Ecology, Climate, and Conflict

Environmental changes threaten peace and security, particularly when political systems are unable to manage and mitigate these disruptions. At the same time, ecosystems and global biodiversity are destroyed worldwide due to wars, pollution, and unsustainable economic development. These challenges often lead to migration movements, distributional conflicts, or the destabilization of supply chains. In addition, geopolitical upheavals within the international system and the crisis of multilateralism complicate the path to necessary cooperative solutions. 

In the age of the “Anthropocene,” in which human agency has drastically influenced the Earth System itself, the management of planetary tipping points – such as the endangered Amazon rainforest or the polar ice sheets – presents a new type of challenges for international politics: on the one hand, the principle of national sovereignty is further under pressure; on the other hand, global technological developments such as geoengineering create new regulatory demands.

In this context, the research group investigates under what conditions environmental changes in the context of the climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises foster conflicts – and under what conditions they can be avoided or even serve as a starting point for deeper cooperation. The research focuses on two central areas: firstly, local environmental conditions in armed conflicts and “environmental peacebuilding,” and secondly, the geopolitics of the “Anthropocene,” particularly in planetary “commons” such as the polar regions, the world’s oceans, the atmosphere, and Earth’s orbit. The research group draws on approaches from critical geopolitics, political ecology, and Earth System Governance. Of particular importance is a “planetary perspective”, which broadens the analytical view to the socio-ecological reciprocity of conflict and cooperation dynamics as well as the neglected role of non-human entities. 

Image: Danny Burke, Unsplash