Date of Award

2024

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Environmental Science

First Advisor

Julia Gibson, PhD

Second Advisor

Emily Sample, PhD

Abstract

Climate change is having profound impacts on communities around the world. In some cases, and with time, more and more, the impacts of climate change are happening on a level that constitutes genocide. Raphaël Lemkin’s and Claudia Card’s definitions of genocide are most applicable to climate change as they have broader understandings of victim groups and social death, and they recognize that inaction to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm constitutes genocidal intent. The UN’s more rigid definition does, to a lesser extent, also apply to climate change. Across the three definitions examined here, the argument of climate change as genocide is most pronounced when looking at these issues using frameworks of feminist theory, Indigenous thought, and queer theory. These frameworks root the arguments in reality just as much as in theory and create space for othering, necropolitics, sovereignty, and ecocide to become part of the conversation. Power structures are key to both climate change and genocide; they muddy waters and create feedback loops that perpetuate status quos and impede concrete solutions. Ecocide is relevant to climate change both as a means of genocide and as its own concept, wherein the environment itself is victim of harm. Climate change and genocide are considered as features of the systems we live under, rather than bugs in the system. This thesis is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu).

Comments

Owen George is a 2024 graduate of the M.S. Program in Environmental Studies and Sustainability at Antioch University, New England.

Thesis Committee:

Julia Gibson, PhD, Chairperson

Emily Sample, PhD

ORCID No.: 0009-0008-1984-8884

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