New Books In Environmental Studies

In this episode, host Alex Batesmith sits down with Dr Rachel Killean and Dr Lauren Dempster to discuss their groundbreaking new book, Green Transitional Justice (Routledge, 2025). The conversation explores the urgent need to rethink transitional justice (TJ) in light of the environmental crises facing post-conflict societies. Dr Killean and Dr Dempster begin by explaining what drew them to the intersection of TJ and environmental harm. Their book emerges from a shared concern that traditional TJ mechanisms—designed to address human rights violations in post-conflict settings—have largely ignored the profound and lasting harms inflicted on Nature. They deliberately use the term “harms against Nature” to signal a shift away from anthropocentric language and to foreground the agency and value of the natural world. The book is structured around four major critiques of the TJ field. First, the authors argue that knowledge production in TJ is shaped by Eurocentric and neocolonial perspectives, often marginalisin