Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans For Peace

An Overview of the Environmental

Costs of War 

Prepared by Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans for Peace

 

“War is hell”, stated the Civil War’s General Sherman, who ironically carried out a scorched earth policy in conducting war against the Confederate States.

 

It is hell not only in the carnage inflicted on young men and women of the military and on civilians and property, but in its environmental impacts.  The planet’s natural environment is already wounded and bleeding to death due to assaults of resource extraction, pollution and climate change.  War, -- a totally fruitless, inhumane, unnecessary mechanism -- adds to this assault on the environment.  This has been true historically, but modern day warfare has vastly increased the adverse impacts. It is vital for environmental movements to address the impacts of war on the environment.  

 

Chemical Warfare

The American military’s use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War is one of the most widely-known examples of using environmental destruction as a military strategy, --akin to scorched-earth practices of an earlier time.  Agent Orange is a herbicide that was sprayed in millions of liters over approximately 10% of Vietnam between 1962 and 1971.  It was used to defoliate tropical forests and mangroves to expose combatants, and destroy crops to deprive peasants of their food supply.  The environmental and health effects were devastating.  The spraying destroyed 14% of South Vietnam’s forests, including 50% of the mangrove forests.  Few, if any, have recovered to their natural state.  Similar to toxic chemical spills, Agent Orange continues to threaten the health of Vietnamese.  In 2001, scientists documented extremely high levels of dioxin in blood samples taken from residents born years after the end of the Vietnam War.  Studies attribute such high levels to food chain contamination: soil contaminated with dioxin becomes river sediment, which is then passed to fish, a staple of the Vietnamese diet.  This is a clear reminder that poisoning our environments is a way of poisoning ourselves.

 

Forests and Wildlife Impacts

Modern warfare devastates forests and biodiversity through direct devastation of wild land through movement of land-based military machinery and from the air by massive bombing.  For instance, it is estimated that 35% of Cambodia’s intact forests have been altered and degraded by 2 years of civil conflict, and in Vietnam bombing severely degraded over 2 million acres of land.  Fires from incendiary bombs destroy forest and wildlife habitat.  Aquatic habitats are impacted through water contamination with petroleum products, military human waste of armies, bombing of reservoir dams and bridges.  Iraq military setting fire to and dumping of oil in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War was called by the UN Environmental Program “one of the worse engineered disasters of humanity.”  Non-adequately provisioned armies turn to mountain gorillas of the Virungas in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been decimated by poaching.  The homeless, displaced by war are often a threat to wildlife and to the protection of National Parks and Reserves.  The residues of warfare, as in depleted uranium or other toxins are concentrated and magnified in food chains, causing ecological cascade effects.  Endangered plants and animals get no consideration when armies are pitted against one another.  Also, biodiversity protection and environmental conservation become lower priorities during and after war.

 

Land Mines

The presence of land mines can render large areas of productive land unusable because of continuing hazard to human use.  These long impact, inhumane devices should be banned by international treaty.  Such a treaty, initiated by a Vermonter Jody Williams, has bee signed by 161 State Parties.  The United States is one of 35 countries which have not agreed to sign this treaty.  The International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, founded by Williams and furthered by the Vietnam Veterans of America, is still active, and needs support particularly in pushing the US to sign onto the Convention.  More than 2.2 million anti-personnel and 250,000 anti-vehicle mines have been removed since 1999, the year of the treaty.  This has restored a portion of the effected lands to productive use after years of hazard.

 

Depleted Uranium

One of the most worrisome new war technologies is the use of depleted uranium for its ability to enhance the armor-penetrability of bullets and missiles.  The US is the leading user of this material and it has been used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Much of this winds up in the soil or in wind-blown dust, and its carcinogenic effects on humans who inhale it is of major concern.  From both wind and water erosion soil enters waterways and is ingested by people and plants. In addition, being in the soil and taken up by plants, it enters nature’s food chain.  This impact needs study and documentation. Veterans for Peace has vehemently opposed its use, and has information on the human health consequences. 

 

The Incredible Costs of Fossil Fuels

The military is a “machine” and as such, it runs on fossil-fuels derived energy. The American military alone is the single largest consumer of oil in the world. It uses 14 million gallons per day,- half of it in jet fuel. The US Air Force alone consumes 2.6 billion gallons per year. Add in the fuel consumption of all the other countries’ military!!!  In Afghanistan each soldier is responsible for use of 22 gallons per day. By end of 2007, the Iraq War had put the carbon dioxide equivalent of 25 million cars into the atmosphere- contributing significantly to climate change.  Securing all this fossil fuel extracts an incredible burden on the environment. From mountain-top removal to oil land gas well drilling in our natural areas, fracking, strip mining for tar sands and dangerous off-shore wells,-all have environmental costs and too often damages from spills (think Gulf oil fire), leaks, transport accidents (Exxon Valdez) and waste disposal. There is also the complex problem of ocean shipping and the conflict over foreign supplies. Was the war in Iraq really about securing oil?

 

Other Mining for Metals

Rebel groups worldwide (and some governments) need money to buy arms to wage war, and to pay mercenaries. Precious metals can provide these funds. The stories of humanitarian and environmental damage from the mining of such sources of money as gold, coltran, tin and tungsten are horrific. Also the use of toxic chemicals in the extraction and refining processes of metals of war means disaster for streams and rivers with their associated aquatic life. “Blood diamond” mining has been well documented. All such mining leaves open sores on Mother Earth

 

General

The planet badly needs, if wars are to continue, a strong international protocol or convention preventing or at least mitigating environmental degradation due to war.  The Geneva Conventions with respect to war are totally inadequate.  Environmental restoration of damaged areas of land and water must be required.  International agreements on nature protection, such as Migratory Bird Treaties, Ocean Dumping, Transboundary Wildlife Corridors are peacetime protocols that are ignored or limited during conflict by the “Law of War”, -- win at all costs.  Environmental security much be raised to the status of a Human Right. War is hell for people and for the natural.