Cusato, E.

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International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion online publications

UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)Ecology in the war against Ukraine and beyondCusato, E.Publication date2023Document VersionFinal published versionPublished inESIL NewsletterLink to publicationCitation for published version (APA):Cusato, E. (2023). Ecology in the war against Ukraine and beyond. ESIL Newsletter,2023(Winter), [2]. https://esil-sedi.eu/esil-newsletter-winter-2023/#guest_editorialGeneral rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s)and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an opencontent license (like Creative Commons).Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, pleaselet the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the materialinaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letterto: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Youwill be contacted as soon as possible.Download date:26 Oct 2023ESIL Newsletter – Winter 2023Editors: Sandrine Maljean-Dubois (mailto:s.maljean-dubois@univ-amu.fr) (University of Aix-Marseille) and Inga Martinkute(mailto:inga.martinkute@tf.vu.lt) (Vilnius University)In this issue1. Message of the President2. Guest Editorial by Eliana Cusato: Ecology in the war against Ukraine and beyond3. Meet an ESIL member – Gergő Barna Balázs4. What’s Going On?5. ESIL Series6. ESIL Paper Series7. ESIL Lectures8. ESIL Re ections9. News from Interest Groups1. 2. Guest Editorial by Eliana Cusato: Ecology in the war against Ukraineand beyond(https://www.uva.nl/en/pro le/c/u/e.t.cusato/e.t.cusato.html)Eliana Cusato (https://www.uva.nl/en/pro le/c/u/e.t.cusato/e.t.cusato.html)As the war against Ukraine drags on, the environment is characterized as another ‘casualty’. First assessments point to signi cant ecological impacts thatcould leave the country and region with a toxic legacy for generations. But nature is more than a ‘silent victim’ of military con icts, something to be protectedand cherished. The war in Ukraine has also been fought with energy policies, including the EU import prohibition on Russian oil and the RussianLog in (https://apps.eui.eu/ePayments/esil_default/customer/account/logiJoin/Renew (https://esil-sedi.eu/individual-members/) (https://twitter.com/esil_sedi)  (https://www.youtube.com/user/ESILchannel) (https://www.linkedin.com/in/esil/) (https://www.facebook.com/European-Society-of-International-Law-102087955491722)English (https://esil-sedi.eu/esil-newsletter-winter-2023/)Français (https://esil-sedi.eu/fr/newsletter-de-la-sedi-hiver-2023/)Privacy & Cookies Policy‘weaponization’ of gas supplies. Calls not to be complicit in ‘Putin’s war’, by consuming Russian naturalresources, have multiplied since the con ict’s outbreak. At the same time, fossil extraction has been revivedand ramped up in other regions.The war illustrates that nature, in the form of fossilized carbon resources, remains foundational to a globalextractivist economy, despite attempts to decarbonize society. Paying attention to the ecologicaldimensions of the war against Ukraine (and con icts beyond that), I suggest, o ers the opportunity toreconsider the place of the natural world within international law. How is nature framed in legal normsgoverning military con icts and the transition to peace? What could we learn about international law byexploring how it deals with the ‘ecology of war and peace’?Political scientists, ecologists, and economists have, at least since the 1980s, sought to explain the relationship between environmental ‘scarcity’ and‘abundance’, on the one side, and authoritarianism, instability, and violent con ict, on the other. Some speci c ideas have become popular in internationallaw, in uencing how the ‘ecology of war and peace’ has been discussed and addressed so far. Notably, greed theories, emphasizing the economicmotivations for starting or prolonging armed con ict, paved the way to commodity sanctions to curb trade in ‘con ict resources’ and ‘good governance’interventions in countries in the Global South. Here nature is seen primarily as a resource to be appropriated, extracted, and traded in global markets –thereby  nancing violence and insecurity.A closer look at rules governing armed con ict illustrates that such a narrow understanding of the natural world is deeply embedded in the  eld. In the lawsof war, the ‘environment’ is treated as instrumental to other, more pragmatic goals associated with warfare. Ideas of nature as public or private property, andas economic asset to be protected from the excess of war, have shaped legal practices since the modern origins of the discipline. The way in which post-WWIItribunals dealt with scorched earth practices and the resource plunder in Nazi occupied territories con rms that the main concern was to establishaccountability for conducts that, while degrading the environment, resulted in immediate harm to the enemy’s property and the economic interests of theconcerned country (its ‘economic capital’).More recently, the idea of nature as a ‘victim’ of war has also emerged. Yet, even when framed as a ‘victim’, or ‘casualty’, environmental degradation isacknowledged as a tragically unavoidable sacri ce in relation to the larger objectives of war. That is not to say that concerns about environmentalpreservation and human well-being have been ignored in legal debates and practices. On the contrary, interpretative e orts to introduce environmentalconsiderations into the laws of war have proliferated over the last decades. Still, as the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion demonstrates, balancingecological sustainability and militarism/war-making remains a di cult exercise. Warfare is the negation of sustainability and intra/inter-generational equity.While environmental law principles may mitigate the rationale underpinning the jus in bello, they cannot transform it. Even the most progressive legalarguments struggle to reconcile the justi cations for preserving nature with the destructive logic of warfare, raising the question of whether there can everbe a reconciliation between these two logics.Where does this leave us? Environmental disruptions, militarism, and rising inequalities demand scholars to ask uncomfortable questions that illuminate theassumptions entrenched in the  eld, the law’s alliance with a speci c system of values, and the role of our own discipline in restricting the possibility of moreecologically just futures.3. Meet an ESIL member – Gergő Barna Balázs(https://youtu.be/GBfnVOLceSM)You can  nd the video introducing Gergő Barna Balázs, MJur student at the University of Oxford andmember of the ESIL Early-Career Network (https://esil-sedi.eu/early-career-members/) Co-ordinatingCommittee, here (https://youtu.be/GBfnVOLceSM).4. What’s Going On?(https://www.esilaix2023.fr/)2023 ESIL Annual Conference in Aix-en-Provence – The deadline forthe Call for Papers is fast approaching… act now!Is international law fair?The 18th ESIL Annual Conference (31 August-2 September 2023) will be hosted by Aix-MarseilleUniversity in France. The Conference will be preceded by Interest Groups’ meetings to be held on 30 and31 August.The theme of the Annual Conference is ‘Is International Law Fair?’.Fairness is not a unidimensional concept. The same word may have di erent meanings or scopesdepending on what region of the world we are in. Fairness can serve to elucidate important issuespertaining to the universality of legal concepts as well as to the evolution of international law and international society. The theme of the 18th AnnualConference of the ESIL also raises questions as to the values inherent in international law. Are the norms that constitute international law always inspired byideas of justice and equity? How does one de ne justice, fairness and equity? Who has the legitimacy to assess international law’s fairness? And according towhich criteria? Is the fairness of international law to be gauged based on its objectives, its contents, its consequences or the legal process? Shouldinternational law be fair? Can it even be? How in uential are contemporary international law theories on the ‘epistemologies of the South’ (Sousa Santos)?And what lessons can be learned from past and current international crises such as the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, or inequality vis-à-vis theharmful consequences of climate change?Please visit the conference website HERE (https://www.esilaix2023.fr/).The call for papers is available HERE (https://www.esilaix2023.fr/call-for-papers). The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2023.(https://esil-sedi.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2023-ESIL-Research-Forum_Tartu_Call-for-Papers.pdf)2023 ESIL Research Forum in TartuPrivacy & Cookies Policy

Ecology in the war against Ukraine and beyond

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Ecology in the war against Ukraine and beyond

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