chapter05

CHAPTER 5 Collateral Damage

Defense and the environment is not an either/or proposition. To choose between them is impossible in this real world of serious defense threats and genuine environmental concerns.

—U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, 1990

Introduction

Natural resources and the ambient environment are not only causes of conflict and insecurity; they can bear the brunt of that same insecurity. Collateral environmental damage occurs when the natural environment is damaged during the conduct of war or in preparation for war. This damage is usually unanticipated and unintentional, but it can range from negligible to catastrophic in scale.

The most fundamental element that makes a state sovereign in the modern era is the inviolability of its borders. Since territorial integrity is the primary definition of a sovereign state, the most primary duty of a state in defending its national security is to develop the ability to counter any threat, and most nations will prioritize defense operations well above environmental protection. Rarely will a state put environmental protection above military protection (e.g., Costa Rica is an exception since it relies heavily on ecotourism for national revenue but has no standing military forces). Consequently, when these two values clash, most often a decision over resource allocation, environmental or human health, or funding will be resolved in favor of military security. Put another way, war trumps ecology.

The natural environment has always suffered during war, but two factors now make environmental damage from armed conflict a particular concern. First, advancements in the lethality of military technology, particularly the increasing destructiveness of modern weaponry, can make armed conflict more environmentally devastating than ever before. Low-tech weapons such as knives, bows and arrows, and muskets have limited environmental impact. High-tech and more indiscriminate weapons such as mustard gas and other chemical agents, napalm, defoliants, and biological weapons have a much larger environmental footprint, and as such, their use has been internationally prohibited. As the largest and most indiscriminate weapon, the use of a nuclear bomb could have a global ecological impact.

Second, in the wake of unprecedented environmental degradation from peacetime activities such as economic development, the public has become increasingly aware of environmental issues and will probably find extreme environmental damage during war unacceptable, even if collaterally incurred. As global populations grow, the existing resource base becomes that much more critical to provide peacetime civilian resources, and the outcry over its damage would probably be greater.

Any discussion of collateral damage to the environment during conflict raises particular ethical questions for all nations, including those involved in the conflict and those that remain bystanders. How should the environment be treated in wartime? Is the benefit of the military objective gained worth the cost of the ecological damage done while gaining it? And should we protect the environment for our sake or for its own sake?

Negative Ecological Effects of War and Conflict

War and other military activities can have devastating effects on the natural environment, damaging land and soil, waterways, flora and fauna, and human health. Collateral damage from war compromises land integrity by eroding and compacting soil, destroying agricultural productivity, contributing to loss of forest productivity through weapons damage, and presenting a continuing danger to civilians from landmines and unexploded ordnance. Water resources are also degraded as a result of warfare, as they can be contaminated both at the surface and underground. Wildlife suffers directly through destruction of habitat, and society suffers indirectly through negative public health impacts, exposure to pollution, and loss of critical infrastructure like electricity and running water. Gary Machlis and Thor Hanson have coined the term warfare ecology to refer to the environmental impacts of preparation for war, war itself, and postwar activities. The concept of warfare ecology is designed “to advance ecological science; inform policy; and reduce, mitigate, or prevent the environmental consequences of warfare” (Machlis & Hanson 2008, 730).

Ecosystem services such as arable land and fresh water are needed for reconstruction of the economy and survival of the civilian population. Degradation of these services due to conflict can provide another layer of instability in war-ravaged areas, and military doctrines that call for peace ops and stability as key missions could mean that armed forces will take on an environmental protection role. Depending on the type of weapons used, recovery from a conflict could take years or decades, or the ecosystem may never recover. Different regional ecosystems are more or less robust, and each has its specific ecological weakness. The weapons used in a particular area may cause little damage in that area, but the same weapons may be more destructive when used in another area. Ecological damage from warfare can be difficult to assess properly, since the full effect of the damage may not be apparent for many years. Even when full damage can be known, it is very often impossible to know whose weapons have caused it.

In addition, “scorched earth” policies, or the intentional destruction of environmental resources during conflict, have been commonplace since the beginning of warfare. The greater the environmental destruction, the smaller the chance that the defeated population would be able to challenge the victors. In some cases, defeated territories have been destroyed completely and rendered unfit for future habitation, as the ancient Romans did to the city of Carthage. In other cases, the environmental damage has been less obvious. The 20th century contains some familiar examples of environmental destruction during war, also known as “ecocide,” or the killing of the earth.

Examples of Environmental Collateral Damage

Agent Orange in Vietnam

One of the most significant examples of environmental destruction during war is the United States’ use of defoliants and herbicides during the Vietnam War. From 1962 until 1971, the U.S. Air Force sprayed approximately 18 million gallons of Agent Orange and other dioxin-contaminated herbicides on the jungles of Vietnam during Operation Ranch Hand. Some two million hectares were sprayed at least once, and approximately half a million hectares were sprayed more than once (Westing 1971).

Operation Ranch Hand was designed to deprive the North Vietnamese of tree and jungle cover, and to deplete the agricultural base of their territory. These defoliants were successful in denuding the trees, but this massive defoliation caused erosion, flooding, and other ecological damage across the country. Agent Orange contained 2,4,5-T, a known teratogenic compound which was banned from use within the United States in 1970 (Stellman et al. 2003, 681). It also contained dioxin, long been known to be poisonous. Soil and sediment analysis from recent scientific studies across Vietnam have found that there are still easily detectable levels of herbicide residue, more than 30 years after the war's end. Some hugely contaminated hot spots contain dioxin and furan levels up to 20 times higher than the probable effect level in sediment, and up to 46 times higher in soil (Mai et al. 2007). In addition to long-lasting negative ecological effects, Agent Orange and the other herbicides used have been suspected of contributing to cancer and other health problems that veterans began experiencing after the war.

Oil Fires in Operation Desert Storm

Probably the most well-known and egregious example of environmental damage in modern armed conflict occurred during the 1991 Gulf War. As coalition air strikes began, Saddam Hussein's army set fire to more than 650 Kuwaiti oil wells, which burned for 10 months and consumed approximately 1.25 million tons of oil. Whether he did this to smog the skies and confuse air strikes or to deprive the Kuwaiti government of the oil and its attendant revenue is unclear. However, the environmental effect was significant: these fires released 100,000 tons of soot and 800,000 tons of CO₂ into the lower atmosphere (Horgan 1991, as found in Seacor 1994, 492) and the smoke plumes from these fires could be seen from space. More long-lasting environmental damage was caused by the released oil that was not combusted. A considerable portion seeped into the ground and pooled in lakes, contaminating some 40 million tons of soil (Omar et al. 2000, 320).

Figure 5.1 Aerial View of Kuwaiti Oil Fires

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(National Science Foundation)

In addition to setting the wells on fire, the Iraqi army caused further environmental damage as it retreated. The army damaged storage tanks and oil tankers, and opened oil taps at Mina Al Ahmadi and other coastal loading stations, discharging 2–4 million barrels (some estimates go as high as 10 million barrels; Adbulraheem 2000, 341) of crude oil into the Persian Gulf. This caused an oil slick covering 400 kilometers of coastline (Majeed 2004). Between the oil fires and the Gulf spill, Saddam Hussein may have been guilty of trying to commit ecocide, or killing of the earth, thereby rendering the territory in question uninhabitable as a political tactic, in effect saying to the Kuwaitis and the rest of the world that if he couldn't have Kuwait and its resources, no one could. In 1996, a United Nations special compensation fund awarded Kuwait $41.8 billion as war reparations for the environmental destruction caused by Saddam Hussein's invasion. To date, Iraq has paid approximately $15 billion.

Depleted Uranium Weapons

Depleted uranium (DU) has been used to make heavy, armor-piercing shells for use in war. Depleted uranium is the material left over when the fissile isotope U²³⁵ is removed from natural uranium for fission purposes. The resulting material is radioactive and heavier than lead, making it ideal for construction of tank-piercing shells. When fired, DU rounds not only break through armor plating, but also burn hot enough to produce uranium oxide vapor (Busby & Morgan 2005, 2). From a military standpoint, any weapon designed to halt an armored advance is very desirable and useful. Consequently, they have been used in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, in Bosnia and Kosovo in the late 1990s, and again in Iraq in 2003. It is unknown if U.S. and NATO forces used DU weapons in Libya in 2011.

The primary concerns surrounding depleted uranium are human health–related due to its longevity in the environment. However, there has been very little scientific work done on the long-term ecological effects of DU weapons. They vaporize on impact, emitting alpha particles and leaving behind radioactive residue; if undetonated, they can contaminate groundwater. The U.K. Royal Society's assessment of DU weapons indicated that the environmental contamination is limited to the immediate area of use, and other than monitoring groundwater supplies, the general population should face little risk (Royal Society 2002). Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan point out, however, that if uranium aerosols disperse from the battlefield where they are used into an area with noncombatants, the use of DU weapons could then become a matter for international legal concern, since their effects cannot be limited to combatants only.

Ecological Effects of Nuclear War

Perhaps the most catastrophic of conflicts would be a nuclear war. In addition to the horrifying death toll and rampant physical destruction it would bring about, the explosion of nuclear weapons would have massive global ecological effects. Although the likelihood of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia has decreased significantly since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, seven other nations around the world currently have nuclear weapons, and more nations may be developing them. Even a relatively limited, regional nuclear exchange could produce enough soot and smoke to cripple global agriculture and lead to massive starvation.

In 2008, atmospheric scientists Owen Toon, Alan Robock, and Richard Turco constructed a climate model to estimate what the ecological effects would be from a regional nuclear war involving 100 15-kiloton weapons detonated between India and Pakistan. Independent of the estimated 20 million dead, they posited that approximately 5 teragrams (Tg, or 5 million metric tons) of soot and smoke from burning cities would enter the immediate atmosphere. Within five days, the smoke would cover most of South Asia, the Middle East, and eastern Africa. Within nine days, it would extend around the globe, and within approximately one and a half months, it would have blocked more than 10 percent of incoming sunlight everywhere on earth.

Similar to emissions from volcanic eruptions, this soot and smoke would increase the albedo (reflectivity) of the atmosphere, so that less incoming sunlight would reach the earth's surface. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia reduced global average temperature by 0.5°C, and the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines did the same by 0.4°C. In the hypothetical case, 5 Tg of soot and smoke could depress global average temperatures by 1.25°C, larger than anything felt in the last 1,000 years. Soot and smoke also affect the destruction of stratospheric ozone levels (McCormick et al. 1995).

Previous studies of nuclear winter in the 1980s concluded that the cooling effects of the fallout from a nuclear war would be felt for only a few years. Now, due to the availability of better models developed in part for climate change analysis, recent studies show the cooling effect persisting for approximately a decade. Such cooling would depress global agricultural production by reducing the amount of sunlight available to plants for photosynthesis, by reducing temperatures and shortening growing seasons, and by altering precipitation patterns. However, the researchers insistently point out that there have been no studies done on which areas would be affected and by how much. Given that global food prices are already increasing (discussed in Chapter 3), a global supply-induced crop shortage from production failures due to soot and smoke could bring the international agricultural trade to a halt. Thus, a regional nuclear war would have environmental effects on people unrelated to the conflict, in countries on the other side of the world.

Preparation for War

Collateral damage to the environment occurs not only during war, but also during training for war. Building and testing of weapons systems, military personnel training and preparation, and routine peacetime military activities can all have huge impacts on the environment. These impacts usually occur on a local scale, but are often long-lasting and can be irreversible. Several well-known examples illustrate this type of collateral damage.

Weapons Testing and Manufacturing

The production and testing of nuclear weapons, the bedrock of international security theory during the Cold War, left an enormous environmental footprint. From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. Navy tested nuclear weapons of various sizes and configurations in the Pacific island chain of the Marshall Islands. Bikini Atoll was the site of the largest test, named Castle Bravo, in 1954. Due to larger-than-expected fallout and a major wind shift, the two inhabited atolls of Rongerik and Rongelap were exposed to radioactivity, as was a Japanese fishing vessel in the area, the Daigu Fukuryu Maru. In addition to poisoning the Marshallese islanders and Japanese crew with fallout, coral reefs in the area were damaged and persistent radioactive nuclides were found in the waters surrounding the atoll for several miles. Since these tests, the U.S. government has paid out more than $774 million to the governments of Japan and the Marshall Islands as compensation for the damages (Brookings 1998).

Before nuclear weapons can be tested, they must be created. The U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons development site at Hanford, WA, has long been a matter of concern to environmentalists and local residents (Gerber 1992; see also Dycus 1996). The site was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project to fabricate plutonium for American atomic bombs. According to the Washington State Department of Health, releases of radioactive isotopes such as Iodine-131, Strontium-90, and Plutonium-238 have contaminated the Columbia River, as well as the air, soil, and groundwater surrounding the nearby towns of Hanford, Richland, and White Bluffs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed Hanford as a Superfund site in 1989, but plans for its cleanup have been postponed repeatedly for technological and budgetary reasons. Now, the DOE is proposing to build a unique radioactive waste treatment plant which will convert the 53 million gallons of highly toxic waste at the site into glass logs, a process called vitrification, for long-term storage at an estimated cost of $74 billion (The Economist 2011). Similar contamination problems have been reported at Rocky Flats, CO, Oak Ridge, TN, and other sites involved in the U.S. nuclear weapons production chain.

Just as the United States is not the only country with nuclear weapons, it is also not the only country to suffer from nuclear contamination as a result of building and testing them. In 1954, the Soviet government established a nuclear test site on Novaya Zemlya, an island chain in the Barents Sea, and detonated weapons above ground, underground, and under water, including a 58 megaton airburst, the largest nuclear weapon ever exploded. Fallout rained down as far as Norway, 900 kilometers away. While all nuclear countries have conducted nuclear tests, the Soviet Union alone conducted 132 tests at Novaya Zemlya between 1955 and 1990 (McVicker 1998), and 456 tests at the Semipalatinsk site in Kazakhstan between 1946 and 1991 (Kassenova 2009; see also Sidel 2000). During the Cold War, information regarding nuclear tests and weapons manufacturing and deployment capabilities was generally classified and not released to the public. Even after the end of the Cold War, nuclear information is considered sensitive (see the case of Alexander Nikitin, the former Soviet nuclear inspector profiled in Part II of this volume, who was charged with treason for cooperating with a Norwegian environmental group).

Live-Fire Training and Surveillance

Weapons do not have to be used in war to cause environmental damage. The island of Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico, was used as a live-fire training range by the U.S. Navy for more than 60 years. Local residents claimed that the island became contaminated with lead and other heavy metals, chemical explosives, and unexploded ordnance, and protested the Navy's presence there. In May 2001, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations ADM William Fallon cited the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act as two of the most difficult obstacles to training, and petitioned the House Committee on Government Reform to keep Vieques open. However, by May 2003, the Navy agreed to cease its use of Vieques and withdraw from the territory. The Navy has since set aside $200 million for environmental cleanup, which began in 2005; as of 2008, nearly 15,000 live munitions have been removed from approximately 775 acres of land, and in 2010, a luxury W Hotel opened up on the island, indicating the local government's desire to boost tourism.

With Vieques no longer in use, the Navy maintains a live-fire range on Farallon de Medinilla, an uninhabited island in the Northern Marianas. Defense advocates say that the military needs Farallon de Medinilla, since it is the only range that provides sufficient room for thorough training for forward-deployed forces, without which military readiness will suffer. Environmental groups, however, sought a court injunction to prevent the Navy from using the island, arguing that it is a major nesting ground for several endangered species of birds on the Pacific Flyway. In 2002, a district court for the District of Columbia argued that the Navy's activities on Farallon de Medinilla were in violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1918.

Other peacetime military operations also have environmental ramifications. For example, the U.S. Navy's low- and mid-frequency active sonar is an important part of American sea-based defense, intended to detect enemy submarines. However, the high-intensity sonar has been linked to mass strandings of whales and other cetaceans in oceanic waters. Cetaceans such as dolphins, porpoises, and whales use underwater sound waves for navigation and communication, and they have been known to beach themselves after exposure to sonar. A recent study by marine scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute revealed that the feeding, mating, and migratory behavior of whales can be disrupted at 140 decibels (Tyack et al. 2011), well below the output of many modern sonar arrays designed to detect near-silent diesel-electric submarines.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower California court decision requiring the Navy to desist from using mid-frequency active sonar. The Court ruled that submarine training was more important than protecting cetaceans, and that the Court would defer to the Navy's judgment as to when and how best to conduct its sonar training, though the Navy is required to allocate at least $14.75 million through FY 2011 for marine mammal protection.

Military-Controlled Areas as Habitat

Not all military activities and facilities are harmful to the natural environment. Human development is constantly encroaching on wildlife habitat, and large undisturbed tracts of land such as military bases can serve as a refuge for species of all kinds. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, just north of San Diego, CA, is home to the training ground of the First Marine Division. Due to the high value of land in southern California, the approximately 125,000 acres on the base is home to a number of indigenous and endangered species that have been crowded out of other land. The U.S. Marine Corps has an Integrated Natural Resource Management Plan in place to manage and conserve this wildlife while still maintaining military training.

In an unusually positive example of war's effect on the environment, an area that was formerly a war zone has now become one of the most important conservation sites in the world. The 1953 Armistice that brought the war between the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) to a halt preserved a demilitarized zone, or DMZ, four kilometers wide between the two countries as a sort of no-man's-land. As a result of the area being completely uninhabited for almost 60 years, its 390 square miles have become a home for more than 1,000 species, several of which are not found anywhere else in the world. The South Korean government is now making plans to turn the DMZ and the adjacent low population area into a formal wildlife refuge, but this will not happen easily. A formal agreement will have to be reached with the unpredictable North Korean regime and more than 1 million land mines will need to be cleared before the area can be opened up for tourists.

Figure 5.2 Korean Demilitarized Zone

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(Department of Defense)

Legal Status of the Environment during War

The conduct of war and conflict is generally governed by “rules of war” treaties such as the 1907 Hague Convention and the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, as well as arms control agreements and treaties that limit certain types of weapons (e.g., 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention) or prohibit their use in certain places (e.g., 1959 Antarctic Treaty). Limitations on the entry into war and the course of its conduct derive from what is known as Just War Theory, which governs the types of conduct that are acceptable from belligerents in a war. Restrictions that are not specifically laid out in a treaty or a convention are said to be contained in customary international law, wherein a nation will abide by guidelines out of a sense of legal obligation.

The terms and provisions contained in these treaties encompass two basic philosophical and legal principles. The principle of proportionality indicates that the means of war must be appropriate to the ends. Put another way, combatants can use only the minimum amount of force that is needed to attain the objective. Disproportionate use of force can include indiscriminate weapons such as landmines. What constitutes proportionality in war is decided with regard to both customary international law and current military doctrine. The principle of discrimination means that all targets, whether human (military personnel) or structural (bridges or airfields), must have military or strategic value. Combatants cannot target civilians, and reprisals against civilian resources are prohibited. This is a relative principle rather than an absolute principle; in other words, it is acceptable to maximize protection for noncombatants and minimize collateral damage if in pursuit of a legitimate military target.

There are conventions and protocols that protect specific groups or classes of people from indiscriminate harm during war, such as noncombatants, women and children, soldiers who are wounded or who have surrendered, and medical and religious personnel. However, there is no specific obligation to protect the natural environment during a conflict. Rather, protection of the environment falls under the realm of customary international law (ICRC 2005, 191). Principle VI of the Nuremburg Code includes in its definition of war crimes “violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to…devastation not justified by military necessity.”

There are several sources of customary international law that address the protection of resources during war (see the boxed text), but only two international treaties specifically address the wartime legal status of the environment.

Environmental Modification Convention

The 1977 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) entered into force in 1980. The need for an environmental modification treaty was prompted by the use of defoliants and weather modification techniques such as rain cloud seeding during the Vietnam War. While these tactics may have conferred short-term military advantage to the side deploying them, they often resulted in persistent damage to the local environment.

ENMOD prohibits “military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting [lasting a number of months], or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage, or injury to any other State Party.” ENMOD goes on to define “environmental modification techniques” as “any technique for changing—through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes—the dynamics, composition, or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.”

While on its face ENMOD seems to be a comprehensive prohibition against collateral environmental damage, it has some significant loopholes. First, it only applies to the use of the environment as a weapon, that is, natural forces such as storms or drought directed against the enemy. It does not address the environmental damage arising from the use of conventional weapons. Second, its provisions are only applicable between signatories; a nation can use these techniques against a nonsignatory or against its own people. Finally, it only prohibits hostile use of these techniques. Presumably, nonhostile environmental modification is permitted, and this question has been raised in conjunction with new inquiries into the development and deployment of geo-engineering technologies.

The full text of the Environmental Modification Convention appears in Part Three of this volume, Key Documents. The United States has ratified this convention, though some critics have argued that the terms of the ENMOD do not go far enough to prevent environmental damage related to war (see Goldblat 1975).

Protocol I to the Geneva Convention

The 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts also addresses the protection of the environment during war, and employs language that is similar to ENMOD. Protocol I, Article 54 addresses the protection of objects specific to the survival of the civilian population. Starvation of civilians is prohibited, as is attacking or destroying food stocks, agricultural areas, and drinking water supplies. This article recognizes, under just war theory, that the civilians are nonbelligerents in the conflict and as such, the food and water necessary for their survival are deserving of the same protections afforded to their own persons.

Article 55 likewise prohibits “methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment.” Protocol I uses the same terms as ENMOD, but in this case, a long-term time frame means decades, not merely one season. In addition, attacks against the environment for reprisal purposes, such as the previously discussed oil fires after the 1991 Gulf War, are explicitly prohibited.

The key concept behind both ENMOD and Protocol I is that of proportionality. As previously mentioned, this means that the damage to the environment from a weapons attack must not outweigh the military benefit gained by the attack. While current U.S. military doctrine and rules of engagement call for explicit compliance with the laws of war, it is difficult for the military to develop operational guidelines that balance military necessity with environmental protection, though these guidelines are reviewed periodically. Consequently, the determination of proportionality is extremely subjective, and at the time of the attack, relies on the judgment of the military commander in the field. Violations of these laws can be considered war crimes. As per the Nuremberg trials, not even military necessity is sufficient reason for ignoring the laws of war, not even the loss of the battle or the war itself. However, international laws of proportionality, environmental or otherwise, are still not always followed due to poor planning, bad intelligence, equipment failure, or outright neglect. The full text of Protocol I appears in Part Three. The United States has not ratified this Protocol.

Other International Agreements

Various other international treaties and agreements contain provisions that protect particular places on earth (or off earth) from warfare and conflict. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 prohibits weapons deployment, nuclear explosions, or radioactive waste storage in Antarctica, which is to be used for peaceful purposes only. The 1968 Treaty of Tlatelolco prohibits nuclear weapons in all of Latin America and the Caribbean, the first treaty to protect a populated area; the 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga, the 1995 Treaty of Bangkok, the 1996 Treaty of Pelindaba, and the 2006 Treaty of Semipalatinsk prohibit nuclear weapons in Pacific Island States, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia, respectively. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits nuclear weapons, weapons testing, and military bases on the moon or any other celestial body.

Why attempt to outlaw war from some areas and not others? We might argue that the more the places on earth where war is prohibited, the better things will be, and it is true that none of the treaties mentioned above has been breached by any nation. However, we only have to look to the ultimate fate of the Covenant of the League of Nations to remember that most nations prize war as a method of defense, either of their borders, or their allies, or their national honor; they also prize war as a method of acquisition of land and resources. Consequently, international law is unlikely to prove to be a permanent safeguard against war's general destructiveness.

Is there something unique about the natural environment—among all the spoils of war—that should render it off limits for destruction? In 1997, a team of environmental economists led by Dr. Robert Costanza of the University of Maryland attempted to estimate the financial worth of the entire world's ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are those functions that a healthy environment provides: climate regulation, fresh water supply, nutrient cycling, pollination, food production, genetic biodiversity, recreation, and many others. Costanza and his team estimated that the natural world provided human societies all over the globe with an average of $33 trillion worth of services for free; many of these services are such that humans cannot reproduce them for themselves at any price. When we consider how critical most of these services are to human survival, their damage or decline is a threat not only to one army or even to one nation, but to the ability of the earth to support human life.

“Fifth Geneva Convention”

Legal scholars have disagreed on whether existing protections for the environment under international law and customary international law are sufficient during conflict, or whether a new and comprehensive “Convention on the Protection of the Environment in Time of Armed Conflict” is necessary to protect the environment during wartime, completely and without loopholes (Plant 1991, 184; note that this is only a proposed title, and there is no such convention currently in existence). There are both advantages and disadvantages to this.

Depending on its terms, a new convention could make it an explicit war crime to target the environment during conflict, or even to undertake a military action that might adversely impact the environment. Some argue that existing laws are not enough to protect the environment during war because operational logic on the battlefield always elevates military necessity over environmental protection and the judgment of the battle commander over legal constraints. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has proposed a Draft Convention on the Prohibition of Hostile Military Activities in Protected Areas, but as of this date, it has not been officially adopted by any nation or government (Shambaugh et al. 2001, 19).

However, a new convention would be burdensome and contentious to negotiate among nations that have different environmental and security priorities. It might also be practically unenforceable, since an international court would give the “military necessity” argument high regard when deciding if a particular military action violated convention. Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the charter of the International Criminal Court (the Rome Statute) does use the same language as Protocol I in defining war crimes related to the environment—“widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment”—so collateral environmental damage can already be classified as a war crime if severe enough. While no permanent agreement has yet been reached on how environmental damage during conflict might be prevented or mitigated, it is useful to know that awareness of the environmental effects of war has made its way into operational thinking, from military rules of engagement to UN treaties.

Future Issues

As weapons become more powerful, and as environmental damage that occurs during peacetime becomes more widespread, some questions will certainly arise about collateral damage to the environment during war.

First, is it appropriate to put collateral environmental damage on the list of war reparations? We may never be able to approximate war's true ecological cost due to the near-total lack of long-term environmental monitoring of warfare sites. Furthermore, determining “how much” the environment was damaged during war is problematic. Environmental economists know the myriad problems inherent in environmental valuation during peacetime—chief among them, the difficulty of measuring the nonmonetary worth of an ecosystem. Valuing economic damages to the environment as possible war reparations makes this task that much harder because how much of the damage was caused by the conflict and how much existed prior to the conflict may be unclear.

In addition, war can damage the ecosystems of entire regions, making substitutes for various ecosystem services difficult to find and creating synergistic effects between the environment, public health, and other parts of society. For example, the 1991 Kuwait oil fires resulted in air pollution, which in turn affected agriculture and public health. And while our legal system prefers to adjudicate all issues to closure as soon as possible after they occur, our current economic and scientific methods to measure damage are quite limited, and full and accurate damage estimates may take years to assess. In any case, it is very unlikely that sufficient funds would be available from a defeated nation to make postwar environmental reparations. Some scholars have proposed the creation of a stand-alone liability fund to pay for environmental damages caused by war regardless of culpability, though who would put money into such a fund prior to the outbreak of war is unclear.

Second, should wartime military activities be exempt from national or international environmental laws and statutes? The U.S. military believes they should, citing training and readiness concerns, and has already petitioned Congress to grant the services blanket exemptions from, among others, the Migratory Bird Treaty and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. On the other hand, environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice argue that existing laws do not impede military training, and that there are plenty of places to train and fight that are not in ecologically sensitive areas. Additional questions about environmental laws remain, such as whether peacetime environmental treaties like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea or a belligerent nation's domestic environmental laws still apply during wartime (Plant 1991, 14; see also Dycus 1996).

Third, how should nations expect nonstate actors to behave with respect to matters of international environmental security? Traditionally, since nations are the ones that have prepared for and waged war, they have placed national security over all other national values: economic growth, human happiness, civil liberties, and ecological health. Now, in the age of nonstate warfare, groups that wage nontraditional war place their own survival or the spread of their ideologies over these same values. Current international law rests on the mutual cooperation of sovereign states; unfortunately, therein lies one of the problems with using traditional legal instruments to ensure protection of the environment during wartime. Machlis & Hanson's wartime ecology recommendations apply—as per their own admission—to traditional states with organized armed forces, and are less relevant to guerilla groups, terrorists, and rogue states (734). However, combatants of those types are exactly where the modern thrust of nontraditional war is coming from. Guerilla groups and terrorists do not have the international standing necessary to sign a treaty, nor do they have privileges in the international community to lose if they risk breaking one. Consequently, they have little to no incentive to abide by any sort of legal instrument protecting the environment during war.

Ethical Consideration toward the Environment

Given these various issues, are international legal instruments enough to protect the environment during wartime? After all, there are laws, treaties, accords, and resolutions protecting women and children, medical and diplomatic personnel, schools, hospitals, religious structures, and cultural monuments, and prohibiting acts such as torture and genocide. Yet we only have to examine current world affairs to know that monuments are destroyed by fundamentalist groups (Bamiyan, Afghanistan); women and children are raped and tortured by soldiers and sometimes peacekeepers (DRC); terrorists hide weapons in mosques and other forbidden buildings (Iraq); and medical personnel, food aid workers, and civilians are routinely fired upon (Somalia, Libya). If we cannot care for persons and things of significance to persons, how can we protect an ecosystem, whose existence is no less important than that of a hospital or church, yet seems so removed from us and our security concerns?

The idea that there are laws of war at all arises from the recognition that humans embrace some sort of ethical behavior toward each other and confer a certain level of moral worth even on their enemies. This then informs the behavior of combatants toward each other and toward noncombatant civilians. Equivalent moral worth is not conferred upon nature, however. Rather, Judeo-Christian ethics place significant emphasis on humankind's superiority over nature. This viewpoint makes abuses of the environment ethically justifiable, or at least not ethically prohibited. When our own security or that of our nation is at stake, the natural environment takes even lower precedence in our ethical calculus.

The philosophical field of environmental ethics has much to add to this debate. If humans as individuals are the referent of security and not states, then suddenly ecological health and the preservation of environmental services carry much greater weight in warfare and security decision making. Actions that can have a clear military benefit, such as bombing an oil refinery that is producing fuel for the enemy, suddenly become less of a no-brainer when the environmental damage is totted up and weighed in comparison. Ecologist Aldo Leopold articulated an environmental value known as the land ethic—that humankind is part of a larger ecosystem, and that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” By this definition of right and wrong, all warfare is wrong, since there is no type of warfare that leaves the land better off after the conflict than before. Pacifists have argued this point of view for centuries, often pointing out that humans and the ecosystem suffer in tandem.

What makes an action good or bad? We think that maintaining security and/or spreading our values is good, but what if achieving this sort of security entails reaching a good end (peace) by a bad means (environmental destruction)? If we face an ethical conundrum in weighing one life against another, as in a preemptive attack that may kill a dozen fighters in an attempt to save hundreds of civilians, we can at least measure the relative worth of these two actions in the common currency of human lives. It becomes much harder to compare the worth of civilians’ lives against that of a tropical forest, a desert ecosystem, or a mighty river. That humans consistently choose their own lives over nonhuman life speaks of the difficulty in embracing the land ethic when confronted with contradictory, seemingly more important values.

How could we then persuade military or combatant commanders to place the value of environmental protection and preservation above that of military necessity? On the face of it, this would seem to require a higher value for nature overall within the warring societies. Even the laws that do protect the environment do so because of its value to human society, not because of its intrinsic value. That sort of “deep ecology” philosophy, wherein the environment is valued just because it exists and not because it holds any benefit for humans, may be too large a philosophical shift for warring societies to embrace, but as the mutual interrelationship between security and environmental health becomes clearer, such a revised view of the importance of the environment may render any sort of collateral damage during war unacceptable.

Sources of International Obligations Concerning Protection of the Environment in Times of Armed Conflict

• General principles of law and customary international law

• International conventions

• Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, of 1907 (H.IV), and Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (H.IV.R)

• Hague Convention (VIII) relative to the Laying of Automatic Submarine Contact Mines, of 1907 (H. VIII)

• Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 1949 (G.C.IV)

• Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, of 1954 (H.CP)

• Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, of 1976 (ENMOD)

• Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), of 1977 (G.P.I)

• Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), of 1977 (G.P.II)

• (United Nations) Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, of 1980 (CW), with:

• Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-traps and Other Devices (CW.P.II)

• Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (CW.P.III)

Source: Guidelines for Military Manuals and Instructions on the Protection of the Environment in Times of Armed Conflict. 30–04–1996 Article, International Review of the Red Cross, No. 311. Annex. Available at http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jn38.htm

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