ENVISIONING NECRO-ECOLOGICAL POLITICS

Abstract

This paper introduces the paradigm of necro-ecological politics as a critical expansion of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics into the ecological domain. While traditional biopolitics focuses on the regulation of life, this study contends that contemporary sovereignty in the Global South increasingly operates through the administration of death—manifesting as “sacrifice zones”, “slow violence”, and “ecological deathworlds”. By synthesizing political theory, decolonial ecology, and environmental jurisprudence, the research argues that ecological destruction is not a neutral byproduct of development but a systematically engineered apparatus of power that disproportionately exposes marginalized populations to lethal environmental risks. The analysis reveals that modern environmental law often serves as a pillar of this necro-ecological regime, legitimizing extractivism and the “desexualization of living spaces” through technocratic frameworks. However, within these landscapes of organized demise, practices of “re-worlding”—including land rematriation, community agroecology, and embodied environmentalism—emerge as vital sites of resistance. Ultimately, necro-ecological politics offers both a diagnostic tool to unveil colonial-capitalist exploitation and a normative framework to envision a transformational “planetary justice”. It calls for an ontological shift in sovereignty that recognizes the interconnectedness of human and non-human life, asserting a moral and legal imperative to rehabilitate a damaged planet for future generations.