Silent Scars of War

The International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, observed each year on 6 November, draws attention to a casualty of conflict that is rarely counted among the dead and the wounded. Established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2001, the day recognises that damage inflicted on ecosystems and natural resources during hostilities does not end when the guns fall silent. Polluted wells, scorched fields, poisoned soils and felled forests leave scars that outlast the fighting itself, often crossing borders and burdening generations yet unborn. There can be no durable peace if the resources that sustain livelihoods and ecosystems are destroyed.
Over the past six decades, the United Nations Environment Programme has found that at least forty per cent of all internal conflicts have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources. High-value commodities such as timber, diamonds, gold and oil, as well as scarce essentials such as fertile land and water, have repeatedly financed or inflamed violence. Conflicts that turn on these resources are also twice as likely to relapse. The pattern is not accidental. When armed groups control mines or forests, when governments lose the capacity to manage watersheds, or when scorched-earth tactics are used to deny an adversary cover or sustenance, the environment becomes both weapon and prize. The resulting degradation undermines food security, public health and the very foundations on which any post-conflict recovery must rest.
Contemporary theatres of conflict continue to illustrate the scale of this damage. In Gaza, two years of intense fighting have erased the greater part of tree crops, shrubland and annual agriculture, while munitions, untreated sewage and debris contaminate freshwater and marine systems. The clearance of tens of millions of tonnes of rubble will itself carry long-term risks of further pollution. In Ukraine, the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam flooded hundreds of square kilometres, wiping out habitats and dispersing contaminants across ecosystems that once supported communities and wildlife. Elsewhere, attacks on water infrastructure, oil facilities and industrial sites have left aquifers fouled, air thick with toxic smoke and soils laden with heavy metals. These are not isolated incidents; they form a persistent pattern in which the environment absorbs blows that human societies then inherit as disease, displacement and diminished productivity.
The interlinkage runs in both directions. While war devastates nature, the degradation of nature can itself heighten the risk of conflict. Climate change amplifies existing stresses by intensifying droughts, floods and competition over shrinking resources. Roughly one in every five people now lives in a setting marked by fragility, conflict or violence. In such places, the loss of a forest or the contamination of a river does not merely reduce biodiversity; it erodes livelihoods, weakens trust in institutions and can tip fragile equilibria into renewed violence. Protecting ecosystems is therefore inseparable from the work of prevention, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Healthy landscapes can serve as shared assets around which divided communities rebuild cooperation, provided that resource governance is transparent, equitable and restored as a priority once hostilities subside.
In regions of ecological sensitivity, the stakes are especially high. Mountainous terrain, river systems and forests that sustain dense populations can suffer irreversible harm from even limited conflict or the illicit extraction that often accompanies it. Recovery requires more than the cessation of fire. It demands systematic assessment of environmental damage, the safe removal of unexploded ordnance and toxic residues, the rehabilitation of soils and water sources, and the deliberate inclusion of environmental safeguards in peace agreements and reconstruction plans. International law already offers instruments for this purpose, yet their consistent application remains uneven. Strengthening them, and embedding environmental expertise within peace operations, would reduce the likelihood that today’s battlefields become tomorrow’s wastelands.
The observance of this day is not merely commemorative. It is a reminder that the protection of the environment must be treated as integral to the pursuit of peace. When natural resources are managed sustainably and shielded from deliberate destruction or predatory exploitation, the foundations of stability grow firmer. When they are not, the costs accumulate silently, measured in lost harvests, polluted waters and communities that cannot return to the land that once sustained them. The choice is therefore practical as well as moral: to count the environment among the casualties of war is to accept a peace that remains incomplete. To protect it is to give lasting peace a better chance of taking root.