INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR PREVENTING THE EXPLOITATION IN WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT NOVEMBER-6

 

INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR PREVENTING

 THE EXPLOITATION IN WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT

NOVEMBER-6

The International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict is an international day observed annually on November 6 .The International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict was established on November 5, 2001, by the United Nations General Assembly, during Kofi Atta Annan's tenure as secretary-general.November 6th marks the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. For this occasion, we have put together a selection of books on this subject from our library collections. Enjoy the discovery!Guidelines on the protection of the natural environment in armed conflict: rules and recommendations relating to the protection of the natural environment under international humanitarian law, with commentary / ICRC, 2020. The Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict set out rules and recommendations relating to the protection of the natural environment under international humanitarian law (IHL). A concise commentary accompanies each rule or recommendation to aid understanding and to clarify its source and applicability. The Guidelines are a reference tool for States, parties to armed conflicts and other actors who may be called upon to interpret and apply IHL. They are intended to facilitate the adoption of concrete measures to reduce the environmental impact of armed conflict and can be incorporated into military manuals and national policy and legal frameworks. Ultimately, better respect for IHL can limit the impact of armed conflict on the natural environment and the deeply interlinked consequences for conflict-affected populations who depend on it.Abstract: Conflict-related environmental damage remains a huge challenge. This article provides a brief overview of international humanitarian law (IHL) rules that protect the natural environment in armed conflict and notes some convergences with the rules developed by classical Islamic jurists (those who lived from the seventh century up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century) affording protection to the natural environment. Today, a significant number of International Committee of the Red Cross operations take place in Muslim-majority countries, and some Muslim interlocutors, in particular Islamic non-State armed groups, use Islamic law as their normative framework. For better respect for IHL in relevant Muslim-majority States or territories, considering an Islamic legal approach to the protection of the natural environment alongside IHL would allow the parties to conflicts in such countries to better understand their obligations and should enhance the protection of the natural environment in armed conflict.

War in cities: why protecting the natural environment matters even when fighting is taking place in urban areas / ICRC, 2024.Abstract: Cities contain many natural features, biodiversity and ecosystems. Those provide a multitude of particularly interconnected services to people, which are commonly referred to as “ecosystem services”. These include provisioning (food and clean water), regulating (flood control and pollution filtering), and cultural (recreation, such as parks) and supportive services (nutrient cycling). Fighting in cities will harm these ecosystems and destroy biodiversity, and in turn affect the well-being and health of local populations and their ability to inhabit the area, sometimes even long after the conflict has ended. The contamination of the air, soil, subsoil and watercourses caused by war in cities will be significant due to toxic and harmful constituents inside weapons and explosives used during hostilities in urban settings; fire, debris and rubble that result from such hostilities – especially when facilities containing toxic and hazardous substances are damaged; damage to water, sanitation and electrical infrastructure that services a city. This document lays out the legal and policy framework protecting the environment in armed conflict. It also describes the measures that can and should be taken by states and other actors, including non-state armed groups, as well as humanitarian, community or corporate actors to reduce environmental degradation.

Protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict: 50 years of effort, and no end in sight / Michael Bothe, Environment and security, vol. 1. issue 1-2, September 2023.The debate about environmental protection in relation to armed conflict began around 1970 due to the meeting of two political movements: on the one hand, becoming aware of the environmental problem including concern for future generations and, on the other, a need to develop the law of armed conflict, filling some loopholes left by the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and reflecting experiences of conflicts which had happened since that time. There was (and is) a tension between the military interest of winning a war and the environmental interest of preserving the planet for future generations. Protocol I additional to the Geneva Convention adopted in 1977 constituted a victory for the military interest by defining the threshold of impermissible environmental damage in a way which is a far cry from satisfying the need of environmental preservation. But a lively discourse had started which has brought progress, but is far from yielding satisfactory final results. Major elements are the application of the rules concerning the protection of the civilian population and civilian objects to environmental protection, the principle of due regard for the environment, the recognized need to establish zones protected for the sake of environmental preservation, intensive activities of environmental fact-finding, the challenge of maintaining necessary environmental governance under the condition of armed conflict and environmental restoration as part of peacebuilding after the conflict.

Greening the economy of armed conflict: natural resources exploitation by armed groups and their engagement with environmental protection / Daniëlla Dam-de Jong, Hague Yearbook of international law, 2019.The exploitation of natural resources, and notably extractives, to fund armed conflict has been identified as one of the six principal pathways for direct environmental damage resulting from armed conflict. Armed groups, including those fighting in a non-international armed conflict and de facto independent non-state territorial entities (DFINSTE), are often involved in these practices. Yet, they sometimes also play a valuable role in protecting the environment in territories under their control. This article explores the normative foundations for the vast practice by armed groups with respect to natural resources exploitation and examines the engagement of these actors with the core standards for environmental protection under international law across three different settings. It concludes that a clear legal basis for natural resource exploitation by armed groups is currently lacking, but that recognition of some rights to exploit natural resources is necessary for the purpose of protecting the inhabitants of territories under control of these groups. It further finds that it is essential that the international community clearly sets out its expectations with respect to environmental protection by armed groups more generally and, where possible, engages with these groups to green their practices.

The environmental infrastructure that sustains human societies has been a target and instrument of war for centuries, resulting in famine and disease, displaced populations, and the devastation of people’s livelihoods and ways of life. Scorched Earth traces the history of scorched earth, military inundations, and armies living off the land from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, arguing that the resulting deliberate destruction of the environment—”environcide”—constitutes total war and is a crime against humanity and nature. In this sweeping global history, Emmanuel Kreike shows how religious war in Europe transformed Holland into a desolate swamp where hunger and the black death ruled. He describes how Spanish conquistadores exploited the irrigation works and expansive agricultural terraces of the Aztecs and Incas, triggering a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions. Kreike demonstrates how environmental warfare has continued unabated into the modern era. His panoramic narrative takes readers from the Thirty Years’ War to the wars of France’s Sun King, and from the Dutch colonial wars in North America and Indonesia to the early twentieth century colonial conquest of southwestern Africa. Shedding light on the premodern origins and the lasting consequences of total war, Scorched Earth explains why ecocide and genocide are not separate phenomena, and why international law must recognize environmental warfare as a violation of human rights.

Prof. John Kurakar