Environmental Violence
In the Earth System and the Human Niche

The book develops the concept of environmental violence as a potent tool to identify, track, reduce environmental threats to humanity.

Richard A. Marcantonio (Author)

9781009170796, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 July 2022

350 pages
25 x 17.4 x 2 cm, 0.62 kg

'Deftly contrasting direct violence - usually clear and straightforward in action - with environmental violence - that often lacks a direct perpetrator-victim link - Marcantonio takes the reader on an informative and meaningful journey of discovery. Navigating the social, ecological, and structural impacts and processes of anthropogenic ecosystems and their landscapes, and legacies, of environmental harm, Marcantonio demonstrates how, and why, the perturbations caused by structural and institutional inequities are central in the human capacities to live, resist, and flourish in the 21st century. Marcantonio's model acts to identify key mechanisms of crisis and highlight particularly crucial points of disturbance by integrating core anthropological and peace studies methodologies with methods from across the environmental sciences. This book presents a holistic social and environmental understanding of contemporary crises facing the Earth System and the Human Niche.' Agustín Fuentes, Princeton University

The concept of environmental violence (EV) explains the harm that humanity is inflicting upon itself through our pollution emissions. This book argues that EV is present, active, and expanding at alarming rates in the contemporary human niche and in the Earth system. It explains how EV is produced and facilitated by the same inequalities that it creates and reinforces, and suggests that the causes can be attributed to a relatively small portion of the human population and to a fairly circumscribed set of behaviours. While the causes of EV are complex, the author makes this complexity manageable to ensure interventions are more readily discernible. The EV-model developed is both a theoretical concept and an analytical tool, substantiated with rigorous social and environmental scientific evidence, and designed with the intention to help disrupt the cycle of violence with effective policies and real change.

Acknowledgements
Preface
1. Approaching environmental violence
2. Environmental violence defined
3. Environmental violence across the global ecosystem and in the contemporary human niche
4. The flow of environmental violence on the Pampana River, Sierra Leone: Mining and toxic pollution
5. Environmental violence in everyday island life: Non-toxic pollution and extreme weather
6. Reflections, findings, and future applications of the environmental violence framework
7. Ethics, policy, and trajectories of environmental violence
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Climate change [RNPG], Pollution & threats to the environment [RNP], International relations [JPS]