Rahul Gandhi

Chapter 2: Literature Review

To analyse the impact of war on the environment in Gaza towards rethinking war and the environment more expansively, it is important to contextualise this analysis. This could be done within the literatures of thinking international relations, security studies, sociology, and environmental science. In this way, it is possible to benefit from a range of perspectives and methods of other theories or studies. To this end, this review first explores the issues with the way IR is thought. It furthermore explores how conflict and security are thought. With this broad establishment of the contours of IR and security, and a critique of them, it is explored how the impact of war is understood. It is furthermore explored how the impact of war on the environment is being studied. Contextualising war and the environment are then done by reviewing the literature around the Anthropocene and some of the ways in which they reproduce the issues with thinking IR or challenging them. This discussion is further contextualised in terms of the war on Gaza. This review ultimately scaffolds the issues surrounding understanding the impact of war on the environment in Gaza by starting at the most general level of theory. It then highlights specific matters to consider in order to inform a conceptual framework that rethinks IR, security, and the environment.

Thinking International Relations

To understand how IR is thought, it is worth considering how and from which historical processes the discipline came to be, and how these shape the way it is thought today. The discipline was arguably founded with the development of theories to manage imperialism or contend with war after World War I (Satgar 2022; Thakur and Vale 2020, 2). It has been argued that this developed to describe the European experience of imperialism and war (Satgar 2022; Thakur and Vale 2020, 2). After World War II, this included the American experience, thereby becoming a Euro-American social science focused on the establishment of peace (Satgar 2022; Thakur and Vale 2020, 2). Scholars have contended that this has resulted in a coloniality of IR which entails the reproduction of patterns of domination and marginalisation in a colonial matrix of power (Tucker 2018, 215). 

If this is where IR began, it is important to interrogate how IR was used so that insights can be gained into the discipline’s coloniality and how its thinking is constrained today. Krishna (2001) usefully describes some of the elements of the education and thinking of IR which form part of this coloniality and which have historical roots. Importantly, he contends that one such element is the valorisation of abstraction and theory-building, such that historical description of violent colonial encounters such as slavery and genocide may be effaced (Krishna 2001, 401). Sabaratnam (2020) similarly identifies these strategies as an epistemic mechanism of ignorance. Ignorance separates how Whiteness shaped IR and its organisation of society today (Sabaratnam 2020, 12). Said, in his discussion of the oriental mode of understanding knowledge, discusses how the philosophies of classical thinkers such as Locke and Hume are not seen as connected to their racial theories, but abstracted (Said 2003, 13). In fact, recognising their views of race recognises their philosophies more broadly as justifications of colonialism and slavery (Said 2003, 13). Acharya (2022) discusses how racism has been implicated in the founding of the liberal international order through the ideas of thinkers such as Locke or Mill. Similar to Said or Krishna, he recognises that these should not be abstracted from their thoughts or investments in slavery and colonialism (Acharya 2022).

Another element of thinking IR, Krishna (2001, 402) argues, advances ideals to which the international system may aspire, but which defer engagement with coloniality, establishing a state of deferred redemption. Sabaratnam (2020, 13-14) similarly identifies the epistemic mechanism of innocence which asserts racism as accidental, unintentional, or well-intentioned, or located in a historical past so as to minimise responsibility.

These approaches are notable because in critiquing abstraction, contrapuntally analysing different histories offers nuanced insights into a more accurate history of international affairs. This represents an effective method of conducting a study to describe competing aspects of the same story such as a nuanced description of the impacts of war on the environment. For Krishna, there are several histories which inform this analysis. One is a broader history of understanding war and statehood, such that the abstraction of sovereignty elides certain histories (Krishna 2001). These include those of wars with non-state actors such as tribes in colonies, and even more, the histories of non-white people or the importance of race (Krishna 2001). Grove (2019, 6) further distinguishes how European wars were wars of exhaustion while settler colonial wars annihilated people and environments. This suggests that more violence, indeed annihilation, could be revealed by challenging thinking in IR. 

Within these critiques, there are several noteworthy aspects. These include Eurocentrism, authors’ loci of enunciation, and duality in Western philosophy. Grosfoguel (2007) critiques the Eurocentric foundations in many theories. Sabaratnam identifies this as a mechanism of immanence by which modernity is seen as endogenous to the West, with universal appeal for the rest of the world (Sabaratnam 2020, 13). Acharya and Buzan (2007, 288) discuss how Western history and perceptions which inform IR are presumed to be universally valid for understanding the world. This view is also reflected in theories critical of Europe and its power by radical authors such as Gramsci and Foucault (Grosfoguel 2007, 212). Similarly, Marxism is located in a history of Europe where difference was not based on race, but on class, informing the structural point of departure (Mignolo 2007b, 164). Moreover, Marx assumed a universal validity and abstract objectivity to his thought by suggesting that peasants could not represent themselves but needed to be represented (Ziai 2018, 119).

There is an epistemic as well as social location at play here – the social positioning of the author and their position within Eurocentric knowledge (Grosfoguel 2007, 213-214). This acknowledges that everyone speaks from a specific position which is not objective or innocent of coloniality, be it on lines of class, race, or gender (Grosfoguel 2007, 213). This position is vital to contend with. Like Krishna or Acharya, Grosfoguel (2007, 215) asserts that knowledge claiming to be universal through abstraction helps occlude the power of the knowledge-producer and the violence it embodies. In its modern sense, while this may not be as overt as owning slaves, it may persist when scholars from the non-West are only allowed to describe their own experience while scholars from the West can describe all experiences (Mignolo 2009, 160). However, the very lack of experience of the colonial wound may limit the expansive capabilities of those thinking within coloniality (Mignolo 2009, 170). In addition, this may be embodied by actors and institutions creating, pronouncing, and transforming universal ideals related to a standard of modernity (Mignolo 2018, 98). This reflects the above decolonial discussion of universal knowledge. Seen as built from Castro-Gomez’s point zero – a position of knowledge contended to have no position except a radical objectivity and universal validity – it is beyond reproach (Grosfoguel 2007, 214; Mignolo 2007b, 162; Quijano 2007).

Mignolo (2007a) further articulates the matter of location as doubly constituted by a geo-political and body-political vantage point. The geo-political location is the historically located locus of enunciation often defined as an objective point of reason by powers in imperial centres to deny the reason of those in the peripheries and thereby engage them in waiting for “imperial emancipations” (Mignolo 2007a, 462-463). This ability to produce valid knowledge has long been denied to subaltern voices and geo-politics of knowledge is thus an important perspective to break the imperial illusion (Mignolo 2007a, 460-462). Body-politics of knowledge enhances this. Similarly ascribing objectivity to often white, male subjects in colonial epistemology, coloniality is disrupted by body-politics which reinscribes the racialised, gendered, and sexualised body of the knower and exposes this false neutrality (Mignolo 2007a, 484, 507). Together, the geo- and body-political perspectives problematise the elision of the locus of enunciation of knowledge producers which is premised on a claim to objectivity to support universality. They reveal who the knower is and where they are located, in ways which vitally implicates their knowledge.

Contrary to colonial epistemologies, position does matter when this is viewed in light of coloniality and its duality. This duality establishes the objective position of knowledge-producers. The Eurocentric preoccupation and its encounters with the rest of the world are not in fact premised on timeless qualities of sovereignty, international law, or property. Instead, they are based on the differentiation between the self and the other in order to valorise these “timeless’ qualities (Krishna 2001, 408). Krishna provides a few examples of this dualistic view. For instance, the work of Grotius may be contrapuntally seen to empower the Dutch in their trade relations, and privilege the Dutch in disputes against other European powers (Krishna 2001, 409). Moreover, this established a Europe pitted against Orientalist others, propertyless Native Americans, or enslaved Africans (Krishna 2001, 409). The same way in which abstraction of the law was used, so too was the valorisation of a standard of communication, liberal principles of economic and administrative organisation, and a simplification of local experiences (Krishna 2001). Under universalised conceptions of what was useful in Spanish America and British India, for instance, the “other” was reduced to the “same” (Krishna 2001).

In terms of this contrapuntal narrative, the issue with thinking IR may thus be rooted in the key dualistic differentiation between the self and the other. Accompanied by power, this has privileged certain groups in the production of knowledge while occluding the imperial conditions that have supported this. IR privileges certain groups with power and pits them against dualistic “others”. For instance, the universalism discussed above is based on the claimed objectivity of the mind, dualistically separated from both the body and nature (Grosfoguel 2007, 214). The objects of this universal knowledge are often outside of the Global North while the theory is often located within it (Grosfoguel 2007, 211). And, while these subjects possess reason, objects without reason, or those outside Europe, are necessarily a part of nature itself (Quijano 2007, 173). Harrington (2016, 481) asserts that this has led to a failure to imagine the complexity, interactivity, and variety of the world.

These discussions of abstract and Eurocentrically-derived universalism, objective positionality, and duality are also discussions of race or whiteness. However, an author’s skin colour or place of origin does not necessarily make their contribution racist or in the vein of colonial IR. This is the opposite extreme of completely abstracting an author’s work from their identity or locus of enunciation. Hence, Sabaratnam (2020, 5) suggests that it may be useful to contextualise race not in the identity of the thinker but in a set of epistemological tropes and assumptions rooted in structural power which sets up hierarchies of the human. In addition to the above critiques, rethinking IR could thus contend with the disciplinary structures which privilege Europe through these tropes (Sabaratnam 2020, 8-9).

Sabaratnam (2020, 10) contends that understanding this requires contention not only with Eurocentrism or race as a consideration of who is racially white or geographically in Europe or the West. This must contend with Whiteness as a subject-positioned entitlement to property, privileged political recognition, inherited belonging, and an affinity with the West as “progressive, endogenously developed, meritocratic, individualist, and liberal” (Sabaratnam 2020, 10). The features of this conception are not a skin colour or location, but critical recognitions of structural power which would even disadvantage those “belonging” to the West – Indigenous peoples in settler colonies (Sabaratnam 2020, 10). This resonates with the core of Grosfoguel’s consideration of not simply a white body producing knowledge about the other, but a dualistically separate one for this dualism is constructed by the power Sabaratnam identifies.

These treatments can show how thinking IR has been shaped by thinkers privileged by subject-positioned Whiteness, for specific objectives, in a dualistic logic that valorises abstraction to elide difference. It can also show how this persists today. Equipped with this perspective, and perspectives of how knowledge in IR came to be and the mechanisms of how IR is thought, it is worth considering insights into the contours of dominant IR theories today. Neorealism, Sabaratnam (2020, 27) argues, as articulated in Waltz’s seminal work, Theory of International Politics, may overlook what constitutes power and how Great Powers were constituted by the racial hierarchies of modern imperialism. Neoliberalism, as discussed in Koehane’s After Hegemony, may similarly not recognise that Western unity was advanced to mitigate effects of loss of resources in former colonies and manage decolonisation (Sabaratnam 2020, 27). This could perhaps maintain dependence on the former metropole, not serving only abstractly functional purposes (Sabaratnam 2020, 27). From Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics, insights into constructivism may also reveal that there is an occlusion of the violence in the encounter between the West as self and the other in abstracting socialisation from its imperial history (Sabaratnam 2020, 27).

Jahn (2018) further considers, for instance, how a distinction between the self and other in liberalism and liberal internationalism is a key feature that has managed liberalism’s internal contradictions. Jahn (2018, 49) contends that one of these contradictions was that from its inception, liberalism was premised on principles such as private property, individual freedom, and government by consent which could not be realised in the societies of thinkers like Locke. To manage this, the international realm was turned to, where it was contended that unproductive land could be seized and granted to individuals in the colonial metropole (Jahn 2018, 50). Hence the distinction between self and other, or domestic and international, where the domestic practice of liberalism required illiberal practices abroad, is a key feature of liberal internationalism (Jahn 2018). 

This perspective offers a reading into how liberalism existed alongside colonialism and may even erode as liberal principles of free trade blur this distinction (Jahn 2018). From this, it is possible to see how theories lauded as progressive in the immanent fashion of thinking IR, were premised on a racialised dualism, that upon inspection, reveals the thinking of coloniality. Such thinking includes how land may be viewed as productive for certain actors and how this may drive its exploitation, often at the expense of the environment. Coloniality thus becomes a way of understanding environmental degradation. In addition, as Quijano (2007, 173) discusses, both knowledge and property are intersubjective relations whereby they exist only in relation to something else. Hence, a dualism is needed to maintain property rights in liberalism and the value of knowledge in coloniality in general. This is the same duality which sees nature as separate from the reasonable subject (Quijano 2007, 173). Hence, the views of nature as separate from humanity, the view of property as productive, and the knowledge deemed to be valid informing these all derive from coloniality.

Anghie (2004) analyses this colonial persistence in the links between decolonisation after World War I and the League of Nations Mandate System used to manage newly independent states. This traces the nascence of the international system as the expansion of the colonial European system of international law to encompass the globe (Anghie 2004, 115). It furthermore considers how decolonisation began occurring at the same time as the establishment of international institutions like the League of Nations which were statist (Anghie 2004, 115). It is possible that this made it a foregone conclusion that the process of decolonisation and international integration meant former colonies would need to embrace the system of state sovereignty as they came under the tutelage of existing states (Anghie 2004). For Anghie (2004, 117), this may reflect a “contrast” to the conquest and exploitation of 19th-century positivist international law, as this integration included tutelage and protection. Nevertheless, this may instead reveal the endurance of a coloniality even in decolonisation and international institutions (Anghie 2004, 117). Similar to Sabaratnam’s critical reading of Koehane, Anghie (2004) sees the Mandate System as a flawed understanding of the real inequality in race and economics between European states and Third World states. It is furthermore an attempt to manage the coloniality of this inequality (Anghie 2004). 

Instead of rejecting the coloniality of formalism, the pragmatism of the Mandate System gave institutions a new way of perpetuating colonial relations (Anghie 2004). One way of envisioning this is by tracing how the Mandate System sought to valorise labour and productivity and extinguish native customs by extolling the humanitarianism of universal values such as liberty (Anghie 2004, 166-168). Furthermore, the judgement of “backwardness” became less cultural and more economic, but inequality persists (Anghie 2004, 172). At the same time, there was a material interest in the management of mandate territories, such as in the redefinition of mandates in the Middle East or the mandate of Nauru for the value of their oil and phosphate deposits (Anghie 2004, 144). Thakur and Vale (2020) arrive at similar findings analysing the trusteeship system proposed by Lionel Curtis, an imperial servant in South Africa. They argue that this paternalistically tried to create “good order” in the liberalist fashion by passing civilisational judgements on groups such as the Herero and Namaqua people, and envisioning universal applicability (Thakur and Vale 2020, 25-26, 157).

Hence, the Mandate System and international institutions perhaps reflect a lot of coloniality of thinking IR. It does so by valorising abstract universal values, having a prescriptive force in the interests of exploitation, and maintaining unequal relations. It also ignores the existence of this inequality in the first instance. Elsewhere in the same text, Anghie (2004) contrapuntally explores how the War on Terror operates by the same logics as the US occupation of the Philippines or the violent settler-colonial conquests of the Americas. It did so by seeking legal validity in international law and utilising the unequal benefits granted by international institutions such as the UN, pursuing a project of remaking the “other” in the image of the “civilised self” (Anghie 2004). Jahn (2007) identifies these dynamics more firmly with liberalism. Here, it is contended that the modernisation and democracy promotion strategies from the Cold War era until the present, espouse liberal assumptions which when illiberally perpetuated on unwilling recipients, generate resistance (Jahn 2007). In addition to reflecting another key contradiction in liberalism, Jahn (2007, 225) contends that this reflects the same dynamic as historical imperialism. Grove (2019, 10) supports this assertion by highlighting the ways in which universalist prescriptions, from their imperial origins, justify intervention. As Stoler (2016, 52) puts it, the “interior frontiers of liberal democracy and empire were woven from the same well-armed and exclusionary cloth.”

Thakur and Vale (2020) explore a re-orientation of South Africa as the location from which thinking and making IR was vitally shaped. Their work represents a reading of South Africa’s experience of British imperialism which serves as a critique of IR and displays how a perhaps contrapuntal viewpoint, not dissimilar to Krishna’s, can reveal importance moments in the nascence and development of theories like IR. It may even have insight into issues like environmental degradation and the climate crisis. For them, the Boer War in which the British used strategies of internment in concentration camps and scorched earth policies, represented a moment which disillusioned the liberals who had extolled the benefits of empire (Thakur and Vale 2020, 4-6, 107; Tucker and McNeill 2025, 322). This led to anxieties and innovations for what the end of empire could mean (Thakur and Vale 2020, 4-6). In addition to possible insights into environmental concerns from demonstrating the reading of history contrapuntally, the authors see South Africa as uniquely encapsulating the nexus of multiple racial questions. Race was either treated as a category denoting how imperialism would eliminate people (such as in Tasmania) or Darwinianly “uplift” them (Thakur and Vale 2020, 7-8). South Africa was home to both – groups who had been eliminated and groups to whom religion and civilisation were brought (Thakur and Vale 2020, 7-8). But South Africa also featured unequal relations between groups of white people (the English and Afrikaners) and non-white people (Black people and South Asians) (Thakur and Vale 2020, 7-8). Statehood in South Africa thus had to contend with race, the state, empire, and the international system, and IR developed a disciplinary vocabulary to manage this (Thakur and Vale 2020, 13, 155). In terms of what Sabaratnam calls Whiteness, the subject-positions of Afrikaners and Indians are complicated and demand an analysis of history, class, and power. Hence, in analysing this history, it can be seen how empire and thinking IR were implicated, and how sovereignty or features like mandates were shaped by questions of race and maintaining economic benefits, as Sabaratnam and Anghie have also considered.

The legacies of these origins and ways of thinking IR shape not only theories, or what Thakur and Vale calls its vocabulary, but its contemporary practice and practical implications. Grove (2019, 20-21) for instance contends that the formation of the discipline as research in the interests of influencing clients and practising statecraft by other means has shaped the global order. This places the United States at its core where interests such as racism and climate change are ignored and decisions are serviceably made in the interests of the order, not the people or environments constituting the world (Grove 2019, 20-21). Grove (2019, 22) argues that this denial of complexity in the service of order limits the methods of the field. If this is so, alternative methods, such as historiography, may help appreciate complexity, but so may methods from other disciplines such as geography. 

Practically, Grove (2019, 39) asserts that this dominance of the global order has led to unprecedented control with the Global North benefitting from the status quo. This is such that even the climate crisis is dealt with like other issues in IR – with universalist abstractions and empiricism (Grove 2019, 39). Like other authors, Grove (2019, 10, 40) identifies that this dominance has been driven by the integrative and homogenising strategies of settlement, conquest, extraction, exploitation, and the extolling of rational thought. Grove (2019, 10, 40) draws the link from this order’s capabilities for world ordering and denial of complexity, to its failure to address the issues faced by this order, especially by erasing responsibilities. This failure, he suggests, also encompasses the active annihilation delivered by violence which persists from the era of crusades, conquests, and colonialism (Grove 2019, 80). Historically, he discusses how the invasion of the Americas killed about 20 million people, destroyed their cultures and environments, impacting animals, ecosystems, and the climate itself, all in the process of knowing, conquering, and ordering the world (Grove 2019, 42). This is the importance of the complexity authors such as Anghie and Krishna embrace but find missing in IR, especially in recognising histories of violence. Furthermore, because the discipline is curtailed by definitions, vocabularies, and interests which define events like wars, rethinking IR may be important to contend with the manifestations of IR’s persistent coloniality. For instance, it may be insufficient to study the Anthropocene as IR does – in terms of security, politics, conflict, geopolitics, law, and governance (Simangan 2020, 214).

In addition to these discussions of coloniality in thinking IR through discussing IR’s history, it is important to consider how the ways IR treats history may reflect coloniality so that a historical analysis in rethinking IR does not replicate that coloniality. Apart from the themes of power, abstraction, and universalism as some of the features of colonial thinking, there is a theme of linearity which may also be in operation. This entails a view of time which flows forward in a straight line, delineating separations between past, present, and future (Hunfeld 2022). Contending with this in dealing with history is relevant in avoiding coloniality’s replication.

The linear view of history and time and its part in coloniality has been explored by various scholars, surveyed in Hunfeld’s (2022) work discussing their implication for global justice. Hunfeld identifies several aspects of this temporal theme of coloniality which are worth noting. First, time being seen as linear establishes valorised temporal commitments of progress and development which are used as judgements to form and marginalise “others” as culturally and racially inferior (Hunfeld 2022, 101-102). This is consistent with Said’s assertion that origins are important in the encounter between the “self” and “other” (Maphosa and Makama 2024, 2). In the construction of the “other”, it is considered how far they are on the path to progress when the discoverer encounters them (Maphosa and Makama 2024, 2). This linear mode is used to universally valorise a Western trajectory of time, upon which the West is further than the non-West, establishing their superiority (Hunfeld 2022; Maphosa and Makama 2024). Being used to establish the non-West as further back in time, and thus not only normatively “barbaric” but temporally “primitive”, their colonial subjugation is justified (Hunfeld 2022, 105). This is to remedy their prehistoric, ahistoric, immature, uncivilised, and premodern condition in terms of development (Hunfeld 2022, 105). Bringing them to modernity becomes the European’s burden (Quijano 2007, 176). Development, operating through time to prescribe a colonial view of the world, further culturally represses non-Western cultures and ways of being by seducing those in the non-West with the supposed benefits of development, thus beginning to take an internal form of domination (Quijano 2007, 169).

In addition to linearity serving a judgemental and justificatory role in the colonial marginalisation of the non-Western “other”, it plays an occluding role (Hunfeld 2022, 106). It does so by placing the present as universally important in determining what is real, what is valuable, and what is not (Hunfeld 2022, 106). The past is occluded by asserting that it is primitive, static, and beyond the realm of what is real (Hunfeld 2022, 106-107). At the same time, the past may occupy a role of importance but only if it is productive in aiding discourse establishing the primitiveness of the “other” or justifying coloniality as in the case of national myths used to support statehood (Hunfeld 2022, 107). Similarly, the future is seen as a realm of possibility or uncertainty rather than reality, disrupting the responsibility of people in the present to shape the future (Hunfeld 2022). 

Hunfeld (2022) asserts that linearity acts similar to other modes of coloniality such as abstraction or universalism by occluding the relational entanglements of people to their pasts and futures. It also occludes the entanglements between the changing and co-constituting realms of the past, present, and future (Hunfeld 2022). For instance, Fanon has written of how black people are placed in a “zone of nonbeing” through linear temporal assertions of their lack of culture, civilisation, and history (Hunfeld 2022, 107). This may contribute to their internal domination by valorising a standard of development which they are absent from and, alongside their epistemic silencing in the ways described above, by denying their social totality (Quijano 2007). Furthermore, in terms of Sabaratnam’s discussion of Whiteness, this may be thought of as a temporal dimension of the epistemic mechanisms of ignorance, immanence, and innocence. An ignorance of the past occludes its dynamism which would deny the progressive judgements of linearity, as well as the violence experienced by those marginalised as the “other” (Hunfeld 2022). Linearity also constructs an immanent standard of progress, justifying colonial practices to achieve it. Finally, in occluding responsibilities in the past and to the future, and making abstract claims of universal standards of progress, an innocence is maintained. 

The implication of this is that time is used to enact other forms of coloniality. For instance, a selective reading of the past for national myths may be used to justify settlement and statehood. The histories of “others” are occluded to deny their being and ignore the violence they have faced. This may justify violent settler colonialism and genocide. As discussed below, in terms of war, it is periodised as asserted by Barkawi (2016), such that if a ceasefire is reached, the violence it perpetuates may considered to be over as it belongs to the past. This could occlude the violence and suffering which continues outside of what is considered war. Furthermore, responsibility to the environment may be undermined by disrupting the relational continuity between the present and the future, suggesting that those in the present have no responsibility to beings such as the environment in the future. In terms of coloniality, this also uses the construct of the state to assert that once a colony achieves independence, it is in the postcolonial era and coloniality is left behind (Grosfoguel 2007, 219). However, disrupting this linearity, highlighting continuities, and grappling with coloniality (not colonialism), can challenge occlusion.

Overall, whatever theory may be used to explain international dynamics, institutions, and laws, scholars trace a pervasion and what is nevertheless an arguably persistent adherence to the tenets of thinking IR across the globe. These tenets are vitally located in coloniality and indeed in what has been described as a colonial matrix of power (CMP) which manifests as an ecology of diverse and interrelated modes – an entanglement (Grosfoguel 2007, 217). These modes include modernity, coloniality, capitalism, and patriarchy (Grosfoguel 2007, 217). From this, it can be seen how the assertion that IR maintains coloniality is credible. As a structure of forms of domination beyond state borders or periodised moments, and in premising the privileging of certain knowledges by marginalising others through strategies described above, coloniality persists (Grosfoguel 2007, 219-220). Colonialism may be over but coloniality continues. This is through the epistemic structuring of knowledge and mechanisms of Whiteness and positionality. They manifest in global structures and their underlying ideologies. These include discourses of development or the fundamental dualism which sets up ways of occluding power and continuities by promoting universal homogeneity. Beyond IR, and especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, this may also manifest in other social sciences such as Anthropology which are premised on the same coloniality distinguishing between the Western subject and the non-Western object (Quijano 2007, 174). Moreover, knowledge becoming specialised in separate domains precludes highlighting the links between those domains, thus perpetuating the narrow conceptions of coloniality, seen within segmented disciplines as universal (Mignolo 2018, 100).

The value of this perspective is that rethinking the conventions of IR in interdisciplinary ways can assist in revealing logics, linearities, and inequalities which may be entrenched in the prevailing international order. It also highlights the perpetuation of relations which may be exploitative, extractive, and destructive to plants, animals (human and non-human), and the environment. Understanding the relations of power between groups, insights into which can be gained from thorough historical studies, helps create a nuanced narrative. This, in rethinking IR, can reveal more complex determinants of international and socio-economic relations in terms of race, class, gender, and species. It is arguably the dualist logic of IR and Western philosophy broadly, for instance, which privileges humans as masters of nature (Harrington 2016, 487-488). This may also lead to more effective policies which have cognisance of these relations and the issues they manifest. Grove (2019, 11) suggests that such policy may even recognise the unequal relations between “genres” of humans to appropriately assign responsibility. Indeed, these matters of how IR is thought can have practical impacts even today, whether in causing problems or finding their solutions. Having surveyed the critiques of thinking IR, insights into the broad disciplinary issues can be specifically thought of in terms of conflict and security which is considered next.

Conflict and Security

Four conflicts currently dominate news headlines, namely Sudan, Tigray, Ukraine and Gaza – representing the conflicts with the largest battle-related deaths (Rustad 2024, 7). Rustad (2024, 7) finds that while battle-related deaths decreased in 2023, the previous three years are among the three most violent years on record since 1989. This reality reflects the importance of considering conflict in terms of the coloniality of thinking IR. In terms of these contemporary conflicts, however, they have had greater civilian impacts due to urbanisation and the urbanisation of conflict, and the use of indiscriminate weapons (ICRC 2019). The use of heavy explosive weapons in populated areas is not prohibited and has indiscriminate effects which presents challenges for international humanitarian law (IHL) in terms of civilian protection (Splojaric 2024). In Ukraine for example, Ukrainian use of cluster munitions unintentionally harmed Ukrainian civilians (Human Rights Watch 2023). However, this goes beyond the civilian impact. The ICRC’s (2019, 66) report on IHL found that “over 80% of all major armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000” occurred in locations which sustain around half the world’s plants and rare species of animals as biodiversity hotspots. This highlights that while there is increasing alarm over the effect of war and conflict on civilian populations, there is less focus on the environment. Indeed, the natural environment is not precisely defined nor adequately addressed under IHL (ICRC 2019, 67). Though there are provisions addressing avoiding harming the natural environment and provisions prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons, these are limited and not well enforced (ICRC 2019, 67-68). Hence, a stronger emphasis is needed on reforming IR and its principles such as international law so as to embrace the full extent of conflict. Furthermore, Dunlap and Brock (2022, 3) argue that ecocide as the targeting of the environment may constitute a method of genocide but this link is not considered by international law, representing another gap.

These gaps should be contextualised within Grovogui’s discussion of the colonial origins of humanitarianism which establishes a Eurocentric conception of what is deemed human as a moral judgement of humanity (Grovogui 2013, 81-82). This then ascribes to those outside of the West less-than-human objecthood to justify intervention by the actors and structures established by the West to enforce humanity through intervention (Grovogui 2013, 86-87). What IHL accounts for or not should be considered in light of this. For instance, with the environment being considered non-human, it may be occluded from IHL.

The military industrial complex remains a core challenge to conflict and peace, and environmental security (ICRC 2019, 66). In fact, Grove (2019, 21) argues that the world order itself is centrally invested in a martial intellect prioritising war and security. As a symptom of the coloniality of IR, this involves the close collaboration between the military and industry to their mutual benefit, even during peacetime (Harigel 2019, loc. 27 of 233). It furthermore involves close political involvement under the guise of maintaining a strong army to protect national security (Harigel 2019, loc. 28 of 233). However, in this, there are few considerations of the impacts of weapons, either in production, testing, or deployment, on humans or the environment (Harigel 2019, locs. 44, 46 of 233). The military industrial complex commands substantial financial and human resources in the development of weapons which destroy the environment, leave behind waste, or are rendered obsolete (Harigel 2019, loc. 42-43 of 233). Stemming from this, rapidly emerging military and defence technologies are not envisaged or covered under international law or IHL (ICRC 2019, 50). These exigencies all highlight the importance of considering conflict more holistically, from an environmental, civilian, technological, and non-state-centric viewpoint. Moreover, considering what is human more decolonially is also necessary. Rethinking IR is pertinent for this. For instance, it is argued that IR developed to manage war and decolonisation for European states in the 20th century (Thakur and Vale 2020, 4-6). If the limits of the discipline as explored above in this way were challenged, ecocide and its relation to genocide could more closely be examined.

This becomes more pertinent in light of the aforementioned conflicts and the recent increase in battle-related deaths which has made conflict a significant feature and occurrence of international relations since 2021 (Obermeier and Rustad 2023, 9). Considering the argument that “war made the state, and the state made war” (Tilly 1975, 42) and states make IR, conflict could be considered more enduring than this trend. As Grove (2019, 84-85) contends, the state and war have been mutually supportive in providing the centralisation of resources. Or, as Barkawi (2016, 207-208) argues, war in terms of the state mobilises the leadership, army, and people, in defining what constitutes legitimate force. Furthermore, war has philosophically been seen as a reciprocal exchange of the equal right to kill (Chamayou 2015, 160-161). What are the implications if alternative understandings are offered? Conflict may be even more enduring if the boundaries of IR are challenged to reconceptualise what is considered noteworthy and if complex histories are excavated to reveal encounters highlighted by Krishna and Grove, for instance. It is noteworthy that in IR thought, Sabaratnam (2020, 5) argues that war is seen as separate from violence, thus erasing histories, power, and race in the interactions, not just between states, but between all related beings. Specifically, wars are thought of in nationalist terms of the nation-state, erasing non-state actors (Grove 2019, 80). For instance, imperial use of force is often occluded (Barkawi 2016, 208). These certainly fall out of the bounds of the limits of a reciprocal equal right to kill. Hence, in addition to recognising this essential nature of conflict and security in International Relations, it must be evaluated how conflict and security are central to the study of IR. From this evaluation, it is then possible to broaden how they are studied. 

It is worth noting that war is seen as integral to the discipline. This is in its shaping of states and the impacts it has from a state perspective on the nature of the international order, its governance, and all the actors encompassed by it, including the environment (Prorok and Huth 2019; Thompson 1993). Moreover power and security are emphasised as paramount for state actors as espoused by Morgenthau and Carr (Quinn 2018, 71-73). Consequently, anarchy as the natural state of the international system necessarily sets up a security dilemma by which actors have to maximise their security against the threat of others, as espoused by Waltz (Quinn 2018, 71-73). Hence, states, as primary actors shaping international relations, and to maintain their security in an anarchical world, must militarily maximise their position in relation to others (Dyer 2001, 442). Deeply entrenched in this prevailing view of security are anthropocentric elements as the referent objects of security, like territories, humans, or states (Dyer 2001, 442). These have no way of considering the environment as the referent object of security in an ecocentric manner (Dyer 2001, 442). Moreover, conceptions like human security may be based on colonial understandings of what is human, thus allowing violence and insecurity to be enforced on those deemed as non-human (Grovogui 2013). These are often people who may not meet the colonial requirements of humanity (civilisation), or the environment (Grovogui 2013). Security is thus traditionally understood in terms of relative power and the maintenance of anthropocentric objects of security such as humans or states. While holding a place of importance, this means that conflict and security are constrained in their expansive capabilities by how IR is thought. They are thought of in terms of strategy, states, actors, casualties, and a singular preoccupation with violence (Grove 2019, 59-60). Moreover, because war is seen as exceptional and cataclysmic, in terms of IR’s adherence to definitions, conflicts may be underrepresented, not only in how they affect the environment, but completely (Grove 2019, 59-60). In fact, the war peace binary that assumes war only during wartime and the peacefulness of peace is arguably insufficient for conceiving of violence outside of war (Barkawi 2016, 201). This is in relation to weapons development and testing and possible impacts on humans and the environment. Indeed, during the inter-war years, the environment was being considered for its centrality to the success and failure of wars (Harrington 2016, 485). 

In addition, nuclear arms races had impacts long after the end of World War II, with testing destroying the environment central to Pacific Island Bikinian culture (Mauldin 2025, 118). Colonial subjects in American Micronesia, the British Gilbert Islands, and French Polynesia were subject to similar impacts (D’Arcy 2025, 177). For these people and environments, testing of weapons was no test as it left them with incineration, cancer, and their land rendered uninhabitable (Grove 2019, 42). Beyond this, Barkawi (2016, 205) suggests that it may even be that since 1492, there has been a near continual state of warfare and repression, but always dispersed.

These assumptions manifest in both the trends securitising climate explored below, as well as the ways in which conflict in the Middle East is treated. In an emergency Security Council session following Iran’s launch of missiles towards Israel following Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus in April 2024, the UN Secretary-General framed the conflict as an issue of peace and security and international law (United Nations 2024b). It was condemned by the United States representative there in terms of Iran’s threat to the security of states such as Israel, Jordan, and Iraq, through its arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon, its enabling of attacks by Houthi rebels, its funding and training of Hamas, and the transfer of drones to Russia (United Nations 2024b). To the French representative, this represented the risk of a new war in the Middle East through escalation, with the Chinese representative echoing a similar sentiment (United Nations 2024b). These reflect the strong positions taken by states in international disputes. Here, complex issues, such as Palestine’s occupation, may be reduced to an international law framing which tries to maintain peace and security at all costs, protecting the interests of the state. Conflict is seen largely as a security threat to humans or state actors rather than a threat to the environment. This is evident in the briefing following the Security Council’s failure to adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire on 20 November 2024 in which the situation is described in terms of who is responsible, what the humanitarian impact is, and what the failure to adopt on a resolution means for international law (United Nations 2024a). There is no mention of the environment. It is thus worth considering how rethinking IR offers more capabilities for understanding the complex history and present of related actors involved in conflicts, as well as the system in which they operate.

However, this trend can even be observed in the climate change realm, where it is argued that climate change is a threat to security and may exacerbate conflict, especially in regions like the Middle East (Siddiqi 2022). Despite what Siddiqi (2022, 2) calls the unhelpful preoccupation with proving a correlation between climate change and conflict, studies continue to attempt to do so. Siddiqi (2022, 2) thus contends that this stems from a colonial system of knowledge production which can be dismantled through a postcolonial critique. These systems were attempts by European colonisers to completely dominate colonial subjects by producing knowledge about their colonies (Vijayasree 2013, 148). Siddiqi (2022, 3) argues that studies assessing climate change as a cause of conflict are rationalist and deny complexity, fuelling stereotypes that those in the Global South are prone to violence, as a colonial form of knowledge production. This does not fully appreciate why they may be required to migrate (Siddiqi 2022, 4). Instead, they are judged by Western scholars who have no appreciation of precise contextual detail, relying on quantitative methods and abstraction as the guises of imperial politics of knowledge production where there can be no subjective judgements (Siddiqi 2022, 4). Conflict, Grove (2019, 60-61) argues, could thus instead be read as a history of the Western-led order and more broadly, a history not of declarations, numbers, and treaties, but of politics, colonialism, capitalism, settlement, racism, and ecological destruction.

Siddiqi’s argument is important to recognise not only as climate should not be seen as causing conflict in a simplistic model of causality, but to appreciate the environment more in its own right. It would be a shift from scientific Eurocentric positivism creating the dualism of Western philosophy placing man as master and owner of nature, which has utilised science as a means to order the world (Grove 2019, 40; Harrington 2016, 487-488). Knowledge has, from this positivist perspective, had an agenda to order the world (between coloniser and colonised or man and nature) while under the guise of objectivity, an aspect explored from Said’s Orientalism, and asserted by Grove (Grove 2019, 40, 60-61; Said 2003, 2, 10). This epistemic mechanism deeming what is considered true or useful knowledge has generally been used to deny other knowledges as well as guide both control and action (Said 2003, 10, 32). Siddiqi is thus provocative in the recognition of this relationship as it hints at how the climate is empirically treated in terms of the interest of security while in policy, the environment may go unnoticed in terms of the impacts of war. In this fashion, the environment becomes useful to study because it may pose a security risk, but is not useful to study in terms of how it is impacted by war. Siddiqi’s call for qualitative study does not deny the science of quantitative study but should enhance it. This is done by allowing it to be contextually cognisant, thereby aiding an analysis of how conflict exacerbates environmental degradation, instead of the other way around. Siddiqi’s work thus reflects a specific indictment of the ways IR is thought, as explored above, while highlighting the effect on the environment of conflict and persistent coloniality. It thus becomes important not only to rethink IR for understanding the world, but understanding the conflict that inhabits it, and more specifically, how this impacts the environment. Similar to the relational ontologies which could be yielded by rethinking IR, Barkawi (2016, 203) suggests that decolonising war may have insights into its co-constitution with politics, society, economy, and technology. Hence, having discussed how the thinking of IR is reproduced in understandings of war, conflict, and peace, important instances of violence or their impacts may be overlooked. Exploring how the latter aspect is studied is discussed next.

Impacts of War

The impact of war, despite being complex, has been traditionally evaluated in terms of political changes, namely, change in leadership, change in regime type, and involvement of external stakeholders in governance (Prorok and Huth 2019, 19). Prorok and Huth’s (2019) review of political impacts of war thus focus on the state. One such impact pertains to endogenous and exogenous leadership change stemming from internal conditions or revolution and foreign-imposed regime change by victors respectively (Prorok and Huth 2019, 19). Another related impact involves what type of regime is imposed, or which regimes are more susceptible to change after war, premised on assumptions of differences between autocracy and democracy (Prorok and Huth 2019, 19). Here, autocracies are easier to change while democracies are not, due to the differing legitimacy with each (Prorok and Huth 2019). Other studies into impact evaluate the prospect of democratisation following war, based on how a war comes to an end, what institutions exist to promote democracy, and whether there has been international intervention (Prorok and Huth 2019, 20).

These impacts consider domestic political conditions in the state after war, focusing on leadership, institutions, and government. However, changes at the state level may also be evident internationally and may be more than political, but still related. This represents a limitation in the understandings gained from such studies which ignores certain impacts. These include economic effects of war through destruction of infrastructure and production capabilities of agricultural land, the reduction of labour through military conscription or death, or even innovation in weapons which could boost the economy (Thompson 1993, 128-130). This reduces vast impacts, amongst them both humanitarian and environmental, to economic variables of either positive or negative net effect on a state’s economy. It is hence limited in its capabilities to look beyond the economic and state realms, especially to impacts which may not have tangible economic effects.

Also from an international perspective, wars may lead to the creation or break-up of states and subsequent territorial expansion, in addition to territorial changes from the war itself (Thompson 1993, 131, 136). On this level, impacted also are the positions of states in the world in terms of position as powers, alliances and subsequent conflict due to territorial loss or weakening of the state (Thompson 1993, 136). Historically, this also impacted the ability to maintain control over colonies (Thompson 1993, 137), which may be applied to contemporary examples of settler colonialism, such as that in the occupied Palestinian territories. Even more than these regional changes in territory, conflict, or control, international impacts of war can be as significant as the reordering of the world order or economy (Thompson 1993, 137). It is arguable, for example, that the World Wars resulted in the entrenchment of the modern liberal international order, including institutions such as the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions (Acharya 2022). Before this, the Peace of Westphalia symbolised the addition of non-intervention to the norm of state-sovereignty, even if indirectly (Paris 2020, 457). These perspectives are limited in understanding more diverse and non-unitary sets of actors like humans or animals by focusing on the state and what changes may be observable on a global scale. However, it has already been explored how the wars and decolonisation of the early 20th century, such as World War I and the Boer War, evaluated critically, perpetuated colonial relations in systems such as trusteeships (Thakur and Vale 2020; Anghie 2004).

These state-centric approaches to the impact of war have focused on the centrality of the state and its relations in terms of the impact of war. However, other studies have looked at the social and public health ramifications of war (Prorok and Huth 2019, 19). The most obvious of these impacts include battle-related deaths, with civilians considered as well as combatants (Prorok and Huth 2019, 21). Socially, other impacts include displacement and migration (Prorok and Huth 2019, 21). In terms of health, hazardous conditions and movement may exacerbate the risk of disease which would strain already damaged health facilities (Prorok and Huth 2019, 21). Of course, governments would not be able to meaningfully address these public health risks due to focus on war or post-war rebuilding of infrastructure (Prorok and Huth 2019, 21). General trends, apart from deaths and health stressors, include decreased life-expectancy and increased mortality, with the effects being felt stronger by women and children (Prorok and Huth 2019, 21). Prorok and Huth (2019, 21) survey the general trends of social and public health impacts of war, identified above, but nevertheless recognise that more may need to be done to evaluate which conflict types affect these impacts more. This would be to improve access to data for analysis and to disaggregate measures of health impact to identify specific effects which inform the broader complexity of general health impact (Prorok and Huth 2019, 21). This includes considering psychological health impacts of war (Prorok and Huth 2019, 22). Still, these perspectives are limited in their analysis of impacts often only in the immediate term and only on humans, and not the environment.

Hence, there are two broad themes dominating the way the impact of war is understood, representing a gap in the way the environment is traditionally considered as an impact of war. The first analyses the state as the unit of analysis, both in terms of internal conditions and changes to the international system. This reflects the state as a central focus of security (Simangan 2020, 214). The second analyses societies as the unit of analysis, encompassing social and health impacts on people. These are valuable in that states and societies are both real aspects of the world, but only represent a part of a greater picture that may be elucidated by evaluating the environment, smaller communities, entire regions or continents, and different time periods. It is even contended that the entanglements between war, the economy, resources, urbanisation, and science result in an annihilative and pervasive impact on people and the environment (Grove 2019, 82). These perspectives can be yielded through approaches critical of the assumptions of IR. They may yield insights into how more complex impacts stem from the complex relations between actors in a war, be they equal sides, or colonial powers eradicating populations or testing weapons. Hence, in one instance, it is worth considering other studies which have looked beyond these traditional themes, to evaluate the impact of war on the environment.

Impacts of War on the Environment

There have been numerous studies aimed at evaluating the impact of conflict on the environment. These pertain to specific instances of conflict such as in Ukraine (Wenning and Tomasi 2022; Rawtani et al. 2022), Gaza (London et al. 2024; Buheji and Muhannadi 2023; Baraquoni et al. 2020), the Gulf War (Gerges 1993), Ethiopia (Hishe et al. 2023), or Rwanda (Ordway 2015). They may also pertain to specific perpetrators of environmental destruction such as Israel (Qumsiyeh 2024) or the United States (Crawford 2019). Other studies are specific to weapon types such as landmines (Torres-Nachón 2004; Gangwar 2003), chemical weapons (Mojabi et al. 2010; Mayer and Johnston 1991), or nuclear weapons (Prǎvǎlie 2014). Apart from these specific enquiries, there are also studies into the general impacts of war on the environment (Reuveny, Mihalache-O’Keef, and Li 2010; Lawrence et al. 2015) or at specific impacts conflicts may have, be it to soil (Certini et al. 2013), land systems (Baumann and Kuemmerle 2016), water (Francis 2011), or wildlife (Dudley et al. 2002). These studies point to the extensive literature on assessing impacts of war and conflict on the environment. They are valuable for their wide coverage of time periods and geographical locations as well as weapons, which represent methods of analysis which could be used for different conflicts and environments. These can diversify how war is seen as a cataclysmic binary event as well as showing that impacts can follow from occurrences not traditionally considered wars.

A number of patterns are evident. Some studies straddle weapon types and look at specific locations or impacts on specific ecological components such as soil, water, or vegetation.1 Conversely, other studies may straddle different locations if looking at impacts of specific weapon types that may have been used extensively.2 Another general observation is that where some studies are directed towards environmental scientists, for example, they may not be as accessible to general readers or those outside the discipline such as in the social sciences.3 This represents a barrier where social science analyses may be empirically lacking and where scientific analyses may be contextually lacking. At the same time, traditional IR as discussed above, may extoll the virtues of purely empirical work, but it has been seen how this may occlude certain aspects which are worth understanding. Still, that is not to suggest that studies on either side are devoid of any use on the other. However, a stronger interdisciplinary effort is necessary to bridge gaps and lead to a more robust response to the issues raised by these studies (Burke et al. 2016, 505). The rethinking of IR, rooted in the interaction of different disciplines and methods, can rise to meet emerging challenges. Similarly, the new challenges posed by the Anthropocene, and the interface of both social and empirical elements, may be addressed by conceiving of diverse perspectives unbound by rigid disciplinary boundaries (Burke et al. 2016, 506). It is possible to conceive that a more socially oriented study, even if considering the loss of vegetation in a conflict, may envision the impacts on the people and animals dependent on that environment. It may also envision the indirect impacts from their migration. This is similar to Siddiqi’s (2022) critical view of empiricism which lacks complexity and a holistic understanding of occurrences such as migration.

To analyse the contributions of some of these studies in how they assist this study, and in terms of what gap exists, they are reviewed specifically by surveying what the impact has been by individual state, in individual cases, and by individual weapons, as well as pertaining to combinations of these when analysing individual environmental components such as soil or water.

Impact of individual states

Two studies consider the impact of individual states. In the first, Crawford (2019, 2) finds that the US Department of Defense is the world’s largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases through the production, transport, and usage of arms. Between 1975 and 2018, these emissions amounted to 3.685 billion metric tonnes of CO2 and in 2017 alone, thePentagon’s total greenhouse gas emissions exceeded that of Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal (2019, 2). The Pentagon, coordinating US military activity, thus represents an impact of war on the environment in its production of greenhouse gases. More specifically, since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has emitted 1.267 billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gases (Crawford 2019, 2). 

Crawford’s analysis, apart from its findings, is useful in identifying from where these emissions are derived, informing a method for studies attempting to analyse military emissions. These sources include emissions for installations and non-war operations such as military bases, war-related emissions in overseas contingency operations, emissions from the production of weapons, emissions through the burning of petroleum such as oil wells and refineries, emissions of other belligerents, emissions through reconstruction of infrastructure, and emissions from other sources such as fire suppression chemicals like Halon, or explosions of non-petroleum targets in warzones (Crawford 2019, 11). Crawford’s (2019, 13) study is similarly useful for identifying how specific vehicles may have specific fuel consumption ratings which may, combined with ranges of travel, provide an estimate of carbon dioxide emissions. Hence, apart from the significant findings of this study, it is useful in revealing which areas may contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and how they may be estimated. 

While significant in comprehensively analysing greenhouse gas emissions, this study does not engage with deeper impacts from specific weapons in specific locales such as cluster munition use in Afghanistan. Here, 248 056 BLU-97 submunitions were deployed (Handicap International 2006, 29), containing 317.5 grams of cyclotol explosive each (CAT-UXO n.d.), which when unexploded, may leech into soil, with toxic impacts (Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining and Convention on Cluster Munitions 2016, 18-19). Hence, any study of an impact on the environment must analyse such impacts beyond greenhouse gas emissions, representing a limitation of the Crawford study. There is value in thinking of impact in more varied forms, which may be overlooked by studies only concerned with emissions. Still, Crawford’s disruption of what constitutes war and its impacts, for instance in analysing military bases or reconstruction, represents the opportunities for rethinking war in IR, especially in terms of the environment.

The second study considering the impact of a specific state is that analysing Israel’s impact on the environment through its total military activity in Palestine since 1948 (Qumsiyeh 2024). This analyses a range of impacts from pre-conflict to post-conflict activities. This is useful less for its methodology, which brings together other studies, but for the areas analysed. This identifies generally what activities Israel engages in to harm the environment in all stages of conflict. In pre-conflict, Israel has a military industrial facility near Tel Aviv which produces pollution including with Trichloroethane and heavy metals (Qumsiyeh 2024, 979). In addition to 210 military bases, Israel also impacts biodiversity by limiting movement of wildlife, similar to humans, through restrictions and zoning supporting settler colonialism, as well as disruption of water resources (Qumsiyeh 2024, 979-980). Israel also possesses a large fleet including 251 US F-class attack jets, 330 support jets, 128 helicopters, and 15 transport planes, all of which emit greenhouse gases (Qumsiyeh 2024, 979). Land vehicles may have a similar impact, numbering 2500 tanks and 5000 armoured personnel carriers (Qumsiyeh 2024, 979). The impact of activities during conflict is identified as significant due to the significant number of explosives being dropped (20 000 tonnes in 2014 and 89 000 in 2023) and the advanced and large bombs being used (Mark 80 aerial bombs) (Qumsiyeh 2024, 981-982). This is such that Israel has destroyed 70% of all buildings in north Gaza in the present conflict (Qumsiyeh 2024, 981-982).

Qumsiyeh (2024, 982) also evaluates specific impacts on soil, air, animals, and water, during conflict. Israel has used explosives with depleted uranium or high impact explosives, incendiary bombs, and white phosphorous which all have impacts on soil, air, and water. Solid waste has resulted from the use of these weapons, sinking boats and creating concrete, steel, and rock debris from the tens of thousands of buildings bombed (Qumsiyeh 2024, 983). The noise pollution from this has meant noise is above double that which is deemed allowed, impacting even marine wildlife such as dolphins (Qumsiyeh 2024, 983). Destruction of water and wastewater services means this impact influences water resources. Sewage is being dumped on the land or in the sea and sea water is being used to flood tunnels in Gaza, polluting the underground water table and influencing biodiversity above (Qumsiyeh 2024, 983-984). Over time, Israel has also left behind a lot of unexploded ordnances such as landmines which remain a post-conflict risk (Qumsiyeh 2024, 984). The value of this study is thus that it analyses a range of impacts Israel has had on the environment in Lebanon and Palestine since 1948, identifying areas that must be considered in this study. Furthermore, it holistically explores the relations between the people, animals, and environments of the occupied Palestinian territories. Hence, even though the findings are preliminary, they reflect important areas of consideration.

Impact in specific areas

A few studies consider the impact of conflict in specific areas. In some cases, this overlaps with the analysis explored by authors above. For example, an analysis of Israel’s current war on Gaza complements Qumsiyeh’s analysis, finding that Israel’s destruction of wastewater plants has seen the daily dumping of 100 000 cubic meters of wastewater into the sea or on land (London et al. 2024, 3). The same study expects there to be major impacts due to toxic pollution from explosives (London et al. 2024, 3). They also anticipate pollution of soil from white phosphorous in bombs used in 2023, and damage to the land due to flooding of tunnels by Israel (London et al. 2024, 3). This study is, however, more empirical and does not delve into longer-term impacts that may result from disruption to the lives of the people or animals in Gaza.

Buheji and Muhannadi (2023) provide more context for these impacts or expected impacts in Gaza, also focused on the recent conflict, with context provided for previous time periods. As of the time of the writing of their article, 25 000 tonnes of explosives had been used in Gaza, with airstrikes occurring every 15 minutes (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 20). More specific impacts pertaining to the effect in Gaza is reviewed below where the literature on Gaza is considered. However, the authors highlight each period of conflict in Gaza, the operations undertaken and weapons used, as well as facilities targeted. This shows patterns of extensive bombing campaigns and the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous, explored further below. These studies represent that there is consensus on what the impact of Israel’s war on the environment in Gaza may entail. However, this may not go into specifics from pre-conflict to post-conflict impacts or represent the data in an aggregated manner. They furthermore do not represent an updated impact on the environment since the conflict has continued past its first anniversary.

Another key site of conflict has been Ukraine, where details of an impact on the environment has also been sought. Rawtani et al. (2022) identify several potential impacts that may result from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The first pertains to water, where there may be contamination from chemical, biological, or nuclear sources, and where Russia’s targeting of industrial regions in Eastern Ukraine may destroy mines, petroleum facilities, or other industrial units which could release toxic substances (Rawtani et al. 2022, 2). Acid mine drainage may also result from closure of coal mines in that region and the suspension of pumping, leading more toxins to seep into the groundwater aquifer (Rawtani et al. 2022, 2). And, like Gaza, if sites of treatment or storage of waste are targeted, these may pollute the land and water (Rawtani et al. 2022, 2). So, apart from direct impacts of weapons on the environment, activities being affected by war or infrastructure being damaged by war may also lead to environmental degradation.

There is also an impact on the air in Ukraine. Similar to Crawford’s findings, Rawtani et al. (2022, 2) find that activities including those related to vehicles and equipment used in war may result in greenhouse gas emissions, including the release of dust and particulate matter, affecting air quality. This effect on climate change will be exacerbated by the negative impact on Ukraine’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as it redirects its focus from development on renewables to the war effort (Rawtani et al. 2022, 4). Similar to the risk of water pollution, there may be risks to air quality from explosives and weapons that are biological, chemical, or nuclear (Rawtani et al. 2022, 2). Moreover, targeting of industrial facilities such as refineries may also release toxic gas into the air (Rawtani et al. 2022, 2). This risk extends to the destruction of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants which could cause radioactive pollution (Rawtani et al. 2022, 3).

Like other authors, Rawtani et al. also find that the impact could be observed not only in the air or water, but in the soil of an impacted area. Crater formation may be a physical impact of shelling and bombing, while pollution may come from hazardous deposits due to damaged infrastructure or weapons, including unexploded ordnances like landmines (Rawtani et al. 2022, 3). Land use pattern change due to damage and landmines, or loss of vegetation, may also impact soil fertility (Rawtani et al. 2022, 3). Finally, ecosystems may be impacted as a result of the physical and chemical impacts of war, with deforestation and wildfires being some observable impacts. In March 2022, this was seen in Chernobyl where 7600 hectares of forests and grasslands were impacted by wildfires (Rawtani et al. 2022, 4). This shows how war may have an ecocidal logic which targets the environment, representing a gap in how war has been studied. This gap has been explored above but the implications for the environment are considered further below. These varieties of impacts thus become opportunities to evaluate how war operates by utilising the environment. It further offers insight into the possibilities of what a holistic understanding of war and the environment may entail by also interrogating the interface between the two.

Rawtani et al. (2022, 4) furthermore find that it is likely that there will be a large impact on the environment as a result of the over 120 000 explosives having been used. This includes the destruction of nearly 85 000 tonnes of petroleum products and the subsequent release of 294 242 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (Rawtani et al. 2022, 4). In terms of biodiversity, forest fires have affected 250 484 hectares of forest, releasing over 180 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (Rawtani et al. 2022, 4). Finally, over 14 million square metres of other ignition has occurred, releasing 1.15 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (Rawtani et al. 2022, 4). Overall, Rawtani et al. make some useful findings in line with other studies but do not go into much detail on some of the impacts posited. This study is thereby useful as a reinforcement of some of the areas which should be considered in a holistic environmental impact study.

With numerous conflicts occurring, there are several locations being addressed by various studies. For example, Hishe et al. (2023) study the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, evaluating the impact of conflict on vegetation cover. Their study, using remote sensing (explored further in the methodology below) to evaluate the changes in vegetation, find that conflict between 2020 and 2022 has decreased vegetation cover, reversing gains made between 2000 and 2020 (Hishe et al. 2023, 647). This represents a useful methodology to consider for this study. It also disrupts some of the preoccupations which IR may have with conflicts meeting traditional definitions of war by analysing a localised area. Similarly useful is Ordway’s (2015) analysis of forest cover change in Rwanda due to conflict between 1986 and 2003. This also makes use of remote sensing and satellite imagery to evaluate changes, though finding variable growth and decline in forest cover at different places due to displacement of people (Ordway 2015, 458). This finding may be less relevant for Gaza which is a small and densely populated area. Another study by Gerges (1993, 307-311), looking at the Gulf War, finds generalised impacts from the daily release of 50 000 cubic metres of raw sewage into the Kuwait Bay due to damage to wastewater treatment plants, the pollution of sediments, damage to coral reef organisms, damage to seagrass, and the emission of 300 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from fires. This also represents, like subsequent studies, a way of comprehensively analysing impact on the environment. It is also possible to see that because different studies assess different areas with different geographies and weapons used, impacts may vary. This needs to be considered in developing a methodology which determines which measures are common amongst all conflicts (perhaps vegetation loss) and which measures are more specific to certain conflicts. In the latter case this could be radioactivity due to the use of nuclear weapons, or chemical pollution due to gases. Moreover, some of the methods such as remote sensing represent useful developments in understanding impacts in zones still in conflict or where travel to obtain samples is not possible. However, it is still unable to analyse certain features like water table pollution (which is underground) or impacts on humans and animals, though the latter may be inferred from high resolution satellite imagery.

Impact of specific weapons

In addition to location-specific studies, there are weapon-specific studies. Mojabi et al. (2010) are important to review for they explore specifics pertaining to white phosphorous which is seen to have been used by Israel. The authors identify it as a yellow wax-like substance which, when fired from artillery shells, produces a yellow flame and white smoke that burns people, buildings, and materials indiscriminately while in contact with oxygen (Mojabi et al. 2010, 2). It also provides cover for troop movements (Mojabi et al. 2010, 2). The authors, however, stop at analysing the substance in terms of impact on humans, making it necessary to study further the impact on ecosystems or ecological components. They are useful in terms of identifying the mechanism by which white phosphorous acts – as a dual smoke and incendiary effect, the latter of which relies on oxygen.

Landmines being another weapon used by Israel, studies on this impact are important to review. Torres-Nachón (2004, 260) focused on anti-personnel landmines which are exploded by the proximity or contact of a person. His study found that 110 million landmines have been planted around the world (Torres-Nachón 2004, 263). These may corrode to leak heavy metals such as mercury and lead into soil, or they may destroy vegetation or kill animals upon explosion (Torres-Nachón 2004, 265). An indirect impact may be the displacement of people which may impact other locations due to human activity such as deforestation (Torres-Nachón 2004, 265). Being located in rich biodiversity areas such as Southern Africa, Asia, or Central and South America, these represent risks to plant and animal species there (Torres-Nachón 2004, 275-276). However, the precise impact is difficult to assess, especially in terms of precise impact in the extent of soil and water pollution, due to lack of data (Torres-Nachón 2004, 275-276). Hence, this study reveals general trends which may be observable with landmines, though raising a methodological problem of obtaining data. In this case, this may necessitate analysis using remote sensing of chemical composition of soil or changes in vegetation in areas with landmines or estimating the area with landmines as a measure on its own. However, the capabilities of this are still limited and constrained by technical expertise.

Another study into the impact of landmines, by Gangwar (2003), has similar findings. This identifies specific impacts such as landmines covering 2 million acres of land in Vietnam or 125 000 animals being killed in Libya and 264 000 animals being killed in Afghanistan by mines and other unexploded ordnances (Gangwar 2003, 2). However, while extensively covering generalised impacts of war and landmines, Gangwar is unable to identify substantial specifics on the quantitative impact, likely due to the constraints identified by Torres-Nachón. Still, in terms of environmental security, these studies represent the imprecision and variety in analysing impact which may be difficult to assess or be wide-reaching – something not considered in environmental security. In addition, both these studies are over 20 years old and there have not been extensive studies of this kind since, perhaps due to the reduce in use of landmines as more states accede to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (International Campaign to Ban Landmines 2024, 1). However, it is worth considering that existing landmines may continue to have an impact long after war has ended or new landmines are used, suggesting the need to consider impact and war on a broader temporal scale. For instance, it is a positive development that more studies are being conducted into the impact of nuclear testing, especially as radioactive effects remain in the environment for decades (D’Arcy 2025).

Impact on specific components

In addition to studies which may identify the impact of various components in one location or by specific weapons, there are studies evaluating specific impacts on components which reveal methodologically useful insights. These pertain to soil and water. Certini et al. (2013) evaluate the impact on soil, identifying physical impacts in terms of cratering, chemical impacts in terms of pollution by heavy metals, explosives, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, chemicals such as defoliants, and biological impacts such as propagation of bacteria with impacts on animals. This is not dissimilar to the findings by other authors which deal with impacts on soil of specific conflicts. It is however a highly scientific approach, inaccessible to those outside chemistry or biological sciences, and not specifically useful for revealing how soil can be analysed in a specific location, though revealing what could be analysed about soil. Thus, it does not offer insight into critically considering the extent of ecocide.

Francis conducts a similar study of generalised impacts but on the component of water. Here, water can be affected by efforts in preparation for war, in its use as a weapon (such as for flooding), by physical and chemical impacts of ordnances, and the pollution of various substances including defoliants or heavy metals (Francis 2011). Like Certini et al. (2013), this is not dissimilar to other findings by authors on specific conflicts, and it is highly scientific, making it less easily interpreted. However, it does reveal what can be analysed about water, even if not specifically how this could be done. Indeed, the author recognises the need to develop methods to quantify these impacts on comparable scales, representing a gap (Francis 2011, 996). These scientific approaches thus represent an empirical viewpoint which does not say much without context or accessibility, rendering the data obsolete in terms of aiding further thinking (Grove 2019, 15). In fact, these should create the conditions of holistically understanding ecocide, representing a critical epistemology which is missing (Grove 2019, 15). This scientific knowledge thus needs to work together with knowledge of the environment in a broader sense, which includes humans, to inform more expansive thinking of what the impact of war is on the environment.

These studies reviewed all show vastly different impacts on the environment which are not exhaustive. However, this further strengthens the need to evaluate conflicts from an environmental lens and reveals avenues to consider vegetation, carbon emissions, soil, air, water, and land changes, as potential areas of enquiry.

The studies surveyed thus reveal examples of various impacts but concentrate on one location, in some cases. Others evaluate examples of weapons across various locations or of specific impacts on components by all war. In comparison, Machlis and Hanson (2008, 729, 732) attempt to envision a holistic taxonomy of the impact of war on the environment that informs a broader view of the systems (such as biodiversity, soil, or water, etc.) affected by conflict. This involves looking at impacts stemming from preparation for conflict, the occurrence of conflict, and postwar activities, much as some of the studies did so above. It would also involve evaluating impacts on components such as soil, vegetation, wildlife, forests, water, marine life, as well as the larger planetary climate. Qumsiyeh (2024), Rawtani et al. (2022), and Gerges (1993) seem to have been engaging in such an exercise, identifying specific areas to evaluate in each stage of conflict, and on specific components. The studies above could thus inform a thematically segmented study in line with that proposed by Machlis and Hanson (2008) that appreciates the complexity of the impacts of conflict on the environment. This is in line with the themes that have been pointed out (soil, water, etc.), and which may be analysed in the pre- and post-conflict stages as well as during conflict. Of course, without the context that is arguably important to accompany empirical studies, data is arguably obsolete (Grove 2019, 15). Hence, literature pertaining to the importance of the environment is considered next. This vitally builds on the general principles of rethinking IR to conceptualise a framework for rethinking war and the environment itself. Nevertheless, the studies above pose interesting challenges to IR’s disciplinary boundaries, periodisation of wars, and binary logics. These present useful methods for rethinking IR beyond these constraints which occlude violent impacts outside of official wars.

Anthropocene

It is important to consider why the environment matters in understanding the impact of war and in analyses of conflict and security. In a 2002 “Nature” article by Paul Crutzen, he posited that we are experiencing a shift from the Holocene as a geological epoch corresponding with and facilitating human development, to a warmer and human-dominated geological epoch defined by climate change induced by human activity (Steffen et al. 2011, 843; Satgar 2018b, 49-50; Lewis and Maslin 2015, 171). Called the Anthropocene, it is an epoch dominated by human-induced climate change and it considers the relationship humans have with the environment (Lewis and Maslin 2015, 178). This is one which is asymmetrical and which may potentially see humans taking a more active role in managing the environment (Lewis and Maslin 2015, 178). This recognises the undeniable increase in temperatures and atmospheric carbon, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, and extinction rate since the fifth mass extinction 66 million years ago (Harrington 2016, 493). Since 2016, the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the IPCC (since 2007) have included the notion of “anthropogenic climate change” in their analysis (Satgar 2018b, 51). This places the climate crisis as central to the planet’s geological future and positions humans as central to addressing and reversing the change.

The combination of the Anthropocene and the manifold effects on society are vast and transboundary. These are impossible to predict and hence mitigate, constituting a poly-crisis of simultaneous and disparate crises whose impacts exceed the sum of each impact alone (World Economic Forum 2023, 9). Combined and simultaneous environmental, geopolitical, and socio-economic threats are consequential to life, self-determination, food, health, water, and housing, and the planet which sustains all life (World Economic Forum 2023, 9; OHCHR 2015, 2, 6). The root of the Anthropocene places human activity as central to the issue, whereby even action to mitigate effects on humans may exacerbate the crisis. There has already been some discussion of how universalist concepts such as the Anthropocene may be insufficient in highlighting the unequal relations not only between humans, but humans and non-humans. This may also embrace empirical studies or positivist thinking which may occlude the complexity and number of sources contributing to the Anthropocene. One source may be war and some studies highlighting this link have already been discussed. Hence, the Anthropocene has been critiqued for maintaining epistemic coloniality by asserting a Eurocentric progression of development, maintaining the human-nature dualism, and furthermore positioning humans as stewards of nature (Simpson 2020). This may depoliticise responsibilities towards causing climate change and ascribe blame to relations with nature of indigenous peoples, for example, when they have existed in reciprocal harmony with the environment (Simpson 2020, 65). In fact, these reciprocal relations are occluded by the Anthropocene’s Eurocentric adherence (Simpson 2020, 65).

Thinking beyond the Anthropocene is thus essential. This requires a deeper appreciation of the environment in its own right (Satgar 2018a, 18). This is especially because an appreciation of the Anthropocene on its own does not help dismantle the negative impacts humans have on the environment. In some ways, it simply reinforces the human position as central, recognising humans as core to the problem so far but identifying humans as core to the solution. However, this does not decentre the human and repositioning the environment. Still, this recentring could consider the environment, not humans, as the referent object of concern such that the environment is considered first in taking action, not humans. Less than accountability, maintaining human centrality may represent a reinforcement of human control in a way that, as Lewis and Maslin (2015, 178) suggest, may return humans back to the centre of the universe. However, it is perhaps useful not to replicate dominance and replace the central figure of that (human or the environment) but embrace an equal appreciation of the presence of multiple related objects (humans, animals, plants, the environment, the planet). This is explored further below.

Some of the perspectives to manage the environment’s position have considered granting nature rights, contemplating the impacts of climate change across borders (thereby challenging state sovereignty), and reframing it as a global feature (the planet) (Simangan 2020, 216-217). Within IR, in rethinking the human position, posthumanist IR has conceived of the human as a “socially and culturally constituted category” as “ambiguous beings” connected to other non-human beings (Harrington 2016, 490). There are thus hybrid ontological forms of relations between the human and non-human (Harrington 2016, 490). This is encouraging because it does not remove the importance of humans or suggest that there should be a hierarchy of concerns which must necessarily have a top. Instead, it proposes a framework of horizontally related actants. This includes non-human agency, the appreciation of complexity, non-linearity and unpredictability, and recognises the hierarchies of power within human systems and between humans and non-humans (Harrington 2016, 490). This vitally challenges the human-nature duality as a key issue in IR (Simangan 2020, 218). It also encompasses objects as diverse as animals, microbes, devices, materials, and terrain, but emphasises their agency, not their utility (Harrington 2016, 491). Grove (2019, 71) poses a provocative scenario in which an asteroid hitting the Soviet Union with a thirty-megaton blast in 1962 instead of 1908 could have been mistaken for a nuclear attack. This may have led to nuclear war, mutually assured destruction, and perhaps nuclear winter (Grove 2019, 71). Here, a non-human agent has a role to play in ways unconceived by anthropocentric logics of security dilemmas. 

Still, because the Anthropocene has been created on the frontlines of modernisation by, often, wealthy European males, even a posthumanist stance should perhaps centrally focus on the decentring of power, not humans (or all humans) (Harrington 2016, 483; Grove 2019, 44). One intervention has been the consideration of a Capitalocene in which nature has been commodified and degraded for capital gain (Simangan 2020, 220). This would highlight the industrialisation of developed states through strategies of destruction and colonialism, which allows them a transition not available to countries on the opposite end of this (Simangan 2020, 220; Grove 2019, 47). Grove even critiques the Anthropocene for being a geo-biopolitical means of maintaining the world order even though that order has precipitated the crisis it describes (Grove 2019, 47). Hence, the Anthropocene is less about humans being central and more about systems of capital, power and knowledge from some portions of humanity as authors such as Grove, Harrington, and Siddiqi explore. So, it is important to understand not only the relations of all things, but the relations of power between them. However, not only does posthumanist IR, according to Grove (2019, 10), fail to prioritise this, but in thinking IR itself, universalist abstractions used to understand reality conceal power relations, erasing responsibility (Krishna 2001, 403). Hence, similar to Sabaratnam’s (2020) provocation that the issue is not in the author’s skin colour or location but in their adherence to assumptions which privilege structural power, it may be that the issue of the environmental crisis is not humans, but power. At present, Grove (2019, 39) suggests that the Global North beneficiaries of the global order are animated by interests of order which deny these complexities, maintain unequal power relations, and embrace empiricism in dealing with the Anthropocene. Hence, it may be that the Anthropocene is wholly insufficient if it represents the coloniality of IR thinking.

Reading a history of imperialism, and recognising this power, reveals instances where war has impacted the environment. For instance, in looking at the Boer War as Thakur and Vale do, there are implications for the environment that can be seen beyond the traditional concerns of IR or its making. The relations between the British imperialists, Boer farmers, and the land, provide insight into Lord Kitchener’s strategy to burn Boer farms and undermine their ability to feed themselves (Tucker and McNeill 2025, 322). Grove (2019, 6) points out that wars in settler colonies, in seeking to disrupt the people and their relation to the environment, annihilated both. As he discusses, in ordering the Americas, there was a cost to human and animal life, ecosystems, and the climate (Grove 2019, 42). To defeat the Sioux, Kiowa, and Comanches for instance, bison was exterminated (Dunlap and Brock 2022, 4). Rethinking the Anthropocene and IR itself identifies how non-humans have been the target of violence. Relational thinking sees food as one reason justifying violence on the environment, due to its sustenance of enemies (Grove 2019, 87). Furthermore, rethinking IR to see the coloniality of more recent wars, the activities of war, even during peacetime, and seeing beyond the war- peace binary recognises some notable instances of ecocide. In addition to the nuclear testing discussed above, with radioactive fallout and uninhabitability persisting, the United States used “44 million litres of Agent Orange and 28 million litres of other defoliants” to damage the forests, soil, mangrove marshes, and wildlife of Vietnam, as well as defeat the North Vietnamese (Grove 2019, 42; Tucker and McNeill 2025, 325; Dunlap and Brock 2022, 2). In these accounts, it is perhaps possible to see the environment rendered nothing more than a factor of war (Harrington 2016, 485). And, broadly considering war as inclusive of the violence of European conquest, settlement, and extractivism, instances such as the clearing of the US Great Plains to remove humans and animals to make way for agriculture shows how the order Grove (2019, 3, 11) discusses as central to IR, can collapse an entire habitat. Herein, humans are entangled with the environment as perpetrators and co-victims of its destruction. In addition, there are also entanglements of goggles, amphetamines, drones, animals, degraded vegetation (Harrington 2016, 491). These offer insights into how the ecocidal dynamics of more recent wars can be understood. For example, how do wells and tunnels in Gaza have an impact or are impacted.

Recognising this destruction and going beyond the Anthropocene, ecocide is important to define as a feature of relations defining war and the environment. Defined as the destruction of the environmental ecosystem, with war, deforestation, mining, pollution, emissions, and any other deliberate destruction (Satgar 2018b, 55; Dunlap and Brock 2022, 2), it is therefore important to interrogate what role war and conflict play, not only in terms of the impact on humans. This is especially as ecocide features the transformation of the environment into a space of war (Grove 2019, 82). Thus, moving beyond the Anthropocene assists in going beyond traditional notions of security which hold states, people, or society as referent objects, and instead towards a form of security that sees ecosystems themselves as referent objects of security (McDonald 2018, 163). McDonald (2018, 165) argues that this should preclude the word environment for its implication with human society. This is important so that the environment, the planet, or nature, is not given importance only for its impact on state or human security but because its own security may be impacted (Dyer 2001, 443-445). Thus, the environment becomes more than a variable to be managed in waging a war for conquest, providing food to belligerents, or testing weapons to augment military capabilities as in the instances discussed above. So, the environment should not be securitised only to maintain anthropocentric concerns or as the maintenance of the interests of actors waging war, albeit enlightened (Dyer 2001, 447). Instead, it should perhaps avoid security discourse altogether to avoid the pitfalls of thinking in terms of security, in terms of IR, or even anthropocentrically. 

In terms of identifying broader ways of thinking IR, and recognising that adding the environment to a security calculus may simply reproduce old ways of thinking, it is proposed that relations between objects may be a useful way of thinking. Perhaps there remains room for humans here, not ignoring humanitarian concerns in favour of ecology, but seeing the deep entanglement between humans and nature. This is not a co-existence or relationship of convenience but a significant relationship in which being is inextricable from nature (Harrington 2016, 489). This is where humans ultimately do depend on the planet for life (Dyer 2001, 448). It may also be conceived that animals also rely on the planet for life, and as the planet is shaped by beings dependent on it, the planet is even dependent on them, constituting a being. This recognises the risk of appending the environment to the list of human security concerns as Dyer warns (where human remains central and environment is decentred). It hence realises that humans are still a part of the environment which sustains them (where the environment is central and humans are decentred) as a heuristic as other non-statist perspectives grow. It may be particularly useful to avoid centrality altogether, as posthumanist IR may suggest, or more radically, in terms of lending importance to relations. Grove (2019, 10) calls this ecological, referring to relations which are inhuman, across scales of space and time, and not discrete, causal, or human.

The alternative is that the environment will be securitised or defined as a threat in relation to state security (Harrington 2016, 485). For example, the environment will be treated as a threat to security by exacerbating migration (Dyer 2001, 445). Or, the environment will be used as a unit of analysis by which some states criticise others for damaging “their” environment, while ultimately maintaining the statist perspective, notwithstanding that climate change transcends boundaries (Dyer 2001, 446). There could also be concerns over resources or societal breakdowns (Harrington 2016, 486). Causevic and Marashi (2023), in their study of how NATO can adopt a strategy to address the security threats of climate change, display the dangers of such an approach. For example, climate change may exacerbate existing socio-economic tensions, especially placing a stress on food and water access, and coastal habitation whereby migration or conflict may result (Causevic and Marashi 2023, 69). This may stress fragile states, creating the risk of public disorder, civil unrest, or riots (Causevic and Marashi 2023, 69). Causevic and Marashi (2023, 70) identify the difficulties that traditional statist security has with climate change, much like Dyer, because it transcends borders for example, with potential for it being treated as a threat-multiplier variable at most. NATO reports identifying this as a security threat that requires a coordinated strategy, including things like defence planning (Causevic and Marashi 2023, 76). This does not actually remove the environment from the security realm, and even places it as a task under military control. The authors suggest a more sustainable approach (Causevic and Marashi 2023, 78), though this seems more in line with the heuristic Dyer suggests than a meaningfully alternative strategy.

Considering the limits of understanding the environment’s position in terms of IR, security, and the Anthropocene more broadly, authors propose relational ecologies between broad classes of posthuman actors which together constitute an environment. This holds promise for avoiding the pitfalls of universalism or abstraction in IR. These pitfalls erase diverse experiences, consider the environment in terms of humans and humans privileged by Whiteness largely, and ultimately reproduce the conditions which have precipitated the “Anthropocene”. Moving beyond this, it is possible to construct a framework for understanding these relations. Before exploring this, however, a literature of the case study of Gaza is discussed.

Gaza

To assist the conception of a framework which rethinks the impact of war on the environment, the case study of Gaza could be used. As mentioned above, this represents one of the prominent zones of conflict at the moment. It also presents varied insights into an area which has experienced forms of colonialism and whose sovereignty is contested within the system of international law. Like Thakur and Vale’s consideration of South Africa, considering Gaza may offer insight into the relations underpinned by the coloniality of thinking IR. As a zone experiencing a war, it may also elucidate ways of understanding the impact of war on the environment.

In addition to the background provided above and the explorations of history and impact on the environment to follow, the literature on Gaza could broadly be considered. First, this could contend with the coloniality in how Gaza is understood, and then identify which authors have contributed to scholarship on Gaza, its history, and the experience of its environment with war.

Following the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, the State of Israel responded with a large-scale incursion on Gaza involving air raids and a ground invasion. This has entailed a large-scale loss of life, displacement, and a significant and mounting impact on the environment (Agha et al. 2024, 1; Neimark et al. 2024; Buheji and Muhannadi 2023). As of July 11, 2025, it has resulted in the direct and indirect deaths of at least 57 680 people (UNRWA 2025). Conservative estimates however, accounting for unidentified or missing persons, at a rate of 4 indirect deaths per 1 direct death (Khatib et al. 2024), could put this number at as many as 288 400, or 12% of the population. Gaza has thus been recognised by some as the location of the most well-documented genocide in history (Albanese 2024).

However, Gaza has for longer, been an enduring presence central to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, while receiving the harshest treatment through its occupation and blockade by Israel (Agha et al. 2024, 4). As such, it is contended that Gaza has experienced the entangled difficulties of self-determination, political oppression, and environmental decimation (Stoler 2016, 60). Despite this, it has been argued that Gaza’s story has been told not in a way that reveals these entanglements, but which ignores pre-modern Palestine (Doumani 1992, 6). This erases the experience of Palestinians, and tells a history which begins with the arrival of “modernity” with Napoleon, or through events describing political transformations (Doumani 1992, 6). These include the rule of Egyptian King Muhammad Ali, the arrival of Jewish settlers in 1882, Ottoman reform due to British efforts, and a fascination with the area’s biblical history (Doumani 1992). This historiography appears to resemble IR thinking by privileging histories which feature prominent imperial powers, eliding the experiences of Palestinians themselves, and promoting the importance of principles such as modernity and its arrival in Palestine. It is conceivable that this may shape how Palestine and Gaza are seen, which histories of theirs is deemed important, and how coloniality shapes Gaza today. The insight which could be gained by this is that an analysis of this area’s history and present needs to carefully be undertaken with cognisance of the coloniality in thinking informing dominant narratives. This is such that attention is given more equally to facets of its history both political and local. This may include how locals have experienced Gaza as well as the relations between Gaza and Palestine and their people, environment, and the world more generally. Importantly, the work on orientalism by prominent Palestinian academic, Edward Said, may be effective for understanding Palestine and Gaza’s experience of coloniality. The framework and definition for this is discussed below.

Studies evaluating the impact of war on Gaza are numerous. In addition to those providing historical context (Agha et al. 2024), there are studies and reports exploring facets of the events in Gaza and reporting on the humanitarian and environmental situations. As a territory for which there is a UN Special Rapporteur, Gaza has been covered by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. While the October 1 report stemming from this is primarily concerned with human rights, key findings include that Israel’s occupation has been ruled as unlawful by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024, that this has been through force, racial segregation, and apartheid, that Israel now displays genocidal intent in Gaza, and that this has been made evident through evidence of humanitarian impact and the targeting of the ways of life of Palestinians in Gaza (Albanese 2024). While this is framed in terms of the violations of international law, Albanese (2024) does also consider the ongoing colonial erasure she asserts is constituted by genocide, as well as the possibility of ecocide being practised as well. Owing to its purpose as a report, it is thus framed in terms of a legal opinion and relates the situation through the use of statistics. As an analysis of an ongoing war, this poses limitations but the report is effective in bringing together multiple pieces of information and attempting to depict the colonial erasure unfolding (Albanese 2024). This does mean it features less history and considerations of the international relations enabling the war. However, it is a useful collation of information on the war and provides insight into the legal question of genocide, which may be nuanced in this study by a framework for rethinking IR and the impact of war on the environment.

Similarly, the periodic reports describing the humanitarian situation synthesised by institutions such as the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA 2024), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO 2024a; FAO 2024b), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP 2024a; UNEP 2024b) all empirically describe the humanitarian and environmental situation in Gaza. They provide up to date information on the unfolding situation, synthesising various elements, but as reports, avoid broader explorations of the colonial international relations enabling the war. However, like the empirical studies of the impacts of war on the environment discussed above, these provide useful sources for developing deeper understandings. The UNEP (2024a) report is a comprehensive preliminary analysis released in early 2024 which analyses the environmental situation in Gaza before the war, and during the war. This is done in terms of categories of water, solid waste, energy, the marine environment, the terrestrial environment, and the air. In each category, with whatever information has been available, it attempts to envision the change due to the war and the impact this could have on the people and environment. It also anticipates what indirect impacts may follow from the displacement of people, for example (UNEP 2024a). This is useful as it provides categories which may inform a methodology of an impact analysis, explores means of determining impact, and envisions the relations between people and the environment holistically. In terms of the humanitarian situation, this can be supplemented with later information provided in FAO and UNRWA situation reports. The UNRWA (2024) report frames impacts in terms of death, injury, and displacement. This latter aspect provides insight into the effects of Israeli strategies as well as potentially what guides them – the colonial erasure as contended by the Special Rapporteur.

Of importance is that the massive humanitarian concern of over 10% of the population being killed is in addition to a significant carbon footprint in the first 60 days as an incomplete measure of direct emissions from vehicles (including aircraft and tanks) and munitions used in Gaza (Neimark et al. 2024, 4). These are from Israeli F-16 and F-35 flights, US supply flights, Israeli artillery to the amount of 8000 tonnes of steel and explosives, 10 000 Israeli bombs to the amount of 2300 tonnes, and 500 Israeli vehicles (Neimark et al. 2024, 6-7). And, over half of these emissions derive from US cargo planes carrying military supplies to Israel (Neimark et al. 2024, 10). This study reveals pertinent international dynamics such as the US support of Israel which are worth considering in terms of the war. However, its methodology is unclear in certain cases (such as estimating flight hours from tonnes of bombs dropped), making it less replicable as a method.

Some of the studies analysing the impact of war on the environment in Gaza specifically, and by Israel in Palestine more generally, have been reviewed above.4 Of these, Buheji and Muhannadi (2023), provide the most comprehensive study. The 2002 war is identified as being composed of airstrikes with lethal gas being used, the destruction of many houses, and the pollution of the air with lethal gas (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 22). The 2008-2009 war included airstrikes and bombing with munitions containing white phosphorous and depleted uranium (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 23). In addition, 1 000 tonnes of explosives were dropped and residential areas and sewage and water treatment systems were targeted (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 23). This resulted in chemical and nuclear pollution, and the destruction of infrastructure (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 23). In addition to identifying precise numbers of buildings destroyed, by type, nearly 450 000 trees were uprooted (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 23). An 8-day offensive in 2012 saw the intense bombing of Gaza, destroying infrastructure (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 23). The 2014 campaign included airstrikes and a ground invasion, targeting a power station, infrastructure and sewage pumps, residential areas, and civilian buildings (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 24). The 2019 attack included air raids and the 2021 attack included 1500 declared airstrikes and the use of white phosphorous bombs (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 24). Another attack in 2021 included more bombing of infrastructure and residential areas, followed by a smaller attack in 2022 (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 25). Since 2023, there have been air strikes and bombing, a ground invasion, the use of white phosphorous and lethal gas, and as of 27 November, 25 000 tonnes of explosives dropped (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 25-26). There has also been the indiscriminate targeting of all buildings including religious buildings and hospitals (Buheji and Muhannadi 2023, 25-26). This study shows how extensive the bombardment of Gaza has been, identifying many key areas to investigate further, but not providing precise detail on sources or number of bombs and types, for example. This could thus be expanded upon.

Qumsiyeh (2024), meanwhile provides a perspective which envisions an impact on the environment by considering Israeli military capabilities and activities. This considers potential, though unquantified, impacts in terms of land, air, and water pollution due to the use of white phosphorous and explosives with depleted uranium (Qumsiyeh 2024). It also considers the impact of the destruction of WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) infrastructure and buildings (Qumsiyeh 2024). This is useful like the UNEP report in envisioning the types of impacts which may be felt, as well as identifying weapons used (such as white phosphorous), ultimately considering impacts outside the bounds of the current situation, more expansively. For instance, it is important to think about what the impact has been previously in Gaza, how that has changed at present, and what may follow when the war is over.

London et al. (2024) conduct a similar analysis to Qumsiyeh but only briefly consider the quantity of the impacts in terms of toxic pollution due to explosives or wastewater dumping. This represents a succinct compilation of data on impact which is again useful in terms of categories considered, not dissimilar to the UNEP report. Finally, Mojabi et al. (2010) explore the impacts of white phosphorous, which has previously been used by Israel, on people and the environment. Providing troops with cover, this yellow wax-like substance burns indiscriminately in the presence of oxygen making it a potent and toxic weapon. This study is useful in providing information on the use of white phosphorous and its impacts.

Finally, it has been argued that this long-term conflict is reflective of a strong concern with territoriality and security by both Israel and Palestine, at the expense of climate security (Mason 2013, 305). While climate security may be a flawed anthropocentric framing, this does reveal a problematic approach which is informed by thinking IR, that could benefit from insights into coloniality, settler-colonialism, relations between humans and the environment, and the environment itself. Indeed, the studies above, while all useful for depicting the impacts of war on Gaza, are aimed at reporting the information on impact. This is such that many statistics are used but the relations between people and the environment are not always thought of, and the vital structure of unequal power underpinning these relations are left undiscussed. It may be that this occludes a true understanding of coloniality at work. In terms of thinking IR, Gaza is seen as a territory and not a state with the same rights as Israel, which informs discourses of impact, displacement, and arguments of Israeli self-defence. Israel is also able to be represented at the UN. The self-determination of Gaza, though considered by authors such as Albanese, must contend with the well-established legal force of statehood. This may obscure the coloniality of Gaza’s occupation and leave its fate in the hands of international law, which authors such as Anghie (2004, 144) have contended simply reproduce colonial relations. Palestine was already discussed as a desirable mandate for its oil reserves. It may be possible that strategic interests guiding the occupation of Gaza are also now present, but left undiscussed in an IR framing. Hence, as Krishna discusses, abstraction of principles such as state sovereignty leads to the elision of coloniality.

In terms of the impact on the environment, while reports such as that by UNEP contend with humans and the environment, they are led by an anthropocentric interest that supplements the humanitarian and international law framing of the war. This is also the focus of the humanitarian reports. So, in addition to considerations of Gaza as an occupied territory in international law, it is also seen as the location of a humanitarian catastrophe. While this is true, the environment is often seen in anthropocentric, not ecocentric terms. This represents a gap that follows from the conventions established by all the literature surveyed – the impact of a war on the environment is understood in terms of its implication for the state and humans. This makes it vital to situate this case study in terms of rethinking IR beyond statehood and international law, and in terms of rethinking the environment beyond security, humans, or the state. Herein is an opportunity to gain insight into the relations between all agents, human and non-human, in Gaza by proposing a framework of a relational ecology for understanding the history, the present, the people, and the environment there. This is made more pertinent by the need to mainstream such knowledge, the sustenance of this war, and the simultaneous humanitarian and environmental crises perpetuated by it.

Conclusion

This review has surveyed the literature considering how IR is thought, how conflict and security are thus thought, and how the general impacts of war, as well as the impacts of war on the environment are considered. It has been seen how the coloniality of knowledge and practice in IR operates by universalising and abstracting values, and ignoring critical elements like race and power relations. These may have enduring impacts on IR today. This operates through structural modes such as dualism and linearity which afford agency to some and not to others, in a discourse of progress premised on what is considered to be universally valid. Furthermore, this has shaped how conflict and security are seen, where they are understood in terms of definitions of war that privilege an understanding of wars as cataclysmic, exceptional, and consequential for states and humans. Hence, similar to the coloniality of IR, there is a coloniality of war which occludes various instances of violence and limits enquiries into the impact of war. Still, there are numerous studies which evaluate the impact of war on the environment. These provide insights into what methods could diversify an understanding of the impact of war on the environment in IR. At the same time, these studies have epistemic limitations by extolling empiricism or ignoring facets not seen as positivist or rational. In a way, both IR and the evidence-based sciences of the environment are constrained by a valorisation of positivist or abstract features, be they of the chemistry of the environment or the principles of war. However, together, the methods of these studies can add details to the insights of IR which reveal complex relations. Similarly, IR can assist these studies in making sense of the data. However, this would need to consider both the addition of new methods to IR, and the shifting of its thinking. Still, in light of the scale of the growing climate crisis, this has perhaps never been more pertinent. 

While IR may contend with the environment in terms of the coloniality it uses to understand humans, states, and war, this may relegate the environment to a categorical position in a calculus of security threats to the state or humans. However, shifting thinking to appreciate the environment needs to go beyond avoiding this. While this would replicate the same relations which have arguably led to what is called the Anthropocene, so too perhaps would a centring of the environment. This is because it nevertheless fails to contend with the underlying inequality in relations between beings inhabiting this planet – humans, animals, plants, objects, and the environment. Posthumanism may suggest the need for dismantling hierarchies but needs to also grapple with existing hierarchies which have been constitutive of Anthropocene conditions. Interestingly, the ontology of understanding relations to dismantle Whiteness, as Sabaratnam proposes to reform IR, represents a useful perspective. So, there should be no clear-cut judgements of what constitutes Whiteness without evaluating subject-positions of power. Similarly, there should be no judgements of which species as a whole has precipitated the climate crisis and environmental degradation, without evaluating the subject-positions of members of that species relative to each other and the environment. This should be cognisant of the epistemic mechanisms of ignorance, immanence, and innocence. For instance, certain actors may choose to occlude their contributions to climate change but extoll their progress in achieving a transition. They may do so while denying responsibility for precipitating it and claim that their progress can be achieved by less powerful actors whose exploitation contributed to the growth of wealth, power, and climate change. Grove (2019) would argue that this reflects the order dominated by Europe and America (the Eurocene), which privileges Eurocene powers, and disadvantages the rest.

Furthermore, just as Blackness should not replace Whiteness as a hegemonic ordering presence, the environment should not simply replace humans as the centre of IR, security, or the world. Because subject-positions of humans are different, it is not simple to define whether humans as a whole have been central to causing the “Anthropocene”. Hence, a more useful understanding of the dynamics causing this could be gained by giving presence to all subjects, their agency, and their relations to each other. This may be beneficial for developing knowledge and practices which disrupt the destructive capabilities of coloniality and interrogate their persistence in order to develop new ways of knowing and being. As a humanitarian and environmental crisis unfolds with the war on Gaza, these perspectives may help broaden understandings of it. Particularly, empirical studies can be aided by discourse critiquing the operation of the international system. Furthermore, anthropocentric preoccupations which place the environment as secondary could be challenged by understanding the horizontal relations between people in Gaza and its environment. What follows is a research design situated around this, followed by a framework for developing these perspectives.

Chapter 3: Research Design

References

Contents

This represents the work from my Master’s research, which can be found in full here.

  1. London et al. (2024); Qumsiyeh (2024); Buheji and Muhannadi (2023); Hishe et al. (2023); Wenning and Tomasi (2022); Rawtani et al. (2022); Baraquoni et al. (2020); Crawford (2019); Baumann and Kuemmerle (2016); Ordway (2015); Certini, Scalenghe, and Woods (2013); Francis (2011); Dudley et al. (2002); Gerges (1993). ↩︎
  2. Prǎvǎlie (2014); Mojabi et al. (2010); Torres-Nachón (2004); Gangwar (2003); Mayer and Johnston (1991). ↩︎
  3. Baraquoni et al. (2020); Prǎvǎlie (2014); Certini et al. (2013). ↩︎
  4. Qumsiyeh (2024); London et al. (2024); Buheji and Muhannadi (2023); Mojabi et al. (2010). ↩︎