States have formally adopted a set of 27 legal principles intended to enhance the protection of the environment throughout the cycle of armed conflicts, marking the end of a 10-year process and with it the most significant advance in the legal framework since the 1970s.
Lawyers and states have been working on the PERAC framework for more than a decade, this October it will be adopted at the UN General Assembly.
Bonnie Docherty of Harvard Law School introduces a new joint report with CEOBS on the principles that should guide environmental remediation as part of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Commentary arguing that conservation organisations urgently need to speak up about the impacts of armed conflicts on biodiversity in order to mainstream conflict-sensitive conservation in international policy making.
Our new analysis of government views on a UN project to enhance the legal protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts has found considerable reluctance to strengthen rules that would help protect people and ecosystems.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a stark reminder of the human and environmental costs of armed conflict. In this post, Rachel Killean examines the legal avenues that could be open for Ukraine in seeking accountability and redress for environmental damage.
States should support the establishment of an intergovernmental science-policy panel on chemicals, waste and pollution, argues Linsey Cottrell. Doing so could also help draw attention to conflict pollution.
When wars end without clear resolution, conflicts can become frozen. In this post, Clayton Payne examines how the frozen conflicts affecting Georgia’s breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have influenced their environment, and how it is managed.
