Socio-ecological Transformation Conflicts
Conflicts over climate and energy policy, security and geopolitical dimensions of global decarbonization, or human and environmental rights violations in global value chains: The current socio-ecological transformation is causing new and exacerbating existing socio-political conflicts that will characterize the 21st century.
These are conflicts that take place on very different political fields and levels – local, national, regional, global and planetary – but which are similar in their fundamental problems. This link between the global and local levels of conflict is illustrated, for example, by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine with its destruction of local ecosystems and the resulting distribution conflicts in global supply chains (for example in the area of food) as well as in German energy policy. This example of multiple interlinked lines of conflict emphasizes the difficulty of predicting socio-ecological transformation conflicts as well as the importance of further research into them.
This raises classic questions of peace and conflict research, such as power structures and hierarchies (e.g. between actors in the Global North/South), violent and peaceful conflict resolution, political, economic, and social inequality, diplomacy, NGOs and social movements, or the role of law and international institutions.
The new working group on socio-ecological transformation conflicts, which introduces some of its fields of research in this blog series, brings together existing expertise on these conflicts at PRIF.
