Climate Change, Disasters, Sustainability Transition and Peace in the Anthropocene

This book emerged from peer-reviewed papers presented at the meetings of the Ecology and Peace Commission during the 26th General Conference of the International Peace Research Association in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from 27 November to 1 December 2016.

This chapter reviews the process of responding to socio-environmental disasters in places affected by high-intensity levels of conflict, and explores the essential features and challenges that this type of conflict poses for disaster response. Using the notions of humanitarian arena, legitimacy, and power relationships, the chapter presents the different strategies that aid and society actors (those for whom humanitarian aid action is part of their core function and those for whom is not) use to respond in these complex settings, contributing to the study of the nexus between social conflicts and socio-environmental disasters such as earthquakes, droughts, or hurricanes. This chapter makes an original contribution to the disaster response literature by reflecting on the utility of using high-intensity conflict scenarios as an analytical category, to inform better policies and practices on disaster response in these specific types of conflict.

Natural hazards often strike in conflict-affected societies, where the devastation is further compounded by the fragility of these societies and a complex web of myriad actors. To respond to disasters, aid, state, and societal actors enter the humanitarian arena, where they manoeuvre in the socio-political space to renegotiate power relations and gain legitimacy to achieve their goals by utilising authoritative and material resources. Post-conflict settings such as Burundi present a challenge for disaster response as actors are confronted with an uncertain transition period and the need to balance roles and capacity.

In addition to increasing extreme events due to climate change, losses of ecosystem services, soil depletion, water scarcity, and air pollution, in most emerging countries the importation of basic food items, especially corn, soya beans, and wheat, has increased. These countries often purchase genetic modified grains which might affect their biodiversity. The present chapter proposes a climate-sustainable agriculture with food sovereignty (CSAFS) that combines the climate-smart agriculture promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations with the recovery of local food cultures, environmental diversity, and healthy food intake from a gendered perspective. This approach deepens the concept of food sovereignty from Via Campesina, the international movement which coordinates small and medium scale agricultural producers and workers across the globe. This case study of Mexico illustrates the nutritional impact on poor people of industrialised and imported food. In 2018, half of all Mexicans live in conditions of poverty, with informal jobs and insufficient income. The increase of food prices has forced many people to substitute nutritious fresh food with sugar and carbohydrates. This change of diet has increased obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and other chronic illnesses. Since 2017 President Trump has initiated a renegotiation of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and his administration has charged import taxes on selected Mexican export products. The complexity and urgency of this crisis, aggravated by climate change impacts, obliges the Mexican Government to rethink its agricultural policy, which is now unable to provide healthy food to everybody. The State, the business community and the citizens must design a policy of a sustainable agriculture and a healthy food culture, which may reverse environmental deterioration, increase the capture of greenhouse gases, mitigate climate change impacts, reduce the malnutrition of adults, and improve the chronic undernourishment of small children.

The consequences of climate change, and the need to adapt and spur livelihood challenges. During periods of (un)expected climate change, traditional African communities applied indigenous cultural resources to secure the agrarian sector which almost exclusively supported their livelihoods. This study combines insights from the theories of cultural functionalism and interaction rituals to provide a descriptive interpretation of select indigenous cultural resources the Abagusii community of southwestern Kenya employed to respond and adapt to manifestations of climate change. The study proffers ways of repositioning this hitherto undervalued knowledge in partnership with contemporary climatological science to provide the ‘magic potion’ which will enable adaptation to the ever-enduring challenge of climate change in contemporary Africa.

The Anthropocene has led to significant discussions on the emergence of a new era in human and Earth history, with all its implications. In it, human beings are at the same time the main threat to the Planet and the potential solution, leading to discussions in the social sciences and the humanities addressing the societal consequences of complex interrelations between global environmental change, lack of sustainable development, poor governance, inequality, social challenges, economic crises and risk society. In the midst of these changes and debates, social relations, social dynamics and social institutions have also changed significantly and at a very rapid pace, reflecting changes over the past decades. The family, considered the basic institution of society, is also a historically-bound institution, based on violent dynamics of gender domination, exclusion and subordination in patriarchal societies, that has changed across time and space.

It unfolds in three main sections. First, in the Introduction, there are four interrelated subsections dealing with the general historical and conceptual framework, namely (i) the current historical époque: the dawn of the Anthropocene (7.1.1); (ii) the theoretical and methodological model: Social Representations Theory (7.1.2); (iii) the object of study: the family as social institution (7.1.3); and (iv) the context of the study: social and gender violent dynamics in Mexico (7.1.4). The second main section addresses the family, social representations and gender; it presents the theoretical-methodological model. The third and last section is thematic, looking at assisted reproductive technologies and ‘homoparenting’ (gay and lesbian parenting) in Mexico. There is a brief closing reflection at the end of the chapter.

This essay contributes to a conceptual discussion on the need for bridge-building between the natural and social sciences, among different social science disciplines, and the research programmes in political science focusing on peace, security, development and environment (‘sustainable development’), by introducing the two new linkage concepts of ‘political geo-ecology’ and ‘peace ecology’. It focuses on the policy goal of a ‘sustainable peace’ understood as ‘peace with nature’ in the newly proposed epoch of earth history, the Anthropocene.

The key argument of this chapter is that this goal may be achieved by a process of ‘sustainability transition’ that addresses the economic causes of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, in which where concerned individuals, families, local communities, states and nations as well as international governmental organisations and non-governmental bodies and social movements may contribute to the transition.

This text suggests that the goal of a ‘sustainable peace’ may be addressed from a peace ecology perspective that integrates both peace and security studies and ecology or ecological approaches aiming at the realisation of the goal of a ‘sustainable development’. It is argued that this requires a shift from disciplinary and multidisciplinary research methods towards inter- and transdisciplinary approaches by moving towards a ‘transformative science’ aiming at a ‘sustainable peace’ where the needed policy changes and the actors and processes of this change towards sustainability should become a part of the research design and action research process.

This essay touches on the manifold fundamental conceptual, methodological, theoretical and action-oriented research needs of a ‘peace ecology approach’ that aims at contributing to the realisation of a ‘sustainable peace’ as ‘peace with nature’ in the ‘Anthropocene’, where the societal outcomes of the physical effects of global environmental and climate change can be countered and mitigated by policies of adaptation, mitigation and an increase of resilience by the affected people.

From the perspective of a Hobbesian policy approach of ‘business-as-usual,’ but also from traditional scientific worldviews, this goal may appear at present to be utopian and for sceptics, it is not achievable. It requires a fundamental change in the dominant ‘worldview’ of many scientists and of the neoliberal mindset of most policymakers, practitioners, but also of ordinary citizens towards an alternative sustainability approach.

For the natural and social sciences it requires a new ‘scientific revolution towards sustainability’ – similar to what Kuhn (1962) called the ‘Copernican Revolution’ or Schellnhuber (1999) outlined as a ‘Second Copernican Revolution’ – with a new scientific paradigm of a ‘peace ecology’ that still needs to be developed in the future.

This holistic approach of linking different scientific discourses with discussions in the political realm deliberately distances itself from the mainstream of political science contributions with often narrowly focused theoretical discussions that solely appeal to a scientific audience and are hardly noted in societal and political discussions.