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The consequences of Boko Haram insurgency on the Nigerian state has enjoyed robust interrogation. However, most of the studies have concentrated on human and material losses to the neglect of the environment. Yet, the activities of the insurgents as well as the counterinsurgency strategies of the Nigerian armed forces, have negatively affected the environment. This study interrogates the impacts of the insurgency on the environment, using cases such as soil and water contamination, mining of landscapes, indiscriminate killings, and the destruction of habitats, farmlands and cultural landscapes as empirical evidence. The study concludes that activities of the militants and the military have had debilitating effects on the physical environment in northeastern Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The island of Borneo has been the subject of starkly different portrayals. On the one hand, the devastation of the island's great rainforests, choking haze from fires set to clear land for oil palm plantations, and open-pit coal mining have prompted visions of environmental collapse. On the other hand, Indonesian President Joko Widodo's 2019 announcement that the national capital will be moved from Jakarta to East Kalimantan prompted utopian dreams that massive investment and technology will create a glorious future. This article explores how these competing portrayals of Borneo emerged historically through European and American fiction – including utopian novels, lost race stories, and pulp and science fiction – and are reflected and reproduced in Indonesian political thinking. The final section examines how these long-standing ideas about Borneo as the site of the fantastic and the phantasmagoric have colored media reporting and commentary about President Widodo's planned new capital in East Kalimantan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the possibilities and challenges facing international criminal law as a method of meaningfully responding to environmental destruction. Noting the interconnections between environmental destruction and the causes, conduct and impacts of mass violence, scholars have explored multiple ways in which international criminal law might be better equipped to respond to such harms. These have ranged from using existing provisions to introducing a new crime against the environment. This paper examines the evolution of these approaches and considers the capacity of international criminal law to respond to environmental destruction. In light of the challenges associated with introducing a new crime, it focuses on the possibilities associated with 'greening' the Rome Statute. Building on this approach, the paper considers whether the reparation framework adopted by the International Criminal Court offers an opportunity to meaningfully respond to environmental destruction and related human rights violations. It argues that there are three main ways in which this might be done: (i) by introducing the concept of 'eco-sensitivity' to reparations designed to respond to other anthropocentric harms; (ii) by awarding reparations that explicitly recognise the harm caused by environmental destruction when possible; and (iii) by exploring the possibilities of an environmental approach towards 'transformative reparations'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines engagements with the natural environment in Indonesian contemporary art, with a specific focus on Yogyakarta-based multimedia artist Setu Legi. After discussing various historical models of Indonesian creative engagements with the environment, I argue that Legi's work deals with environmental problems by personalising the political as well as highlighting political aspects of the personal. Using the work of Félix Guattari and T J Demos, I show how his art offers a form of eco-aesthetics that disentangles the interconnections between art, politics and the natural environment. I analyse Legi's critical exploration of the concept of 'homeland' (tanah air) and the geopolitics of West Papua through his creation of alternative maps of the Indonesian archipelagic state. Finally, I demonstrate how Legi relates cultural and environmental destruction as well as possible solutions for these problems to a range of religious and spiritual ideas and practices in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nihilist is one who wants nothingness in the place of what is. Does John Gray in his book, Straw Dogs, wish the end of the world? No: but he does contemplate with calm and even some pleasure the end of the human race, or at the least its diminishment to a small fraction of its current numbers. He is appalled by the irrepressible human destructiveness of nature, whether animals, plants or inanimate formations, and finds in this destructiveness the ironical source of human self‐destruction. The only way in which human destructiveness can end is for the human race to end or be substantially reduced. The restored health of nature demands the ruin of humanity, which, unchecked, ruins nature while preparing its own ruin. Much of the book is devoted to deflating human pride as shown in its claim to specialness. This claim is the principal source of human destructiveness of nature. Humanism, the Enlightenment and doctrines of progress bear much of the responsibility for such pride. If we could see through the claim to human specialness, we would not lament in advance the inevitable passing of humanity from the scene. The success of Gray’s deflationary project is mixed, but his book is completely successful as a work of provocation and may even, despite its apparent intentions, inspire some of its readers to adopt a chastened humanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]