Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-15T16:08:15.302Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Scorched Earth: Environmental War Crimes and International Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2014

Bronwyn Leebaw
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Environmental devastation is not only a byproduct of war, but has also been a military strategy since ancient times. How have the norms and laws of war addressed the damage that war inflicts on the environment? How should “environmental war crimes” be defined and addressed? I address these questions by critically examining the way that distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate wartime environmental destruction have been drawn in debates on just war theory and the laws of war. I identify four distinctive formulations for framing the wartime significance of nature that appear in such debates and analyze how each is associated with distinctive claims regarding what constitutes “humaneness” in times of war: nature as property; nature as combatant; nature as Pandora's Box; and nature as victim. I argue that efforts to investigate and judge the environmental impact of war destabilize and expose the limitations of core distinctions that animate humanitarian norms, but also offer an important and neglected source of guidance in addressing those limitations.

Type
Articles
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 770 - 788
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American-British Claims Commission. 1874. “Agent’s Report.” Papers Relating to the Treaty Of Washington Vol. 6.Google Scholar
Anderson, Fred. 1970. “Is the Use of Herbicides in Limited War Justified?” Essay published by the U.S. Army War College. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Defense Technical Information Center.Google Scholar
Anthes, Emily. 2013. Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s New Beasts. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.Google Scholar
Ashford, M. W., and Gottstein, U. 2000. “The Impact on Civilians of the Bombing of Kosovo and Serbia.” Medical Conflict and Survival 16(3): 267–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aoláin, Fionnuala Ni. 2006. “Political Violence and Gender during Times of Transition.” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 15: 829.Google Scholar
BBC News. 2010. “Dickin Medal Awarded to Bomb Sniffing Search Dog Treo.” February 6.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. 2009. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Bennoune, Karima. 2004. “Toward a Human Rights Approach to Armed Conflict: Iraq 2003.” UC Davis Journal of International Law and Policy 11: 171–228.Google Scholar
Best, Geoffrey. 1988. “Historical Evolution of the Cultural Norms Relating to War and the Environment.” In Cultural Norms, War, and the Environment, ed. Westing, Arthur. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Biro, Andrew. ed. 2011. Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Chris. 1993. International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Brown v. United States. 1921. 256 U.S. 335.Google Scholar
Bullard, Robert. 1990. Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Buss, Doris, and Manji, Ambreena, eds. 2005. International Law: Modern Feminist Approaches. Oxford: Hart, 2005.Google Scholar
Carnahan, Burrus. 1998. “Lincoln, Lieber, and the Laws of War: The Origins and Limits of the Principle of Military Necessity.” American Journal of International Law 92(2): 213–31.Google Scholar
Carson, Rachel L. 2002. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. 1948. United Nations Treaty Series 78, December 9.Google Scholar
Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. 1976. New York, United Nations Treaty Series 1108, December 10.Google Scholar
Cole, Luke W., and Foster, Sheila R.. 2001. From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Coole, Diana, and Frost, Samantha. 2010. “Introducing the New Materialisms.” In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, Politics, ed. Coole, Diana and Frost, Samantha. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Cronon, William. 1995. “The Trouble with Nature, or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. Cronon, William. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Cronon, William. 2003. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Crawford, Neta. 2003. “Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War.” Perspectives on Politics 1(1): 5–25.Google Scholar
Dinar, Shlomi, ed. 2001. Beyond Resource Wars: Environmental Degradation and International Cooperation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Downes, Alexander B. 2008. Targeting Civilians in War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Drumbl, Mark A. 1998. “Waging War against the World: The Need to Move from War Crimes to Environmental Crimes.” Fordham International Law Journal 22(1): 620–46.Google Scholar
Eckersley, Robyn. 1992. Environmentalism and Political Theory: Towards an Ecocentric Approach. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Eckersley, Robyn. 2007. “Ecological Intervention: Prospects and Limits.” Ethics and International Affairs 21: 293–316.Google Scholar
Eisenhower, Dwight D. 1961. Farewell Address, Washington D.C., January 17. http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=90 (accessed August 27, 2014).Google Scholar
Ellis, Lisa. 2008. Provisional Politics: Kantian Arguments in Policy Context. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Evangelista, Matthew. 2002. Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Falk, Richard. 1973. “Environmental War Crimes and Ecocide: Facts, Appraisal, and Proposals.” Security Dialogue 4: 80–96.Google Scholar
Falk, Richard. 2007. “The Inadequacy of the Existing Legal Approach to Environmental Protection in Wartime.” In The Environmental Consequences of War, ed. Austin, Jay E. and Bruch, Carl E., 137–55.Google Scholar
Fussell, Paul. 2000. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Galston, Arthur, W. 1967. “Changing the Environment: Herbicides in Vietnam.” Scientist and Citizen 9(7): 122–29.Google Scholar
Galston, Arthur. 1970. “Plants, People, and Politics.” BioScience 20: 405–10.Google Scholar
Geneva Convention IV Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. 1949. Geneva, United Nations Treaty Series 75, August 12.Google Scholar
General Orders no. 100 [The Lieber Code]. 1863 Prepared by Francis Lieber and promulgated by Abraham Lincoln, April 24. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lieber.asp (accessed August 27, 2014).Google Scholar
Gleditsch, Nils Peter. 1998. “Armed Conflict and the Environment: A Critique of the Literature.” Journal of Peace Research 35(3): 381–400.Google Scholar
Goodpaster, Kenneth E. 1978. “On Being Morally Considerable.” Journal of Philosophy 75(6): 308–25.Google Scholar
Grotius, Hugo. 2005 [1625]. The Right of War and Peace, ed. Tuck, Richard and Barbeyrac, Jean. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Guha, Ramachandra. 1997. “The Authoritarian Biologist and the Arrogance of Anti-Humanism: Wildlife Conservation in the Third World.” The Ecologist 27(1): 14–20.Hague Convention IV: Convention on Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its Annex. 1907. International Conferences (The Hague), October 18.Google Scholar
Hall, Marcus. 2009. “World War II and the Axis of Disease: Battling Malaria in Twentieth Century Italy.” In War and the Environment: Military Destruction in the Modern Age, ed. Closman, Charles E.. College Station: Texas A&M Press.Google Scholar
Hamblin, Jacob Darwin. 2013. Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hartigan, Richard Shelly, ed. 1983. Francis Lieber and the Law of War. New Brunswick: Transaction Press.Google Scholar
Henckaerts, Jean-Marie, and Doswald-Beck, Louise. 2005. International Committee of the Red Cross, Customary International Humanitarian Law, Volume I: Rules. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Herr, Michael. 1968. Dispatches. New York: Avon Books.Google Scholar
Higgins, Polly. 2010. Eradicating Ecocide. London: Shepheard-Walwyn.Google Scholar
Holland, Breena. 2008. “Justice and the Environment in Nussbaum’s ‘Capabilities Approach’: Why Sustainable Ecological Capacity Is a Meta-Capability.” Political Research Quarterly 61(2): 319–32.Google Scholar
Horwitz, Joshua. 2014. War of the Whales: A True Story. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
The Hostage Case, Testimony of Lothar Rendulic. 1948. Nuremberg Trial Transcripts, 4-A-F,C-23-1 Court V Case VII. http://library.und.edu/digital/nuremberg-transcripts/doc/30 (accessed August 27, 2014).Google Scholar
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 2000. Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, International Legal Materials 39, 1257. http://www.icty.org/sid/10052 (accessed August 27, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karimi, Faith. 2014. “Report: Ukraine Dolphins to Switch Nationalities, Join Russian Navy.” CNN World, March 27.Google Scholar
Kinsella, Helen. 2011. The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kosek, Jake. 2010. “Ecologies of Empire: On the New Uses of the Honeybee,” Cultural Anthropology 25(4): 650–78.Google Scholar
Koskenniemmi, Martti. 2002. “‘The Lady Doth Protest Too Much’: Kosovo, and the Turn to Ethics in International Law.” Modern Law Review 65(2): 159–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leebaw, Bronwyn. 2007. “The Politics of Impartial Activism: Humanitarianism and Human Rights.” Perspectives on Politics 5(2): 223–39.Google Scholar
Leiss, William. 2011. “Modern Science, Enlightenment, and the Domination of Nature: No Exit?” In Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises, ed. Biro, Andrew. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Luke, Timothy. 1997. Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy, and Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Meron, Theodor. 2000. “The Humanization of Humanitarian Law.” American Journal of International Law 94(2): 239–78.Google Scholar
Meyer, John. 2001. Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Naess, Arne. 1978. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 16(1–4): 95–100.Google Scholar
O’Rourke, Catherine. 2013. Gender Politics in Transitional Justice. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Peluso, Nancy, and Watts, Michael. 2001. Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Pellow, David Naguib. 2007. Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pictet, Jean S. 1958. The Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949: Commentary. Geneva: International Committee for the Red Cross.Google Scholar
Principles of Environmental Justice. 1991. Drafted and adopted by delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Washington D.C. October 24–27. http://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.html (accessed August 27, 2014).Google Scholar
Principles of International Law Recognized by the Nurnberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal. 1950. Yearbook of the International Law Commission 11, 997.Google Scholar
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I). 1977. United Nations Treaty Series 3, June 8.Google Scholar
Pulido, Laura. 1996. Environmentalism and Environmental Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the Southwest. Phoenix: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Pulido, Laura. 2000. “Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(1): 12–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Adam. 2000. “The Law and War and Environmental Damage.” In The Environmental Consequences of War: Legal, Economic, and Scientific Perspectives, ed. Austin, Jay E. and Bruch, Carl E.. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rolston, William. 1988. Environmental Ethics: Duties and Values in the Natural World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. 1998. United Nations Treaty Series 2187(38544), July 17. http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/PIDS/publications/RomeStatutEng.pdf (accessed August 27, 2014).Google Scholar
Ross, Michael L. 2004. “What do We Know About Natural Resources and Civil War?” Journal of Peace Research 41(3): 337–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, Edmund. 2001. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sameit, Mark D. 2008. “Killing and Cleaning in Combat: A Proposal to Extend the Foreign Claims Act to Compensate for Long-Term Environmental Damage.” William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review 32(2): 547–79.Google Scholar
Samson, Steven Alan. 1998. “Francis Lieber on the Sources of Civil Liberty.” Humanitas 9(2): 40–62.Google Scholar
Sarathy, Brinda. 2012. Pineros: Latino Labor and the Changing Face of Forestry. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Michael. 2000. “War and the Environment: Fault Lines in the Prescriptive Landscape.” In The Environmental Consequences of War: Legal, Economic, and Scientific Perspectives, ed. Austin, Jay E. and Bruch, Carl E.. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schlosberg, David. 2004. “Reconceiving Environmental Justice: Global Movements and Political Theories.” Environmental Politics 13(3): 517–40.Google Scholar
Schonfeld, Zach. 2014. “Notabugsplat, an Art Project Designed to Be Seen by Drones.” Newsweek, April 22, 4:38 PM.Google Scholar
Schwabach, Aaron. 2000. “Environmental Damage Resulting from the NATO Military Action against Yugoslavia.” Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 25: 117–40.Google Scholar
Shklar, Judith. 1964. Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sikkink, Kathryn. 2011. The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics. W.W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Sjoberg, Laura. 2013. Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Solis, Gary. 2010. The Law of Armed Conflict, International Humanitarian Law in War. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Southwest Organizing Project. 1990. “Letter to Big 10 Environmental Groups.” March 16. http://www.ejnet.org/ej/swop.pdf (accessed August 27, 2014). – see n. 11Google Scholar
Sze, Julie, and London, Jonathan. 2008. “Environmental Justice at a Crossroads.” Sociology Compass 2(4): 1331–54.Google Scholar
Teitel, Ruti. 2011. Humanity’s Law. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tuck, Richard. 2005. “Introduction.” In The Right of War and Peace, ed. Tuck, Richard and Barbeyrac, Jean. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
United Nations Environmental Program and United Nations Centre for Human Settlements. 1999. The Kosovo Conflict: Consequences for the Environment Geneva: UNEP. http://www.unep.org/publications/search/pub_details_s.asp?ID=3345 (accessed August 26, 2014).Google Scholar
United Nations Environmental Program Scientific Mission to Kosovo 2001. Depleted Uranium in Kosovo: Post-Conflict Environmental Report, March 12. http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/features/du/finalreport.pdf (accessed August 26, 2014).Google Scholar
Vattel, Emer. 2008 [1797]. Law of Nations, ed. Kapossy, Béla and Whatmore, Richard. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 2002. “The Triumph of Just War Theory and the Dangers of Success.” Social Research 69(4): 925–44.Google Scholar
Weinstein, Tara. 2005. “Prosecuting Attacks that Destroy the Environment: Environmental Crimes or Humanitarian Atrocities?” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 17: 697–721.Google Scholar
Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 555 U.S. 7 (2008).Google Scholar
Wyatt, Juliann. 2010. “Lawmaking at the Intersection of International Environmental, Humanitarian, and Criminal Law: The Issue of Damage to the Environment,” International Review of the Red Cross 92(879): 593–646.Google Scholar
Yuzon, Ensign Florencio J. 1996. “Deliberate Environmental Modification Through the Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons: ‘Greening’ the International Laws of Armed Conflict to Establish an Environmentally Protective Regime.” American University International Law Review 11(5): 793–846.Google Scholar
Zierler, David. 2011. The Invention of Ecocide: Agent Orange, Vietnam, and the Scientists Who Changed the Way We Think about the Environment. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar