The connection between ecology and conflict has been the object of extensive study by political scientists and economists. From the contribution of natural resource 'scarcity' to violent unrest and armed conflict; to resource 'abundance' as an incentive for initiating and prolonging armed struggles; to dysfunctional resource management and environmental degradation as obstacles to peacebuilding, this literature has exerted a huge influence upon academic discussions and policy developments. While international law is often invoked as the solution to the socio-environmental challenges faced by conflict-affected countries, its relationship with the ecology of war and peace remains undertheorised. Drawing upon environmental justice perspectives and other theoretical traditions, the book unpacks and problematizes some of the assumptions that underlie the legal field. Through an analysis of the practice of international courts, the UN Security Council, and Truth Commissions, it shows how international law silences and even normalizes forms of structural and slow environmental violence.

How do mobilization for war and the actual war effort affect the environment? How do ecological conditions encourage war? What are possible, non-violent solutions to the ecological- conflict dynamic? Ecology of War & Peace attempts to answer these questions in readable prose with an unapologetic bias toward non-violence.

Our world of increasing and varied conflicts is confusing and threatening to citizens of all countries, as they try to understand its causes and consequences. This book takes advantage of a diversity of geographic perspectives as it analyzes the political processes of war and their spatial expression.

"The chapters in this book [posit] that humans clearly have the capacity to make war, but since war is absent in some cultures, it cannot be viewed as a human universal. And counter to frequent presumption, the actual archaeological record reveals the recent emergence of war. It does not typify the ancestral type of human society, the nomadic forager band, and contrary to widespread assumptions, there is little support for the idea that war is ancient or an evolved adaptation. Views of human nature as inherently warlike stem not from the facts but from cultural views embedded in Western thinking"--Amazon.com.

The history of development is one marked by insecurities, violence, and persistent conflict. It is not surprising, therefore, that development is now thought of as one of the central challenges of world politics. However, its complexities are often overlooked in scholarly analysis and among policy practitioners, who tend to adopt a technocratic approach to the crisis of development and violence. This book brings together a wide range of contributions aimed at investigating different aspects of the history of development and violence, and its implications for contemporary efforts to consolidate the development-security nexus. From environmental concerns, through vigilante citizenship, to the legacies of armed conflicts during and after decolonization, the different chapters reconstruct the contradictory history of development and critically engage contemporary responses and their implications for social and political analyses. In examining violence and insecurity in relation to core organising principles of world politics the contributors engage the problems associated with the nation state and the inter-state system and underlying assumptions of the promises of progress. The book offers a range of perspectives on the contradictions of development, and on how domination, violence and resistance have been conceived. At the same time it exemplifies the relevance of alternative methodological and conceptual approaches to contemporary challenges of development. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

The purpose of this book is specific and ambitious: to outline the distinctive elements, scope, and usefulness of a new and emerging field of applied ecology named warfare ecology. Based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, the book provides both a theoretical overview of this new field and case studies that range from mercury contamination during World War I in Slovenia to the ecosystem impacts of the Palestinian occupation, and from the bombing of coral reefs of Vieques to biodiversity loss due to violent conflicts in Africa. Warfare Ecology also includes reprints of several classical papers that set the stage for the new synthesis described by the authors. Written for environmental scientists, military and humanitarian relief professionals, conservation managers, and graduate students in a wide range of fields, Warfare Ecology is a major step forward in understanding the relationship between war and ecological systems.

In this volume security specialists, peace researchers, environmental scholars, demographers as well as climate, desertification, water, food and urbanisation specialists from the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and North America review security and conflict prevention in the Mediterranean. They also analyse NATO s Mediterranean security dialogue and offer conceptualisations on security and perceptions of security challenges as seen in North and South. The latter half of the book analyses environmental security and conflicts in the Mediterranean and environmental consequences of World War II, the Gulf War, the Balkan wars and the Middle East conflict. It also examines factors of global environmental change: population growth, climate change, desertification, water scarcity, food and urbanisation issues as well as natural disasters. Furthermore, it draws conceptual conclusions for a fourth phase of research on human and environmental security and peace as well as policy conclusions for cooperation and partnership in the Mediterranean in the 21st century.

This informed Christian response to more than one hundred common questions regarding the ethics of war demonstrates the viability of just-war reasoning in responding to contemporary geopolitical challenges.

This book provides a comprehensive yet accessible overview of land systems vulnerability assessment in Asia - fundamental to the understanding of the link between global change, environmental sustainability and human wellbeing. The extent and intensity of human interactions with the environment have increased spectacularly since the Industrial Revolution. Thus, the global change research community and development practitioners increasingly recognize the need to address the adverse consequences of changes taking place in the structure and function of the biosphere and the implications for society. With a focus on Asia, this book provides an overview of the vulnerability of land systems and the subsequent multiple stressors in this region. The book offers a discussion surrounding the potential causal processes that affect land systems vulnerability and our capacity to cope with different perturbations. It also identifies factors that help to integrate vulnerability assessment into policy and decision-making. • Addresses the complex issues arising from human–environment interactions that cannot be satisfactorily dealt with by core disciplinary methods alone. • Key coverage of a variety of topics from the vulnerability of smallholder agriculture and urban systems to the impact of socioeconomic processes at the sub-regional level. • Coverage of the causal processes that affect land systems vulnerability and capacity to cope with different perturbations are documented. • Focus on integrating vulnerability assessment into policies and decision-making • Includes contributions from leading academics in the field.

This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world’s most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China’s physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.