The Environmental Consequences Of War

The environmental devastation caused by military conflict has been witnessed in the wake of the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the Kosovo conflict. This book brings together leading international lawyers, military officers, scientists and economists to examine the legal, political, economic and scientific implications of wartime damage to the natural environment and public health. The book considers issues raised by the application of humanitarian norms and legal rules designed to protect the environment, and the destructive nature of war. Contributors offer an analysis and critique of the existing law of war framework, lessons from peacetime environmental law, means of scientific assessment and economic valuation of ecological and public health damage, and proposals for future legal and institutional developments. This book provides a contemporary forum for interdisciplinary analysis of armed conflict and the environment, and explores ways to prevent and redress wartime environmental damage.

and used in munitions. Rather the requirements for the agent’s military effects took precedence. In addition, the interaction among the political, technical, and legal challenges connected with the known or possible risks posed by CW agents is complex and sometimes not well understood. This is usually because technical considerations, when acted on, are almost invariably informed by political ones, such as various legal requirements. The book contains nine chapters covering different aspects of the research on environmental consequences of war and its aftermath and covers in one additional chapter more general issues such as prevention of war and its environmental c- sequences, the legal, political, and technical background to selected environmental and human health effects of CW agents, and the atmospheric transport and depo- tion of persistent organic pollutants under warfare conditions to more specific ones related to two main tragic examples: the war in the Balkans and the Gulf War. Aspects of the war in the Balkans cover contamination by heavy metals in Serbian national parks, the impact of NATO strikes on the Danube river basin, and the problems associated with transuranium elements. The Gulf War in Kuwait covers other problems related to the impact of oil contamination, the impact on grou- water resources, and the soil damage of ground fortifications among other envir- mental and health problems.

SOME PLACES YOU NEVER FORGET... For Amanda Stockenberg, that place was Smugglers' Inn. The seaside inn had been a refuge for Amanda when she was sixteen, a place to find solace, to find herself...and to find love. She can't think of the inn now without remembering Dane Cutter. The then nineteen-year-old illegitimate son of the cook had taught her about love. She'd been ready to give up everything to be with him. But at the end of the summer he, it seemed, was not. Now, ten years later, Amanda once again finds herself staying at Smugglers' Inn, this time for a corporate retreat. The event is her last chance to prove herself to her bosses, so she doesn't need any complications...like finding Dane Cutter still working at the inn. And still as dangerous to her equilibrium as ever. Because suddenly, Amanda isn't sure what she wants—the window office or the window room of a seaside inn. She has one week. Seven days to choose between achieving all her dreams...or reuniting with the man she never stopped loving.

The end of the Cold War has opened up the arena for increased attention to other lines of conflict, both in Europe and globally. Environmental disruption - by no means a new phenomenon - is a chief beneficiary of the shift in priorities in the public debate. The Scientific and Environmental Affairs Division of NATO has moved with the times and has defined environmental security as one of the priority areas for its cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union. Research on these issues is now thus very much a collaborative effort across former lines of division in Europe. The Introduction by Sverre Stub sets the tone: Our Future - Common, or None at All. The book reveals the very real risks associated with environmental degradation, whether of the land, waters or the oceans, and charts out previous disputes and points to the very real danger of violent conflict associated with the drying up of natural resources. The book ends with a section on Responses, which seeks to provide answers to the threats discussed in the preceding sections.

In 1982, three conservationists in the United States discussed a growing concern they shared about the long-term biological consequences of nuclear war; they wondered what such a war would do to the air, the water, the soils 1 the natural systems upon which all life depends. I was one of those three; the others were executives of two philanthropic foundations, Robert L. Allen of the Henry P. Kendall Foundation and the late Robert W. Scrivner of the Rockefeller Family Fund. Together we began trying to! find out what the scientific community was doing about the problem and what steps could be taken to alert the environmental movement to the need to address the subject. We knew that a large-scale nuclear war might kill from 300 million to a billion people outright and that another billion could suffer serious injuries requiring immediate medical attention, care that would be largely unavailable. But what kind of world wouldisurvivors face? Would the long-term consequences prove to humanity and survival of all species than the to be even more serious immediate effects? We found that comparatively little scientific research had been done about the envifonmental consequences of a nuclear war of the magni tude that toda,y's huge arsenal could unleash . .

In 1962 Rachel Carson warned of the consequences of man's pollution in her book Silent Spring, a book that some feel marks the real beginning of our environmental awareness. Silent Spring told of the consequences of our increasing pesticide use to birds. Almost 30 years after her warning, the western Arabian Gulf experienced its "silent spring" when approximately 100,000 to 250,000 waterbirds died, along with millions of other organisms, due to the massive oil spill that resulted due to Gulf war. The magnitude of our environmental problems has continued to grow during the last thirty years to a point where even the "doomsday" environmentalists could hardly have envisioned back in 1962. It seems the death of yet uncounted thousands of humans was not sufficient for Saddam Husain. His desire for power and infamy led him to unleash environmental war on mankind. At the end of the Gulf war he set ablaze the oil fields of Kuwait and released more oil into the sea than had been spilled at any time throughout history. These actions were despicable and an affront to civilized man. A quality environment should be a right of all mankind, and to wage war by deliberately polluting the earth cannot be tolerated.

Explores the links between the Cold War and the global environment, ranging from the environmental impacts of nuclear weapons to the political repercussions of environmentalism.

This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' relationship to the natural world. To be sure, environmental factors such as topography and weather powerfully shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns, and the war could not have been fought without the horses, cattle, and other animals that were essential to both armies. But here Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver weave a far richer story, combining military and environmental history to forge a comprehensive new narrative of the war's significance and impact. As they reveal, the conflict created a new disease environment by fostering the spread of microbes among vulnerable soldiers, civilians, and animals; led to large-scale modifications of the landscape across several states; sparked new thinking about the human relationship to the natural world; and demanded a reckoning with disability and death on an ecological scale. And as the guns fell silent, the change continued; Browning and Silver show how the war influenced the future of weather forecasting, veterinary medicine, the birth of the conservation movement, and the establishment of the first national parks. In considering human efforts to find military and political advantage by reshaping the natural world, Browning and Silver show not only that the environment influenced the Civil War's outcome but also that the war was a watershed event in the history of the environment itself.