Climate Change and Peacemaking Criminology: Ecophilosophy, Peace and Security in the ?War on Climate Change?

Some commentators have recently sought to cast climate change as primarily an issue of national security, thereby necessitating a "war on climate change." In this article, we argue that the adoption of a securitizing and war-making approach is problematic in that it proposes solutions that parallel the very human actions that contribute to climate change. Because the securitizing responses to the problem of climate change only further the hierarchical domination that contributes to the problem, we contend that we must approach climate change from a critical perspective informed by peacemaking and liberation rather than war-making. Given the harms attendant to war, neoliberal capitalism, security and domination, we maintain that solutions to climate change that rely on making war, securitizing and commoditizing are likely to only exacerbate and extend the negative impacts of anthropogenic climate change. As such, this article proposes that peacemaking and liberation be integrated into human-environment interaction(s) by calling for the rejection of a "war on climate change" and by suggesting what a "peace treaty with the earth" would look like.