2023: Krieg und Klima. Wenn die Natur zum Kriegsopfer wird
Curator: Monika Halkort
Social scientist and journalist; Curator 2023
War and Climate is a new series of talks that uses current conflicts to illustrate the long-term environmental and climate consequences of armed conflicts. Wars in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Sudan, among others, have turned entire swaths of land, rivers and coastlines into toxic dumps where war debris mixes dangerously with toxic chemicals, oil spills and radioactive weapons material. Not only do they threaten the groundwater and food supplies of affected populations, but largely unchecked, they drive up CO2 emissions while destroying vital natural resources to mitigate them.
The lasting risks to the environment, climate and the livelihoods of societies, are by no means an unavoidable concomitant of military attacks, but part of the operational logic of modern weapons systems and war strategies.
How must climate policy be rethought and implemented in light of this intertwining of technology and geopolitical as well as ecological crises? And what are the consequences for civil resistance, the definition of war crimes, and questions of historical justice?