Military personnel may come across a number of natural and anthropogenic environmental health risks during training, domestic operations and overseas deployment. The response has been to seek to integrate data on environmental risks and exposures into health monitoring programmes. Could these systems help inform approaches aimed at monitoring the risks to civilians from toxic remnants of war?
While Iraq is still recovering from the environmental impact of both Gulf wars, it now faces new environmental problems caused by the current conflict against the Islamic State. Since the uprising began in June 2014, fierce battles have taken place in and around cities and industrial areas, affecting the already precarious environmental situation. Wim Zwijnenburg considers the risks and response.
This study found that the conflict had exacerbated existing pollution in the Donbas region and caused further environmental damage and loss.
Report by the Ukrainian NGO Environment People Law which was one of the first to raise the alarm about the environmental consequences of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
This blog examines how mine action became decoupled from earlier, more holistic approaches to addressing the material legacies of wars, which included environmental harm, and whether it is time for this to be reappraised.
The widespread damage to urban areas in the latest conflict in Gaza has generated a range of toxic remnants of war, from debris, to sewage and water contamination to the residues of weapons, there is a pressing need for an environmental assessment in the affected areas.
When considering how norms could be developed to ensure that conflict pollution is properly addressed, it is worth examining peacetime norms and standards for military contamination. This blogs takes a look at the approach taken in Australia.
A report from Oslo’s International Law and Policy Institute commissioned by the Norwegian government as part of the ICRC Pledge 1290 from the 2011 Red Cross conference to: “highlight the relevance of the existing legal framework for the protection of the natural environment in contemporary armed conflicts”.
