Analysis | Up in Smoke: How The World’s Militaries Are Destroying the Environment
Global military consumption and destruction of natural resources and habitats not only runs counter to global efforts at combatting climate change, but has become a grave international security threat.
The most devastating consequence of war today is what it has always been: the loss of human life. However, the effects of war reach far beyond the human toll they take, scouring, poisoning, and scarring the environment. In a century defined by climate change, it is increasingly vital to examine perhaps the most under-publicized casualty of war: the environment. Environmental warfare is not only detrimental to the natural environment in both the immediate and long-term, but it directly conflicts with global efforts toward peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and post-war restoration. Modern warfare’s environmental impact is as much a threat to international security as it is to environmental conservation.
As wars continue to ravage the natural world, it is imperative that the international community renew efforts to limit the weapons and methods of warfare which cause undue and extreme harm to the environment. Any new initiative aimed at curbing environmental destruction from warfare must address both the preparation and sourcing of materials, as well as the actual combat. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, the international community must move to discourage and limit the following key practices of war.
Fueling the Flames
Resource depletion is among the top environmental consequences of war, as conflict preparation largely affects resource reserves. Equipping modern armies with weapons and producing military vehicles requires massive amounts of resources that are often depleted far quicker leading up to war than they are at any other moment.
According to the National Mining Association, the U.S. Department of Defense uses a staggering 750,000 tons of minerals annually, including metals such as copper, nickel, and aluminum — all of which are used to make aircrafts, naval ships, and military armor, among other war materials. Yet this figure doesn’t account for the many other natural resources — such as oil, sand, and timber — which are needed to fuel and operate equipment, build fortifications, and supply troops.
The environmental destruction caused by military harvesting of natural resources is extreme. Deforestation, clean water shortages, increased CO2 emissions and particulate pollution, soil erosion, species endangerment and extinction, flooding, and drought are but a few of the negative externalities commonly caused by excessive collection and use of natural resources. The environmental externalities of military requisition and activity often aggravate regional instability as land is rendered sterile and crucial resources become scarce. In the worst cases, resource depletion can lead to the displacement or permanent resettlement of peoples and instigate migration-related and resource-driven conflicts.
The excessive consumption and depletion of natural resources by modern militaries prior to physical engagement run directly counter to objectives of providing regional stability. As the world adapts to a century marked by a changing climate and resource scarcity, it is incumbent upon both military and civilian leaders to ensure that militarization efforts are not self-defeating. In many cases, stripping the environment of natural resources in the name of national security often fuels the very conflict that leaders hope to prevent.
What’s Left When the Smoke Clears
While the term ‘environmental warfare’ may bring to mind the scorched-earth policy of the Russian military in the Napoleonic era, many more recent and devastating examples abound in the twentieth century. Perhaps the most striking example of habitat destruction resulting from environmental warfare is the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War as part of Operation Ranch Hand. Agent Orange — a highly toxic herbicide — was deployed by the U.S. Air Force to eliminate forest cover, which complicated efforts to locate enemy combatants. Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed approximately 11 million gallons of the herbicide over the forests of Vietnam. Approximately five million acres of upland and mangrove forests were destroyed, as well as 500,000 acres of crops. The immediate impact was devastating; forests home to a great variety of species disappeared almost overnight, crippling entire ecosystems.
Although the United States has since banned the use of the chemical, the effects of its use are still felt today. Recovery efforts in Vietnam in the post-bellum years were severely hampered by the aftereffects of Agent Orange. In affected areas, the soil lost much of its nutrients, impeding re-growth processes. Once held in place by a network of densely packed trees, nutrient-rich topsoil washed away in monsoons in the years that followed, leaving the remaining soil barren. Dioxin — the active toxin in Agent Orange — has a half-life of one to three years on plants and soil surfaces, but can remain toxic for more than 100 years when buried underground or steeped into the sediment of rivers and other bodies of water.
To this day, Vietnam has some of the most polluted soil and waterways in the world. As the world’s third biggest exporter of rice — a universal food staple for many — the fertility of Vietnam’s soil is crucial not only to its economy, but to global trade and combating world hunger. In an increasingly competitive global market, the persistence of dioxin in Vietnam’s soil leads to higher levels of risk in business transactions and increased production costs for local Vietnamese farmers, which can then impede the cumulative amount of rice produced. This ultimately decreases the amount of rice which can not only be sold internationally, but consumed locally — intensifying both poverty and famine in Vietnam — leading to potential border disputes and heightened tensions between states as individuals migrate in search of basic necessities.
Aside from the destruction of natural habitats, pollution also poses a serious human health and security risk, as the development and testing of weapons and vehicles often involves the extensive use of toxic materials before kinetic conflict and operations begin. Widespread testing of nuclear weapons in the United States in the twentieth century as part of the Manhattan Project yielded toxic levels of chemical and radioactive waste at nuclear test sites in Tennessee, New Mexico, and Washington.
The radioactive waste produced gradually filtered into local creeks and rivers despite efforts to contain the effluent, ultimately poisoning the surrounding environment, fish and wildlife populations, and residential areas. High-level radioactive waste-like uranium typically remains dangerously toxic for approximately 50 years before it legally requires disposal. In many instances, the effects of radioactive waste far outlast this period, as pollution of local waterways and soil negatively impact recreational practices, irrigation efforts, and agricultural production. Some impacts of ingesting radioactive waste may not even become apparent until years later, after crops planted in these contaminated environments have already been grown, cleaned, and distributed with polluted water, wildlife repopulation efforts have begun, and human health issues have begun to surface.
Significant bouts of pollution are also produced during and after conflict. When the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945 to close out World War II, the immediate aftermath extended beyond the human death toll. The fissile nuclear reaction emitted massive amounts of radiation into the surrounding environment, spreading particles that carried miles from the original explosion site by wind currents and contaminating both the air and land. Soil quickly became infertile, water impotable, and crops indigestible, causing an agricultural nightmare and widespread food insecurity.
The creation and use of military vehicles and high-grade weapons during war also tend to leave environmental legacies on the nearby land. Landmines, leftover munitions, and fragmented remnants of bombs and other explosives also pose a significant and lasting risk to civilians and animal life. The most infamous legacy of environmental warfare traces back to the 1960s, when the United States military dropped more than 260 million cluster bombs on Laos during the Vietnam War. Often dubbed “the land of a million bombs,” it is estimated that nearly half of Laos, — roughly the size of the state of Utah — contains 78 million unexploded ordnances, or small bomblets, which failed to discharge on impact. These small bombs and grenades contaminate rice fields, school grounds, and other highly populated areas of the country.
These environmental legacies ultimately restrict access to necessary farming land and pollute nearby soil and waterways with toxic, destructive material. Landmines, in particular, pose a threat to sustainable development efforts, as they degrade local habitats, contribute to species’ population alteration, have the potential to alter food chains, and can lead to deforestation as clearing efforts take place.
Long after the fighting stops, environmental damage remains an issue, as destruction wrought during conflict inadvertently gives rise to long-term consequences that undermine national security efforts. This kind of post-war ruination limits land use, weakens critical infrastructure, and deteriorates public health conditions — ultimately affecting the economic and social well-being of the state.
Expanding Law to the Environment
Protecting the environment during times of war and armed conflict is a relatively difficult task to achieve as international law relies heavily on consent and requires the collective will of multiple states to enforce. Nevertheless, the aftermath of twentieth century conflicts saw an unprecedented push for the development of international treaties that explicitly mention the environmental impact of warfare and call for environmental protection and conservation in war. Many treaties signed in the aftermath of conflict aimed to discourage and disincentivize the use of environmental warfare methods and tactics.
Perhaps the most important international treaty on preventing environmental destruction during war is the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD). Originally drafted in 1976, ENMOD has 78 states signatories and prohibits the use of environmental manipulation techniques which constitute “deliberate manipulation of natural processes — the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.” In practice, this precludes all parties from employing environmental manipulation techniques that 1) are used for hostile purposes; 2) cause destruction, damage, or injury to another state party; and which 3) have widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.
This focus on environmental protection is reinforced by the first Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1977. Article 35, paragraph 3 asserts that states party to the treaty may not “employ methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.” However, holding states in violation of the Protocol, accountable remains challenging, as states must meet all three conditions before an infraction can be declared — yet this is precisely the kind of action that must be championed.
Other treaties address more specific tactics of environmental warfare. Evidence of the long-lasting effects of herbicides such as Agent Orange led to the creation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction which was entered into force in April of 1997. Also known as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), this treaty explicitly refers to herbicides in the preamble. The aim of the treaty is supported by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which seeks to implement the CWC and prevent the future usage of chemical weapons in war through its cooperation with the United Nations.
Yet despite global efforts to hinder the use of environmental warfare tactics, the aforementioned treaties do little to mitigate the other sources of environmental destruction that are associated with war, such as resource depletion and long-term pollution. Incidents of environmental destruction from warfare continue to occur on a monumental scale, suggesting that existing international law is lacking both in scope and enforcement. The international community’s inability to enforce global environmental law stems not from a lack of motivation, but rather states’ apprehension to relinquish sovereignty to benefit the greater good. Future agreements must address the most devastating sources of environmental destruction as well as provide new mechanisms for implementation that hinge on a rights-based approach.
Looking to the Future
Dubbed the ‘silent casualty’ of military warfare, the environment often takes the brunt of the long-lasting and destructive impacts of armed conflict. Despite witnessing the destructive effects of military activity on the environment first-hand and coping with the aftermath even to the present day, it seems that the international community is failing to learn from the costly mistakes it made in the last century. This careless or intentional destruction of the environment during times of war not only leaves scars on the environment, but it runs in direct opposition to national security objectives of those carrying it out, as its consequences make rehabilitation efforts more challenging.
In times of war, the mentality that ‘anything goes’ often persists. For the longest time, this applied to the treatment of other human beings, as typical norms of behavior are often cast aside, and actions once thought unacceptable are seriously considered. Over time, the international community created rules to govern and protect human rights, even in the context of war. As a result, violations of human rights now carry real political, economic, and diplomatic consequences for offenders. Applying these same norm-building methods in instances of environmental destruction in war may yield similar results by way of prevention. Put simply, it’s been done before, and it must — for the sake of the planet — work again.
Coalitions and international organizations, such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, have been formed in the past to address comparable issues. In this instance, a widespread and prevailing issue such as environmental protection requires a separate governing body that has the ability to enforce international law and supersede state authority. Countries with a strong diplomatic core and a history of leadership on similar issues, such as France, Canada, and Japan, should spearhead this collaborative effort.
The damage that militaries inflict on the environment will have implications now and well into the future, strengthening the argument that environmental protection must be a priority of states’ national security agendas. In any case, these efforts should not come as a product of purely altruistic motives, but also a desire to safeguard national security and further peacekeeping goals. The methods and means to protect the environment are well within reach, but their utilization is dependent upon the will of the international community. A failure to address environmental destruction both preemptively and as it occurs will inevitably intensify future conflicts — adding fuel to the already raging fire.
Edited by: Cameron Vaské
All views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not represent the views of The International Scholar or any other organization.
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