6 November 2025
The impacts affect livelihoods, and
fuel displacement as well as ongoing instability. Moreover,
they can linger even after the fighting has ended.
In
Sierra Leone, for example, “when the guns fell silent in
2002 after a decade of conflict, our primary forests and
savannahs also fell silent,” deputy foreign minister
Francess Piagie Alghali told the UN Security Council on
Thursday.
“We witnessed loss of biodiversity, the
forced migration of wildlife, and the abandonment of
agricultural fields and swamps, all direct consequences of
the armed conflict.”
Long-term
implications
Sierra Leone holds the rotating Security
Council presidency this month and Ms. Alghali presided over
a debate on the environmental impact of armed conflict and
climate-driven security risks.
It was held as more
armed conflicts rage across the planet than at any time
since the end of the Second World War, and two billion
people – a quarter of the global population – live in
conflict-affected areas.
“Environmental damage
caused by conflicts continues to push people into hunger,
into disease and into displacement and thereby increasing
insecurity,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Conflicts lead to
pollution, waste, and the destruction of critical
ecosystems, with long-term implications for food security,
water security, the economy and health, she
explained
Meanwhile, climate change “exacerbates
tensions” and can even contribute to conflict – over
water or land resources, for example.
Crop loss,
contamination and flooding
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
Ms. Andersen highlighted
several examples including the destruction of Gaza, where
two years of war have caused the loss of 97 per cent of tree
crops, 95 per cent of shrubland and more than 80 per cent of
annual crops.
“Freshwater and marine ecosystems are
polluted by munitions, by untreated sewage and other
contaminants,” she said, while “over 61 million tonnes
of debris must now be cleared, with sensitivity to avoid
further contamination.”
In Ukraine, the June 2023
destruction of the Kakhova Dam “led to the flooding of
more than 600 km² of land, resulting in severe loss of
natural habitats, plant communities, and species, through
prolonged inundation of ecosystems,” she
added.
Legal offensive
The debate took place
on the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of
the Environment in War and Armed Conflict and amid growing
recognition of the need for global
action.
“Significant efforts are being made to
strengthen the international legal framework to protect the
environment,” said law professor Charles C. Jalloh, a
member of the International Law Commission (ILC), a UN
body.
While no single binding universal treaty yet
exists, he pointed to some of the “so-called soft law
instruments” that have made contributions to date,
including the ILC’s set of 27 draft principles, adopted in
2022.
“The principles, rooted in the law of armed
conflict, international environmental law and international
human rights law, sought to strengthen the protection of the
environment before, during and after armed conflict,
including in situations of occupation,” he
said.
Strengthening links
Maranatha Dinat of
the humanitarian organization World Relief delivered a
message from Haiti, “where the combined impacts of
environmental degradation, climate change and
socio-political instability reinforce one another,
undermining peace, security and sustainable
development.”
She stressed the need to “strengthen
the links between humanitarian action, climate adaptation,
and peacebuilding” in order to boost resilience, promote
social cohesion and ensure lasting stability.
Ms.
Andersen outlined how the international community can assist
conflict-affected countries, starting with rebuilding their
capacity for environmental management.
Such support
“enables governments to manage natural resources for
sustainable development, for economic recovery, and for
climate adaptation, thus reducing poverty, hunger and aid
dependency.”
Climate adaptation and
mitigation
She also called for increased investments
in climate adaptation. UNEP released its latest Emissions
Gap Report this week, which revealed that the world is
struggling to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees
Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
“As we head to
Belém, therefore, for COP30, high ambition is needed both
on adaptation and on mitigation,” she said.
“Every
fraction of a degree matters, and every fraction of a degree
avoided means lower losses for people and ecosystems – and
greater opportunities for peace and
prosperity.”
