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Series:   Elements in International Relations

Environmental Ethics of War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2025

Tamar Meisels
Tamar Meisels
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University

Summary

War is bad for nature, yet relatively little attention has been devoted to environmental military ethics by just war theorists and philosophers of war. Most wars since 1945 have been civil conflicts, often in areas containing the greatest biodiversity. Combining environmental ethics with ethics of war, this Element examines how the environmental crisis should challenge and change the rules of war. While environmental wartime regulation has been addressed rarely by just war theorists, environmental jus ad bellum has hardly been tackled at all. Can environmental harm trigger a new justification for war? Can targeting nature constitute terrorism? And what would be a proportionate response to 'environmental aggression'? With global degradation and climate change right around the corner, this Element discusses some of the most pressing practical ethics issues of our times, suggesting that grave environmental transgressions should be combatted by measures that do not themselves cause disproportionate harm to nature.
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Keywords

just war theorymilitary ethicsnatural environmentrevisionist philosophy of warterrorism
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in International Relations
Online ISBN: 9781009622684
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 24 April 2025

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References

Primary Sources

Antarctic Treaty (4 October 1991). Protocol on Environmental Protection. Articles 2–3. Entered into force 14 January 1998.Google Scholar
Conventions on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (Protocol III) (10 October 1980). Article 2(4). Entered into force 2 December 1983.Google Scholar
Environmental Modification Convention (18 May 1977). Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. Entered into force 5 October 1978.Google Scholar
Geneva Conventions. Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) (8 June 1977). Articles 35(3), 55(1). Entered into force 7 December 1978.Google Scholar
Geneva Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva (12 August 1949): Conflicts Not of an International Character.Google Scholar
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II) (8 June 1977).Google Scholar
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (19 July 1998). Article 8(2)(b)(iv). Entered into force 1 July 2002.Google Scholar
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdfGoogle Scholar

Secondary Sources

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2019. Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems.Google Scholar

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