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 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.
Syria’s oil industry has begun to be targeted by the US. Military policies indicate that the environmental consequences of the strategy are low on the agenda but the move looks set to have direct and indirect impacts on Syria’s environment and people.
NATO’s presence in Afghanistan included 1200 properties, from major airbases to small forward operating bases. Environmental oversight was mixed and the Afghan national authorities had limited capacity for investigating contamination or other forms of damage. Furthermore, the bilateral agreements between Afghanistan and major NATO contributing nations provided very limited scope for environmental redress.
This blog examines the health and environmental risks of the debris and pulverised building materials created by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and finds that very little research has been done into this ubiquitous form of conflict pollution.
