Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-m6qld Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-14T20:15:52.219Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

Get access

Summary

For centuries, military commanders have deliberately targeted the environment, seeking to obtain any possible advantage over their adversaries. In the Third Punic War, Roman legions salted the ground around Carthage to prevent the Carthaginians from recovering and challenging Rome; in the US Civil War, General Sherman cut a wide swath of destruction across the South in an attempt to break the morale of the Confederacy; in World War I, the British set afire Romanian oilfields to prevent the Central Powers from capturing them; in World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union engaged in “scorched earth” tactics; and in the Korean War, the United States bombed North Korean dams.

The Vietnam War showcased the increasingly devastating environmental effects of modern military technology, with entire ecosystems targeted. The United States engaged in a massive defoliation campaign to preclude the growth of groundcover, and even attempted to change weather patterns via cloud seeding over North Vietnam to hamper enemy troop movements and provide protection for US bombing missions. Since then, the public health implications of environmental warfare in Vietnam - primarily birth defects, diseases, and premature death associated with exposure to Agent Orange - have become apparent. The scale, severity, and longevity of these environmental impacts sparked the first international legal provisions specifically prohibiting environmental warfare: the 1976 Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD) and the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (Protocol I). Notwithstanding international condemnation of such tactics, Central American internal conflicts of the 1980s saw further use of defoliation campaigns, albeit to a lesser degree than in the Vietnam War.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Environmental Consequences of War
Legal, Economic, and Scientific Perspectives
, pp. 1 - 10
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×