Environmental Law of Armed Conflict

Warfare involves conflict not only between combatants but also between man and nature. Attacks on the environment become more savage as technology develops. Environmental destruction has become an inevitable result of modern warfare and military tactics. The nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that emerged during the late twentieth century present threats to life itself; but short of that apocalypse, modern weapons can cause or hasten a host of environmental disasters, such as deforestation and erosion, global warming, desertification, and long-term pollution of air and water. This timely study examines how the environmental impact of modern warfare violates fundamental principles of international environmental and humanitarian laws and why these consideration need to be included in rules of armed conflict. If direct attacks on innocent civilians are universally recognized as unacceptable then environ-mental devastation of their habitat by acts of war must also be recognized as an unacceptable consequence of armed conflict. The author presents the case that the international community understand its responsibility to curb environ-mental consequences of modern weaponry and incorporate environmental concerns into the conventions regulating armed conflict.