This summer, climate-induced heat waves ignited landmines and unexploded ordnance buried in the soils around the Middle East, killing people and causing wildfires.  Warmer waters are speeding up erosion of sunken battleships laden with degrading munitions. A melting ice sheet on Greenland has exposed thousands of barrels of toxic waste at abandoned U.S. military bases.  

Remains of War

This is what happens when a ghost from the past comes back to haunt us. The hazardous remnants of war are re-emerging. They include unexploded ordnance (UXO) and other vestiges of war. These military hazards that climate change can “wake up” or expose include landmines, ammunition, toxic waste, chemical weapons, and nuclear materials. Many types of unexploded ordnance in the ground and seas are the legacy of more than 120 years of wars and armed conflicts. Sunken battleships and military freighters from both world wars and regional conflicts rust away on the bottom of the ocean. Decades of wars have created explosive and toxic legacies in our seas and soils that threaten lives and ecosystems.

Effects of Climate Change

Mixing the remains of war with climate change is a recipe for disaster. Degrading munitions left in the soil or water can become unstable over time as the chemicals change, influenced by environmental conditions. Millions of unexploded munitions and mines in the soil degrade more rapidly in the heat, which can result in uncontrolled explosions.

Climate-linked wildfires in Ukraine and Iraq resulted in landmines cooking up and exploding, sparking massive fires. On other occasions, Turkey’s and Iran’s military activities against Kurdish militants resulted in large fires spreading in areas with massive UXO contamination. In 2019, a year with an extraordinarily high number of wildfires, firefighters were killed by old mines and other explosive remnants of war.

Rapidly rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and melting icecaps bring out a range of new challenges that we need to fully understand to prevent human suffering and an even more rapid decline of ecosystems, Yet the magnitude of this problem is unclear.

Scorching Heat and Rising Tides

The scorching summer heat in the Middle East exacerbated by climate change has put the hazards associated with munitions back on the agenda. After some mysterious explosions at military bases in Iraq in 2019 caused unrest, investigations revealed that increased heat affected unsafely stored ammunition, destabilizing the components, and exploding. But most of those munitions were relatively new. An older enemy soon emerged from under the grass: Millions of unexploded munitions and mines in the soil were degrading more rapidly from the heat.

Over the last years, Iraqi Kurdistan has been witnessing a massive increase of wildfires. New information indicated that landmines blew up because of the increased heat from widespread forest fires. An estimated 26,000 hectares of heavy contaminated land from the Iran-Iraq War and Gulf Wars still needs clearing. Similar problems occurred on the heavily contaminated border between Lebanon and Israel, where decaying mines exploded from the summer heat.

Apart from the fires, heavy rainfall and related extreme weather events pose growing risks that result in flooding and soil change. As a result, UXOs buried deep in the soil resurface and get flushed downstream, ending up in unmarked areas, posing again an explosive hazard for civilians. This was the case in Bosnia Herzegovina, the wider Balkan area, and in Western Sahara. Similar problems cropped up this summer in the border between Syria and Lebanon as well as in Yemen. In Laos, the UNDP is already anticipating these climate-linked security risks in UXO-clearance operations.

Melting Ice and Warmer Waters  

During the Cold War, both the United States and Russia added military bases in the Nordic region. Hidden on the huge ice sheet cover over Greenland were dozens of U.S. military bases, including a nuclear reactor. When the United States abandoned these bases, it left behind thousands of barrels of toxic waste, assuming the ice sheet would keep it stored safely. It did for several decades. But when climate change kicked in, the melting ice sheet soon exposed a toxic military legacy. Scientists and experts are speeding up efforts to clean-up the hazardous waste and contaminated soils the United States left behind in Greenland, despite the many legal questions over who should pay the bill.

In Russia, wildfires and melting permafrost are already contributing to increased air pollution and major oil spill incidents, compounding further environmental and public health risks. With limited information available on the status of environmental protection and monitoring around Russian military bases and nuclear testing sites, experts already have flagged concerns over the environmental legacy and linked health risks posed by contamination soon after the Cold War ended.

Since then, incidents around military movements and bases have only been stacking up, especially related to nuclear materials and naval  bases around the Artic. Scientists have already identified 27 high-risk sites with military pollution that could affect both biodiversity and Indigenous populations. Melting icecaps from the North Pole, warmer water streams, and increased temperatures are expected to increase environmental contamination around these bases.

Similar concerns related to climate change are also linked to legacy pollution from sunken war ships from both World Wars and regional conflicts in oceans and seas around the world that often contain tons of ammunitions, fuel,  or even chemical weapons. The rise of water temperatures could speed up corrosion and result in further leaks of these toxic remnants of war, affecting unique local ecosystems and coral reefs. These combined environmental effects of climate change on legacy and current pollution from past or current conflicts and military activities around bases will pose acute and long-term risks to human health and eco-systems, often worsening the already dire environmental problems in conflict-affected countries.

Military Legacy Preparedness and Response Planning

What should we learn from this? First of all, these alarming patterns should stimulate rapid assessment of the acute and long-term risks from military legacy pollution, be it from armed conflicts or military bases. And the findings should be shared with relevant stakeholders including environmental agencies, humanitarian de-mining organizations, and civil society groups.

Over the last decade, substantial progress has been made to combine historical data sets and conflict-pollution data with earth observation to create helpful mapping exercises to improve risk-awareness in affected areas. The lessons learned on data collection, mapping, and risk-scenarios linked with climate change need to be shared among states, in particular the ministries of defense and environment, as well as international and humanitarian organizations to improve understanding of the risks and enhance response work. Dedicated funding and expertise as well as collaboration with local environmental actors and experts are needed to mitigate these compounding climate-security risks.

With the UN Decade on Eco-system Restoration starting this year, it is crucial to include military legacy pollution in remediation work to address these specific environmental security concerns. Militaries should step-up their efforts to contribute their knowledge and expertise on the environmental impact of their own bases as they relate to past pollution data and clearance of toxic and explosive remnants of war. These efforts will not only provide a more complete picture of climate-security issues, they could also save lives.