Abstract
Geography serves, first and foremost, to wage war. (Lacoste, 1976, as quoted in Wisner, 1986: 212)
Most recently, however, an environmental dimension has entered the arena of warfare and military concerns. Although environmental impacts from warfare have long been recognized, even if only superficially, a combination of increasing global environmental awareness and the reliance of a growing population on a shrinking pool of natural resources has intensified focus on such issues (e.g. Collier and Hoeffler, 2012; Machlis and Hanson, 2008; UNEP, 2009a). This is illustrated in the emergence of the nascent ecological subdiscipline of warfare ecology, centred around the interactions and relationships between violent conflict and ecological patterns and processes (Machlis and Hanson, 2008). The need for such a dedicated focus in this area comes from a recognition that although the natures of warfare and military activities change, both occur frequently and with broad geographical spread, being focused in particular on those countries with abundant natural resources, such as biodiversity (Hanson et al., 2009; UNEP, 2009a). The proponents of warfare ecology contend that application of ecological systems knowledge may prove instrumental in effectively evaluating the environmental impacts of war and conflict, providing a basis for effective prevention and mitigation of impact, and facilitating environmental recovery. This supports observations by the United Nations Environment Programme, among others, that not only should the environment be more rigorously protected during warfare, but sustainability of environmental resources should be factored into post-conflict recovery (UNEP, 2009a). Such efforts realistically need to be underpinned by a scientific understanding of the ecological systems involved. The warfare ecology framework further recognizes that warfare incorporates civilian, military, infrastructural and governmental elements (among others), and preparation, implementation and post-war phases of activity (Machlis and Hanson, 2008). The different permutations of warfare-related activity therefore incorporate a wide range of environmental impacts that remain relatively underexplored and overlooked (e.g. Machlis et al., 2011).
At the same time, environmental concerns are increasingly becoming incorporated into both warfare and military activities. Historically, issues relating to the value and protection of the environment have not held much of a role within military activities (or indeed many other anthropogenic activities before the ecological enlightenment that came in the early to mid-20th century), and are almost anathema to the practical realities of warfare, wherein environmental damage is at best collateral and at worst intentional and severe (Lacoste, 1973; Richardson et al., 2005; UNEP, 2009a). Modern militaries are increasingly becoming more environmentally aware, as illustrated by the use of lead-free ammunition by the Swedish military (Crawford, 2012), the extensive clean-up operations military vehicles and materiél need to undergo to avoid spreading potentially invasive species (Cofrancesco et al., 2007; Wittenberg and Cock, 2001), and the incorporation of good environmental practice into general operations (Anonymous, 2008). Greater consideration of the environment in warfare is also reflected in the burgeoning of critiques of international legislation related to environmental protection during warfare (Bothe et al., 2010; Rayfuse and Sjöstedt, 2012; UNEP, 2009b). These have highlighted many gaps for clarification and reinforcement of legislation and the terms used to determine thresholds of environmental damage, which are currently vague, as well as the necessity for a permanent UN body to consider warfare-related environmental violations and the establishment of place-based legal instruments to ensure that ecologically or resource-important areas can be designated as de-militarized zones (DMZ), at the outbreak of conflict (UNEP, 2009b).
Many warfare-related environmental concerns have been centred on different forms of contamination (especially those that may have human health impacts) or the destruction of provisioning resources, but warfare ecology calls for a more integrated understanding of impacts on the functioning of ecosystems. The ecosystem services framework (Turner and Daily, 2008) represents an effective way to articulate such impacts; many environmental concerns essentially relate to how anthropogenic impacts may affect ecosystem services, and how these may be both preserved from degradation and reinstated where they have been compromised or lost. Ecosystem services evaluations require a good ecosystem understanding and are notoriously difficult, relying on a range of valuation methods and models with varying levels of subjectivity (Seppelt et al., 2012). Nevertheless, such quantitative approaches are perhaps the best mechanisms through which the true costs of warfare to the environment (and society) may be elucidated. This is hindered in many cases by a lack of data on the ecosystems affected, and there are few detailed ecological studies on warfare impacts beyond those focusing on the legacy of toxic chemicals, e.g. from munitions (e.g. Pennington and Brannon, 2002; Westing, 1989). Greater exploration of this area is vital if impacts are to be assessed in a robust and reliable scientific manner.
An understanding of the physical forms and processes of the Earth’s surface is essential for appreciating wider ecosystems and how they function during and after conflict. Indeed, warfare on the whole remains intimately associated with the physical landscape, and it is at this level that impacts must be managed (Pearson, 2012). The specialisms of physical geographers therefore feed directly into the warfare ecology framework. Physical geography studies of impacts to landscapes of war are limited, but have included a hydrological assessment of those areas of the Mekong basin heavily bombed in the Vietnam conflict (Lacombe et al., 2010), soil and hydrological impacts of bombing on battlefields of France and Vietnam (Hupy and Koehler, 2012), degradation of soil and vegetation on military training grounds (e.g. Perkins et al., 2007) and damage to karst areas in parts of Cambodia subjected to bombing and other military activity (Kiernan, 2010). There have also been recent reviews of warfare-related impacts to the physical environment, including freshwater ecosystems (Francis, 2011) and soils (Certini et al., 2013). Yet there are relatively few detailed investigations of changes to landscape structure and physical processes, both of which directly relate to ecological functions and ecosystem services. The importance of an understanding of physical forms and processes is already cemented into ecosystem conservation, restoration and recovery in other contexts, and post-war or post-military environmental rehabilitation is no exception (e.g. Robson et al., 2011; Simenstad et al., 2006). As an example, the post-war recovery of the drained marshes of Iraq, an important ecological region and one fundamental to Marsh Arab society, has only been partially successful because of altered hydrological regimes – an understanding of which would be crucial to successful restoration (Hamdan et al., 2010). Physical geographers therefore have an important role to play in the continuing emergence of environmental concerns and quantification in relation to warfare.
Geography as a holistic discipline also has further strengths to bring to bear (Pitman, 2005). Due to its interdisciplinary foundations and focus, it may be considered perhaps the discipline sine pari when it comes to presenting a comprehensive understanding of many of the environmental issues that society is confronted with both now and for the immediate future (Pitman, 2005; Skole, 2004). Understanding the ecosystem level impacts resulting from warfare is a complex problem, above all because no contemporary ecosystem may be considered apart from its human and societal components. Geographers have a good track record in socio-ecological investigations, in interdisciplinary areas such as system resilience (Adger, 2000), ecosystem services (Potschin and Haines-Young, 2011) and nature-society interactions (Zimmerer, 2000). Such expertise may be effectively applied to warfare considerations.
The complexities and importance of warfare-environment interactions become even more relevant as the nature of warfare itself changes. While interstate warfare has been in decline for decades, intrastate warfare remains common (UNEP, 2009a). Metz (2000) predicts that future conflict will likely see a rise in ‘informal’ warfare (wherein at least one party is a non-state force, such as an insurgent militia) and ‘grey area’ warfare (which incorporates components of organized crime). Informal and grey area warfare are far more likely to involve intentional or inadvertent degradation of the environment, are less likely to involve high-technology post-modern military applications such as high-precision missiles that may limit the extent and scale of damage, and their environmental impacts are less likely to be well-documented, researched, mitigated or recovered from. Alongside this, environmental damage has never had more dramatic implications in terms of human impacts, with the destruction of key resources potentially leading to high mortality, economic damage and political chaos due to more concentrated human populations and less resilient socio-economic systems (e.g. Chalecki, 2002).
Gregory (2010) further explores modern geographical contrasts in the execution of warfare, noting that although non-state militaries waging ‘informal’ (and therefore potentially less ‘regulated’) wars are primarily in the Global South, local factors further blur the interactions and linkages between militaries, people, resources and the environment. Likewise, acts of warfare and military activities are increasingly managed and implemented remotely (utilizing, for example, technological developments such as drones), creating both physical and emotional distance between those making the decisions and those experiencing their consequences. This in turn may make environmental impacts less ‘real’ to those not directly affected. Consequently, spatial variations in the nature of warfare are likely to translate into different regimes of environmental impact and concern, further complicating prevention, mitigation and recovery efforts.
This issue contains two papers (Coates, 2014; Havlick, 2014) that address environmental elements of warfare and military activities, and were initiated following a session on ‘Conflict, conservation and environmental security’ at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2012. Coates and Havlick both consider what happens when military training grounds are closed and ‘returned’ to nature. They highlight the potential benefits of such sites for ecology and biodiversity, but explore the tensions that exist between resource provision for such sites, which is often limited, and the need to manage such areas to support some form of nature conservation, resulting in a complex and fluid form of conservation management, constrained by the environmental legacy of past military land use. The question of what is done with post-war or post-military landscapes is an important one. With some notable exceptions, mainly relating to soil and water contamination or disturbance (e.g. Certini et al., 2013), detailed qualitative or quantitative ecological considerations within studies of current or post-war/military land – within which physical processes are key – are somewhat limited. Yet soil compaction, pollution, species extirpations and the entire gamut of environmental impacts that can result from military activities are important for determining the future of such sites, which can cover extensive areas. There exists a very real opportunity for physical geographers to engage with such environmental questions within war and military contexts, and thereby address our impacts on such landscapes more comprehensively. Such issues are long-term and unlikely to fade in the near future; indeed, they are likely to increase as human conflict changes its form and larger areas of the globe become tangentially linked to military processes.
Although it was almost four decades ago, and prior to any meaningful environmental awareness or concern among state militaries, when Lacoste (1973: 3) noted ‘today, more than ever, one has to become aware of the political and military function which geography has had since its inception’, this still resonates; only now, the opportunity exists for geographers to re-engage with the many strands of global warfare for the benefit of both the environment and the societies it supports. While geography historically facilitated the waging of war, it may now have a central role in mitigating its impacts.