This chapter explores how traffickers exploit economic pressure, political instability, and social and cultural factors present during disasters, linking said activities to ecoviolence. While disasters thrust victims into a state of heightened vulnerability, Federal, State, and local emergency management agencies should update their preparedness, response, and recovery programs to include preventative measures to mitigate foreseeable secondary victimization. While the research field focusing on the nexus between natural disasters and the trafficking of persons is in a nascent stage, experts are starting to examine the value of well-trained responders who play in the mosaic of a “whole-of-government” counter-trafficking response plan. This chapter will conclude with a planned emergency management response to climate change that results in more extreme events across the globe.

Building on a recent publication (Stoett & Omrow, 2021) this edited volume is intended primarily as a contribution to the evolving field that we will refer to as ecoviolence studies. The field covers a wide variety of themes, challenges, questions, issues, policy designs, and theoretical implications. While the term ecoviolence had gained some popularity in a limited fashion in the 1980s and 1990s, referring primarily to violence that erupts over conflicts related to natural resources – in particular, access to resources contested along sectarian grounds – we use it in much broader fashion and argue that its resurgence as a field of social science is as timely as it is unfortunate. The threats to planetary health that animate activists and state diplomats alike today – the interconnected climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises, amongst other manifestations of modern capitalism and colonial histories as well as contemporary paths to violence – are violent affairs.

This chapter delves into the intricate saga of Iran – a Middle Eastern country – under US economic and financial sanctions initiated in 1979 and periodically renewed due to Iran’s nuclear aspirations. The chapter traces historical events from the Tehran Hostage Crisis to the post-Khomeini era, shaping US–Iran dynamics across administrations. It covers the JCPOA of 2015, the Trump Administration’s withdrawal, and re-imposition of sanctions. The legal dimensions of unilateral and multilateral sanctions are explored, presenting diverse perspectives on their complexities within international law. Examining repercussions, the chapter scrutinizes their effects on Iran’s economy and populace under economic blockade over the decades.

This chapter begins with the sombre matter of world destruction. Almost by definition, the fully artificial worlds described in this book are ontologically fragile. They can be pulled apart or undone, as easily or more easily than they were put together. Whether they are replaced by a natural world of power politics involving different ethnic groups or whether no more than chaos and disorder can be expected in such a scenario is no doubt an important question, but it does not affect the real possibility of world destruction. This chapter argues for an alternative to hegemonic wars and the threat of nuclear annihilation, an alternative to be sought in the dynamics of world building. Today competition between the superpowers is organised around the capacity to build new technological worlds; those unable to compete must eventually become elements in a world built by others. The emergence of these artificial worlds opens up possibilities for state actors to change the global power distribution without the risks arising from direct action against their rivals. In Ukraine, while Russia seems determined to bring the current world order tumbling down, it also has to face the full brunt of that world order’s power in a succession of system wars ranging from a new form of technological warfare to the uses and abuses of the global energy, financial and trade systems.

In Chapter 10, we advance concrete ideas that peace and social activists are invited to adopt when interested in using personal narratives of genocide and/or intractable war in intergroup processes of sustainable peacebuilding and reconciliation. Our suggestions draw on conceptualizations discussed in the book, as well as recommendations derived from previous on-the-ground experiences in such contexts. Our proposals focus on the following four arenas: (1) intergroup methods for moving from narratives of distancing to narratives that encourage peacebuilding; (2) ways to deal with social forgetting and “dangerous memories” of genocide and intractable war in peacebuilding efforts; (3) how to deal with fake news, denial of atrocities, and distancing narratives in reconciliation endeavors; and (4) concrete suggestions for pursuing peace with personal narratives of genocide and war when the macro-social level is sabotaging peace efforts.