Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Weaponizing nature

Electronic data

  • weaponizing nature minor revision

    Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Political Geography. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Political Geography, 60, 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.03.007

    Accepted author manuscript, 411 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Weaponizing nature: the geopolitical ecology of the US Navy’s biofuel program

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/09/2017
<mark>Journal</mark>Political Geography
Volume60
Number of pages10
Pages (from-to)13-22
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date31/03/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Abstract The United States military is treating climate change as a crucial factor in its preparation for future conflicts. This concern manifests not only in strategic planning and forward-looking documents, but also in building infrastructural capacity and material provision. Yet, the impetus to ‘green’ the military goes beyond the deployment of existing technologies. We examine several facets of the military's role as an environmental actor, particularly through its promotion of the US Navy's ‘Great Green Fleet’ (GGF), which actively supports the development of advanced biofuels by subsidizing their development and facilitating wider marketization. The GGF promises to reduce military reliance on conventional fossil fuels and reconfigure its energy sourcing, thus reducing dependence on imported hydrocarbons; this is with an eye towards ultimately severing the logistical relationship between existing energy infrastructures and the spaces of military intervention. Taking an integrated lens of political ecology and geopolitics - ‘geopolitical ecology’ - we seek to provide an understanding of the production of weaponized nature. We demonstrate that the US military's discursive use of climate change to justify the provision of new military hardware and advanced biofuels promotes a vision of resource conflicts to support the development of technologies to overcome the constraints to delivery of fuel to emergent front lines. We argue that while this may appear to be militarized greenwashing, it signals a shift in the logics and practices of fuel sourcing driven by a dystopian vision of climate change, which the US military played a significant role in creating.

Bibliographic note

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Political Geography. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Political Geography, 60, 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.03.007