8/22/2019 War and Sustainability
1/4JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ENVIRONMENT 3
BYTES OF NOTE
War and Sustainability:
The Economic and Environmental Costs
Sustainable development, as defined by the World Com-
mission on Environment and Development,1 is the ability to
meet the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs. As
Robert Kates, Anthony Leiserowitz, and Thomas Parris sum-
marized in this magazine,2 sustainable development is now
commonly understood to rest on the widespread and simul-
taneous achievement of positive economic, environmental,
and social goals. The social component is broadly conceived
to include, among other things, good public health and an
equitable distribution of lifes benefits and burdens. Mean-
while, nations, ethnic groups, and other interests
frequently
find themselves involved in armed conflict that tends to
drain
economies; deplete natural resources, ecosystems, and human
health; and lengthen rather than mend tears in the social
fab-
ric. War (used here as a shorthand for the more inclusive
term
of armed conflict) is in direct opposition to
sustainability.
The Nobel Foundation uses data from the Correlates of War
project (http://www.correlatesofwar.org) and the Interna-
tional Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO, http://new.prio
.no/CSCW-Datasets) to map wars with 1,000 or more battle
deaths from 1900 to 2001 (http://nobelprize.org/
educational_games/peace/conflictmap). The Center for Sys-
temic Peace and its Integrated Network for Societal Conflict
Research (http://www.systemicpeace.org) also present data
on types of war and conflict, including terrorist bombings
and a list of wars over the last six decades. Kristine
Ecksuseful resource, A Beginners Guide to Conflict Data is
available at http://www.pcr.uu.se/publications/UCDP_pub/
UCDP_paper1.pdf. Tom Parris devoted a previous Bytes of
Note column in March 2001 to Accessing Data on Armed
Conflicts and Humanitarian Crises.3
The opportunity cost of military spending (and thus its
impact on the economic component of sustainability) is huge.
Equipping and training for war, the job of the military even
in
peacetime, directs resources away from other pressing prob-
lems. Deficit spending has this effect not only now but for
future generations. The fiscal year 2007 U.S. defense budget
(http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2007)
tops $485 billion. This does not include nearly $78 billion
for
veterans benefits and services or supplemental Department
of Defense funding requested for 2008 at $189 billion for
the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars (http://www.whitehouse
.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071022-7.html). By compari-
son, the 2007 U.S. budget authority for energy, environment,
and natural resources was $30 billion (see page 10, Table
1-7 of the defense budget above for a comparison of defense
versus other national budget planning, including veterans
affairs). Internationally, these figures compare to a
two-year
20062007 budget of $239 million for the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP, http://www.unep.org/GC/
GC23/documents/GC23-INF16.doc). These defense budget
figures do not address separate but related economic costs,
such as the loss of infrastructure destroyed in combat or
the
lost productivity and sustenance costs of refugees and
othercivilians unable to work due to war.
In his 1961 farewell address (http://www.ourdocuments
.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=90), president and retired
five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower meditated on the
financial burden of a large standing military and alluded to
the need for intergenerational equity in monetary spending
and resource use. In the speech, Eisenhower warned us not
only against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . .
by
the military-industrial complex, but also cautioned us not
to
mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 ENVIRONMENT 3
BY GEORGE E. CLARK
Equipping and training for war, the
job of the military even in peacetime,
directs resources away from other
pressing problems.
8/22/2019 War and Sustainability
2/44 ENVIRONMENT VOLUME 50 NUMBER 1
Wars environmental cost is more difficult to enumerate
than its economic cost. Governments have recognized envi-
ronmental harm as enough of a threat to sustainability to
put
in force a treaty in 1978 prohibiting Military or Any
OtherHostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques
(http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/4783.htm). The treaty cov-
ers only events encompassing an area on the scale of sev-
eral hundred square kilometers, or, presumably, more. It
is not clear what impact this treaty has had, if any, in
terms
of accomplishing its aims. The United Nations has declared
6 November of each year as the day to bring attention to
environmental exploitation during wars (http://www.un.org/
depts/dhl/environment_war).
One site, the Inventory of Conflict and Environment (ICE,
http://www.american.edu/TED/ice/ice.htm) attempts to
document the breadth of environmental impacts of war.
ICEidentifies more than 200 case studies. The site gives a sense
of
the extreme complexity and variety of the interplay between
environment and conflict. However, the articles, many or
most
apparently written by students, carry little information
regard-
ing author affiliation and experience, so assessment of
cred-
ibility is difficult. Further, the apparent lack of a core
author
group and ad hoc Web design give the collection a Wiki-
pedia feel without the advantage of Wikipedias graphic
standardization and feedback mechanisms. Conflict severity
in the case studies ranges from the U.S. and Canadian border
conflict on one extreme to the Rwandan civil war on the
other,
so that one is left wondering what exactly the site is tryingto
compare. There is room for more rigorous, dispassionate,
better-documented, quantitative, and graphically
sophisticated
efforts within this site and elsewhere to build on the
important
work that it has begun.
Land mines and other explosive devices left behind in war
(such as cluster bombs) present perhaps the worst ongoing
environmental threat, as they make using natural resources
(such as farm fields) a deadly activity in affected areas.
The
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (http:/www.icbl
.org) and the International Committee of the Red Cross
(http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/
section_ihl_explosive_remnants_of_war) are good sourcesof
information on this topic. A 1999 statement of U.S. mili-
tary doctrine on mine warfare can be found at http://handle
.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA434133.
The 1991 Gulf War brought widespread attention to the
ecological impacts of war as Iraqi forces dumped oil and set
fire to oil wells in Kuwait (http://www.cnn.com/
SPECIALS/2001/gulf.war/legacy/environment, http://www
.epa.gov/history/topics/foreign/03.htm). A Congressional
analysis of the wars impacts (The Environmental Aftermath
of the Gulf War, http://worldcat.org/oclc/25836239) is
avail-
able in print at many Federal Depository Libraries across
the
United States (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/libraries.html).
The United Nations Environment Programmes Post-
Conflict and Disaster Management Branch
(http://postconflict.unep.ch) has evaluated the environmental
situ-
ation subsequent to or during lulls in a number of
conflicts,
including those in Sudan and Afghanistan. The Biodiversity
Support Program maintains a good listing of links on war
andenvironment in Africa (http://worldwildlife.org/bsp/
programs/africa/conflict.html).
As with most sustainability issues, the environmental dam-
age of war tends to be more complex than it appears at
first.
Rather than simple damage to ecosystems or agricultural
systems that is easily mended, case studies interweave dam-
age, culture, politics, and logistics. Wendy Vanasselts
World
Resources Institute article (http://earthtrends.wri
.org/pdf_library/feature/gov_fea_conflict.pdf) outlines a
complex relationship between civil society, refugees, and
the environment.
Of course, the maintenance of military infrastructure causes
what might be thought of as more mundane environmental
impacts in peacetime, as do non-military agencies. U.S. gov-
ernment agencies contacts for coordinating environmental
impact statements, including those of the military branches,
are listed at http://www.nepa.gov/nepa/contacts.cfm. There
has been some controversy as to what extent the National
Environmental Policy Act (the law requiring environmental
impact statements as part of the decisionmaking process on
government projects) should come into play during overseas
military operations. (See the LL.M. thesis by Thomas Cou-
ture, http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA351470).
Next column: the personal and social costs of war.
1. The Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future, New York:
OxfordUniversity Press, 1987: 43
2. R. W. Kates, T. M. Parris, and A. Leiserowitz, What is
Sustainable Develop-ment? Goals, Indicators, Values, and
Practice,Environment47, no. 3 (April 2005):821.
3. T. M. Parris, Accessing Data on Armed Conflicts and
Humanitarian Crises,Environment43, no. 2 (March 2001): 3.
GEORGE E. CLARK is the environmental resources librarian at the
HarvardCollege Library. Material for Bytes of Note may be directed
to him [email protected].
As with most sustainability issues,
the environmental damage of war
tends to be more complex than it
appears at first.
