Dr Eleonora Natale, together with colleagues Dr Vinicius de Carvalho and Dr Raphael Lima from the Department of War Studies, is leading an ongoing research project examining militarised responses to environmental and social challenges in the Amazon. These challenges range from transnational organised crime and deforestation to public health pressures and Indigenous rights – all of which are exacerbated by the pressures of climate change: rising temperatures, shifting weather patterns and ecological degradation.
A recent field report: “Researching security and environmental challenges in the Amazon,” written by Politics BA graduate Camille Bacha de Carvalho, offers insights into the extensive fieldwork conducted by the team, which includes site visits to Amazonian military commands, Indigenous territories and border platoons.
The project involves researchers from different disciplines at all career stages, from graduate students to more senior scholars: King’s PhD researcher Alice Taberner is currently attending COP30 remotely, contributing insights from the team’s recent findings. Dr Natale is also guest editing a special issue of Conflict, Security & Development that will feature the project’s preliminary results.
This research directly informs teaching at King’s, including modules on Security and International Relations in Latin America (BA3), and supports a series of departmental events and guest lectures organised with the Latin American Security Research Group.
As global attention turns to the Amazon at COP30 – both as an irreplaceable ecological system and a contested geopolitical space – this research highlights the region’s unique, often overlooked defence and security dynamics and the crucial ways climate change is both reshaping them, and being shaped by them.