We live in a new normal of increasing, crosscutting, and shifting patterns of disasters fueled by large-scale environmental change, from floods to wildfires to pandemics. Our intervention in this forum piece makes the case that disasters, and responses to disasters, must be understood within the context of the global political-economic system of capitalism. We situate disasters, their making, and their politics within the Capitalocene and argue that disasters and the physical processes that underpin them are not natural: they are unevenly produced through, and exacerbated by, processes inherent in the capitalist system, with uneven consequences. We suggest that the predominantly technomanagerial approaches to disasters pursued within the neoliberal state and multilateral governance institution system reveal the tensions in addressing the causes of environmental change and the new normal of disasters under capitalism. We argue that through an engagement with the Capitalocene, environmental politics could further contribute to nuanced, critical understandings of disasters and their making in ways that foreground their in/justice implications.

This article takes a political ecology approach to understanding the integration of conservation with security in tackling the illegal wildlife trade. It builds on political ecology debates on militarization by connecting it to the dynamics of global environmental politics, specifically the discursive and material support from donors, governments, and conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The combined effects of a highly competitive funding environment and security concerns of governments has produced a context in which NGOs strategically invoke the idea of the illegal wildlife trade as a security threat. For donors and governments, tackling the illegal wildlife trade is a means through which they can address security threats. However, this has material outcomes for marginalized peoples living with wildlife, including militarization, human rights abuses, enhanced surveillance, and law enforcement.

This forum places CEE at COP10 in the context of wider theoretical debates about global environmental governance. This special issue enhances our understanding of governance by examining how ideas travel and develop at meetings before they become the official documents and announcements that are the more common foci of such papers. The articles in this issue of GEP open up the ‘black box’ of decision-making and allow us to gain a better understanding of global environmental governance, in theory and in practice. These articles are firmly in line with International Political Economy approaches, allowing us to reflect on how regulations can mirror and deepen existing global inequalities, revealing the continuing power of epistemic communities, and demonstrating the important role of ideas. The special issue allows us insight into how global conventions work, how alliances are formed, how particular ideas emerge, and crucially, how alternatives are rendered silent and invisible.