How many lives lost, destinies shattered by the fall of a shell or the bursts of an automatic rifle? In the terrible accounting of wars, we focus first – and this is quite normal – on the number of victims. But alongside this macabre arithmetic, another is gradually gaining importance. She is concerned about the carbon footprint of the attacks, the quality of the air and water in the conflict zones… Thus, the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the first two months of combat between Israel and the Hamas recently made the front page of the British daily The Guardian.
The opportunity to reveal some astonishing figures. According to calculations carried out by British and American researchers, this carbon footprint would be equivalent to that produced by the combustion of 150,000 tonnes of coal. Worse, taking into account the future reconstruction of the 100,000 buildings destroyed in the Gaza Strip, the war triggered by the Hamas attack on October 7 could generate more C02 than New Zealand in one year! Hard to believe ? And yet. Scientists have carefully looked into the smallest details of the conflict: fuel for supply planes from the United States, manufacturing of munitions, explosion of bombs and rockets, construction of underground tunnels by Hamas… If their work waits now a peer review, they confirm the unsuspected weight of military operations.
“We can no longer ignore these kinds of costs,” agrees Doug Weir, director of research at the Observatory on Conflict and the Environment. According to research carried out within this organization, the armies are responsible for nearly 5.5% of global emissions of greenhouse gases each year, more than the aviation and shipping industries combined. “And again, this figure is probably underestimated,” he warns.
Terrible flood in Ukraine
Until recently, this co-product of war aroused relatively little interest. But Russia’s attack on Ukraine changed the situation. Because several astonishing events followed one another on the battlefield: the fighting in the area of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, or the collapse of the immense Nova Kakhovka dam, which held back one of the largest reservoirs of European water. If the first did not miraculously degenerate into a nuclear disaster, the second still resulted in a terrible flood, destroying more than 40 towns and villages and submerging one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world.
Assessing the damage on the ground is not easy. Especially since the war continues. But Ukrainian scientists are already working on it. In a recent article published in the journal Science, they list their sad discoveries: heavily damaged sturgeon breeding, flooding of nature reserves and agricultural land, a fatal blow to countless living organisms… Thus, billions of mussels are rotting on the dry bed of the lake of the former reservoir . The destruction of Kakhovka may also have played a role in the unexplained deaths of dolphins and porpoises in the Black Sea.
Request the International Criminal Court
Of course, this ecological damage is incomparable to the many human lives sacrificed in times of war. But we have to think about tomorrow. When the conflict ends, Ukrainians will still suffer for several years, even several decades, the effects linked to the chemical pollution of fields, the dispersion of mines in nature, or even the destruction of protected areas. This is why the country is already considering legal action to obtain compensation. According to experts, the process will be long, complex and with no guarantee of results.
The first option consists of expanding the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) by integrating ecocide – massive and deliberate destruction of flora and fauna, poisoning of air or water resources – into its prerogatives. But legal specialists question the effectiveness of the method. “Let us assume that we modify the scope of action of the ICC, which is not easy, because certain countries are not very sensitive to the environmental cause. The question of its applicability will arise, because this new tool does not will not be retroactive”, estimates Julie Fabreguettes, associate lawyer at VingtRue law firm. Furthermore, nothing is yet clear about the form that the repairs could take.
“Do we really need international criminal justice in environmental matters when we see the difficulty with which ‘classic’ international criminal justice is applied? Would the ICC prosecutor’s services have the means to sufficient expertise to be able, in addition to their usual complex work, to add another extremely technical justice, which is that of the environment? Many questions arise,” explains the specialist. Furthermore, the ICC does not have its own police force. It would therefore depend on the cooperation of States. “If, tomorrow, some of them refused to extradite military leaders or company directors responsible for pollution, we would have extremely ineffective justice,” continues the lawyer.
Towards a condemnation of Russia for ecocide?
Encouragingly, an ICC decision has already made the link, in the past, between the environment and the crime of genocide in a case of massive pollution of wells in Yugoslavia. “It’s an interesting case. The destruction of the dam in Ukraine could potentially fall into this category. Therefore, there would be no need to change the law. Russia would not necessarily be prosecuted for ecocide, but it should when even answer for his actions,” explains Sarah Becker, associate lawyer at VingtRue law firm.
This path is not simple, however. It would be necessary to prove that the damage was deliberate, extensive, lasting and “excessive in relation to the overall concrete and direct military advantage expected”, according to the texts in force. A formulation which unfortunately opens the door to endless debates. Jean-Marie Collin, spokesperson for France for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican), sees another possibility: “Article 35 of the additional protocol to the Geneva Convention prohibits countries at war from generating massive damage to the environment. Ukraine could therefore use it. Of course, it would have to be patient. We also do not know if this approach could succeed.”
In the meantime, kyiv is right to prepare by documenting as precisely as possible the ecocide of which it is a victim, several specialists point out. “Historical precedent for reparations for environmental damage caused by war is limited, so what Ukraine is trying to do could be an important step forward,” says Doug Weir. Ultimately, everyone could even benefit from it. Because, we must not forget, our carbon budget – the amount of emissions that we can still release into the atmosphere before warming the planet too much – is shrinking dramatically. Estimated at 500 gigatons of C02 in 2021, it would have already halved. Wars, from this point of view, are all the more absurd.
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