Legal Regulation of the Effects of Military Activity on the Environment

1
Legal Regulation of the Effects of Military
Activity on the Environment

• The Hague Conference on Environment, Security
  and Sustainable Development
• 9-12 May 2004
• Amy Hindman
• Legal Advisor to the Executive Director
• UNEP

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Inter Armes, Silent Leges(In times of war laws
fall silent) -Cicero
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Damage to the Environment through military
conflict

• Intentional damage
• Collateral damage
• Wanton damage
• Other indirect effects and aftermath

4
Potential protection for the human environment in
the context of armed conflict

• Basic principles of humanitarian law
• Environmental Conventions
• The law of the Hague
• 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions codifying the
  laws and customs of war
• The law of Geneva
• Protection of classes of people and objects
  outside of combat

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Express protection for the environment in armed
conflict

• 1977 First Geneva Protocol
• Geneva Protocol I, Art. 35(3)
• Geneva Protocol I, Art 55(1)
• Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD)

6
Specific rules limiting the means and methods of
warfare

• Limitations on Targets
• Dangerous forces
• Cultural objects
• Limitations on Weapons
• Biological and chemical weapons
• Landmines
• Limitations based on Area
• Antarctica
• Neutral states

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Sufficiency of existing laws, rules and policies
one assessment

• With the exception of article 35(3) of Geneva
  Protocol I, law of war does not expressly protect
  environmental resources
• Important environmental provisions have not
  entered into customary international law
• General principles of humanitarian law are too
  open-ended to preclude most environmental damage
• Very few norms address the problems of
  environmental harms stemming from
  non-international conflicts

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Potential Solutions Bodansky Recommendations

• A comprehensive review of the environmental
  effects of war
• A UN or ICRC Resolution urging states to protect
  the environment during non-international conflict
• Inclusion of environmental concerns in military
  manuals (such as the ICRC environmental
  guidelines)
• Inclusion of environmental rules in NATO Combined
  Rules of Engagement
• Binding instruments, such as a convention on the
  prohibition of military activities in protected
  environments

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Wars are not acts of God. They are caused by
man, by man-made institutions, by the way in
which man has organized his society. What man
has made, man can change.
- Frederick Moore Vinson