“The Transformation of Political Violence in the Anthropocene”1

Markus Lederer and Verena Lasso Mena (TU Darmstadt)

Draft 06.06.2024

Introducing the Anthropocene in the debate on political violence

The ongoing debate on the Anthropocene – a term that has been introduced to label the
current geological epoch in which humans now have more influence on the planet than any
other force – shows that nature and environment have played a much more important role in
influencing human history than we had previously imagined (e.g. Frankopan 2023; Headrick
2021; Harper 2020).2 It is thus no surprise that political science and particularly the subfield
of International Relations (IR) are rediscovering the concept of geopolitics (for a highly
readable overview, see Dodds 2019). However, the underlying determinism of most
geopolitical writings has led to substantial criticisms (e.g. Guzzini 2012). Inter alia, critical
geopolitics pointed out that we have to go beyond territorial dimensions and focus on
geographic terms like “the West” or “the South” and how they create ideological
constructions, and therefore should not be treated as fixed and everlasting entities (e.g. Ó
Tuathail and Dalby 1998). These insights, inspired largely by the constructivist and spatial
turns, emphasize the social dimensions of human understandings of nature and geography.
Contemporary notions of Anthropocene Geopolitics aim to bring these issues together arguing
that nature and human history can no longer be disaggregated but have to be understood as
constituting two sides of the very same coin (e.g. Dalby 2020). How does this help us to
understand new forms and patterns of political violence?
First, we argue that we have to move beyond the narrow definition of political violence, which
is characterized by its political purposes through physical force or intimidation, affecting social
structures and including forms such as state repression, political assassinations, terrorism, and
civil wars among others (Enzmann 2013; Kalyvas 2019). Instead, we must expand our
understanding to include the transgression of planetary boundaries, which directly and
indirectly transforms new and critical forms of political violence. What can already be
witnessed is a reappraisal of “the environment” as themes like “environmental security” or
the “climate-conflict nexus” are now high on the agenda of any relevant textbook in this field
(e.g. Vogler 2022) or gave rise to handbooks themselves (e.g. Swain, Öjendal, and Jägerskog
2021; Trombetta 2023). After the end of the Cold War, authors like Homer-Dixon set up

1
We thank the participants of the ECPR Joint Sessions in Lüneburg as well as the members of Environmental
Policy Group at Wageningen around Aarti Gupta and Simon Bush as well as Frank Biermann of Utrecht
University and many our colleagues at TraCe for extremely valuable input
2
On March 4th 2024 the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) announced that its Subcommission on
Quaternary Stratigraphy rejected the idea that the Anthropocene denotes a new stratigraphic unit
(https://www.iugs.org/_files/ugd/f1fc07_40d1a7ed58de458c9f8f24de5e739663.pdf?index=true). The IUGS and
all public comments on the decisions did, however, make clear that this the term is now in the public realm and
will continue to mark the idea that we live in an age where human activity is impacting environmental conditions
in ways that are unprecedented.
elaborated research programs of how environmental changes like water pollution or land
degradation as well as conflicts over specific resources might lead to societal problems (e.g.
unequal distribution, scarcity, migration) that then cause violent behavior (Homer-Dixon
1999). For the last 25 years – and with a nuanced understanding of how we are transgressing
various planetary boundaries like climate change or biodiversity (Steffen, Richardson, et al.
2015; Steffen et al. 2018) – the potential links between environmental changes, natural
resources and conflict dynamics have been explored in more and more detail going far beyond
simplistic neo-Malthusian arguments (see section one).3
Second, we claim that to a large extent the beforementioned literature still treats
geographical and environmental factors like air pollution, climate change, deforestation or
water as a more or less independent influence in how conflicts emerge, evolve or end.
Violence is brought about by quantitative changes of “natural” causes. However, at least for
some issues, our analyses of political violence should give up the notion of “the environment”
being out there causing security issues. Rather, in the age of the Anthropocene environmental
change has not only a quantitative dimension but it is also transforming of what constitutes
political violence per se – an argument that we further develop building on insights from
political ecology (e.g. Le Billon and Duffy 2018) (see section two). In particular, we discuss how
the transgression of planetary boundaries is first a result of broader economic, political and
societal patterns. In this perspective, political violence is mitigated via the environment but
caused by other factors like capitalism. Second, the politicization of environmental destruction
might be much more important than the destruction itself thus leading to conflicts and
political violence around our relationship with “nature”. Finally, policy choices to counter the
transgression of planetary boundaries can also lead to political violence unfolding and we
witness this in various forms of “maladaptation” (Busby 2021, 189). In short, our contribution
wants to contribute to an understanding of how environmental destruction starts in the first
place, how it is contested and what consequences our climate or environmental policies have.

1. Transgressing planetary boundaries causing political violence

In the early 2000s, the discussion of environmental degradation potentially causing large-scale
violence shifted from a focus on conflicts over resources towards analyzing the possible nexus
between climate change impacts and conflict (Ide et al. 2023, 1078). Although the
repercussions of global warming have only started to materialize, a lively debate has begun
whether and how they could contribute to violence of all kinds. Some early contributors spoke
quite prematurely of climate wars (Welzer 2008) but soon and rightly so were denounced as
alarmists that did not pay much attention to the complexities of political violence (Deudney
and Matthew 1999).
Currently, scholars analyze causal chains where climate change might contribute towards an
increase in conflicts which covers urban riots, communal intragroup conflicts or intrastate

3
The concept of “planetary boundaries” is well known and it pushes us to take other ecological system
boundaries into account and not just to focus on climate change. However, the boundaries Rockström et al.
identify are not naturally given but are themselves artifacts of a specific Western worldview (Sultana 2023),
which do not take justice issues into account (Gupta et al. 2023).
wars and the changing climate might have impacts on the beginning, duration or pattern of
how political violence unfolds (good overviews can be found in e.g. Busby 2021; Hendrix et al.
2023; von Uexkull and Buhaug 2021; Mach et al. 2019; Ide et al. 2023). Most literature focuses
on variation in two independent variables that are conceptualized to set of such causal chains.
First, changes in temperature are linked to conflicts (e.g. Bollfrass and Shaver 2015). Historical
statistical work shows that decreases in temperatures can be correlated with an increase of
large scale political violence due to large scale migration (Zhang et al. 2007) and rising
temperatures lead to more criminal and gang violence (Hendrix et al. 2023, 145; Mares and
Moffett 2016). Second, indirect impacts like changing precipitation patterns, droughts, floods
or slow onset natural catastrophes are analyzed and there has been a vivid debate whether
these have been the starting point that lead either to people migrating, a decline of land
productivity, reduced crop yields or rising food prices.
We now know that more migration and less food security can – under certain circumstances
– lead indirectly to violent conflicts. For example, concerns on immigration pressures on
receiving countries may exacerbate already existing challenges of right-wing violence against
migrants (Asaka 2021) and changing precipitation patterns increase the conflict potential
between pastoralists and farmers in quite complex ways (Raleigh and Kniveton 2012).
However, it has been acknowledged that the connections among climate change, migration,
and conflict are intricate and challenge straightforward and sensationalized interpretations
(Burrows and Kinney 2016; Brzoska and Fröhlich 2016). There is, nevertheless, agreement on
two aspects: (i) doing such analyses, we should not fall into the trap of a depoliticized
environmental determinism that reduces “conflict to an immediate and unmediated function
of physical, biological and physical-geographical signals” (Raleigh, Linke, and O'Loughlin 2014,
76); (ii) if violence evolves due to these causal chains, this (so far) happens only in conjecture
with other – and more dominant – conflict drivers like historical patterns of conflict,
intragroup inequality, governance failures, low income etc. (Hendrix et al. 2023; von Uexkull
and Buhaug 2021, 6; Ide et al. 2023, 1085; IPCC 2023, 13, 618; Busby 2022). Hence, the debate
whether conflicts are influenced by grievances, greed or a mixture of both leading to specific
opportunity structures (Collier and Hoeffler 2005; Collier, Hoeffler, and Rohner 2008) has also
been a major theme in the climate change conflict community. Therein, the Human–
Environmental–Climate Security framework challenges traditional security approaches by
emphasizing the importance of political decisions in conflicts and underscores the need for a
human-centered, empirically grounded security analysis that considers local power structures
and community resilience (Daoudy 2021).
These analyses now become ever more fine grained, differentiating the potential influence of
climate change induced conflict patters across the onset, the duration and the ending of
political violence. More recently, studies have also started to focus on the effects of
environmental change on human security in urban settings (Adger et al. 2021) or to include
social media analyses (for an overview, see von Uexkull and Buhaug 2021, 10). The literature
has also been enriched by analysis that differentiate between slow or fast onset natural
catastrophes exploring the conditions under which circumstances more or less conflict evolves
(Ide et al. 2020). Finally, the microlevel of human interaction and particularly questions of
trust now gain more attention and scholars explore, for example, the potential link between
droughts and decreased interethnic trust (De Juan and Hänze 2020). What most observers
agree is necessary but still missing are specific scenarios that allow to take the above
“compound effects” into account (von Uexkull and Buhaug 2021, 11; Ide et al. 2023, 1086).
All these studies have in common that they take changes induced by climate change or the
transgression of other planetary boundaries and translate them as a deviation in natural
patterns. This starting point is then linked to societal or governmental vulnerabilities that in
turn and under certain scope conditions might lead to conflict. We can assume that these
analyses will unfortunately find more robust evidence for ever more specific causal chains and
interaction effects. It also seems plausible that research will identify specific tipping points
where transgressions of planetary boundaries lead to large scale evolution of violence
unfolding. There is thus a first quantitative transformation of violence ongoing and the
scholarly community seems well prepared to cover it. This research has also and for good
reasons resonated strongly in the political realm from the UN Security council discussing the
issue of the climate-conflict nexus (Conca 2019) to the military perceiving climate change as a
threat multiplier and thinking about adapting military infrastructures (e.g. Shea 2022).
In conclusion this debate has had important political impact, greatly matured since first
simplistic talk of climate wars came up and has managed to set up a highly elaborated research
agenda. Nevertheless, political ecologists like Le Billon and Duffy are right in criticizing the
“reductionism” (Le Billon and Duffy 2018, 243) of these mostly positivist and very often
quantitative approaches. Political ecology thus points to the blind spots of the environment-
conflict nexus regarding gender, class, racialization etc. We build on this arguing that peace
and conflict studies have only started to understand that it is not only environmental factors
out there that are causing climate change but rather that the transgression of planetary
boundaries can by itself be understood as a form of political violence.

2. Transgressing planetary boundaries as political violence

Nature, even if destroyed on a large scale, does not per se lead to conflict or war but natural
change needs social mediation and interaction to become political. On the one hand, this leads
to the identification of political scope conditions that much of the literature discussed in part
one undertakes. On the other hand, constructivists and poststructuralists have long argued
that we should understand environmental conflicts by analyzing evolving discourses on how
nature and security issues interact (e.g. Oels 2015). Again focusing particularly on climate
change, various authors from critical security studies have convincingly shown that we witness
attempts of securitization, hence speech acts that link climate change, conflict and the
potential need for extraordinary means to counter the later. Most securitization studies
conclude that these represent failed or not completely successful attempts to securitize, at
least when the notion of use of extraordinary means is included (e.g. Trombetta 2008;
McDonald 2012; Rothe 2016). In the following, we move beyond these constructivist
interpretations, as they do not take the materiality of how the transgression of planetary
boundaries constitutes new forms of political violence enough into account. This allows us to
perceive the transformation of political violence in the Anthropocene in a way that
acknowledges the complex mechanisms that the more positivistic work discussed above has
identified but combines it with a stronger focus on how specific forms of violence in the end
stay social phenomenon and thus should be understood as such.

2.1. The origins of transgressing planetary boundaries as political violence

The first and most radical perspective takes the notion of the Anthropocene literally and
argues that eventually all drivers of conflict are human-made and have a political dimension
from the very beginning. In this view, it is, for example, not changes in precipitation that lead
to conflict or an increase of social inequality that brings up grievances. Rather the change in
precipitation is a social artefact resulting from inequality, which by itself is the product of a
historical process that set up specific economic and political structures. In short, we have to
understand the influence of our human-nature interactions “all the way down”.
A starting point of such analyses are the huge anthropocentric changes that we as humans
have brought about since the Neolithic revolution and that have triggered various forms of
violence. A climax in this development has been the “age of discoveries” where extreme forms
of genocidal violence have evolved due to colonial and racial practices (Mirzoeff 2018; Baldwin
and Erickson 2020). From a peace and conflict perspective there are thus good reasons to date
the beginning of the Anthropocene with the beginning of colonialization (Davis and Todd
2017). Alternatively, the transgression of planetary boundaries due to the “great acceleration”
(Steffen, Broadgate, et al. 2015) kicking of global growth in the 1950s can be perceived as the
starting date. In both cases, environmental degradation and climate change can be
understood as a form of structural violence resulting from specific Western lifestyles and
capitalist structures. Some scholars, therefore, prefer the term “Capitalocene” (e.g. Moore
2017). Leaving these semantic debates behind, there is no doubt that water pollution,
biodiversity loss or climate change already have effects in a spatial as well as a temporal
dimensions leading to large-scale ecocide that affects all species (Kolbert 2015 speaks of an
era of the "sixth extinction" that we have started and that might have consequences similar
to the extinction of the Dinosaurs). In this perspective, wealthy industrialized countries and
most likely the readers as well as the authors of this article decrease the life chances not only
of “nature” but also of disadvantaged parts of all societies and of future generations. This is
closely linked to research on environmental racism which has analyzed the intersection of
political violence and ecological degradation, manifesting through the disproportionate
exposure of marginalized communities to environmental hazards (Grossman 1993). For the
last thirty years the literature on environmental racism has first focused on the toxic burden
placed on specific groups due to environmental pollution (Bullard 1994; Pulido 2017), second
the exclusion of minorities from decision-making processes related to harmful environmental
projects (Agyeman 2005; Taylor 2014), and third, the racialized discrimination in the
implementation of climate protection measures (Abimbola et al. 2021).
Specific examples that are being referenced in the literature are territories and urban spaces
that might become inhabitable due to rising temperatures (for a popular reading of "the
uninhabitable Earth" see Wallace-Wells 2019, 53f; one of the most often cited academic
contribution on heat deaths is Sherwood and Huber 2010; Sherwood and Ramsay 2023
provide an even more sinister update). On a large scale this violates the right to life of millions
of people, in particular in South East Asia, but it will also become an issue in urban areas where
old people die prematurely due to heat waves. Much discussed are also low-lying islands
where sea-level rise or insalination might lead to whole territories or countries becoming
uninhabitable (Thomas et al. 2020 provide an overview of how climate change affects low-
lying islands in general and ; Storlazzi et al. focus in particular on the effects of sea-level rise;
Vaha 2015 argues that even if territorially a state has vanished, it still has a right to exist) and
where migration is potentially the only option for many (McLeman 2018). However, the
argument of inevitable uninhabitability has to be questioned in light of self-defined adaptation
narratives from at-risk populations that uphold their right to self-determination and
sovereignty over their natural resources (Farbotko et al. 2023). Furthermore, biodiversity and
the resulting ecocides can be understood as a form of structural violence unfolding in many
parts of the world (Kalkandelen and O’Byrne 2017) and this allows us to focus also on violence
against non-human entities (regarding anmial ecocide, see Wiseman and Kesgin 2024).
While acknowledging global inequalities, one should, however, be cautious not to oversimplify
the complex global dynamics of structural violence by attributing it solely to the global North,
because elites and the rising middle class in many emerging economies are contributing
significantly to environmental degradation and particularly to climate change (Fuhr 2021).
Taking into account national emissions during the last two decades, China’s state-led
capitalism has become the world's largest emitter of CO2, with emissions surpassing those of
the United States, with the European Union being on the 3rd and India on the 4th place.
Considering per capita emissions, the United States still maintains a substantial lead, but China
has been surpassing the historical second position of the European Union in this decade (Earth
System Science Data 2023). Hence, also the poor, the young, and future generations in the
capitalist core will become victims of anthropogenic violence.
All these forms of violence have structural features and resemble the “silent violence” of
pollutants that Nixon so amply described (Nixon 2011). But it can be debated whether they
are a form of political violence as we can assume that they are rarely intentionally set in
motion, which often is perceived to be a precondition for violence to be political (Daase et al.
2022). There is, however, no doubt that the effects have severe political consequences and
that thus agents have “hidden responsibilities” (Le Billon and Duffy 2018, 248). We also
witness a politicization of these trends resulting in calls for environmental, climate or energy
justice. A particularly impressive example of how this is translated into analytic categories is
the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas 2024), the most extensive global comparative and
statistical analyses on environmental conflicts and its associated actors mobilizing for
environmental justice (Temper, Del Bene, and Martinez-Alier 2015; Temper et al. 2018).
Building on the EJAtlas, several studies on regional and global conflict trends have emerged,
highlighting the necessity for a comprehensive approach in environmental conflict research
to capture the multidimensional forms of violence in this field (Navas, Mingorría, and Aguilar-
González 2018; Del Bene, Scheidel, and Temper 2018; Roy and Martinez-Alier 2020; Tran
2023; Dell'Angelo et al. 2021). The EJAtlas has, on one hand, facilitated extensive comparative
studies across multiple sites, offering larger samples in terms of geography, sectors, and
themes. On the other hand, it has elevated the scope of political ecology research to a global
level, revealing patterns essential for a more systematic understanding of the characteristics
of violence in environmental conflicts worldwide (Scheidel et al. 2020a). And finally, the
EJAtlas shows that structural violence can easily become political violence even in a narrow
sense.
 2.2. Reactions against the transgression of planetary boundaries as political
violence
Our second perspective focuses on more intentional forms of political violence that are
triggered by living in the Anthropocene taking up insights from the literature on social
movements and radicalization. We can witness a rising mobilization of various civil society
groups against the transgression of planetary boundaries, with environmental activism
evolving into a diverse movement (Asara 2022). This ranges from less confrontational
strategies such as public advocacy and litigation to more direct and radical actions (Garcia-
Gibson 2023; Doherty 2002). Sovacool and Dunlap (Sovacool and Dunlap 2022) have compiled
an extensive list that categorizes 20 tactics of environmental and climate movements,
including unauthorized protests, blockades, and “climatage” (a blend of climate action and
sabotage). While climate activism specifically concentrates on addressing the adverse
consequences resulting from destructive impacts of anthropogenic global warming and the
urgency for effective mitigation within a limited timeframe (Garcia-Gibson 2023),
“environmental defenders” describe a highly diverse array of people worldwide engaged in
the longstanding practice of protecting themselves, their communities, land, and ecosystems
from dispossession, pollution, and unsustainable resource use, emanating frequently from
extractive industries, agro-businesses, large-scale infrastructure and energy projects, often
financially and politically benefiting corporate interests and powers in industrial countries
(Verweijen, Lambrick, Le Billon, Milanez, and Manneh 2021).
With reference to the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and the increasing
number of violent attacks targeting environmental activists globally, discussions have
emerged over adopting more radical activism methods (most prominently Malm 2021).
Critics, however, question their long-term effectiveness in promoting environmental
protection (Anfinson 2022; Rucht 2023, 16). Discussions often center on the use of sabotage
and civil disobedience, raising concerns about potential radicalization and the perception of
these acts as a threat of eco-terrorism (Mudde and Hirsch-Hoefler 2014). Loadenthal’s
quantitate analysis of over 27,000 incidents labeled as 'eco-terrorism' globally suggests that
the term is often misapplied to political militancy, noting that such actions, while sometimes
unlawful, do differ significantly from terrorism, particularly in the absence of the explicit
intention of deadly attacks on civilians (Loadenthal 2017, 2014). Overall, the distinction
between vandalism and violence directed at human life, as well as potential physical threats
to human lives resulting from radical actions, highlights the complexity of labeling actions as
eco-terrorism. Nonetheless, conceptualizing that radicalization directly leads to terrorism
would be a mistake, especially given the potential it has to justify disproportionate
countermeasures (Abay Gaspar et al. 2021). Moreover, it does not appear to be a current
threat when focusing on the extent of political violence being displayed, as environmental
activists and defenders are being increasingly categorized and targeted as terrorists across the
global landscape (Spadaro 2020). Although traditionally linked to countries with weak
protection of civil liberties, an expanding body of case studies is providing evidence on
repressive measures against environmental activists in countries classified as democracies
(Taylor 2021; Simpson and Le Billon 2021). This trend raises concerns about a potential new
security risk, with repression driving individuals toward extremist ideologies and often
escalating violence in response to the infringement on civil rights (Spadaro 2020; Della Porta
2014).
Research on environmental movements, largely shaped by a Western perspective, has often
overlooked diverse livelihoods and social justice issues in favoring a specific type of
environmentalism (Asara 2022). Beyond climate-centric concerns, indigenous and local
groups have long defended their communities, lands, and ecosystems from multidimensional
threats and violence (Gordon 2024; Verweijen, Lambrick, Le Billon, Milanez, Manneh, et al.
2021). In opposing the expansion of environmentally harmful industries, environmental
defenders are facing a rising threat of violence and legal repercussions globally,
disproportionately affecting the Global South and marginalized communities (Scheidel et al.
2020a; Scheidel et al. 2023). This rising threat is evidenced by the growing number of land and
environmental defenders being killed, many cases of which remain unreported, and
perpetrators persist in impunity. Meanwhile, the criminalization of environmental defense
activities is affecting an increasing number of activists and defenders globally (Le Billon and
Lujala 2020). Such dynamics, often rooted in the extractivist and settler colonialism that
causes ongoing pollution and territorial disputes, are inherently decolonizing efforts against
colonial violence (Menton, Navas, and Le Billon 2021). Notably, the mining sector records the
highest percentage of violent attacks and killings of environmental defenders, with land
conflicts being the deadliest (Le Billon and Lujala 2020).
The debate on radicalization ties into the broader discussion on the Anthropocene,
highlighting how extractivism fuels endless economic growth. This relentless resource
extraction often leads to conflicts over access, control, and utilization of natural resources
(Glaab and Stuvøy 2021). Extractive activities of natural resources frequently involves the
widespread use of deterritorialization and coercive violence in local communities, especially
when resistance intensifies or conflicts emerge during the consent process. This coercion
extends beyond direct physical threats, encompassing tactics like deception, manipulation,
and corruption (Le Billon and Middeldorp 2021; Menton, Navas, and Le Billon 2021).
Repression of environmental activism often garners public attention through instances of
police brutality during peaceful protests, exposed threats, or targeted killings. Subtler forms
of repression in both physical and virtual spaces, including judicialization, defamation,
intimidation, and criminalization, are commonly employed as strategic tactics to deflect direct
critique, rather than relying on overt repressive methods (Scheidel et al. 2020a). These
methods work to solidify the dominance of extractive regimes, influencing local decision-
making (Le Billon and Middeldorp 2021; Menton, Navas, and Le Billon 2021).
In summary, targeted violence and repression against climate activists and environmental
defenders exemplify narrowly defined political violence, characterized by using physical force
to achieve political aims. Repressive measures aim to intimidate, silence, or eliminate
challenges to specific political or economic interests inevitably linked to environmental
degradation (Le Billon and Lujala 2020), potentially leading to a transformation where
environmental activists and defenders apply violence as a means of defending environmental
goals and resisting oppression (Della Porta 2014; Spadaro 2020). A broader conception of
political violence emerges as the consequences of industrial activities intertwine with
intergenerational and environmental health problems, and threats to nature, animals, and
human livelihoods, driven by the overarching goal of advancing political interests for
economic growth (Glaab and Stuvøy 2021; Vayrynen 2012; Menton, Navas, and Le Billon
2021).

2.3. Mitigating the effects of transgressing planetary boundaries as political

violence
Our final stream of literature argues that mitigating environmental destruction or climate
change response measures do not come for free but often cause human rights issues (Schade
and Obergassel 2014; Schapper and Lederer 2014) or even lead to violence as an unintended
consequence (von Uexkull and Buhaug 2021, 8 use the term "climate change response
impacts"; Swatuk et al. 2021 as well as; Busby 2021, 189 speak of "maladaptation"; Froese
and Schilling 2019 focus on conflicts regarding land-use). Again, the issue can be raised that
this is not political violence in a narrow sense but we would argue that similarly to structural
forms of violence, these unintended actions have severe political consequences and they lead
to political discussions.
Various aspects can go wrong when dealing with the effects of climate change or
environmental problems: First, environmental wellbeing might come at the expense of human
security. For example, it can be argued that current forms of “green” land grabbing continue
the tradition of reserving large spaces of territory in natural parks depriving the local
population of its livelihoods (Benjaminsen and Bryceson 2012). These aspects have been
further discussed regarding e.g. the set-up of wind parks in Brazil (Brannstrom et al. 2017) or
in Kenya (Schilling, Locham, and Scheffran 2018) as well as regarding the establishment of
forest protection sites in Zambia (Caron and Fenner 2017). Similarly, the scarcity of agricultural
land might lead to conflicts over whether the land is used for growing grain, food crops,
biofuels or for plants that might generate negative emissions. Second, the extraction of
specific resources necessary for green technologies – particularly in the field of renewable
energy and energy storage – might fuel violence by creating conflicts over land use, access or
distribution thus mirroring the rise of violence surrounding mining in general (Andrews et al.
2017; Berman et al. 2017). Specific examples of this new “resource frontier” (Selby in Hendrix
et al. 2023, 147) that have been discussed are cobalt in the DRC (Sovacool 2019) or lithium in
Northern Portugal (Canelas and Carvalho 2023). Third, extreme forms of planetary
management like climate engineering might have severe consequences which could also lead
to increasing conflicts but for now, we simply do not know whether specific governments
would unilaterally employ such techniques and if they do if this would lead to an increase of
conflicts (Maas and Scheffran 2012; Lederer and Kreuter 2018). In this context, new forms of
geopolitics around negative emissions or renewable energies are evolving but the literature is
skeptical that this will lead to large scale conflict. This does not exclude that violence could
erupt around specific sites and within local communities around distributional conflicts
(Kreuter and Lederer 2021; Lederer 2022). A final aspect is whether governments or societies
that are depending on fossil fuel rents might in the future react violently when – due to less
demand – they see their revenue drop substantially (Gilmore and Buhaug 2021, 8). Russia’s
war on Ukraine can clearly be understood as a petrostate aggression following Colgan’s
classification of how oil leads to war (Colgan 2013) but it is much less clear whether this is a
last stand of a dying business model and whether it will diffuse.
There could, however, also be good news when looking at climate mitigation impacts. We
have to remember that climate change does not act in isolation when it comes to conflict
patterns but should rather be understood as a threat multiplier (see section one). When
climate mitigation has positive effects on economic or political conflict drivers like inequality,
slow growth, poverty or large scale discrimination etc. then this might have positive impact
on conflict dynamics (Gilmore and Buhaug 2021). In short, mitigation and adaptation policies
might be a particular promising form of reducing political violence. However, whether
instruments like carbon taxes or trading systems have such a positive outcome and do not
increase existing cleavages etc. is an open empirical question that depends on how these
interventions are set up politically. Income from REDD+ schemes, for example, could be used
for poverty reduction in some of the most marginalized areas of tropical forest countries or
they could increase corruption and patronage (Gilmore and Buhaug 2021, 4). These potentially
conflict preventive aspects have been discussed under the heading of “environmental peace-
building” for the last twenty years and the argument has been that the need to share the
extraction and use of resources can lead to an increase in cooperation even in highly fragile
situations (Conca and Dabelko 2002; Dresse et al. 2018). Whether the logic of environmental
peacebuilding will, however, provide a correction or even counterforce to the other
tendencies of how political violence is transforming is an empirically open question.

Outlook
Looking ahead, the era of the Anthropocene presents both challenges and opportunities for
reshaping our understanding of political violence and its consequences. As discussed in the
preceding sections, the Anthropocene fundamentally alters the landscape within which
political violence operates and as the research program outlined in section one has shown,
human-made changes in “our environment” are becoming an important but not yet
dominating element in how political violence erupts and evolves. Furthermore, our
transformation of the planet itself is a form of political violence with potentially
unprecedented consequences for inter- and intragenerational justice. The politicization of our
highly destructive relationship to “the environment” has also led to more violence
quantitatively but also qualitatively with more and more repression focusing on
environmental defenders. Finally, even if well intended, many of our efforts to mitigate the
transgression of planetary boundaries are leading to instances of mostly unintended violence
that nevertheless have political consequences. In conclusion, we would like to stress that
taking the concept of the Anthropocene serious, this opens up a “realm of contingency”
(Hällmark 2022, 49f) which moves us beyond the determinism of classical geopolitics and
allows us to focus on agency, freedom and accountability (ibid.).
From a policy perspective, the increasing politicization of environmental issues, coupled with
the growing repression faced by environmental defenders, underscores the urgent need for
greater support for environmental justice advocates (Ryder et al. 2021; Scheidel et al. 2020b).
As the concept of political violence must be expanded to encompass not only overt acts of
aggression but also the systemic and structural violence perpetuated by our unsustainable
relationship with the environment, a reevaluation of traditional approaches to conflict
resolution and peacebuilding is necessary placing greater emphasis on addressing the root
causes of environmental degradation and social injustice (Tassan 2022). Efforts to mitigate the
transgression of planetary boundaries must be approached with caution, recognizing the
potential for unintended consequences and instances of violence (Suckling et al. 2021). While
the pursuit of environmental sustainability is paramount, it must be accompanied by a
commitment to upholding human rights and addressing the underlying drivers of conflict and
inequality (Toussaint and Martínez Blanco 2020). In addition to further empirical approaches
on environmental peacebuilding, the spectrum of research on political violence mitigation
might extend to encompass implementing economic diversification in resource-dependent
regions, fostering circular economies, and embracing degrowth approaches for the
betterment of societal and planetary well-being (Belmonte-Ureña et al. 2021; Le Billon 2021).
Furthermore, concepts advocating for legal rights of nature, while promoting ecological
sustainability and social justice, have gained attention (Shiva 2019). The key lies in retelling
the future story of the Anthropocene with an understanding of the contingencies in historical
causal interactions, rather than viewing it as a geologically deterministic effect (Brajdić
Vuković and Domazet 2022). Political violence in the Anthropocene does not come from
nowhere and it is still up to us humans to deal with it in all its forms.
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