Unconventional, Slow Violent Wars

Slow Violence: The Invisible Threat

Slow Violence is a term coined by Rob Nixon that describes the kind of threat that climate change encompasses: vast, varying, invisible, passive, and gradual. Not immediately seen, slow violence takes the back burner in catching people’s attention — more visible problems like drowning ducklings and bloodshed attract people than dying soil. The effects of climate change include things like deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, and global warming — all of which are known but not instantaneously felt. But, not being felt immediately does not necessarily mean that the consequences are not as drastic. From ocean acidification to increasing global temperature, what may not affect us now will affect those in the future. I suppose what remains to be asked is, how much do we care about the future?

Take note that slow violence does not have to occur over the span of hundreds of years either. Nor is slow violence limited to climate change. The Flint Water Crisis is another example of slow violence where the city’s citizens are drinking lead-contaminated water that has developmental detriments to 8,657 kids. These kids are not being outright punished with fists but with the toxins being brought into their bodies from lack of access to clean water. Kids suffering from developmental defects brought on by lead-contamination will not be outright shown within the next day of drinking the water, but with time down the line from having to drink lead-contaminated water everyday.

Slow violence is not seen as a problem that is in need of being addressed outright and quickly. Slow violence does not have a singular face to show to the world in order for the world to pay attention. Slow violence encompasses different faces with different consequences. Slow violence takes time but, how do we know when to address it? When the consequences show? Should we be taking preventative measures? But, how do you take preventative measures for problems not immediately seen?

Unconventional Warfare

“War destroys ecosystems, livelihoods, and health and sanitation infrastructure. It is the biggest threat of all to sustainable social reproduction.” -Betsy Hartmann and Elizabeth Barajas-Roman

In another article by Rob Nixon, he talks about Saro-Wiwa: a member of the Ogoni tribe in Nigeria that fought against his government and the Shell corporation for killing his people by extracting resources from their land and letting the Ogoni live and die, with and from the harmful after effects. Saro-Wiwa called this an “unconventional war by ecological means.” The Shell company had been extracting oil from Ogoni land and was working together with Nigeria’s militaristic regime which both oppressed the Ogoni people and allowed the environmental degradation of their land. For Saro-Wiwa, his people were being killed through unconventional means of environmental degradation: where his people were suffering the effects of environmental contamination from the extraction of their oil. From the water they drank to the air they breathed, all polluted from Shell’s extraction process.

Indeed, this type of warfare is different from the typical images of war we are given: blood, guns, direct violence, bombs, soldiers, and civilian casualties. The guns and the civilian casualties are still there, but they go by different names: corporations and indigenous people (and other minority groups). Akin to this is the issue with the Dakota Access Pipeline where the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has been trying to stop the oil pipeline project because of indigenous importance (sacred burial land) and for environmental reasons (degradation of the quality of water). To do this, Standing Rock has been holding a protest to confront this injustice, calling on allies to stand with them. In essence, this is similar to Saro-Wiwa, who was part of a micro-minority group standing up to a corporation who was trying to extract resources from minority land.

Unconventional Warfare as a facet of Slow Violence

Slow violence can bring forth unconventional warfare. When people are dying from common and natural resources becoming commodified, war ensues, especially with indigenous nations. Commodification of nature leads to the same effects as climate change: desertification, deforestation, and so on. When people rely on nature as their livelihoods, their life support, corporations who privatize and commodify a shared resource take away the life of communities who are reliant on those resources. However, commodification of the land is degradation of the land.

An interesting idea was brought up in class about the ideology behind the suicide of farmers in India — most of the class saw the causes for farmers committing suicide because of monetary reasons: not being able to handle the guilt with debt, stress, being stuck in a cycle. But, our professor shared a different viewpoint: farmers were committing suicide because of moral debt to the land. I feel that the protest farmers were enacting by committing suicide by the very pesticides that they were encouraged to buy for their cash crop farms (which was also encouraged to bolster the economy) encompasses how unconventional warfare and slow violence are intertwined. The tactic used by Indian farmers, giving up their very bodies and existence to catch the attention of their government of how commodification of the land is harming the land is powerful. The moment farmers decided to commit suicide by the pesticides they were encouraged to buy from big corporations and the government, that was the unconventional war, coming to light. Slow violence in India did not show itself fully until twenty years later after moving from an agrarian culture to agrarian business. After being led to believe that these suicide seeds, pesticides, insecticides were the future for farming, farmers degraded the land they depended on for their future. Now, however, they are returning agency to the land by giving up their own bodies to shed light on how if our bodies cannot live with these chemicals, how can the land?

Slow violence with its many facets should be addressed when recognized. Slow violence should not be tidied up to be a “future-us” problem because slow violence is a now problem. How do we currently address problems like access to clean water, desertification, and other problems that have been going on for years? We start at home: we bring awareness, we fight for active change, and we take preventative measure while we are at it.