Political Ecologies of Violent Conflict

In this chapter, we review political ecology literature on violent conflict. Whilst conflict has been central to the field, violent conflict has received overall little attention. Political ecology has been at the forefront of critiquing environmental deterministic interpretations of violent conflict, in particular, environmental security approaches. Yet it has not progressed much with developing its own distinct perspective on dynamics of violent conflict and the interplay with nature-society relations. We have identified three important limitations of the existing literature: firstly, it focuses rather narrowly on (conflicts over) natural resources and not on other aspects of war-environment interactions; secondly, there is limited engagement with direct, physical violence as most studies focus on structural and symbolic violence; and thirdly, it has largely overlooked international dynamics of violence, owing to its focus on place-based dynamics. We conclude with suggestions for future research, including more grounded studies of zones with ongoing violence, and further examining the role of race, gender and colonialism in political ecologies of violent conflict.