Fossil–military entanglements and ethics of life repair. Critical feminist interventions at the nexus of gender, nature, climate, and peace

Abstract

This thesis asks what happens when ideas about gender, peace, and nature ignore the damage caused by armies and the fossil fuel industry. It examines Environmental Peacebuilding (EP) as a burgeoning interdisciplinary field of practice and an institutional project at the intersection of environment and peace, while showing how it overlooks some of the main drivers of violence and inequality: militarism and fossil fuel exploitation, two concrete manifestations of colonial capitalism and gendered violence. These silences are not accidental, but gendered, political, and structurally harmful. By treating armies and fossil fuels as if they could sit comfortably alongside peace and sustainability, EP as a practice and an institution helps to hide the roots of the problem, keeping violent systems in place instead of challenging them.
Part I (Chapters 1-3) develops a theoretical framework for analysis, action, and transformation. Chapter 1 reviews EP as a field of practice and an institutional project, identifying the conceptual, methodological, and epistemological gaps that motivate the study. Drawing on critical feminisms and in contestation to mainstream EP practices, Chapter 2 develops an ethics of life repair —a methodological lens and a theoretical framework for analysis, action, and transformation—, emphasising connection rather than separation: between bodies and territories, between everyday life and global politics, between what is visible and what is kept out of sight. Chapter 3 then contrasts EP as a practice and an institution with Chapter 2’s ethics of life repair as a critical feminist framework, revealing how EP’s narrow frameworks end up reproducing gendered and other inequalities. Employing scholar-activist methods, Part II (Chapters 4 and 5) extends these critical feminist insights into the analysis of two of EP’s main omissions: militarism and fossil fuel exploitation. Chapters 4 and 5 deepen the critical feminist analysis and intervention in EP as both a field of practice and an institutional project by demonstrating that by silencing militarism and fossil fuel exploitation, and their multiple entanglements, EP does not only hide their ecological and gendered impacts but tacitly presents them as compatible with peace and sustainability, thereby reproducing the very capitalist power structures that generate compounding crises in the first place. Part III (Chapter 6) operationalises the above critical feminist insights, particularly the ethics of life repair as a critical feminist framework for analysis, action, and transformation. Chapter 6 adopts a case study approach, looking at Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, to trace there the layered violences of fossil fuel exploitation and military expansion as twofold manifestations of gendered violence and capitalist accumulation by dispossession, while highlighting context specific feminist practices of care, peace, resistance, and repair. The case study further demonstrates EP limitations as a field of practice and an institutional project.
This thesis contributes to understanding and transforming the gender-nature-climate-peace nexus through a critical feminist approach. It develops an ethics of life repair as both an analytical lens and a normative guide for transformation, revealing how EP practice and institution reproduces gendered, colonial, anthropocentric, and liberal assumptions, and offering new ways to interrogate inclusion, exclusion, and agency. The framework is operationalised through guiding questions and interventions, alongside scholar-activism and a case study of Cabo Delgado, twofold research methods that demonstrate how militarism, fossil fuel exploitation, and gendered power —as concrete manifestations of global colonial, patriarchal and capitalist orders— intersect, while highlighting local practices of resistance, care, and repair. Finally, the thesis synthesises critical feminist theories and praxes, generating original insights that bridge theory, empirical analysis, and transformative action, emphasising that genuine change requires addressing entrenched structures and centring reparative, situated, and justice-oriented practices.

Thesis embargoed. Available: 17/07/2028

Date of Award	Dec 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Robin Dunford (Supervisor), Julia Hartviksen (Supervisor), Vasileios Leontitsis (Supervisor) & Bob Brecher (Supervisor)