Feminist Climate Pacifism: an Ethico-Political Approach to Global Climate Responsibility and Reparations

In the age of Capitalocene, the climate catastrophe and militarism are fundamental causes that render the planet inhabitable for both human and more-than-human life. Despite the many ways they intersect and influence each other, the climate crisis and militarism have largely been considered separately and independently. Further, the climate disaster has overshadowed militarism as a twin cause of planetary catastrophe and human and non-human suffering. A great deal has been said about the climate crisis as a trigger of resource competition as well as of armed conflict (Miguel et al. 2004; Burke et al. 2009; Hsiang, Meng and Cane 2011; Hendrix and Salehyan 2012; Hsiang et al. 2013). However, there is no academic consensus about such a nexus (Detges 2017; Adams et al. 2018; Zhang, Pei, Fröhlich, and Ide 2019; Mach et al. 2019, 2020). Much less studied are the impacts of warfare and militarism on climate and the environment. A growing body of literature (Parkinson and Cottrell 2022) looks precisely at the militaries as the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitters and consumers of fossil fuel. For instance, the US military alone emits more CO2 than entire countries (Crawford 2019). Yet, the Tokyo protocol exempts militaries from reporting their emissions as part of their nation’s total emissions. In addition, pacifism, demilitarisation and disarmament are usually wiped out from the climate discussions. Similarly, in the last decades pacifism has been marginalised (Hutchings 2017) and “subjugated” (Jackson 2018) in International Relations and Global Politics. Pacifism has instead been largely relevant in the fields of moral philosophy and applied ethics, yet generally as a “watered down version” of the Just War Theory (Hutchings 2017). Furthermore, a feminist perspective on the numerous gendered dimensions of, and interconnections between, the climate catastrophe, militarism and pacifism is missing from analysis, policy and action alike. Feminist Climate Pacifism (FCP) aims to look at, challenge and redress this fundamental gap in climate and peace analysis, policy and action, putting feminist climate pacifism (rather than climate security) at its core. Drawing on environmental humanities, climate ethics and politics, and feminist pacifism, FCP wants to offer comprehensive, integrated and inclusive insights for gender-just and peace-sensitive analyses, policies and praxes around global climate responsibilities and reparations. In that sense, FCP is more than a framework or a methodology, it is both an ethical and a political “account and defence of absolute pacifism” (Hutchings 2017) that advocates a paradigm shift (Cohn and Duncanson 2020) if we are to imagine and bring about jut and sustainable presents and futures. Ultimately, FCP aspires to make the world we live in not simply habitable but necessarily thriving for life in all its forms. And for that, I argue together with Kimberly Hutchings (2017), war has to be understood as “an ongoing institution, practice and discursive field" and pacifism as simultaneously pure and impure, an “ethico-political practice committed to a world without war and militarism” (Hutchings 2017).