To conclude, this chapter will discuss the broad approach and findings which the study has undertaken, exploring each chapter and their contributions. Furthermore, it will imagine what some possibilities for rethinking IR, in line with the project of understanding the impact of war on the environment more broadly, may look like. Finally, it will imagine how these possibilities, and others, can help construct a research agenda going forward.
Discussion
This study has attempted to answer the questions, how can rethinking relationality in IR create a new lens for understanding the impact of war on the environment and how has war led to ecocide in Gaza. This has been explored using an approach which first critiqued the normative basis and practice of IR and then imagined what rethinking IR would look like to think beyond the limits of IR. This was applied to the case study of Gaza to explore how its history, identity, and contemporary being have been shaped by complex relations of religions, diverse identities, cross-temporal meanings, and resistance to coloniality. This was furthermore applied to Gaza’s experience of war to explore how this complexity in its being has meant that the longer colonial strategy of Zionism has perpetrated both ecocide and genocide as a part of its Eurocene savage ecology.
The literature reviewed discussed how the origins of IR were implicated in coloniality. This was traced from a deeper enquiry into knowledge itself, identifying specific manifestations of coloniality in knowledge and IR stemming from the colonial matrix of power as a complex ecology of coloniality. This encompasses strategies which valorise abstract knowledge and assert universalist utility, but occlude both the knowledges and experiences of non-Western bodies, including the violence they faced as a result of coloniality. Specific strategies identified included ignorance of anything beyond this coloniality, immanence asserting its validity, and innocence diminishing responsibility by posing violence as well-intentioned or accidental. Furthermore, an element of seeing time as linear further entrenches this. It does so by emphasising a history of European progress, simultaneously relegating those outside of this to primitiveness and denying the relational links in being between the past, present, and future. All of this works to silence the voices of those outside of this colonial matrix and occlude the complexity of the world.
These patterns manifested specifically in how conflict and security have been seen, where security is considered either in relation to the state or to humans, but still defined by colonial terms. Furthermore, wars are subjected to this treatment such that some instances of violence are occluded through a focus on periodisation or borders. This cannot contend with instances of violence against beings not ordered in colonial ways, or the violence which persists after wars are deemed over. The environment is one such being occluded. This informs how the impacts of war are seen – often in relation to the state and humans, or in limited time periods. Again, the impact on the environment may be occluded or relegated subsidiary to state or human interests, as a threat multiplier for instance.
There are, however, studies which do analyse the impact of war on the environment and these are varied in their analysis of the impact by certain states, on certain areas, by certain weapons, or on certain areas of the environment. There may still be an element in which these studies are limited by their focus on only one state or area of the environment, or even their specialised scientific nature. These make it difficult to imagine their contributions to understanding the complexity of colonial relations which perpetrate violence and result in impacts on the environment. Still, they have contributions in understanding how the impact of war on the environment could be assessed in terms of categories and specific elements.
This was followed by a specific review on the discourse of the Anthropocene as a human-driven geological epoch resulting in climate change. This was largely critiqued for its adherence to the same colonial matrix of power which occludes responsibility and attempts to anthropocentrically make universal claims to the roles humans can play in alleviating the impact on the environment. This further reifies man as master over nature and denies the limited role colonial subjects have played in this, nor the value in their ways of being which do not always see the environment as an object. Agency could thus be afforded to many more actors, human and non-human alike, from a poststructuralist perspective, while decolonial perspectives centred on recognising the role of coloniality in precipitating the Anthropocene go further. They do so by attempting to challenge the power which underlies dynamics treating the environment as an object. Alternatively thus, nature itself may be seen as a complex ecology encompassing all beings – humans, animals, plants, inanimate objects, and more. This is such that dealing with the climate crisis, or understanding something like the impact of war on the environment, is not limited to any one of these only. Instead, it grapples with the structures underlying crises without centring any being (like humans or the environment), but recognises their interdependency. Furthermore, to centre this perspective in terms of the case study at hand, a discussion of Gaza was presented to see briefly how the current war is being seen in terms of the aforementioned coloniality. For instance, the crisis is seen in security terms either in relation to the state or humans only. While there are promising studies which help understand the impact of war on the environment, Gaza is not often understood in terms of the complexity constituting its being.
Recognising these flaws, this study thus envisioned a mixed-method research design grounded in understanding the complexity of colonial relations which result in an impact of war on the environment, and specifically in Gaza. This aimed to present a framework that could rethink IR to understand the impact of the war on the environment in Gaza and beyond. This rethinking is in ways that recognise the relational ecologies which may result in ecocide, as well as other co-constituting forms of violence like genocide.
To do this, a framework was presented which recognises the importance of history, transnational relationality, and ultimately complexity. This is for rethinking IR such that beings understood as related, privileges no single being as central, but recognises the ways in which they all constitute each other. Specifically Said’s Orientalism was discussed for the ways in which it helps think critically about the key dualism underlying the relationship between the “self” and “other”. This is whether as Western bodies and Eastern bodies, or as humans and the environment. Furthermore, Grove’s forms of life understanding provided a critical means by which to contend with this. This highlighted the pervasive project of violence, ordering, and war, underlying a Eurocentric destruction of the environment as a Eurocene. At the same time, understanding this coloniality in its complexity, where multiple appendages constitute the world and coloniality itself, can help challenge coloniality by understanding the world itself. This may yield promise for resistance, thinking about crisis and apocalypse outside of Eurocene or IR limits, and contributing to an ethical and caring understanding of the world, and nature as a complex ecology itself. Finally, this framework considered how both time and the position of the author should be recognised such that the coloniality of time as linear could be avoided to highlight multiple relations between multiple objects across time. Furthermore, this could recognise that coloniality necessarily attempts to pose as universally applicable objective knowledge. Deconstructing this means critically recognising that even studies such as this are not universally valid, and need to be complicated by reciprocal contributions to collective knowledge. This necessarily includes those most central to the violence being perpetrated – in the case study, the environment and Palestinians.
This framework was used to explore a background on Gaza which contended with broader Palestinian history and its relation to Zionism as a manifestation of coloniality and the Eurocene savage ecology. Vitally, this discussed the complex origins of Zionism in adopting the coloniality of other Eurocene appendages such as anti-Semitism and Nazism. This uses colonial strategies such as advancing universal truths, constructing certain historical narratives, occluding other complex histories, seeing people in hierarchies, and dualistically seeing the environment as an object for its productive value. At the same time, it adopted the same dehumanisation used by Nazism, which as a colonial strategy, identifies humans with non-humans to justify their eradication.
In discussing Palestinian history, this coloniality was recognised in the ways in which it attempts to shape how Palestine is seen, but how specific evidence defies this. This was discussed in terms of the complex Palestinian identity defying Zionist views of a homogenous group of backward people. Further discussed were the manifold societal developments in Palestine which counter a view of Palestine as empty and barren. Additionally discussed are the complex relations to the environment in Palestine which reveal that humans were a central part of nature, lived alongside the environment, and constructed meanings of Palestine through plants such as cacti, orange groves, olive trees, and poppy flowers. Finally, a discussion of recent political events in Palestine was presented to show how Zionism at work in terms of this history has served to displace people, sever their relationships to the land, and ground itself in a Eurocene discourse. This discourse emphasises the moral contributions of Israel and the immoral, even sub-human, place of Palestinians as people written out of their own history and seen even in their resistance as terrorists and human animals. Consequently, Palestinian identity is complex and consists of shifting identities, successes and failures, and transnational resistance. This can only fully be appreciated outside of linear time and space defined by borders. Thinking beyond this, for understanding Palestine as a complex ecology, and for advancing the collective right to return for Palestinians becomes possible by reciprocally contributing to a collective understanding. This centres the presence of Palestinians and does not parade any one knowledge or thinker as universally valid. This study has aimed to do this by drawing on Palestinian voices, amongst them Khalidi, Said, and Nijim, to grow an understanding of Palestine.
In understanding this complex constitution of Palestine’s nature, in which the people and environment are relationally present, the study then analyses how the humanitarian impact of the war in Gaza, perhaps as an ongoing war of coloniality before October 7, 2023, could be understood alongside the impact on the environment. This was conducted as a mixed-method study of various elements such as water, solid waste and infrastructure, energy, the marine environment, the terrestrial environment, and air. Quantitative methods were able to analyse the impact of war on fires appearing in Gaza as well as precisely measuring the loss of vegetation as of October 2024. This was supplemented by qualitative data, obtained largely from the UNEP preliminary assessment of the same category. It was found that ecocide is occurring in Gaza both as the environment becomes the direct target to kill people and sever their relations to the land, or as the indirect impact as a result of deaths and displacement. For instance, the destruction of WASH infrastructure contributes to waste polluting the environment and increases the reliance of people on increasingly precarious natural resources such as groundwater. Moreover, farmland is directly targeted, as evidenced by the analysis of vegetation loss, while animals suffer directly from bombardment, or indirectly from the blockade and displacement. At the same time, there are impacts of war which are yet unascertainable. This includes precisely what is in the weapons used by Israel and how they may impact the soil and water. It also includes how the air is being affected by bombardment, proliferation of toxic fumes from explosions, or reliance of Palestinians on burning solid waste and plants for heat.
In the subsequent analysis of how genocide is also being perpetrated alongside ecocide, it was seen how a legal analysis of the situation since October 7 identifies genocide as occurring. This is through Israel’s larger ideological project, their dehumanisation of people in Gaza, and their intrusions to not only sever all forms of life and prevent its reconstitution, but to replace it with colonial settlement. More than this, however, if genocide is seen as a structure, then the dehumanisation and targeting of Palestinians across time and space sees genocide occurring for far longer. This includes increasing their technological capabilities and surveillance of Palestinians, the aims to sever Palestinian identity and their relationship to the land, and killing children. In addition, this may also be a part of a strategy by which Palestinians become so dehumanised that even death is denied by aiming to induce as much suffering as possible. This is so that their resistance is diminished and their suffering contributes to an economic cycle by which value is derived from providing them with aid, bombarding them, and reconstructing Gaza in cycles. From this view, life is a shifting determination in Palestine as Palestinians are increasingly seen as less than human so that they may be eradicated or so that value can be extracted from their suffering. This is predicated on colonial views of hierarchies of life and humans. Ecocide necessarily occurs alongside this once slow and now rapidly accelerating genocide because the environment similarly becomes a direct target or collateral damage in killing any life form seen as less than human in Gaza, or attempting to extract value from it. Coloniality is at work here. The appendages of ecocide and genocide advance a project of ordering Gaza in the image of the West, target the complexity of life and being which defies this, and sees the environment and people as an “other”. These “others” are denied the ability to speak, denied their ability to be seen as human, and dualistically seen as objects to be master over, to extract value from, or to kill.
Returning to the questions posed in the introduction, there is undeniably a link between genocide in Gaza and the climate crisis. They have both been structured by the same coloniality which has enabled a Eurocene form of life ordering the world. Furthermore, they do indeed constitute each other, as appendages of this violent form of life. Exploring the case study of Gaza has shown how the impact of war on the environment in Gaza is an ecocide which constitutes genocide and is constituted by it. This same ecocide, as a microcosm of the larger war on nature which has caused climate change, reinforces genocide by targeting the land to sever living of life forms. This is furthered with the environment becoming collateral damage in the targeting of life forms marked by genocide and the displacement they face. Hence, these crises are not only shaped by the same structure, but reinforce each other. It follows then that attempting to grapple with the structure causing them may yield promise for dismantling that structure and addressing these crises. For this, rethinking IR even further is needed – a project that can never be complete, but only grow through reciprocal contributions to collective and diverse understandings. Some possibilities for this are now mentioned.
Possibilities
This study has attempted to think with the environment and people together, privileging the presence of both. There is another thinking between the link between the processes of ecocide and genocide which is worth discussing – the increase in communicable diseases. As of the UNEP report’s release, there were 179 000 cases of acute respiratory infection, 136 400 cases of diarrhoea among children under five (or 25 times more than before the conflict), 55 400 cases of scabies and lice, and 4 600 cases of jaundice (UNEP 2024a, 18). In addition, there has been the resurgence of polio in Gaza (Albanese 2024, 8). As of 8 October 2024, 75% of the population of Gaza, or 1.7 million people, were infected with contagious diseases (Chughtai and Okur 2024). These are all signs of disruptions to WASH infrastructure such as destruction of wastewater treatment plants or disruptions to solid waste removal, or the severance of water supply, which also have serious impacts on the environment. This example is noticeable, and mentioned in conclusion, because it represents an interplay of relations between people and the environment at multiple levels of space and time. The same violence which has an impact on the environment (targeting of WASH facilities), has an impact on people. However, this is aiding the thriving of disease-causing life such as infectious bacteria or lice. It may be possible that these same conditions could be impacting plants or animals. In an area of confinement, with so many people suffering from diseases, it may be worrying that this may also aid later arguments which clinically dehumanise Palestinians. This is much as Jews were dehumanised by being portrayed as diseased (Raffles 2010). Moreover, the impacts of these diseases may result in suffering, trauma, and deformities which will have impacts in the future, even after a ceasefire, representing a feature across time. Furthermore, what is not recognised by coloniality is that even insects, or microorganisms, are deeply present in the world, forming an integral part in shaping it (Raffles 2010, 3). When thinking about the environment in terms of all its complexity, perhaps the life forms which can be seen are facing ecocide and genocide but those which are not seen are thriving. Thinking with an insect or a microorganism thus reveals added layers of complexity which assist in grappling more deeply with meanings of life and the multiple spaces and temporalities of existence. It also grapples with the coloniality which, in deeming these life forms undesirable, perpetrates suffering and sickness, and deems their carriers worthy of extermination.
Thinking with animals may also be an expansive exercise. While there may be still the need to develop avenues by which to think with animals in Gaza as of October 7, 2023, there have been attempts before. Salih (2014) discusses how animals in zoos in Gaza were seen by the world following Israel’s blockade and the various instances of bombardment of Gaza. Zoo animals like lions were seen by Western media sympathetically, and indeed in ways which highlighted their suffering at being starved or killed (Salih 2014, 303). However, thinking with how these animals were seen suggests that they were not pitied because of a genuine sense of care (Salih 2014, 303). Instead, they were viewed as a passing and apolitical spectacle, helping their viewers in avoiding a stance on Gaza’s situation – taking neither the side of Israel or Palestine (Salih 2014, 308). Alternatively, the starvation of the animals in zoos become media spectacles of Israeli occupation though this does not lead to deeper thought of the animals as objects being confined (Salih 2014, 307). These spectacles even become habits of people – unflinchingly viewing suffering (Salih 2014, 304). This argument also suggests a consideration of public zoos emerging at the same time as imperialism and the dualistic view of nature and animals as objects (Salid 2014, 305-306). In this, animals could be domesticated and viewed as entertainment by those with sufficient wealth and leisure (Salih 2014, 305-306). As a provocation, what does this mean for the way blockaded Palestinians in Gaza are viewed? Is their suffering providing pleasure for viewers around the world who may view it as a passing distraction from their leisurely lives? And, does this further reify humans from nature?
Alternatively, the suffering of animals may inspire “humanitarian” action, such as in the case of an Israeli welfare organisation which offered to move animals to foster homes Israel (Salih 2014, 305). In the vein of colonial humanitarianism, these miss the obvious irony of saving animals by moving them to Israel where it is safer, but condemning Palestinians in Gaza to remain. This is especially as animals in zoos in Gaza represent the same confinement faced by Palestinians in Gaza, who, in watching these animals, are watching themselves (Salih 2014, 306). However, this is indeed missed by most viewers. Indeed, watching suffering provides a level of comfort with the uncomfortable which allows people to comprehend the suffering without fully grasping the enormity and complexity of suffering (Salih 2014, 309). This real suffering, which is not shown by images of suffering animals, are the systemic issues enabling the suffering of the many life forms in Gaza (Salih 2014, 312). In the same way, the reports of deaths in Gaza enables the occlusion of the injured and their ongoing experience of war, as Puar (2015) highlights. And, watching animals, Salih (2014, 310) contends, allows viewers to ignore the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed, rather than initiating compassion, spectacles of zoos and their animals corrupts compassion (Salih 2014, 312). Thinking with animals in this way enables an interrogation of compassion and sympathy through the media, asking whether the compassion genuinely contends with the complexity of suffering. In this case, it is suffering perpetrated by a Eurocene order with its policies of objectification and enclosure. Furthermore, it contends with whether this media provides just enough for people to believe that they care enough to turn away, thus occluding suffering and diminishing real care.
This is by no means the extent of thinking beyond IR. Swart (2010) considers how horses were featured in the South African War between 1899-1902. This is the same war which Thakur and Vale identify as a key moment in the making of IR as it spurred new forms of modern coloniality. This point suggests that thinking from different subjects about the same event may yield different insights. Indeed, in thinking about the suffering faced by horses during the war, Swart (2010, 349) discusses how about 330 000, or 66% of all horses in the war, died. Because horses were needed in so many numbers, they were brought in from all over the British Empire, representing an effort that drew on transnational imperialism to maintain imperialism (Swart 2010, 351). This meant that they were shipped to South Africa in terrible conditions and their multinational characters and needs could not fully be appreciated by their riders, contributing even more to their loss (Swart 2010, 351-353). Thinking with the horse enables thinking of multinational imperial networks such as the provision of weapons to Israel by the United States at present (Neimark et al. 2024). It can also appreciate that universality is not suitable for diverse life forms, even horses. With horses also suffering from disease due to overcrowding while being shipped or poor nutrition in a new country, many died from illness, though local knowledge was able to help Boer commandoes treat their horses better (Swart 2010, 354). Again, this represents the effectiveness of local knowledge over universal knowledge.
Interestingly, the strong bond between horse and rider would also yield insights into varied dynamics. The suffering of horses, like the suffering of zoo animals in Gaza, was noted with great concern by many, amongst them the British (Swart 2010, 356). It may be worth considering why this was so. Indeed, they came to be described as having agency and personality – uncharacteristic ways of describing nature, the environment or wild animals in general – and were even euthanised if they were ill (Swart 2010, 357, 360). While other animals were not afforded this respect, sometimes neither were other humans. For instance, parties on either side of the war did not see the other side as even deserving of riding horses, criticising their riding abilities, or they were accused of eating horses – something tantamount to cannibalism (Swart 2010, 360-361). At other times however, horses were seen as property, not differently to useful weapons which were valued parts of the war machine (Swart 2010, 360). And, while their suffering during the war and death in battle led to commissions of enquiry, public outcry, and even memorials to the dead, black South Africans fighting in these wars were not afforded the same respect (Swart 2010).
Thinking with these horses sees shifting views of animals to suit colonial interests. At times, they were deploringly treated and indiscriminately shipped in to aid the war machine. At other times they were afforded a great respect though still used for their value either during the war or for discrediting the other side. Somehow, these animals, like zoo animals in Gaza, were seen as more human by Europeans than the native people, with their deaths even deserving commemoration. This suggests that life forms, themselves a part of nature, may occupy shifting roles between subjecthood and objecthood, as horses have and even as humans have. In addition, thinking with horses enables an appreciation of the complex entanglements, like transnational networks of imperialism, which feature in events which may look as simple as two sides.
Next steps
As a means of closing, this study has critiqued IR for the ways in which its coloniality inhibits expansive understandings of the environment, and specific relations such as the impact of war on the environment. It has presented a framework for rethinking IR which flows from critical reckonings of colonial modes such as orientalism, to a view of nature itself as fluid, beyond rigid confines of space and time, and constituted by the interdependencies of beings such as humans and the environment. This was applied in the context of Gaza to see how its complex history sees it become the target of the co-constituting colonial appendages of ecocide and genocide. Finally, opportunities for thinking further were discussed, such as thinking with insects or thinking with animals.
In the spirit of thinking further, several considerations are worth contemplating. The relational framework discussed here may be critiqued for being too abstract and with no room for practical effects in policy or resistance. While it is true that relational thinking is often abstract, its application on a case study, as demonstrated in this study, is able to provide the evidence of crimes such as ecocide and genocide, and accurately delineate responsibility, to bolster resistance and policy changes. It is the case that more specific work could be done to contribute to resistance and policy. However, this study does not suggest that more work should be precluded. Instead, it encourages further study in a relational way to highlight the specific manifestations of coloniality so that possibilities of policy change and resistance may be aided.
This possibility is worth contemplating in terms of another potential critique that this study focused unduly on Gaza, when other cases of conflict, such as that in Ukraine, may reveal similar workings of coloniality. This indeed represents an area where the further validation of a relational framework may be achieved, aiding the growth of resistance and policy targeting instances of colonial violence. While this study may have benefited from these omitted considerations, it was necessary to give Palestine a treating which adequately addressed its complex history, identity, and political situation. This treatment would be no less pertinent for other cases of colonial violence and war. Again, this highlights the need for such a framework to inform further decolonial research agendas which embraces that research and its role in delivering actionable change is never complete. Indeed, to suggest that this framework or piece of research is the complete answer to colonial violence would be to replicate the epistemic methods of coloniality discussed earlier.
Even in the case study of Gaza, dealt with here, this research cannot be complete. For instance, the evidence discussed above is either preliminary or constantly changing. The preliminary environmental damage assessments are based on efforts to analyse impacts on the environment when this exercise is complicated by data collection in a warzone. Similarly, the fatalities and casualties discussed are constantly changing. In recognising that periodisation of war precludes an appreciation of its true cost, it is thus necessary to engage with such incomplete sources to provide a dynamic account of war and its operation. If genocide is occurring, as is contended here, it would be irresponsible to only account for it once it has been achieved. Data and evidence should thus never claim to be complete accounts of changing situations but represent collaborative efforts at research which brings to light instances of colonial violence and bolsters the resistance to that.
Finally, these contentions may be critiqued for representing advocacy. While it is the case that the findings of this study may be closely aligned with the views of groups advocating for Palestinian freedom, this does not invalidate its contribution even within academia. It is for this reason that this study has grounded its assertions not only in fact, with a rigorous mixed-method methodology, but in discussion of the key thoughts by prominent scholars in IR and beyond. What has been attempted as an attention to rigour bolsters that this study may be considered valid analysis in research. Still, it is worth contemplating that colonial epistemology is precisely premised on what is deemed to be valid, objective, and academically valuable. Thus, in the critical tradition of scholars such as Said, Mignolo, Grosfoguel, and others, it is important to reflect on a researcher and study’s place in colonial epistemology. By attempting to do this, albeit challenging traditional IR, this study may have affinities with advocacy, but is not precluded from being a valid analysis supported by evidence, rigorous methods and critical discussion.
These questions are pertinent when considering any study and its contribution to knowledge. To go further, however, the insights from this study are not exhaustive, and a universal understanding of the world and its complexity can never be reached. Only in recognising many contributions to a collective understanding of the world’s complexity can it be better understood. This is what rethinking IR looks like – thinking with insects, with animals, with the subaltern, with non-linearity, with objects like weapons, with the living dead, with plants like the orange or olive trees. Perhaps the most important question going forth is who does this thinking. There can be no right or wrong knowledge producer for this if it is at once seen that all knowledge producers have a position informing their view and that any knowledge they produce can never be held to be a universal truth. In addition, those marginalised by coloniality need to have their own voice in understanding their reality. Contending with this is a view that many knowledge producers can act reciprocally to begin to challenge coloniality and clear the way for the construction of a collective body of alternatives. This study has aimed to make one such contribution in understanding the impact of war on the environment and the co-constitution of ecocide and genocide in Gaza.
This represents the work from my Master’s research, which can be found in full here.