Where is Care in Environmental Peacebuilding? Analyzing Gendered Dynamics of Care in Anti-Extractivism

Barbara Magalhães Teixeira, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (Sweden)

We interrogate how care undermines, reproduces, or disrupts violence and peace in environmental peacebuilding. While caring values and practices are fundamental to peacebuilding, they may inadvertently constitute extractive processes rather than transformational ones. Building on a model of anti-extractivism as environmental peacebuilding, we use ethics of care to interrogate the gendered dynamics of societal transformations towards climate resilient peace. Ethics of care provides a lens to analyze how gendered harm and violence are both reproduced and disrupted in environmental peacebuilding. We draw on original fieldwork from two cases that illustrate different models of anti-extractivism as environmental peacebuilding in Puerto Rico and Guatemala, revealing how grassroots resistance can challenge dominant peacebuilding frameworks. This paper deepens environmental peacebuilding scholarship through critical engagement with the concept of care, arguing beyond a matter of providing ‘more’ or ‘better’ care. Rather, the political approach to care ethics challenges the gendered structures and power dynamics embedded in caring practices and values of environmental peacebuilding.