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The Environment as Military Target |
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By Haider Rizvi*
Officials and activists are demanding an end to war practices that harm the environment, such as the burning of oil wells, bombing of factories, placing of landmines and the use of depleted uranium in weapons.
UNITED NATIONS - United Nations officials and independent environmental researchers are demanding that nations stop using environmental destruction as a weapon of war.
Repeated practices like the use of weapons containing depleted uranium, placement of anti-personnel landmines, bombing of factories and storage facilities, the burning of oil refineries have devastating effects on the environment and must not be legitimized as acts of war in the international legal framework, they say.
"While environmental damage is a common consequence of war, it should never be a deliberate aim," said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in a message marking the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, Nov 6.
The message comes at a time when war clouds are already blackening the skies over the Middle East, amid fears of possible bombing of Iraq by the U.S. and British.
Currently, there are some 40 armed conflicts going on in the world, involving tens of millions of people, and taking place in areas that are crucial for biodiversity -- Africa, South Asia and Latin America -- regions that are already suffering from poverty and environmental degradation.
Annan's call to limit "intentional" destruction of the natural surroundings during armed conflict has arisen in part as a result of findings by environmental researchers in such war-torn countries as Albania, Macedonia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reports major oil spills, chemical leaks due to bombing of factories, oil refineries and storage facilities, destruction of habitats, and arable land ruined by landmines.
Although international conventions govern nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the environment remains at the mercy of new technologies, such as depleted uranium ammunition, said Annan.
Used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 1999 Kosovo war by the U.S. forces and its allies, depleted uranium weapons are made from nuclear waste, and are widely believed to cause cancer. However, the U.S. Defense Department (Pentagon) denies that it poses a significant health risk.
According to the U.S.-based Center for Defense Information, the United States possesses four weapons that rely on depleted uranium that could be used in a future war with Iraq.
Currently, the UNEP and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are conducting a field study in Kosovo and Yugoslavia to assess the environmental and health implications of depleted uranium.
The UNEP is studying the environmental impact of the recent U.S.-led bombings in Afghanistan and is preparing a report on the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. The aim is to identify the priorities for environmental rehabilitation.
"Though humankind has always counted its war casualties in terms of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, destroyed cities and livelihood," says UNEP chief Klaus Toepfer, "the environment has often remained an unpublicized victims of war."
The study released this month by the Institute of Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) claims that the 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing of military and industrial targets in Yugoslavia released "significant" amounts of toxic substances into the environment and that civilians faced possible exposure to "greater" health risks from contamination in air, water and food.
Sriram Gopal, author of the report "Precision Bombing: Widespread Harm", asserts "there is a need for a sharp redefinition of targets sets and collateral damages."
Currently, collateral damage is measured in terms such as the number of civilian casualties or the cost of replacing property. "Long-term environmental harms can be much more difficult to quantify and evaluate, despite their very significant costs," says Gopal.
In addition to assessing the impacts of bombing, environmentalists see the use of landmines in warfare as one of the leading causes of environmental destruction in armed conflicts.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines estimates that tens of millions of these explosive traps still exist worldwide. In Cambodia and Bosnia alone, there may be well over 100 landmines per square mile.
The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates landmines are killing more than 1,000 people every month.
And the continued existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is a threat to global environment and security, say activists.
"We should not forget the long-term damage that may be caused by use of weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear and biological weapons," warned Jan Kavan, the current president of UN General Assembly in a recent statement. "Their indiscriminate impact can lead to an environment hostile towards many forms of life. Entire species may be wiped out."
The world has seen over 100 armed conflicts since 1990, says the U.S.-based journal, Scientific American. "These wars have killed more than five million people, devastated entire geographic regions and left tens of millions of refugees and orphans," according to a recent article.
In Angola, the wildlife population has fallen to just 10 percent what it was three decades ago. In Sri Lanka, the military campaign against insurgent guerrilla groups has led to the felling of over five million trees.
Kuwait lost 30,000 marine birds as a result of burning of oil fields by the departing Iraqi troops in 1991. Similarly, strafing using defoliants in Vietnam and Afghanistan have caused dramatic loss of habitat.
This picture of the world is a source of discomfort for the UNEP chief.
"We have the Geneva Conventions, which are aimed at safeguarding the rights of prisoners of war and civilians," he says. "But we also need safeguards for the environment during times of war and in the aftermath of conflict… The innocent should not be made to suffer long after the weapons of war have been silenced."
* Haider Rizvi is an IPS correspondent.
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