Melanesia's violent environments: Towards a political ecology of conflict in the western Pacific

► Melanesia's most violent conflicts are examined using a governable spaces framework. ► Resource capitalism has been at the heart of violent conflict. ► Governmentality and scale elucidate the highly contingent nature of these conflicts. ► Regulatory approaches to the landowner-developer encounter have been diverse. ► This diversity gives rise to policy implications for regulating resource conflict.