Introduction

In view of the heated debate about the status and effectiveness of international law-of-war treaties for protecting the environment during armed conflict, it is prudent also to examine norms, rules, and enforcement mechanisms derived from other legal regimes. The environmental protection systems that have had the luxury of evolving under peacetime conditions generally are more nuanced and tailored to their subject matter than the sporadic attempts to incorporate environmental concerns into the law of war. While they of course do not address the extreme circumstances encountered in full-scale armed conflict, many peacetime environmental treaties and domestic statutes have state-of-the-art provisions for deterring and remedying the same kinds of impacts – for example, catastrophic oil spills or deforestation – commonly found during wartime. Thus, at least where it is possible to consider these impacts in isolation, environmental and other peacetime laws may prove useful for wartime environmental protection, either through their direct application or through analogizing and adapting them into the law-of-war regime.

One large question, alluded to in the previous section, is whether global and international environmental treaties such as the Framework Convention on Climate Change or the Convention on Biological Diversity remain in effect during armed conflict. If it could be shown, for example, that oil well fires had led to excessive emissions of greenhouse gases, that could serve as an additional basis for holding the state that caused the fires responsible and liable.