Enforcing Ecocide: Power, Policing & Planetary Militarization

Policing and ecological crises – and all the inequalities, discrimination, and violence they entail – are pressing contemporary problems. Ecological degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change threaten local communities and ecosystems, and, cumulatively, the planet as a whole. Police brutality, wars, paramilitarism, private security operations, and securitization more widely impact people – especially people of colour – and habitats. This edited collection explores their relationship, and investigates the numerous ways in which police, security, and military forces intersect with, reinforce, and facilitate ecological and climate catastrophe. Employing a case study-based approach, the book examines the relationships and entanglements between policing and ecosystems, revealing the intimate connection between political violence and ecological degradation.

Alexander Dunlap is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. His work has critically examined police-military transformations, market-based conservation, wind energy development and extractive projects more generally in both Latin America and Europe. He is the author of two books: Renewing Destruction: Wind Energy Development, Conflict and Resistance in a Latin American Context (2019, Rowman & Littlefield) and The Violent Technologies of Extraction (2020, Palgrave). 

Andrea Brock is a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, Centre for Global Political Economy and STEPS Centre at the University of Sussex. Her work examines a wide range of techniques and technologies to manage anti-extractive projects, including criminalisation and co-option of dissent and greenwashing. She is interested in political ecologies of mining, corporate power, and statism.