Picking up arms against a collapsing planet: militarised ecologies on a planetary scale

Abstract

The current era of intensified militarization is exemplified by the number of inter-state armed conflicts (the highest since the end of the Second World War), increased risk of nuclear weapons use, and an unprecedented global arms trade. Simultaneously, the climate crisis results in widespread damage and biodiversity decline. Despite the socio-ecological harm of warfare and military buildup, many responses to declining climate and biodiversity conditions are militarised through so-called ‘climate security’ action, military greening, and militarised conservation efforts.. We examine this military capture of ecological phenomena and the encroachment of military actors, investments, logics and practices into social and environmental domains. Drawing on cases from Nepal, the United Kingdom, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Gaza Strip, we find that the expansion of military infrastructures, technologies, strategies and interests comes with detrimental socio-ecological implications. Our concept of ‘militarised ecologies’ encapsulates green militarism and green militarisation—the destruction of local ecologies, and encroachment of military interests into national and global policy on climate change and biodiversity. Such intensified militarisation and its socio-ecological effects have been recognised in some academic fields, but not sufficiently from its critical scholars, and needs more attention within political ecology and critical military studies. This is needed to further advance a research agenda on militarised ecologies, which this paper proposes.