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UBC Theses and Dissertations
The insidious nature of defense : military-conservation alliances in the United States Steichen, Lorah Elizabeth
Abstract
The United States military is associated with extensive environmental and social harms, including the destruction of landscapes, the contamination of soil and water, and the production of significant global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet over the past three decades it has also become concerned with environmental issues, including climate change and conservation. New programs have emerged, such as the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) Program, which allows military bases to form partnerships with conservation organizations and other stakeholders to preserve “compatible land uses” by funding conservation and nature-based climate adaptation projects on lands bordering military bases. This thesis considers the politics of military land-use by examining the US military’s environmental and land-use management strategies. How did the US military become an institution at the forefront of nature-based solutions? And, what are the conditions which facilitate and uphold military-conservation partnerships in the United States today? Through historical research and interviews, I demonstrate how—despite an uneven history of environmental compliance and a long record of environmental destruction—the US military has institutionalized, and to some extent embraced, certain modes of environmental management in close alliance with The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Chapter 1 outlines how environmental management became understood as a problem for the US military and how the military responded to pressure from environmental interests by partnering with TNC to implement a form of environmental management that is not only compatible with military activities, but also perceived as essential to achieving broader conservation goals. Chapter 2 demonstrates the durability of these interventions by showing how this history laid the groundwork for the creation of the REPI Program, which was created in collaboration with TNC. Locating mainstream conservation within the military-industrial complex, I argue that TNC’s partnership with the military is premised on, while also reinforcing, US military hegemony. Historically and still today, conservation organizations help legitimate and naturalize militarized land-use in the United States through land-use partnerships which reinforce military lands as key sites for conservation, in turn expanding the military’s terrain of influence, widening its scope and power, and obscuring its broadly disastrous environmental footprint.
Item Metadata
Title |
The insidious nature of defense : military-conservation alliances in the United States
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Creator | |
Supervisor | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
2024
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Description |
The United States military is associated with extensive environmental and social harms, including the destruction of landscapes, the contamination of soil and water, and the production of significant global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet over the past three decades it has also become concerned with environmental issues, including climate change and conservation. New programs have emerged, such as the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) Program, which allows military bases to form partnerships with conservation organizations and other stakeholders to preserve “compatible land uses” by funding conservation and nature-based climate adaptation projects on lands bordering military bases. This thesis considers the politics of military land-use by examining the US military’s environmental and land-use management strategies. How did the US military become an institution at the forefront of nature-based solutions? And, what are the conditions which facilitate and uphold military-conservation partnerships in the United States today? Through historical research and interviews, I demonstrate how—despite an uneven history of environmental compliance and a long record of environmental destruction—the US military has institutionalized, and to some extent embraced, certain modes of environmental management in close alliance with The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Chapter 1 outlines how environmental management became understood as a problem for the US military and how the military responded to pressure from environmental interests by partnering with TNC to implement a form of environmental management that is not only compatible with military activities, but also perceived as essential to achieving broader conservation goals. Chapter 2 demonstrates the durability of these interventions by showing how this history laid the groundwork for the creation of the REPI Program, which was created in collaboration with TNC. Locating mainstream conservation within the military-industrial complex, I argue that TNC’s partnership with the military is premised on, while also reinforcing, US military hegemony. Historically and still today, conservation organizations help legitimate and naturalize militarized land-use in the United States through land-use partnerships which reinforce military lands as key sites for conservation, in turn expanding the military’s terrain of influence, widening its scope and power, and obscuring its broadly disastrous environmental footprint.
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Genre | |
Type | |
Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2024-11-21
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0447313
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Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
2025-05
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International