Description
Russia’s war in Ukraine has profound consequences for more-than-human life and natural environments. War injury and contamination of soil, air, waterways, flora and fauna, alongside catastrophic attacks on infrastructures that support more-than-human life, ground compelling accusations of ecocide as a weapon of war against Ukraine. However, overly deterministic definitions of ecocide emphasize ultimate destruction, erasing the persistent relations among human and non-human animals, and ecologies, and occluding on-the-ground efforts to secure them. This presentation draws on wider research conducted with people displaced from Ukraine to explore how mutual existence with, and care for, more-than-human life can decentre and complicate anthropocentric stories of military violence and devastation. Informed by intersectional feminist thinking, we present narratives that demonstrate an alter-geopolitical approach to securitising more-than-human bodies and habitats during wartime. We argue that this renders more complex existing approaches to wartime ecological vulnerabilities and uncertainties and outlines more nuanced responses to care and concern for more-than-human life affected by war.
