environmental aftermath of work that takes place gradually, often invisibly, which equals violence.
66
00:08:10,430 --> 00:08:19,640
The violence associated with this phenomena use is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and oppressive.
67
00:08:19,970 --> 00:08:24,050
And this rate is, of course, several theoretical, political and legal questions.
68
00:08:24,980 --> 00:08:31,940
Nixon observes that the casualties of slow violence are most likely not to be seen, not to be counted,
69
00:08:32,270 --> 00:08:39,440
as they take years or decades to occur, in contrast with more spectacular, immediately sensational and.
70
00:08:39,710 --> 00:08:42,830
But visible threats such as terrorist attacks.
71
00:08:43,810 --> 00:08:49,450
So in his book, he offers a number of examples of the delayed effects of slow environmental violence.
72
00:08:50,110 --> 00:08:59,320
The most relevant, I would say, for the present analysis is the discussion of the impact of precision warfare upon the environment and human health.
73
00:09:00,370 --> 00:09:10,720
So you observes that during the 1991 Gulf War, American troops fired weapons containing £340 of depleted uranium,
74
00:09:11,230 --> 00:09:18,670
which contributed to making the Gulf War the most toxic work in Western military history, at least until today.
75
00:09:19,750 --> 00:09:28,570
Operation Desert Storm was presented as a quick victory and a demonstration of the technological superiority of the American military,
76
00:09:29,050 --> 00:09:35,830
which, in its opinion, hides the long term legacy of depleted uranium on water land.
77
00:09:37,120 --> 00:09:43,720
Iraqi equity people and American troops, as one indeed agreed of thousands of veterans,
78
00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:52,450
reported the so-called Gulf War Syndrome experiencing a spike in leukaemia renal collapse album deformities.
79
00:09:53,650 --> 00:10:00,760
Nixon thus underlines a dissonance between the idea of smart war and precision warfare,
80
00:10:01,120 --> 00:10:09,520
which are intended to shorten conflict and reduce the number of casualties and thus violence inflicting Ofcom casualties.
81
00:10:10,870 --> 00:10:19,180
The second concept I draw upon is that of structural violence, which was given early expression by the UN gas tool in the 1960s.
82
00:10:20,320 --> 00:10:26,860
Guston famously famously formulated the concept of structural violence in opposition of that of personal violence.
83
00:10:27,820 --> 00:10:33,130
He notes that whereas personal violence can be traced back to concrete persons as actors,
84
00:10:33,550 --> 00:10:38,280
in the case of structural violence, they may not be an actor directly arms and other person.
85
00:10:38,830 --> 00:10:46,630
The violence, he says, is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances.
86
00:10:47,380 --> 00:10:49,030
He points out Outfest,
87
00:10:49,030 --> 00:11:00,100
since the dying of tuberculosis hundreds of years ago was to large extent unavoidable for those who contracted and given more than advantage advances.
88
00:11:00,620 --> 00:11:08,200
Gusto suggests dying from it today is best seen as a form of structural violence bound up with iniquity,
89
00:11:08,230 --> 00:11:13,630
inequality, maldistribution of resources and the dereliction of public services.
90
00:11:14,500 --> 00:11:19,899
So most of you would certainly think of the many, too many COVID 19 related deaths,
91
00:11:19,900 --> 00:11:24,130
especially among the most marginalised segment of the world's population.
92
00:11:25,510 --> 00:11:31,630
Nixon Agatha's theories have obviously many implication three are, in my view,
93
00:11:31,720 --> 00:11:35,920
particularly relevant for the legal analysis and critique conducted in the book.
94
00:11:37,140 --> 00:11:46,320
The first is the rejection that violence occur only occurs only when there is a visible perpetrator or agent to whom responsibility can be attributed.
95
00:11:47,340 --> 00:11:54,990
Legal doctrine such as attribution and conservation intention as the mandatory requirement for international crimes.
96
00:11:55,350 --> 00:12:06,360
Personalise violence by connecting certain harmful consequences to an identifiable actor, often imagine as an individual with conscious and free will.
97
00:12:07,290 --> 00:12:12,830
Conversely, arms that cannot be traced back to an agent are dismissed as accidents.
98
00:12:13,140 --> 00:12:15,090
Unavoidable unintended.
99
00:12:15,330 --> 00:12:24,930
Historically given features about what present world think again about the deaths and suffering caused by the floodings in Pakistan.
100
00:12:26,400 --> 00:12:30,990
The second is the need to pay attention to the root causes of wars and insecurity,
101
00:12:31,260 --> 00:12:35,400
rather than only focusing on the most visible effects or consequences.
102
00:12:36,210 --> 00:12:42,300
As I do in the book, an important dimension of contemporary conflict that has been marginalised in international legal
103
00:12:42,300 --> 00:12:48,630
debates concerns the unequal distribution of natural resources as drivers of violence and instability.
104
00:12:49,470 --> 00:12:56,640
So while legal norms and regulation have been developed to address greed as a motivation for starting and prolonging conflict,
105
00:12:57,240 --> 00:13:06,060
the complexities of grievances in countries in the Global South have not received the same level of attention by international lawyers.
106
00:13:07,780 --> 00:13:12,400
Third is regarding the distinction between negative and positive based.
107
00:13:13,400 --> 00:13:19,520
Well, negative peace, as in all means, simply the absence of direct and visible violence.
108
00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:23,750
The concept of positive peace requires something more.
109
00:13:24,560 --> 00:13:29,660
It demands to address the underlying causes of conflict, including poverty and marginalisation.
110
00:13:30,210 --> 00:13:34,550
You know what case it requires? That issues such as access to natural resources.
111
00:13:34,970 --> 00:13:42,890
Social inequality linked to resource extraction and environmental degradation are put forward in
efforts to build more peaceful societies.
112
00:13:44,330 --> 00:13:47,299
Rob Nixon and John Galton's theories are, in my view,
113
00:13:47,300 --> 00:13:53,750
as a starting point to investigate international engagement with what they call the ecology of war and peace.
114
00:13:54,470 --> 00:13:56,510
So let's say something about international law.
115
00:13:56,810 --> 00:14:04,250
International law, as a discipline and practice, has been concerned with violence and work since it's more than origin.
116
00:14:04,850 --> 00:14:11,540
And as decolonial and postcolonial scholars have indeed claimed, violence is foundation to international law.
117
00:14:12,080 --> 00:14:17,600
But humanity's relationship to nature has also been equally central to international lawmaking,
118
00:14:17,990 --> 00:14:22,790
as observed by SCOTUS, such as Natarajan, Mickelson and Julianne them.
119
00:14:23,630 --> 00:14:30,710
Yet only quite recently, the intersection of nature, violence and conflict has received attention in legal scholarship,
120
00:14:31,130 --> 00:14:34,940
becoming, over the years, a niche area of research and practice.
121
00:14:36,100 --> 00:14:43,570
So over the last couple of decades, a political debate on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict has emerged,
122
00:14:44,290 --> 00:14:49,810
driven by the need to fill gaps and clarify ambiguities in the international legal landscape.
123
00:14:51,100 --> 00:14:58,059
So some scholars, for instance, have examined how rules in principle in international environmental law or human rights law could be
124
00:14:58,060 --> 00:15:04,510
interpreted to ensure that conflict related environmental degradation or resource exploitation are addressed.
125
00:15:05,660 --> 00:15:09,950
The culmination of this debate has been the drafting by the International Law Commission
126
00:15:09,950 --> 00:15:15,290
of 27 principles on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict,
127
00:15:15,620 --> 00:15:20,360
which are expected to be adopted by the UN General Assembly this autumn.
128
00:15:21,750 --> 00:15:31,470
So while there is value, of course, in pushing political changes, the book takes a step back and moves beyond a mindset of problem solving.
129
00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:38,340
It impacts and problematise some of the assumptions about the environment, its relationship to conflict,
130
00:15:38,850 --> 00:15:47,429
underpinning legal debates and practices, and by moving across disciplinary boundaries and engaging with rich literature,
131
00:15:47,430 --> 00:15:50,280
international relations and political sciences,
132
00:15:50,550 --> 00:15:57,870
it aims to develop a better theoretical understanding of how international law deals with the ecology of war and peace.
133
00:15:59,380 --> 00:16:08,830
The installation of violent conflict and the natural world has been the object of extensive study by political ecologists, economists and scientists.
134
00:16:09,670 --> 00:16:17,260
A closer engagement with this literature, such as the literature in particular environmental security and the resource curse,
135
00:16:17,530 --> 00:16:25,510
the political economy of civil war and environmental peacebuilding is necessary to question the assumption that underlie international law.
136
00:16:26,260 --> 00:16:30,100
So my use of the term ecology is therefore not random.
137
00:16:30,670 --> 00:16:35,300
It's informed by discussion in other fields of study and signals.
138
00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:43,630
The value of taking a more holistic or systemic approach that considers the interrelations of environmental injustices,
139
00:16:44,380 --> 00:16:47,470
violent conflict and insecurity more generally.
140
00:16:48,010 --> 00:16:57,190
So in other words, an ecological approach is based upon what we might call relational thinking rather than silos thinking.
141
00:16:57,610 --> 00:17:03,820
A point which I will return in my conclusion. So since at least the 1980s,
142
00:17:03,940 --> 00:17:13,390
accumulating research in peace and conflict studies has sought to explain how environmental issues broadly understood may contribute to the outbreak,
143
00:17:13,750 --> 00:17:18,310
escalation, prolongation and even resolution of violent conflict.
144
00:17:19,180 --> 00:17:28,360
Recognition of these issues has grown over the years, and international efforts to manage them, including through international law, have risen.
145
00:17:29,460 --> 00:17:38,190
Ongoing debate, framing climate change as an international peace and security issue are a clear indication of this trend and
146
00:17:38,190 --> 00:17:44,670
of the importance of expanding our understanding of the ecological dimensions of contemporary conflict.
147
00:17:46,140 --> 00:17:49,740
It's also important to note that this literature is not monolithic.
148
00:17:50,400 --> 00:17:57,780
Different criticism of theories on environmental scarcity and abundance have emerged in recent years,
149
00:17:58,470 --> 00:18:05,640
challenging early studies and underlining their failure to address the broader political and economic dynamics at play.
150
00:18:06,750 --> 00:18:13,230
So, for instance, a literature on environmental security has been criticised for its excessive determinism,
151
00:18:13,620 --> 00:18:16,530
racial undertone and generalised conclusion.
152
00:18:17,400 --> 00:18:24,600
The researchers thesis put its emphasis on greed as the motivation for starting armed struggles and on local
153
00:18:24,600 --> 00:18:31,980
pathologies through the reference to the failed or the weak state series on the political economy of civil war.
154
00:18:32,040 --> 00:18:38,909
For the limited attention to the mechanism of a globalised economy and supply chain and environmental
155
00:18:38,910 --> 00:18:45,120
peacebuilding for the indirect support to liberal peace interventions in post-conflict countries.
156
00:18:46,480 --> 00:18:53,410
So rather than thinking of these theories as external to the discipline and practice of international law,
157
00:18:54,310 --> 00:19:05,050
my contention is that they have fed into the legal field shaping how the ecology of war and peace has been approached, discussed and addressed so far.
158
00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:13,240
Further, by privileging certain explanation of the nexus between environment and conflict, all the others,
159
00:19:13,570 --> 00:19:22,710
our own discipline has also contributed to a specific and arguably simplified understanding of this complex social realities.
160
00:19:23,810 --> 00:19:30,750
So what are the normative implication of adopting a certain frame to describe issues such as illegal resources,
161
00:19:30,770 --> 00:19:34,070
predation and environmental security over other?
162
00:19:34,910 --> 00:19:38,420
What perspectives are privileged and what get marginalised?
163
00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:43,810
And what may happen if we change the lens through which we re?
164
00:19:43,820 --> 00:19:47,000
The interrelation, ecology, war and peace.
165
00:19:48,020 --> 00:19:55,040
To answer this question in the book, I conduct a close analysis of the practice of three different institutions.
166
00:19:56,030 --> 00:19:58,540
So one chapter is on international courts and tribunals.
167
00:19:58,550 --> 00:20:06,320
And there I look at both the practice of criminal tribunals and International Court of Justice, the U.N. Security Council.
168
00:20:06,740 --> 00:20:11,900
And another chapter is on threat commissions in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Timor-Leste.
169
00:20:13,100 --> 00:20:18,350
So I'm well, I'm more than happy to elaborate more on the on the case studies in the Q&A.
170
00:20:18,950 --> 00:20:25,310
I would like to use the remainder of this presentation to summarise the key arguments and interventions on the book.
171
00:20:26,060 --> 00:20:34,280
And these are intentionally controversial and provocative in the sense that they hope to provoke your questions and reactions.
172
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:43,550
So first, the book charts the different ideas of nature in rules governing war and the transition to peace,
173
00:20:44,270 --> 00:20:55,640
and reveals how these legal norms preserve nature as a public or private property and as an economic asset to be protected from the axis of war.
174
00:20:57,150 --> 00:21:06,060
So in the laws of war, the environment is treated as instrumental to other, more pragmatic goals associated with armed conflict.
175
00:21:06,660 --> 00:21:12,389
So ideas of nature as an object to be targeted or collateral damage in the
176
00:21:12,390 --> 00:21:18,330
pursuit of military advantage or as an economic asset to sustain the war effort,
177
00:21:18,810 --> 00:21:24,780
have shaped in scholarly debates and legal practices since the modern origins of the discipline,
178
00:21:26,040 --> 00:21:31,080
the way in which both and post World War Two tribunal dealt with scorched,
179
00:21:31,440 --> 00:21:36,690
scorched head practices and exploitation of natural resources in Nazi occupied territories
180
00:21:37,290 --> 00:21:43,589
confirms that the main concern was to establish legal accountability for candidates that,
181
00:21:43,590 --> 00:21:45,390
while degrading the environment,
182
00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:55,710
resulted in immediate harm to the enemy's property and the economic interests of the concerned countries or its economic capital.
183
00:21:56,490 --> 00:22:01,290
The vision of nature as a resource and commodity that needs to be protected against the
184
00:22:01,290 --> 00:22:06,870
threat posed by armed conflict is deeply entrenched in international law practices.
185
00:22:07,650 --> 00:22:11,460
In the Armed Activity Case and activities case.
186
00:22:11,490 --> 00:22:12,840
The ICJ, for instance,
187
00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:22,650
referred to the prohibition of pillage in the use in Belgium to proscribe illegal resource exploitation by the occupying state gander.
188
00:22:22,980 --> 00:22:30,570
Without considering the more subtle ways in which exploitation practices entail ecological degradation,
189
00:22:30,930 --> 00:22:34,410
loss of livelihoods and adverse social consequences.
190
00:22:35,420 --> 00:22:44,329
Likewise the use by the Security Council of Chapter seven measures to handle resource conflict and support good governance,
191
00:22:44,330 --> 00:22:50,720
intervention in post-conflict countries, focus on the economic dimension of resource extraction,
192
00:22:51,230 --> 00:22:57,320
and reveal a limited attention to questions of sustainability in countries emerging from conflict.
193
00:22:58,700 --> 00:23:04,100
More recently, the idea of nature as a victim of war has also emerged,
194
00:23:04,430 --> 00:23:08,960
and you can see that also in ongoing debates on the codification of the crime of ecocide.
195
00:23:09,950 --> 00:23:12,590
Yet even when framed as a victim,
196
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:20,960
environmental degradation is acknowledged as a tragically unavoidable sacrifice in relation to the larger objectives of war.
197
00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:25,849
It's a constant casualty that that is not to say, of course,
198
00:23:25,850 --> 00:23:33,110
that concerns about environmental preservation and human well-being have been ignored in legal debates and practices.
199
00:23:33,590 --> 00:23:34,490
On the contrary,
200
00:23:35,030 --> 00:23:43,160
interpretative efforts to introduce environmental consideration into the laws of war have proliferated over the last couple of decades.
201
00:23:44,060 --> 00:23:55,730
Yet, as the nuclear weapons advisory opinion demonstrates, reconciling ecological sustainability and militarism making remains a difficult task.
202
00:23:56,720 --> 00:24:04,820
What there is by definition the negation of sustainable development and intergenerational equity.
203
00:24:05,810 -->
00:24:14,060
So while environmental principles and may mitigate the rationale underpinning the youth symbolism, they cannot transform it.
204
00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:21,620
So ultimately, international legal arguments struggle to reconcile the ethical justification
205
00:24:21,620 --> 00:24:26,360
for preserving nature with the pragmatic logic of warfare and militarism.
206
00:24:26,930 --> 00:24:33,470
Raising the question of whether they can ever be a reconciliation between the two logics.
207
00:24:35,010 --> 00:24:43,680
So second, my argument is that by embracing a simplified understanding of the relation between nature, violence and conflict,
208
00:24:43,980 --> 00:24:48,570
international legal discussions and practices jeopardise the prospect of
209
00:24:48,570 --> 00:24:54,000
creating more peaceful societies while perpetuating deeply rooted inequalities.
210
00:24:54,820 --> 00:25:03,790
Whereas the field of peace and conflict studies incorporates different theories which are constantly subject to critical scrutiny and redefinition.
211
00:25:04,420 --> 00:25:11,860
Two ideas have become quite popular in international law, resulting in a variety of policy and normative initiatives.
212
00:25:12,730 --> 00:25:21,190
So one is the idea that resource abundance in the Global South may have a negative impact on the quality of institution,
213
00:25:21,430 --> 00:25:26,620
economic performance, and the motives for starting or prolonging armed rebellion.
214
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:31,750
This is also known as the paradox of Plenty or the resource curse.
215
00:25:32,890 --> 00:25:39,550
So the great thesis in particular emphasised emphasises the desire of rebel groups and warlords
216
00:25:39,910 --> 00:25:45,580
to enrich themselves through the exploitation of valuable commodities such as diamonds,
217
00:25:46,450 --> 00:25:54,340
mineral oil, and pave the way to the adoption of commodity and targeting section by the U.N. Security Council.
218
00:25:54,610 --> 00:26:02,739
For instance, in countries and in conflict, like in Sierra Leone, in Liberia and Angola, and also resulted in the development of governance,
219
00:26:02,740 --> 00:26:10,210
regime regulating trade in resource commodities, for instance, the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative.
220
00:26:11,020 --> 00:26:15,850
So the book questions the assumptions implicit in these normative measures,
221
00:26:16,270 --> 00:26:24,730
notably the idea behind sanctions that once the promise for economic gain is reduced, the conflict will somehow die out.
222
00:26:25,900 --> 00:26:29,530
So unfortunately, as research has showed, that's not always the case.
223
00:26:29,890 --> 00:26:38,799
And moreover, as scholars like Michael Bevis has argued, by failing to consider how marginalisation and inequality in resource,
224
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:42,910
access and distribution are also part of the stories of this conflict.
225
00:26:43,510 --> 00:26:48,910
This normative intervention may lead to the revival of all grievances or create new ones.
226
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:51,880
So in other words, to go back to you and Galton.
227
00:26:51,970 --> 00:26:58,360
Without confronting this knowing, structural ecological violence involved in this complex piece is more fragile.
228
00:27:00,120 --> 00:27:02,680
So the opposite has also been successfully discussed.
229
00:27:02,700 --> 00:27:12,300
But he argued that scarcity of natural resources, such as fresh water and croplands, can generate political instability in fragile countries.
230
00:27:13,140 --> 00:27:20,969
So against this background, the argument that climate change may increase risk and vulnerability and pose a threat
231
00:27:20,970 --> 00:27:26,430
to national human and collective security is gaining traction in policy circles.
232
00:27:27,540 --> 00:27:33,240
Concerns about climate security have also progressively fed into international law debates.
233
00:27:33,930 --> 00:27:39,839
So while scholars have showed that a broader interpretation of the Security Council mandate may
234
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:44,970
legitimise the adoption of measures dealing with the peace and security effects of climate change,
235
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:51,810
the issue remains highly controversial, as exemplified by the different position of developing countries,
236
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:56,460
presents the Group 77, as opposed to small island developing states.
237
00:27:57,180 --> 00:28:05,220
So my research finds how the limitations of existing conceptual and legal frameworks underpinning the practice of the UN Security Council.
238
00:28:06,030 --> 00:28:11,189
It builds upon a feminist and political ecologist perspective to suggest that we may
239
00:28:11,190 --> 00:28:17,430
need to rethink what peace and security means mean in times of ecological disruptions.
240
00:28:18,150 --> 00:28:27,840
So when confronted with the violence of climate change, legal notions of peace and security must evolve beyond traditional militaristic security
241
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:33,750
interests and include ecological sustainability and questions of redistribution.
242
00:28:34,860 --> 00:28:40,319
So moving forward, more research is needed to further interrogate certain ideas and assumptions that have
243
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:45,240
dominated academic debates and shape international legal practices in this area.
244
00:28:46,020 --> 00:28:51,120
In doing so, we may turn to the field of political ecology for some insights.
245
00:28:52,020 --> 00:28:59,580
Political ecology is an interdisciplinary field of study, including anthropologists, geographers and sociologists.
246
00:28:59,940 --> 00:29:04,530
With a rich research tradition that dates back at least to the 1980s.
247
00:29:05,370 --> 00:29:09,600
Well, of course it would be impossible to convey the diversity of this field.
248
00:29:10,020 --> 00:29:17,879
In concluding, I wont outline
how a political ecological approach may open new lines of inquiry
249
00:29:17,880 --> 00:29:23,040
into the role of international law in times of raising authoritarianism,
250
00:29:23,340 --> 00:29:26,730
militarism and social ecological disruptions.
251
00:29:28,650 --> 00:29:37,680
So at this point, to be noted, is that political ecology would resist the urge to assign power of concession to the environment
252
00:29:38,010 --> 00:29:43,770
while maintaining that the effects of ecological problems being environmental degradation,
253
00:29:43,770 --> 00:29:48,930
pollution, deforestation, climate change are always mediated by social factors.
254
00:29:49,620 --> 00:29:54,450
So as Nancy Peluso and Michael Woods point out in Violent Environments,
255
00:29:54,750 --> 00:29:59,889
the book that gives the title to this presentation, Conflicts or Struggles or the Natural.
256
00:29:59,890 --> 00:30:06,810
He says this cannot be understood without considering the structural dimension of uneven power relations.
257
00:30:07,500 --> 00:30:11,100
Such relations are made of local and global linkages.
258
00:30:11,790 --> 00:30:18,030
Therefore, rather than blaming local actors for local dysfunctions being corruption or my governance,
259
00:30:18,570 --> 00:30:26,070
the more useful move would be to trace the broader political economic dynamics involved in the making of the conflict,
260
00:30:26,820 --> 00:30:31,080
as well as to interrogate the role of international law and law in general,
261
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:36,870
in the commodification of the natural world and in supporting global extractivism.
262
00:30:38,350 --> 00:30:45,760
In contrast with the depoliticised concept of environmental scarcity or abundance as drivers of conflict,
263
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:52,000
a political ecological approach would emphasise the politicisation of the environmental conflicts.
264
00:30:52,750 --> 00:31:00,159
So research in the field of political ecology points out that costs and benefits associated with environmental changes are,
265
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:07,510
for the most part, distributed among actors unequally, which reinforces the existing social and economic inequalities.
266
00:31:07,930 --> 00:31:15,160
So his argument, for instance, in these days has been made by Indigenous people and in global south countries during the course of 27.
267
00:31:16,510 --> 00:31:21,760
So a political ecology perspective invites us to pay attention to historical processes
268
00:31:21,790 --> 00:31:27,610
of environmental degradation and resist dispossession to the legacies of colonialism,
269
00:31:27,790 --> 00:31:34,419
specialisation and gender discrimination in shaping the current order and arguably
270
00:31:34,420 --> 00:31:40,390
to shaping the current legal order further in line with other critical traditions.
271
00:31:40,750 --> 00:31:48,310
It also invites to reconceptualize justice, international justice in broader terms as involving corrective,
272
00:31:48,430 --> 00:31:51,460
procedural, distributive and social components.
273
00:31:52,570 --> 00:31:58,120
So I would suggest that opposing the determinism of certain literature and resisting
274
00:31:58,120 --> 00:32:02,740
the appeal of grand theories on the environment conflict nexus is empowering.
275
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:09,700
If we agree that environmental factors do not unleash disorder or harmony in societies,
276
00:32:10,030 --> 00:32:19,390
but rather it is the institution that we create and the decision we make to determine the consequences for ongoing conflict and peace processes.
277
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:27,700
Then, a new audit horizon of possibilities open up for our field law and in particular,
278
00:32:27,700 --> 00:32:35,710
international law is part of such institutions and thus can play a role in realising a more just and peaceful world.
279
00:32:36,250 --> 00:32:42,220
What can be part of the problem? By ignoring complexity and reproducing troubling assumptions.
280
00:32:43,270 --> 00:32:46,389
So by arguing for an ecological relational approach.
281
00:32:46,390 --> 00:32:54,370
And by exploiting the limitations of silos, thinking so between issues, between disciplines and also within international norms.
282
00:32:55,300 --> 00:33:01,850
The book ultimately urges international legal scholars to reflect on the implication of defining
283
00:33:01,850 --> 00:33:08,410
the problem in certain terms and the possibilities associated with its critical description.
284
00:33:08,860 --> 00:33:16,960
To use an expression borrowed from Sandy apologia and I want to emphasise that theory and practice go hand-in-hand in this endeavour.
285
00:33:17,410 --> 00:33:20,440
Although the relationship between the two can be dialectical.
286
00:33:21,590 --> 00:33:30,200
So as put by Gerard School in his book Savage Ecology, and I'm quoting, ideas matter even if they cannot save us.
287
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:39,500
Stories, explanations and philosophical adventures optimise the mission the best of what the human estate has to offer.
288
00:33:40,310 --> 00:33:45,800
No matter how desperate things get, someone will still ask why this is happening,
289
00:33:46,370 --> 00:33:51,890
and we still will share in that question the possibility of thinking together.
290
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:54,530
Thank you very much for your attention.