This year has seen a surge in global conflict, with devastating consequences for both human life and the environment. The article highlights the extensive environmental damage caused by wars, including deforestation, poisoned soils, habitat loss, air and water pollution, and the carbon footprint of military operations. The conflict in Ukraine serves as a stark example, with landscape fires and the destruction of the Kakhovka dam causing catastrophic floods and widespread ecological damage.
This year, we have witnessed unspeakable conflict ravage the world, from the ongoing invasion of Ukraine to the genocide in Gaza, the ensuing conflict in Lebanon and Iran, and Sudan’s brutal civil war. If the incessant bombardment of war feels all-encompassing, that’s because it is. Armed conflict numbers are at their highest since World War II, with one in seven people exposed to conflict this year, including a shocking 87 per cent of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Russia’s demolition of Kakhovka – Ukraine’s largest dam – was decried by the EU as the worst environmental disaster in Europe since Chernobyl. It unleashed catastrophic floods, submerging thousands of hectares of land in contaminated water. Pets, livestock, and wildlife all perished, habitats were decimated, and tens of thousands of people were forcibly displaced as a tsunami of sewage rushed upon them.
Speaking of pollution, the carbon emissions of war – and that of the Gazan invasion in particular – are astronomical. In the first two months of Israel’s offensive, the conflict produced more carbon emissions than the annual footprint of 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. To rebuild the 100,000 damaged buildings in Gaza will require 30 million tonnes of construction carbon emissions – that’s the annual carbon footprint of New Zealand.
Particularly when we are still living with the polluting legacies of previous wars. From the first world war up until the 1970s, expired munitions and chemical weapons were routinely dumped near Beaufort’s Dyke in the Irish Sea. Most of these armaments remain buried on the sea floor between Northern Ireland and Scotland today, while others have detonated underwater or washed up on beaches.
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