Description
The literature on peace, climate, and conflict primarily focuses on investigating the relationship between climate factors and the risk of conflict, particularly events that undermine negative peace. Despite the importance of studying possible indirect causal links to the risk of direct violence, the impact on other forms of violence has been little explored. Therefore, we ask: how do climate factors, in the context of coloniality, affect the production of violence? Employing a security lens from the perspective of Latin America, this theoretical essay argues that climatic factors also affect positive peace by exacerbating the risks of structural violence. As a structuring element of international politics, coloniality further exacerbates the risks of structural violence in the face of climate change, generating unequal impacts on different social groups. By identifying the dimensions of structural violence and its relationship to climate vulnerability, this study aims to demonstrate that coloniality structures both the production of structural violence and climate vulnerability. As a contribution, we present a theoretical-analytical model that enables a deeper understanding of the factors linking climate change and structural violence, capable of capturing the historical and contextual nuances underlying this process, given the structuring nature of coloniality in Latin America.