Big Scrub Environment Centre

Environmental Collateral Damage

Earthbeat: Radio National Broadcast on Saturday 22/2/2003

A war in Iraq may be short but the environmental impacts could last for decades. Depleted uranium, higher cancer rates, strange diseases, land mines, acid rain, fractured water supplies, loss of wildlife these are just a portion of the environmental legacy left by modern warfare. Earthbeat this week looks at the post conflict clean up in Kuwait and Afghanistan and what we might expect from a war in Iraq.

For the full transcript, go to http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s786734.htm

"War is not good for children or any living thing."

Alexandra de Blas: What things are people dying from apart from direct injury?

Dr Sue Wareham, President, Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia). warehams@ozemail.com.au:
Well the direct injury in 1991 in fact accounted for only a relatively small percentage of the total number of deaths. Most of the deaths and particularly the deaths in children, let’s remember that about 70,000 children died as a result of the 1991 Gulf War, according to our estimates. A lot of those deaths were from destruction of the infrastructure, particularly the destruction of Iraq’s electricity generating capacity which was reduced to about 4% of its pre-war level. Now if a society doesn’t have electricity, it virtually cannot survive in any meaningful fashion. So when the electricity was destroyed, with it went the water treatment and sanitation systems. So the effect of this is that sewerage is pouring into the rivers where people were needing to rely for their water, clean water was basically not available for a lot of the population. So children were dying in very large numbers from epidemics of infectious illness.

Alexandra de Blas: Well the environmental effects of the Gulf War in 1991 was some of the most severe ever seen in a conflict; more than 600 oil wells were set alight, and the smoke haze caused a 10-degree drop in average temperature for many, many months; what environmental concerns do you have if the war with Iraq goes ahead?

Sue Wareham: If war goes ahead, again we are likely to see the igniting of oil wells, deliberate igniting by Saddam Hussein, possibly as a final fling towards humanity. As well as the igniting of oil wells in 1991, there was enormous spillage of oil into the Persian Gulf. In fact in enormous numbers, which had a catastrophic effect on the marine life and bird life of the area, migratory birds and local birds were affected terribly. Marine life, which is in fact quite rich in that region, sea turtles, dolphins, all sorts of fish etc. the impact was catastrophic. So there’s that part of it, but also on the land there were large amounts, in fact tens of millions of barrels of oil spilt into the desert of Kuwait, and the impact of that on the desert ecosystems was quite enormous. There’s also the factor of troop movements over the desert, if you can imagine 1-million troops moving over a desert, the impact of that on the ecosystems is quite enormous.

Klaus Toepfer, Executive-Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi is calling for safeguards for the environment in times of war, not unlike the protection for prisoners and civilians provided under the Geneva Convention.

Klaus Toepfer: I believe that we must make the environment a very, very outstanding asset. It must be at the basis for human beings making their living. Therefore the impact on the environment must be also judged in the same direction as all the other terrible actions linked with conflicts and wars.

Alexandra de Blas: What laws or regulations could you use to elevate the environment in the conflict situation?

Klaus Toepfer: There is not yet a really fundamental basis for such a solution, but there are of course a lot of other agreements, there are lots of activities in the different conventions and protocols. We have already binding laws around the world, but they are not consequently linked and especially focused to conflict situations.

Alexandra de Blas: The environment and natural resources are often the trigger for conflict. And water is potentially a huge source of future instability, diamonds played a key role in Angola, but arguably, isn’t the natural resource of oil one of the key triggers in the war that we may see unfold?

Klaus Toepfer: I really have to underline that what we saw here in Africa is indeed in lots of cases, linked with this exploitation of natural resources, as you rightly mentioned. There is of course a totally other situation we have to be confronted with in other regions where there is a question of the terrorist attacks where there is a topic of weapons of mass destruction, do you know that the United Nations has dedicated to peace, we are doing our utmost to avoid conflict. I sincerely hope that this is still a very good chance to come to a very peaceful solution, also of these problems.

For the full transcript, go to http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s786734.htm

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