Many in the international community are finally coming to accept that the earth’s ecosystem can no longer bear the weight of military occupation. Most have reached this inevitable conclusion, clearly articulated in the environmental movement’s latest slogan “No Climate Justice on Occupied Land”, in light of the horrors we have witnessed in Gaza since October 7.

While the correlation between military occupation and climate sustainability may be a recent discovery for those living their lives in relative peace and security, people living under occupation, and thus constant threat of military violence, have always known any guided missile strike or aerial bombardment campaign by an occupying military is not only an attack on those being targeted but also their land’s ability to sustain life.

A recent hearing on “State and Environmental Violence in West Papua” under the jurisdiction of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), for example, heard that Indonesia’s military occupation, spanning more than seven decades, has facilitated a “slow genocide” of the Papuan people through not only political repression and violence, but also the gradual decimation of the forest area – one of the largest and most biodiverse on the planet – that sustains them.

West Papua hosts one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, is the site of a major BP liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, and is the fastest-expanding area of palm oil and biofuel plantation in Indonesia. All of these industries leave ecological dead zones in their wake, and every single one of them is secured by military occupation.

At the PPT hearing, prominent Papuan lawyer........

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