The Case for Communities of Prevention: Comparing Responses to Climate and Mass Atrocity at Home

Abstract

What action and agency are deployed by communities at the intersection of climate and mass atrocity? This article identifies a new concept of “communities of prevention” that increases focus on group action to prevent direct and structural violence at this intersection. Drawing on political ecology, the article discusses communities of prevention with two comparative cases of community-generated resilience in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It finds that this new concept shows how such groups are punctuated by agency and lived experience of atrocity and displacement, ecological protection strategies, the dynamics of women’s organizing in sustaining resilience, and adaptability.