Challenges and prospects for long-term peacekeeping in the Anthropocene

Abstract

In recent years, the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’ has increasingly become a central analytical scheme for current social and ecological crises. Based on the thesis that the structural problems of the present arise from unresolved injustices between past generations, which reproduce a life-threatening danger towards future generations, this essay calls central assumptions underlying modernity into question. This essay illuminates the relationship between ecological crises, colonialism, and the classical humanist historiography of modernity. Ultimately, this essay concludes that the possibility of securing long-term peace is only feasible with radical social, economic, and political transformations, without which our idea of peace will remain deficient in the future.

Keywords

• Anthropocene;
• humanity;
• global justice;
• postcolonial peace;
• climate risks