Violent Environments and Infrastructures

For its research on Violent Environments and Infrastructures, bicc explores how differing worldviews on resources access, climate-driven scarcity and development projects contribute to social conflicts, aiming to understand and address the link between violent conflict and social inequalities through sustainability perspectives.

The presence of diverse and conflicting perspectives among individuals about the accessibility, regulation, utilisation, and exploitation of renewable and non-renewable natural resources, such as water, land, minerals, or grazing land, serves as a basis for the emergence of social conflicts that have the potential to escalate into violent conflicts.

Furthermore, many marginalised and underprivileged people across the globe are facing rising resource shortages due to climate change. Large-scale infrastructure, economic growth, and nature conservation initiatives promise a better future, but they can also obstruct some people's access to resources and jeopardise their local livelihood strategies. Climate change and long-term development strategies promote socio-ecological transformation processes that are fraught with social and political conflict.

bicc seeks to establish an applied understanding of sustainability that addresses the relationship between violent conflict and social inequality by tackling the challenges presented by the climate crisis, food insecurity, land-use change, and the control of access to land.