Exploring the Nexus between Transitional Justice and Ecoterritorial Conflict Resolution: Time for an Ecoterritorial Turn in Transformative Transitional Justice?

Abstract

This article explores the nexus between ecoterritorial conflict resolution and transformative transitional justice, against the background of (neo)extractivism and the Peruvian case of half a century of oil violence. Our argument is twofold. On the one hand, we argue that transitional justice can act as a conceptual and analytical lens to better understand and further (claims for) change while also countering the invisibilization of ecoterritorial struggles of Indigenous and local communities who resist the framing of their lives and ecosystems as sacrificable or disposable. On the other hand, we argue that reading ecoterritorial struggles through the lens of transitional justice also has implications for the paradigm itself. The article is rooted in the first author's longstanding work with Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon who engage with transitional justice discourses and practices as part of their struggle against oil violence.