War and Peace and Sustainability

“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” -- Hermann Göring, one of the most powerful figures of the Nazi party.

Violent clashes between Palestinians and Israelis has erupted again. As I sit here trudging through my thesis, I ponder about my purpose. What is the point of anything I do when some people, somewhere, are dropping bombs on other people? What difference am I going to make by eating less meat, using less water, taking public transport, shopping with cloth bags, and all my little pro-environmental behaviours, when other people who share the same planet can detonate tons of chemical explosives without any consideration of the consequences? 

I have always wondered what were the environmental impacts of war. Because the human costs of war are so great, they triumph over any environmental considerations. But the legacy impacts of war on human health and ecosystem is a nontrivial consequence. For example, during the Vietnam War, the United States military sprayed Agent Orange to defoliate jungles and ruin cropland, resulting in millions of people being exposed to the toxicity of the herbicide, and a legacy of pollution and disruption of the ecological food chain till this day. Not to mention, nuclear blasts and testing release massive quantities of energy and radioactive particles, causing far-reaching contamination of land and water around the site. 

Named after the hair colour on Clementine...

From a cursory google search, I found one paper on the Environmental Impact of War and Terrorism, written in 2003 by a professor at the University of Reading, who is now retired. (I actually wanted to look for her when I was in Reading. I thought it would make for a fun celebrity-hunting adventure, Min Green style.) 

I wanted to chase Dr. Mannion like Min Green chased Lottie Carson

The paper discussed how war and terrorism have changed human landscapes, such as in destroyed cities, in the establishment of camps for refugees and enemies, and in graves and memorials. War and terrorism also results in lasting ecological consequences such as degradation of agricultural land, pollution of air and water, and biodiversity loss. 

Perhaps it might be more realistic to rally environmentalists around global peace-building efforts, instead. 

Peace and sustainability are both rather hippie ideas

My counsellor, Liz, 是个丰满的黑人大妈 with a hearty laugh. She is also very wise. Because I am currently engaged in conflict with my supervisor, she pointed me towards a powerful little book of Conflict Transformation, which not only brought me comfort, but also got me fascinated about the transformational lens on conflict, as I can now see conflict, and the potential of this book's concept, everywhere. The writer, John Paul Lederach, believes that peace is not a static state, and that peace work is characterized by intentional efforts to address the natural ebb and flow of human relationships through nonviolent approaches. 

Conflict transformation focuses on productive change, and change can be thought of as a circle: 

The process of change, therefore, also involves things coming to a standstill, things moving backwards (3), and things going through a complete breakdown (4). These are necessary in order for things to move forward (1). 

Illustration of conflict as a process-structure, and the need to establish creative platforms for addressing content, context, and underlying patterns and structures of the relationship

It may help, then, to conceive of conflicts as episodes, or the visible expression of conflict rising within the

relationship or system. The epicenter is the web of relational patterns from which new episodes and issues emerge. Conflict transformation addresses both the episode and the epicenter of conflict. In this view, escalation, for example, may be a necessary process in pursuit of constructive change. 

Actually, this diagram reminds me of the Panarchy diagram for complex social-ecological systems, which explains the four phases of the adaptive cycle, and connects cycles in nested hierarchies:

Social relationships are indeed complex systems, I suppose, and therefore cycle through phases of growth (1), conservation (2), release (3), and reorganisation (4). 

It is difficult to pull apart the challenges for human society from the challenges for sustainability. I am brought back to my interest in the work of SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). I spent some time perusing their publications on armed conflict and peace processes, as well as on armament and disarmament, which is a major research stream. Their Yearbooks also contain an economic lens on war and peace: military spending, international arms transfer, and peace operations budgets. 

The transparent bookkeeping and analyses on armed conflict and peace work by SIPRI is a vital contribution to our collective knowledge and understanding on these issues. I feel inspired to join them. 

While the type of violence that SIPRI's work is focused on is very visible, less visible is the systemic everyday violence that creates starkly inequitable societies. As both nuclear warfare and climate change are existential threats, the Peace & Planet Network tries to draw these links, and advocates for activists in human rights, environment, and nuclear abolition to work together to address the interconnected problems with the exploitative model of the economic system. 

I don't think we can truly seek to be at peace with the planet without seeking to be at peace with one another. In the first place, advocating for collaboration on sustainability efforts involves asking others to pause or put aside what they hold dear, to care about what's important to me (sustainability). We need to acknowledge that, in activism, we are engaging in conflict about values and priorities. 

Conflict Transformation states that conflict cycles reinforce an environment of insecurity that threatens identity. And at the root of most conflicts are issues of identity, which protect a sense of self and group survival. And as the conflict transformation process-structure suggests, we must establish platforms of constructive change, address underlying patterns, and seek to increase justice. We must envision something better. 

It is Celebrate Learning Week here at UBC, under Workplace Learning Ecosystem, and I have signed up for the sessions on Conflict Engagement. There is also a monthly Conflict Theatre Community that I have recently enrolled in. The workshop on Tuesday introduced the "Argument" and the "Polarity Map" as tools for exploring the pros and cons of a dilemma. The example used was whether we should continue working from home, or return to campus. The presentation also offered some insights on some of the constructive options we have for engaging in conflict, identified some of common ways of resistance that can be ineffective or even destructive, and what alternatives there are for leaders as well as resisters to facilitate engagement. 

Slides by Roquela Fernandez and Professor Tom Scholte from UBC Conflict Theatre

I love how conflict links to theatre, and how the science of rational arguments connects with the art of debate. I can't wait to learn more, and to put these ideas into practice. 

Solastalgia; This Is Not A Drill

Dear old blog, and you, an unlikely reader, I'm sorry for my silence! I was recently approached by a friend who asked if I would like to collaborate on/contribute piece(s) on the theme of Environment to an art publication, and asked me for some writing samples. I thought it might be time to revive this blog again. 

Right now I am surrounded by several unfinished books (and an unfinished thesis) nagging for my attention, and one I'd like to share with you is This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. (I link to an upload on someone's gdrive...shhh.) Part One is a collection of honest, uncensored pieces on where we are now. I highly recommend everyone to read Douglas Rushkoff's Chapter 8: Survival of the Richest and Susie Orbach's Chapter 9: Climate Sorrow. Part Two, which I skimmed over because I'm not planning to take to the streets, is about activism tactics and stories, and a rally for civil disobedience. 

Survival of the Richest gibes at billionaires' self-centredness as well as their passiveness, declares that technology is not the panacea to our problems even if we were mega rich, and ends with a call for togetherness defining our humanity. Climate Sorrow deals with the difficult emotions - sorrow, grief, guilt, fury, and despair - that we experience when we acknowledge our crisis. 

Recently, I have connected with friends over our shared solastalgia: the distress from one's lived experience of environmental change, "the homesickness you have when you are still at home". Solastalgia (身是客) is how I feel when I think about pollution, as well as urban landscape change, in China. If you have also experienced solastalgia in this way, I would love to hear from you; please comment on this post or chat with me privately.

(Three Kids at Play, 2016)

Extinction Rebellion has gone under my radar since COVID hit, but now that vaccines are rolling out across the globe, I'm redirecting my anxiety towards our global environmental crisis. And I hope the media will, too. 

As I begin to blog again, I won't set any grand ambitions of regular updates, only that I will do my best in my free time. 

The Apocalypse

Happy 2019! What better way to start off the New Year than with The Apocalypse!

I really like how this video shows that the "the world is going to end so let's give up and enjoy ourselves while we can" mindset is just another form of climate denialism. Good stuff.

One critique I have for ContraPoints ("the Oscar Wilde of YouTube") is that (at the risk of catastrophizing) an environmental refugee crisis may eventually lead to Total War.

The last time that happened, someone dropped 2 nuclear bombs somewhere.

SIPRI (The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), a think-tank that does research on security, conflict and peace, has a research programme dedicated to Climate Change and Risk. Together with SEI, SIWI and SRC (the Planetary Boundaries folks), they try to encourage institutional reforms in the UN Security Council to better manage security risks of climate change.

Linking climate change to security is a "survivalist" approach in environmental discourse. It may be more effective - more Realistic - than the other approaches identified in Dryzek's book, The politics of the earth: environmental discourses. (The other approaches are environmental governance, sustainability, and activism.)

Environmental discourses defined by Dryzek's taxonomy

A few reasons why I'm restarting this blog:

1. New Year New Me 
2. Academia can feel alienating from broader concerns 
3. To explore a wider range of environmental discourses than my thesis. "Alternative theses", if you will. (A. Hansen, 2018)
4. Engage in discussion and debate with readers 

A few principles I'll blog by:

1. Short and sweet
2. Keep things light
3. Link to other content creators - there's so much information out there already
4. Catalogue resources - tags 
5. Document personal communication - I've spoken with so many people about environmental issues, it's a shame our conversations don't have a wider reach 

Uh... I'll try, ok Regina George? 

From Who's Who to Environmental Justice

We all know Steffen, W. Who's "et al. (2015)"?

Of all the authors of the 2015 paper, 9 are men and 7 are women, a satisfactorily even representation. What about other forms of representation? Except for Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan, all are (at least partly) caucasian. Except for Ramanathan, researchers representing organisations in developing countries (LDCs) like Kenya and South Africa hold joint appointments with organisations in Europe. Even Ramanathan is representing both India, an LDC, and United States, a developed country (DC).

(It's not what it looks like...)

Not to go all intersectional feminist and criticise good research for feminism's sake, but it's worth noting that DC representation exceedingly outnumbers LDC representation in this paper. This gives the impression that PBs is an initiative of the Global North.

Debates on global environmental governance are a privilege of the secure, wealthy and powerful. Professor Juan Martínez‐Alier quotes Hugo Blanco, a former peasant leader in Peru, "The common people have more important things to think about, for instance how to get their daily bread."

However, with great power comes great responsibility. In a survey in Germany on the perceived levels of pressure to act on water management issues and air pollution control, global pressures were rated significantly higher than local pressures. Secure, wealthy and powerful states - DCs - are not only privileged enough to take up global environmental causes, they are apparently burdened with the responsibility to. This is no surprise, since from the perspective of Environmental Justice, many consider DCs to have an ecological debt to LDCs.

(Source: Jason Ammerlaan)

From a policy perspective, LDCs have poorer infrastructure to ensure compliance with environmental regulations than DCs do. There is a tendency for DCs to export environmental degradation to LDCs.

There are different varieties (and theories) of environmentalism. Here, I'm pointing out the difference between the environmentalism of affluence and the environmentalism of survival. Hugo Blanco's speech went on to list valiant environmentalists fighting against local pollution and exploitation problems; "Indigenous peoples oppose deforestation; northern environmentalists may complain against deforestation only if they reduce CO2 in their own countries."

(Source: Capitalism Nature Socialism)

Thus, one valid criticism of the PBs, developed to influence global environmental governance, is that it has less relevance on local scales, especially in LDCs, where resource exploitation and environmental degradation have priority over the less urgent global environmental changes.

Although the importance of local environmental governance cannot be underestimated, global efforts are just as important to furthering Environmental Justice. LDCs are the most vulnerable to security consequences of climate change. Coastal communities in LDCs are most vulnerable to rising sea levels.

(Source: Geirge Steinmetz, National Geographic Creative)

In addition, assuming that "environmental conflicts" fall into the "established patterns of interstate conflict", and convening on national scales to "mobilise environmental awareness and action, may prove counterproductive by undermining globalist political sensibility". Exacerbating the North-South divide in the name of justice is not the most sustainable strategy for decision-makers to build sustainability.

While LDCs more often than not have to prioritise local over global problems, all environmental issues are interconnected - even the 9 PBs interact - because "Earth is a single, complex, integrated system". I believe that the planetary perspective of PBs unite humanity in a way that environmental concepts with a narrower focus cannot achieve. With this mindset, world leaders would look upon the environmental degradation of a remote region not as a faraway problem, but as inseparable from the Earth System.

(Source: Oxfam America)

However, as with everything, moderation is key. It has been shown that in the case of Climate Change, a fragmented, loosely-coupled set of specific regimes has advantages over a comprehensive, integrated, global regime. The importance of local environmental governance is further supported by evidence that "agents make decisions based on individual perceptions". Earth System scientists abstractly debating planetary-scale processes is not the only meaningful conversation we should be having about global environmental change. We should encourage people to share their individual stories about environmental change, too.

Personally, I've noticed that more and more open green spaces in Singapore are being converted to buildings. I've read about the Three Gorges Dam and other environmentally invasive initiatives happening in China during my lifetime. I've vacationed on Southeast Asian tropical islands, and watched our speedboat cut corals. These instances of land-use change concern me; I don't need science to be convinced. The PBs simply put them all into perspective.