Crisis, Geographies of Dispossession and Contested Territories: for a Global Landscape Convention

This study investigates contemporary violence and conflict in Palestine and Lebanon, critically examining how power produces contested landscapes marked by socio-ecological injustice. It focuses on acts of resistance and everyday practices that mitigate the destruction caused by warfare, occupation, and the enduring legacies of colonialism, foregrounding justice and the right to inhabit territories as articulated in the European Landscape Convention (ELC). Drawing on post-humanist perspectives—particularly “rights and responsibilities for all” (Strecker 2024)—the paper highlights the agency of human and more-than-human actors, including communities, animals, artefacts, and material ecologies in sustaining life, memory, and identity under conditions of extreme adversity. Everyday spaces are presented as vital arenas of resistance, recovery, and empowerment, where local customs and skills maintain socio-ecological knowledge and foster relational resilience (Hayley 2018). Through the lens of intertwined concepts of ecocide and genocide, the study exposes the systematic erasure of life and landscapes, while simultaneously emphasising ongoing practices of reparation as an instrument of socio-ecological justice. Finally, the paper advocates for a critical re-evaluation of the ELC after 25 years, aligning with scholarly appeals (Egoz 2011; Strecker 2024) for its global extension, positioning landscapes as spaces of survival, multispecies rights and ethical stewardship in the face of planetary crises.