The environmental impacts of war
When we think about wars, we think of human lives being taken, monuments and buildings being destroyed. Yet, there is one other dimension that is usually forgotten: its environmental impacts.
A war is ultimately a fight for resources. Fighting for human resources to have the biggest army. Fighting for technological resources to have the best, most deadly weapons and engines. And fighting for natural resources to feed the mass production of food, clothes, weapons, drugs and infrastructures.
These resources are extracted, exploited and transformed, only to destroy other resources, your opponent’s. If you do the math, in the end the results are very negative to our source of resources — our planet.
Mainly because during that fight, the scope of what parties can see ends in winning or losing. What happens after that is not important. The long-lasting impacts on the planet are obviously not taken into account. Accounting for sustainability is put to a side when you are faced with extreme conditions.
From direct, foreseeable impacts like landscapes being destroyed by battles and bombs; to ones far from battlefields, due to extraction, processing and transportation of resources. Here are just 3 of many practical environmental consequences of wars over time:
1. Nuclear frenzy
The nuclear bombs shed during World War II made, without a doubt, reckless damage to the environment of the areas affected by it. But there is a whole industry behind the production of nuclear bombs that had terrible impacts as well.
In fact, radioactivity is released into the environment in many phases of the production and testing process of nuclear weapons. The testing phase of nuclear weapons included atmospheric, underground and underwater tests. Atmospheric tests alone accounted for 428 mt, equivalent to over 29,000 Hiroshima size bombs. This resulted in large amounts of radioactive materials being dispersed in the atmosphere and deposited in the earth’s surface.
2. Biological weapons
In the second World War, The United Kingdom conducted experiments on a biological weapon composed of Anthrax. Anthrax is a bacterium that occurs naturally in some animals in low levels, becoming lethal if inhaled in larger amounts. In 1942 the UK demonstrated its killing power by releasing it in a Scotish Island — The Gruinard Island — to wipe out a flock of sheep. The bacteria was so strong that only in 1987 was the island considered anthrax-free again and sheep could repopulate it.
3. Toxic pollution as a war tactic
We all depend on the environment to survive. So, attempting to damage the environment, the source of resources of your enemy, has been vastly used as a war strategy. During the war in Southeast Asia, the United States sprayed an estimated amount of 55 million kg of herbicides over Vietnam’s croplands. The goal was to deprive the enemy of its food sources. Years later, another environmental crime derived from warfare happened. During the Gulf War, Iraq released about 10 million barrels of Kuwaiti oil into Gulf waters, causing incredible stress to its ecosystem.
2020 started with not so uplifting news for the world. The tension between the United States and Iran put “World War III” in minds and tweets all over the world. Apart from the massive damage to human lives, destruction of infrastructures, displacement of populations and weakening of international security we also have to consider the enormous impact of a global war on the environment.
This is only to show how a war compromises all SDGs. From Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (SDG 16), No Poverty (SDG 1), to Life on Land (SDG 15) and Climate Action (SDG 13).
Written by Inês Lagoutte
