The Silent Casualty: Environmental Destruction As a Systemic Consequence Of Ongoing Armed Conflict
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/ssh.v12i1.2480Keywords:
War and Environment, Environmental Warfare, Ecocide, IHL, Ukraine, Gaza, Climate Change, UNEP, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Rome Statute, Biodiversity, Water ContaminationAbstract
Armed conflict has always exacted a human toll, but the environmental dimensions of modern warfare have received comparatively scant attention in international legal scholarship and policy discourse. As of 2023, more than 170 active armed conflicts were recorded globally, each generating cascading environmental consequences that persist long after the guns fall silent. This paper examines the multidimensional environmental impact of ongoing wars, with particular focus on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza two of the most environmentally destructive armed conflicts of the contemporary era along with the ongoing Isreal and Iran war. Drawing on empirical data from the Initiative on GHG Accounting of War, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and other international organizations, the paper traces the environmental footprints of warfare across five principal domains: greenhouse gas emissions, soil and land contamination, destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure, deforestation and biodiversity loss, and the collapse of nuclear safety margins. The paper further interrogates the adequacy of the existing international legal framework encompassing Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, customary international humanitarian law (IHL), and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to address the scale and permanence of war-induced environmental harm. It argues that the cumulative evidence from ongoing conflicts reveals a structural deficiency in international law: the threshold for criminalising environmental destruction during armed conflict is so exacting as to be practically unenforceable, leaving ecosystems without meaningful legal protection. The paper concludes by evaluating emerging reform proposals, including the codification of ecocide as a fifth international crime under the Rome Statute, and argues that genuine environmental accountability for war requires both doctrinal reform and institutional political will.
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See generally RICHARD FALK, THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF WAR 3–12 (2000); UNEP, FROM CONFLICT TO PEACEBUILDING: THE ROLE OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENT 5–8 (2009) (documenting the tripartite structure of war-induced environmental harm across multiple contemporary conflicts).
United Nations, The Environmental Toll of Conflict and War, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STABILIZATION AND RECOVERY (Nov. 7, 2024), https://www.jmu.edu/news/cisr/2024/11/07-environment.shtml (reporting 170+ armed conflicts recorded in 2023 with ecosystem destabilisation across affected regions).
INITIATIVE ON GHG ACCOUNTING OF WAR & CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES ECOACTION, CLIMATE DAMAGE CAUSED BY RUSSIA'S WAR IN UKRAINE: THREE-YEAR ASSESSMENT 3–5 (Feb. 24, 2025) [hereinafter THREE-YEAR GHG ASSESSMENT] (placing total war-related emissions at 230 MtCO₂e equivalent to combined annual emissions of Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia).
U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), Environmental Impact of the Conflict in the Gaza Strip: Second Assessment ¶¶ 7–12 (Sept. 23, 2025) [hereinafter UNEP GAZA SECOND ASSESSMENT]; Environmental Impact of the Gaza War, WIKIPEDIA (last visited Apr. 2026) (compiling UNEP, UNOSAT and FAO data on debris volume and water infrastructure destruction).
Barry S. Levy, The Impacts of War on Health, Human Rights, and the Environment – An Overview, FRONTIERS IN PUB. HEALTH (Mar. 2025), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12484150/ (analysing direct, indirect and long-term categories of war-induced environmental harm).
Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, May 18, 1977, 1108 U.N.T.S. 151 [hereinafter ENMOD].
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts arts. 35(3), 55, June 8, 1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 3 [hereinafter AP I].
Levy, supra note 5 (characterising war's environmental effects as structurally encompassing infrastructure collapse, population displacement, governance incapacitation and contamination legacies).
Reinhard Bun et al., Tracking Unaccounted Greenhouse Gas Emissions Due to the War in Ukraine Since 2022, 914 SCI. TOTAL ENV'T 169879 (2024) (establishing methodology for attributing war-generated GHG emissions outside national reporting frameworks).
Id. (estimating substantial unaccounted GHG emissions across military vehicle fuel consumption, munitions manufacture, infrastructure destruction, and conflict-induced fires).
THREE-YEAR GHG ASSESSMENT, supra note 3, at 4–6 (providing sectoral breakdown with warfare activities at 82.1 MtCO₂e, infrastructure reconstruction at 27%, and conflict-induced landscape fires constituting an additional major category).
Planetary Security Initiative, Climate Damage Caused by Russian War in Ukraine in Three Years: The Key Numbers (Feb. 24, 2025), https://www.planetarysecurityinitiative.org (reporting $42 billion climate liability based on social cost of carbon of $185 per tonne).
IIASA, Significant Greenhouse Gas Emissions Resulting from Conflict in Ukraine (Feb. 15, 2024), https://iiasa.ac.at/news/feb-2024/ (noting that international policy frameworks presuppose a world without conflict which 'is unfortunately not the reality we are facing today').
Douglas Weir, quoted in TIME, Ukraine to Claim $44bn in Climate Damages from Russia: Why War Is So Bad for Emissions (Nov. 20, 2025), https://time.com/7335449/ (tracing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol's military emission exclusion to deliberate political choice and noting Paris Agreement's voluntary reporting standard).
Id. (reporting Ukraine's November 2025 announcement at COP30 of intention to seek $44 billion in climate damages from Russia, described as the first such national reparations claim in history).
EUR. JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE (JRC), STATUS OF ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE IN UKRAINE 28–33 (Apr. 11, 2025) [hereinafter JRC UKRAINE STATUS REPORT] (documenting mechanisms of soil contamination through heavy metal deposition, unexploded ordnance, and military vehicle-induced erosion).
Id. at 11 (noting agriculture constitutes 11% of Ukraine's GDP and accounted for EUR 23.3 billion in exports in 2023).
Id. at 31–33 (documenting release of lead, mercury and arsenic through military activities with potential for food chain penetration, and noting 40% of Ukraine's soils were erosion-affected prior to invasion).
United Nations, The Environmental Toll of Conflict, supra note 2 (citing Ukrainian government projections of $34.6 billion for explosive land contamination clearance).
FAO & UNOSAT, Agricultural Damage Assessment of the Gaza Strip (May 2025) (reporting less than 5% of Gaza cropland remaining cultivable, with 80.4% of 15,053 total hectares damaged and 77.8% inaccessible).
Systemic Ecocide: Israel's 2-Year War Devastates Gaza's Environment, PRESS TV (Sept. 15, 2025), https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2025/09/15/755057/ (reporting FAO-UNOSAT findings and noting destruction of every greenhouse in the Gaza governorate by April 2025).
Forensic Architecture, No Traces of Life: Ecocide in Gaza 2023–2024, GOLDSMITHS UNIV. LONDON (2024) (documenting via satellite imagery the destruction of 65+ km² of farms and orchards by February 2024 and characterising the agricultural destruction as deliberate ecocide).
See Abdullah Muratoglu & Fatma Wassar, Water at the Intersection of Human Rights and Conflict: A Case Study of Palestine, 6 FRONTIERS IN WATER (Dec. 2024), https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2024.1470201 (analysing the dual humanitarian and environmental dimensions of wartime water infrastructure destruction).
The Ecocide of Gaza, THE CANARY (Oct. 3, 2025), https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/10/03/ (reporting 88% of Gaza's water wells and all desalination plants destroyed or non-operational by mid-2024).
Yara Asi et al., The Ongoing Environmental Destruction and Degradation of Gaza: The Resulting Public Health Crisis, 115 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH 1078, 1079–81 (2025) (documenting 94% decrease in total water volume and up to 70% of population consuming contaminated water).
Environmental Impact of the Gaza War, WIKIPEDIA, supra note 4 (citing Norwegian Refugee Council data on daily discharge of 130,000+ cubic metres of untreated sewage into the Mediterranean from October 2023 following fuel supply blockade).
UNEP GAZA SECOND ASSESSMENT, supra note 4, ¶ 15 (reporting 73 of 84 sewage pumping stations destroyed by February 2025).
ICRC, From Crisis to Recovery: Managing the Environmental Impacts of Armed Conflict, ICRC LAW & POLICY BLOG (Dec. 2, 2025), https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2025/12/02/ (referencing the Kakhovka Dam Breach Environmental Assessment among UNEP's recent conflict-related assessments).
JRC UKRAINE STATUS REPORT, supra note 16, at 42–45 (documenting chemical contamination of inland waterways and marine infrastructure with long-term biodiversity consequences for Black Sea and Sea of Azov ecosystems).
THREE-YEAR GHG ASSESSMENT, supra note 3, at 8 (attributing 2024 wildfire escalation to combination of conflict-generated ignition points, climate-driven drought conditions, and hampered firefighting capacity).
JRC UKRAINE STATUS REPORT, supra note 16, at 22–25 (citing European Forest Fire Information System data showing 965,000 hectares burned in Ukraine in 2024, more than twice the EU total over the same period).
Euronews, Three Years of War in Ukraine: 'Environmental Damage Knows No Borders' as Emissions Rise to New High (Feb. 24, 2025), https://www.euronews.com/2025/02/24/ (reporting 118% increase in landscape fire emissions for 2024 reaching 25.8 MtCO₂e).
Environmental Impact of the Gaza War, WIKIPEDIA, supra note 4 (compiling UNOSAT data showing 48% tree cover loss by March 2024, rising to 80% by January 2025).
UNEP GAZA SECOND ASSESSMENT, supra note 4, ¶¶ 20–28 (finding unprecedented deterioration of soil, freshwater and coastal ecosystems compared to June 2024 baseline, with recovery timelines measured in decades).
Counting the Cost: The Environmental Toll on Ukraine from the Russian Invasion, HUM. RTS. RESEARCH (Oct. 2025), https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/ (reporting all Zaporizhzhia reactors shut due to Russian occupation, removing 6 GW of capacity and citing IAEA reports on persistent safety risks).
Id. (documenting 2022 missile strike detonated 300 metres from South Ukraine NPP and 2023 blast-wave damage to Khmelnytskyi NPP, with IAEA reports on ongoing drone activity near Rivne NPP).
UNEP GAZA SECOND ASSESSMENT, supra note 4, ¶ 9 (estimating 40 million tonnes of debris representing 57% increase from June 2024 assessment and 20 times total debris from all Gaza conflicts since 2008).
Systemic Ecocide, PRESS TV, supra note 21 (reporting scientific warnings on white phosphorus contamination of crops, soil and food chain, with links to birth defects already documented in Gaza).
AP I arts. 35(3), 55, supra note 7; see also ICRC CASEBOOK, The Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict, https://casebook.icrc.org/highlight/protection-natural-environment-armed-conflict (summarising treaty and customary law framework including Rules 45, 139 and 140 of the ICRC Customary IHL Study).
Michael Bothe, Carl Bruch, Jordan Diamond & David Jensen, International Law Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict: Gaps and Opportunities, 92 INT'L REV. RED CROSS 569, 577–79 (2010) (characterising the tripartite conjunctive threshold as 'one of the highest damage thresholds in international humanitarian law').
ICRC, Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict ¶¶ 45–49 (2020) [hereinafter ICRC GUIDELINES] (affirming customary law status of Rule 45 while noting some states deny customary character of certain elements in non-international armed conflicts).
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court art. 8(2)(b)(iv), July 17, 1998, 2187 U.N.T.S. 90 [hereinafter ROME STATUTE].
Iryna Rekrut, Environmental Destruction in Conflict: Broadening Accountability in War, ICRC LAW & POLICY BLOG (Mar. 20, 2025), https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2025/03/20/ (noting that the high threshold of Art. 8(2)(b)(iv) has so far prevented any prosecution under the provision).
ICC Office of the Prosecutor, Policy Paper on Case Selection and Prioritisation 13–14 (Sept. 15, 2016) (indicating ICC Prosecutor's intention to give attention to environmental crimes as potential Rome Statute matters).
TIME, supra note 14 (reporting Ukraine's 247 environmental war crime cases against Russia in domestic courts and before the ICC as of April 2025).
International Law Commission, Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts, U.N. Doc. A/77/10 annex (2022) (affirming in Principle 13 that obligations under international environmental law continue to apply in armed conflict).
ICRC, From Crisis to Recovery, supra note 28 (citing UNEA 2024 consensus decision as reflecting growing political recognition that environmental protection in armed conflict is integral to peace and recovery, while noting it does not create new binding obligations).
Weir, quoted in TIME, supra note 14 (explaining that military emission exclusion in Paris Agreement reproduces the Kyoto Protocol architecture and leaves war as a major unaccounted emissions source within global climate governance).
Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide, Commentary and Core Text (June 2021), in STOP ECOCIDE INTERNATIONAL, https://www.stopecocide.earth (defining ecocide as 'unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment').
Rekrut, supra note 43 (comparing alternative threshold structure and mens rea standard of proposed ecocide definition favourably against Art. 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute for purposes of environmental accountability in armed conflict).
See id. (noting that as of January 2025, fifteen countries had criminalised ecocide in domestic law and the European Parliament had issued a Directive treating ecocide as a crime, evidencing growing international consensus).
Bun et al., supra note 9 (arguing that accurate accounting for war-generated GHG emissions is crucial and that international policy frameworks for net-zero transition 'presuppose a world without conflict which unfortunately is not the reality we are facing').
G.A. Res. 77/352, 3, U.N. Doc. A/RES/77/352 (Nov. 14, 2022) (establishing in principle that Russia should make reparations to Ukraine for damage caused by the invasion, providing a foundation for environmental compensation claims).
See UNEP, From Conflict to Peacebuilding, supra note 1, at 42–45 (reviewing the UNCC Gulf War reparations process, including the environmental claims component, as a precedent for post-conflict environmental compensation).
See UNEP GAZA SECOND ASSESSMENT, supra note 4, statement of Executive Director Inger Andersen ('The situation is going from bad to worse. If this continues, it will leave a legacy of environmental destruction that could affect the health and wellbeing of generations of Gaza residents.').
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