Environmental Harms and Entangled Lifeworlds in the Russia-Ukraine War: A Relational Reframing of Transitional Justice

Abstract

This interdisciplinary article adopts a novel approach to thinking about the environmental impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war - and of war/armed conflict more broadly. First, it unpacks, drawing on original empirical data, how these impacts make salient the interconnectedness of human and more-than-human worlds, which it explores with reference to the concept of solastalgia. Second, the article situates its analysis of the war's environmental impacts directly in relation to transitional justice. Calling for a relational reframing of the field that gives expression to multiply entangled lifeworlds, it reflects on what this reframing might look like and emphasises two key ideas - care and listening.