Military Conflicts And The Environment

The methods of modern warfare cause tremendous devastation to the environment. The progression of warfare to chemical weapons and nuclear weapons has increasingly created great stress on ecosystems and the planet.

Military environmental destruction has many manifestations:  unexploded ordnance, herbicidal defoliations, the testing of nuclear weapons, depleted uranium munitions, fossil fuel use, intentional flooding, and biological warfare.

The Ottawa Treaty, the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention: To date, there are 163 state parties to the treaty including Canada.  33 UN states, including the United States, Russia, China and India are non-signatories. 

4 major conflicts have caused at least 10,000 direct violent deaths in current or past calendar year: Syrian Civil War 29,000, War in Afghanistan 23,024, Mexican Drug War 14,771, Iraq Conflict 12,548 (source – estimates by Wikipedia ).  See the rest of the list here: