Veranstaltungsankündigung: "War and Geos: The Ecological Aftermaths and Beforemaths of the War on Gaza"

War and Geos: The Ecological Aftermaths and Beforemaths of the War on Gaza

This talk considers war-earth relations by journeying from the aftermaths of war – bombed-out landscapes, depleted ecosystems, and public health crises – to the “beforemaths”, spaces that are under-studied yet instrumental in the preparatory phases of war. In Gaza, military operations carried out by Israel have leave harmful residues in the landscape, typically the heavy metals of munitions that seep and leach in the earth. Those metals are, of course, extracted from the earth, often at similar cost to ecological and human health. For instance, weapons companies source raw materials from the DRC and Rwanda where mining communities are subject to similar patterns of long-term harm as those in Gaza. This is a beforemath of war, a site of military violence that reveals a doubly destructive relation between war and earth where practices of extracting and depositing minerals distribute widespread violence across large tracts of the planet.

Mark Griffiths is Reader in Political Geography in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University (UK). Dr Griffiths is PI on the 5-year (2023-2028) UKRI Horizon Europe-funded project “War and Geos: the environmental legacies of militarism”.