Plant-based diets are often perceived as being antithetical to Indigenous interests in what is today colonially known as Canada. This perceived antithesis hinges on veganism's rejection of the consumption of animals. This apparent antithesis, however, is a misperception that a reframing of ethical veganism can help correct. This article argues that veganism's objection to dairy should be underscored as a central concern of ethical veganism. Such emphasis not only brings into view the substantial alignment between plant-based diets and Indigenous worldviews, but also highlights the related goals of decolonization and reconciliation in Canada. Veganism, in reality, rejects a practice (dairy farming) that was constitutive of settler colonialism in North America and which still promotes colonial familial ideologies while constructing Indigenous peoples and other non-Europeans (who disproportionately cannot tolerate lactose) as abnormal. Veganism – along with vegetarianism – shares the general respect for animals and interspecies relations (along with a concomitant disavowal of human exceptionalism) that many Indigenous legal orders in Canada promote. Yet, despite this shared disavowal of a principal colonial ideology, the tight correlation between hunting and Indigeneity on the one hand, and veganism and vegetarianism and an objection to killing animals on the other, makes veganism's contributions to decolonization and reconciliation difficult to see. By framing veganism as a critique of the dairy industry, however, the associations that veganism has with decolonizing ends are not clouded by these overpowering correlations, helping to bring into view even vegetarianism's contributions toward these ends.
{"title":"Veganism, dairy, and decolonization","authors":"Maneesha Deckha","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.02.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.02.05","url":null,"abstract":"Plant-based diets are often perceived as being antithetical to Indigenous interests in what is today colonially known as Canada. This perceived antithesis hinges on veganism's rejection of the consumption of animals. This apparent antithesis, however, is a misperception that a reframing of ethical veganism can help correct. This article argues that veganism's objection to dairy should be underscored as a central concern of ethical veganism. Such emphasis not only brings into view the substantial alignment between plant-based diets and Indigenous worldviews, but also highlights the related goals of decolonization and reconciliation in Canada.\u0000\u0000Veganism, in reality, rejects a practice (dairy farming) that was constitutive of settler colonialism in North America and which still promotes colonial familial ideologies while constructing Indigenous peoples and other non-Europeans (who disproportionately cannot tolerate lactose) as abnormal. Veganism – along with vegetarianism – shares the general respect for animals and interspecies relations (along with a concomitant disavowal of human exceptionalism) that many Indigenous legal orders in Canada promote. Yet, despite this shared disavowal of a principal colonial ideology, the tight correlation between hunting and Indigeneity on the one hand, and veganism and vegetarianism and an objection to killing animals on the other, makes veganism's contributions to decolonization and reconciliation difficult to see. By framing veganism as a critique of the dairy industry, however, the associations that veganism has with decolonizing ends are not clouded by these overpowering correlations, helping to bring into view even vegetarianism's contributions toward these ends.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":"11 1","pages":"244-267"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43640896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since launching in the UK in 2018, Extinction Rebellion (XR) has become a global social movement that uses mass civil disobedience to pressure governments to take immediate action on the climate crisis. While XR has shifted the conversation on climate change, it has also been critiqued for its lack of attention to privilege and oppression, and for its ‘apolitical’ approach to climate organizing. In this article, we argue that XR must develop an intersectional approach in order to address the climate crisis. In particular, we reflect on our experiences as participants in XR-Vancouver, located on unceded Indigenous territory in the settler colonial state of Canada. Settler colonialism in Canada is intertwined with the climate and ecological crises, as Canada's status as a petrostate is built on the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples through a strategy of racial extractivism. To attend to these dynamics, we build on Kyle Powys Whyte's concept of ‘decolonizing allyship’ and suggest three ethics – of relational accountability, care, and incommensurability – that settler-led movements like XR can cultivate. We conclude by inviting XR to (re)engage with a ‘politics of refusal’ that subverts the state and allows XR to collectively enact what different systems (rooted in intersectional, decolonizing allyship) could look like.
{"title":"Toward an ethics of decolonizing allyship in climate organizing: reflections on Extinction Rebellion Vancouver","authors":"D. James, T. Mack","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3667745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3667745","url":null,"abstract":"Since launching in the UK in 2018, Extinction Rebellion (XR) has become a global social movement that uses mass civil disobedience to pressure governments to take immediate action on the climate crisis. While XR has shifted the conversation on climate change, it has also been critiqued for its lack of attention to privilege and oppression, and for its ‘apolitical’ approach to climate organizing. In this article, we argue that XR must develop an intersectional approach in order to address the climate crisis. In particular, we reflect on our experiences as participants in XR-Vancouver, located on unceded Indigenous territory in the settler colonial state of Canada. Settler colonialism in Canada is intertwined with the climate and ecological crises, as Canada's status as a petrostate is built on the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples through a strategy of racial extractivism. To attend to these dynamics, we build on Kyle Powys Whyte's concept of ‘decolonizing allyship’ and suggest three ethics – of relational accountability, care, and incommensurability – that settler-led movements like XR can cultivate. We conclude by inviting XR to (re)engage with a ‘politics of refusal’ that subverts the state and allows XR to collectively enact what different systems (rooted in intersectional, decolonizing allyship) could look like.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44851388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Book review of excellent monograph on the role of international law in achieving food security. The book aims to provide ‘the first systematic analysis of the international rules influencing food systems’. As such, the book is an important contribution to the still rather scarce legal literature on the topic of global food systems and their relationship to food security.
{"title":"Book review: Hope Johnson, International Agricultural Law and Policy: A Rights-Based Approach to Food Security (New Horizons in Environmental and Energy Law, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham 2018) 202 pp.","authors":"J. Verschuuren","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.01.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.06","url":null,"abstract":"Book review of excellent monograph on the role of international law in achieving food security. The book aims to provide ‘the first systematic analysis of the international rules influencing food systems’. As such, the book is an important contribution to the still rather scarce legal literature on the topic of global food systems and their relationship to food security.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":"11 1","pages":"138-142"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.06","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48690697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Climate change is one of the defining problems of our time. The relationship between climate change and human rights is receiving increased attention by stakeholders, including the UN and its primary human rights body, the Human Rights Council. Discussions on the relationship between climate change and human rights are hotly contested. This article is concerned with how states advocate for or against climate change and human rights at the Council. Participant observation on climate change resolutions from 2006 to 2019 through the UN's webTV archives are used to illustrate how states frame climate change. Although passed without a vote, significant contestation occurs over the content of each resolution. During explanations of the vote, Member States make some form of three claims – using one of three dominant framings. The first focuses on equity and development. The second frames the relationship between human rights and climate change: climate change is either constructed as a problem undermining human rights or as generating a responsibility for states to protect human rights when responding to it. The final argument's framing revolves around the mandate of the Council to discuss climate change as a human right. This article helps shed light on theories of norm contestation and on the strategies and frames used in advocating for the relationship between human rights and climate change and its construction – and significance – in the UN Human Rights Council.
{"title":"Contesting human rights and climate change at the UN Human Rights Council","authors":"M. Voss","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.01.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.01","url":null,"abstract":"Climate change is one of the defining problems of our time. The relationship between climate change and human rights is receiving increased attention by stakeholders, including the UN and its primary human rights body, the Human Rights Council. Discussions on the relationship between climate change and human rights are hotly contested. This article is concerned with how states advocate for or against climate change and human rights at the Council. Participant observation on climate change resolutions from 2006 to 2019 through the UN's webTV archives are used to illustrate how states frame climate change.\u0000\u0000Although passed without a vote, significant contestation occurs over the content of each resolution. During explanations of the vote, Member States make some form of three claims – using one of three dominant framings. The first focuses on equity and development. The second frames the relationship between human rights and climate change: climate change is either constructed as a problem undermining human rights or as generating a responsibility for states to protect human rights when responding to it. The final argument's framing revolves around the mandate of the Council to discuss climate change as a human right. This article helps shed light on theories of norm contestation and on the strategies and frames used in advocating for the relationship between human rights and climate change and its construction – and significance – in the UN Human Rights Council.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":"11 1","pages":"6-29"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46861733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article offers a novel, grounded way of assessing the intense interaction between human rights and eco-justice in urban open spaces. Using three iconic parks in the city of Cali, Colombia, as its sites of investigation, the article explores how the anthropocentrism of human rights and the structural order that foregrounds them results in eco-justice aspirations being undermined by human rights – including as environmental rights – in these spaces. The article reflects on three negative consequences of the tensions marking the relationships between human rights and eco-justice in Cali: defaunation; a proliferation of ‘urban heat islands’; and increased local pollution.
{"title":"Human rights vs. eco-justice: conflicts and other futures in urban open spaces in Cali, Colombia","authors":"S. Cárdenas, E. Angulo","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.01.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.03","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a novel, grounded way of assessing the intense interaction between human rights and eco-justice in urban open spaces. Using three iconic parks in the city of Cali, Colombia, as its sites of investigation, the article explores how the anthropocentrism of human rights and the structural order that foregrounds them results in eco-justice aspirations being undermined by human rights – including as environmental rights – in these spaces. The article reflects on three negative consequences of the tensions marking the relationships between human rights and eco-justice in Cali: defaunation; a proliferation of ‘urban heat islands’; and increased local pollution.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":"11 1","pages":"61-85"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45128884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
One of the far-reaching consequences of climate change relates to the forced displacement of people. Climate-induced migration is a very complex issue. The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants noted the varied reasons for migration as being armed conflict, poverty, food insecurity, persecution, terrorism, human rights violations, climate change and natural disasters. Despite the recognition in the very first IPCC report in 1990 that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration, it took climate negotiators over two decades to include displacement in climate documents. This article discusses complexity, scale and displacement scenarios, paying particular attention to the plight of small island states and to the climateconflict-displacement nexus. It analyses the legal regime applicable to political refugees under international law and the current legal lacuna with regard to climate refugees. It surveys recent developments including the Global Compact on Migration, and the Task Force on Climate Displacement. This article argues that while current human rights law provides some protection, it is insufficient, and that the international community should take urgent action to design a legal regime to protect the rights of climate displacees. This is especially true of inhabitants of small island states who will be forced to move because their states are ‘disappearing’. The article argues that major emitters owe a legal duty to help climate displacees and especially the inhabitants of small island states.
{"title":"Climate change and displacement: protecting ‘climate refugees’ within a framework of justice and human rights","authors":"S. Atapattu","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.01.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.04","url":null,"abstract":"One of the far-reaching consequences of climate change relates to the forced displacement of people. Climate-induced migration is a very complex issue. The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants noted the varied reasons for migration as being armed conflict, poverty, food insecurity, persecution, terrorism, human rights violations, climate change and natural disasters. Despite the recognition in the very first IPCC report in 1990 that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration, it took climate negotiators over two decades to include displacement in climate documents. This article discusses complexity, scale and displacement scenarios, paying particular attention to the plight of small island states and to the climateconflict-displacement nexus. It analyses the legal regime applicable to political refugees under international law and the current legal lacuna with regard to climate refugees. It surveys recent developments including the Global Compact on Migration, and the Task Force on Climate Displacement. This article argues that while current human rights law provides some protection, it is insufficient, and that the international community should take urgent action to design a legal regime to protect the rights of climate displacees. This is especially true of inhabitants of small island states who will be forced to move because their states are ‘disappearing’. The article argues that major emitters owe a legal duty to help climate displacees and especially the inhabitants of small island states.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":"11 1","pages":"86-113"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47860908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Framesmatter. They bring into view, interpret and – in a significant sense materialize – bring into mattering – a set of assumptions, interpretations and practices of circumscription that shape (and interact with), as Gitlin puts it, ‘what exists, what happens and what matters’. Moreover, frames matter for law. They determine the conditions under which problems are apprehended by law, and thus can influence the assertion of authority, jurisdiction and institutional responsibility over particular issues. Frames are central to this issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, their significance is apparent, overtly or tacitly, in each contribution. The frames discernible in the contributions are dynamic, emergent, and contested by counter-frames. It is clear that frames can take hegemonic and counter-hegemonic positions depending on their location in the emergent energies and contestations at stake in the field in which they function as shape-givers. Frames signal intensities of both focus and of action/inaction, and it seems clear that every framing inevitably involves selection, if not pre-selection – and in that, represents an exercise of power. Contestation, between frames, between the ideological commitments that can underwrite them, between communities and movements both semiotic and material, are also present in this issue. Contestation perhaps inevitably underwrites key contemporary tensions surrounding the dense entanglements between humans and non-humans and convergent and divergent forces, energies and futures in the climate-pressed posthuman ecology of the Anthropocene. In ‘Contesting human rights and climate change at the UN Human Rights Council’, M Joel Voss is explicit about the centrality and power of framing – and of contestation – in his analysis. The context for Voss’s analysis is provided by discussions concerning the relationship between human rights and climate change at the UN Human Rights Council. Noting how hotly contested the issues are and how fraught the discussions become, Voss conducted participant observation of climate change resolutions at the Council between 2006 and 2019 in order to expose the rival framings of climate change enlivened in the discourses of state participants. Drawing on Payne’s work on framing, persuasion and norm-contestation, Voss conceptualizes frames in a way that implies, to our mind, their operation as modes of organizing power: they provide, after all, ‘a singular interpretation of a particular
{"title":"Editorial: Frames and contestations: environment, climate change and the construction of in/justice","authors":"Anna Grear, J. Dehm","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.01.00","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.00","url":null,"abstract":"Framesmatter. They bring into view, interpret and – in a significant sense materialize – bring into mattering – a set of assumptions, interpretations and practices of circumscription that shape (and interact with), as Gitlin puts it, ‘what exists, what happens and what matters’. Moreover, frames matter for law. They determine the conditions under which problems are apprehended by law, and thus can influence the assertion of authority, jurisdiction and institutional responsibility over particular issues. Frames are central to this issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, their significance is apparent, overtly or tacitly, in each contribution. The frames discernible in the contributions are dynamic, emergent, and contested by counter-frames. It is clear that frames can take hegemonic and counter-hegemonic positions depending on their location in the emergent energies and contestations at stake in the field in which they function as shape-givers. Frames signal intensities of both focus and of action/inaction, and it seems clear that every framing inevitably involves selection, if not pre-selection – and in that, represents an exercise of power. Contestation, between frames, between the ideological commitments that can underwrite them, between communities and movements both semiotic and material, are also present in this issue. Contestation perhaps inevitably underwrites key contemporary tensions surrounding the dense entanglements between humans and non-humans and convergent and divergent forces, energies and futures in the climate-pressed posthuman ecology of the Anthropocene. In ‘Contesting human rights and climate change at the UN Human Rights Council’, M Joel Voss is explicit about the centrality and power of framing – and of contestation – in his analysis. The context for Voss’s analysis is provided by discussions concerning the relationship between human rights and climate change at the UN Human Rights Council. Noting how hotly contested the issues are and how fraught the discussions become, Voss conducted participant observation of climate change resolutions at the Council between 2006 and 2019 in order to expose the rival framings of climate change enlivened in the discourses of state participants. Drawing on Payne’s work on framing, persuasion and norm-contestation, Voss conceptualizes frames in a way that implies, to our mind, their operation as modes of organizing power: they provide, after all, ‘a singular interpretation of a particular","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.00","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41778772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: James R May and Erin Daly (eds), Human Rights and the Environment: Legality, Indivisibility, Dignity and Geography (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham 2019) 585 pp.","authors":"Áine Ryall","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.01.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.07","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":"11 1","pages":"143-148"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44638184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article I show that the form of argument put forward by the climate change denial movement in the United States (US) closely resembles that used in Nazi Germany with regard to Nazi racial definitions. Each involves a rejection of scientific method. This rejection inherently lends itself to far-right politics, which is a philosophy of prejudice. The prevalence of such a philosophy in contemporary American political culture, exemplified through climate change denial, has arguably opened the door for a president of Trump's type. Nevertheless, the US Constitution is far more difficult to suspend than that of the Weimar Republic. As a result, US institutional safeguards against a philosophy of prejudice are likely to hold against a short-term assault on environmental justice in a way that the Weimar Republic's constitutional order did not against Nazism's assault on civil rights. The greater threat to environmental protection in the contemporary US situation is the slow erosion of democratic norms by the Trump administration.
{"title":"Climate change denial as far-right politics: How abandonment of scientific method paved the way for Trump","authors":"G. Byrne","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.01.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.02","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I show that the form of argument put forward by the climate change denial movement in the United States (US) closely resembles that used in Nazi Germany with regard to Nazi racial definitions. Each involves a rejection of scientific method. This rejection inherently lends itself to far-right politics, which is a philosophy of prejudice. The prevalence of such a philosophy in contemporary American political culture, exemplified through climate change denial, has arguably opened the door for a president of Trump's type. Nevertheless, the US Constitution is far more difficult to suspend than that of the Weimar Republic. As a result, US institutional safeguards against a philosophy of prejudice are likely to hold against a short-term assault on environmental justice in a way that the Weimar Republic's constitutional order did not against Nazism's assault on civil rights. The greater threat to environmental protection in the contemporary US situation is the slow erosion of democratic norms by the Trump administration.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.02","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45355750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the last fifty-odd years the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has launched programs aiming at emulating and incorporating insect technologies in military technology. The US Army Unmanned Aircrafts Systems Roadmap 2010–2035 has specified insect swarming as a field of development for Unmanned Aviation Systems. While legal scholarship has paid substantial attention to drones, autonomous weapons systems and artificial intelligence (AI), developments based on insect swarming technologies have been largely ignored. This article takes emerging AI swarming technologies in military warfare systems as its starting point and asks about the significance of the swarming insect in and through contemporary International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and warfare. Taking up Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notions of ‘the swarm’ and the ‘war machine’, and drawing on critical environmental legal scholarship, the article argues that rather than dispersing the human from its central position in the ‘targeting loop’, the increased interest in insects for commercial and warfare purposes is an intensification of transhumanist desires and an acceleration of late capitalism. As a counter-move, and as a contribution to a posthumanist turn in IHL, the article calls for becoming-insect, swarm and minoritarian as an epistemological practice and ontological shift in IHL and its critical scholarship, resulting in a posthumanitarian legal ordering of becoming.
{"title":"The swarm that we already are: artificially intelligent (AI) swarming ‘insect drones’, targeting and international humanitarian law in a posthuman ecology","authors":"M. Arvidsson","doi":"10.4337/jhre.2020.01.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2020.01.05","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last fifty-odd years the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has launched programs aiming at emulating and incorporating insect technologies in military technology. The US Army Unmanned Aircrafts Systems Roadmap 2010–2035 has specified insect swarming as a field of development for Unmanned Aviation Systems. While legal scholarship has paid substantial attention to drones, autonomous weapons systems and artificial intelligence (AI), developments based on insect swarming technologies have been largely ignored. This article takes emerging AI swarming technologies in military warfare systems as its starting point and asks about the significance of the swarming insect in and through contemporary International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and warfare. Taking up Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notions of ‘the swarm’ and the ‘war machine’, and drawing on critical environmental legal scholarship, the article argues that rather than dispersing the human from its central position in the ‘targeting loop’, the increased interest in insects for commercial and warfare purposes is an intensification of transhumanist desires and an acceleration of late capitalism. As a counter-move, and as a contribution to a posthumanist turn in IHL, the article calls for becoming-insect, swarm and minoritarian as an epistemological practice and ontological shift in IHL and its critical scholarship, resulting in a posthumanitarian legal ordering of becoming.","PeriodicalId":43831,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights and the Environment","volume":"11 1","pages":"114-137"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45079798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：