In the Conclusion, I offer some remarks about the relation between the argument I developed over the course of the book, and whether applying it to our structurally unjust real world leaves the argument vulnerable to a number of criticisms. I discuss two issues in more detail: first, whether the unequal distribution of international crime prosecutions taints the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and whether the ICC does in fact deter crimes. Both issues are serious, but ultimately, I conclude that they do not weaken my argument. I end the book by highlighting just how radically the project of international criminal justice departs from earlier strategies for dealing with war and human rights violations.

Technology will play a role in addressing environmental violence. Some common technological aims include: more equitable access to cleaner and safer industrial techniques; wider deployment of pollution safeguards; and the transition of energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels and toward batteries and renewables. Of course, alternative technologies do not address many of the structural and cultural factors involved in generating environmental violence. Shifting from one mechanism to another, or one material to another, entails a shift in economic context, but guarantees nothing about whether this new context will be more equitable, or even ecologically responsible. We propose that, in order for technology deployment to be truly appropriate to the task of reducing environmental violence, economic affluence must be an equally primary factor of concern. In this article, we introduce the “affluence–technology connection” and provide several different contexts and perspectives to support the concept. These include appropriate technology efforts in Ladakh, India, the carbon footprint of alternative transportation technologies, and the true impact of service sector versus industrial sector activities. These lead us to a fairly simple conclusion: Achieving a lower-violence future means seeking appropriate affluence alongside appropriate and sustainable technologies.

Environmental violence is a cycle that preserves global power through the unequal distribution of pollutants while affecting society's most vulnerable ecosystems and populations. This concept poses a series of associations and interdependencies between our economic systems, our power structures, and our relation to nature. However, culture could interact with environmental violence beyond the supplementary role it has assigned in the model of environmental violence following Galtung's typology. Culture has autonomy from the economic practices that pollute the environment and its inhabitants. Under certain conditions, specific praxis and beliefs could dismantle the binary between the classical Marxist concepts of base and superstructure on which the relation between cultural violence and environmental violence, as defined, seems to depend. Therefore, there is a need to reconsider how culture, and our ways of understanding it, are part of the cycle in which our ways of production and consumption are incompatible with the stability of the environment and society. This chapter traces how far culture can, in its autonomy, reproduce the practices associated with environmental violence by analyzing a canonical Latin American poetic discourse: the poem Alturas de Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda.

How does environmental displacement fuel violent conflict? Worldwide environmental violence uproots more people every year than war, and the alarming acceleration of environmental displacement has generated significant speculation about its security consequences. This chapter undertakes a review of the literature linking environmental migration and violent conflict to: (1) map the complex causal pathways linking environmental migration to the onset and dynamics of political violence; (2) evaluate the “state of the evidence” or available empirical support underlying claims of an environment-migration-conflict link; and (3) identify gaps in existing literature. By systematizing existing research, this chapter seeks to clarify the state of knowledge on the environment-migration-conflict nexus, identify points of consensus and debate, and chart a path forward for future research. The review finds that while existing research suggests environmental displacement fuels civil war and communal conflict, there is a dearth of research addressing how environmental migrants may experience violence at the hands of the state. In addition, more comparative research is needed to gain deeper insights into the conditions under which environmental displacement impacts political violence.

This chapter engages with the concept of environmental violence to explore how art has witnessed and responded to human-produced pollution and its associated violence on human health and well-being. In this application of the environmental violence framing, this chapter seeks to deepen our understanding of the role of art in drawing our attention to the direct and indirect risks associated with anthropogenic pollution, ecological impacts, and climate change.