In 2001, the UN General Assembly declared November 6 the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. In the 22 years since, both the impact of the exploitation of the environment during war—and the centrality of natural resources in establishing peace—have gained greater global recognition.

Yet the passing of more than two decades have not consigned these challenges to the dustbin of history. Today’s ongoing conflicts—ranging from territorial disputes in the South China Sea and violent extremism in the Sahel, to instability in South Sudan, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas War—continue to illustrate how the environment is both a victim of war, and necessary consideration in recovery.

This annual commemoration is important to any larger consideration of the environment and security, and ECSP has examined these issues in depth over a number of years. So in recognition of this year’s International Day for preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed conflict, we’ve collected a number of New Security Beat posts that offer analysis of why this issue deserves to keep its global spotlight.

A Broader Lens on an Urgent Question

One of the most useful distillations of the questions raised by the annual commemoration of the effects of conflict on the environment was a 2020 report authored by Ken Conca and Anita van Breda: Enduring Responses to War and Disaster: The Environmental Dimensions of Sustained Recovery.

The launch for this Wilson Center/ECSP report featured a Q&A with the authors that summarized and foregrounded the key issues raised in the study.

“There are few healthy, productive, and secure communities existing in destroyed and degraded environments,” observed van Breda. “The environment as an environmental asset plays a role in all aspects of human well-being.”

Conca noted the progress that had been made over recent decades in identifying and creating forward momentum in solving them. “I started working on post-conflict environmental peacebuilding twenty years ago.” He explained. “At that time, it was indeed mostly blank stares! Today, there is a large community of practice around the concept, and a growing body of research.”

Assessing the Gender Dimension of the Issue

The impacts of conflict on women are well-known, but the environmental aspects of the challenge have been a focus of New Security Beat posts for a number of years. As early as 2011, the Wilson Center was convening key voices to address the issues surrounding women, water and conflict, as well as honoring the work of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai – whose work with the Green Belt Movement rested firmly on the three essential components of a stable society: sustainable environmental management, democratic governance, and a culture of peace.

Other ECSP essays have examined how these challenges are faced in conflict zones such as Somalia (2014) and the UN’s assessment of the role women can play in natural resource management during and after conflict (2015).

More recently, a 2020 interview with Mishkat Al-Moumin, Iraq’s first Minister of Environment in the Iraqi Interim Government in 2004, offered a window into how theory and research plays out in a complex and conflicted-affected context. “If environmental policies are designed in a way that deprives certain people from access to an environmental resource, then a conflict will arise,” observed Al-Moumin.

Continuing Dispatches from the Front Lines

As we have seen, the challenges that conflict poses to the environment via exploitation have not receded. And New Security Beat writers have written essays from across the globe that assess the problems and explore the pathways to resolution.

In Ukraine, for instance, the current conflict is exacerbating an already dismal record, as Caroline Kapp noted in a September 2023 post. And on the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion in February 2023, the ECSP Program convened a panel of experts for a panel in its Water @ Wilson series to assess the state of play for this essential resource in the conflict. But there are pathways for Ukraine to better secure its own energy future, as Kostiantyn Krynytskyi, Head of Energy at Ecoaction, noted in a March 2023 New Security Broadcast.

Environmental exploitation has also featured in the conflicts and climate-related calamities occurring in the Middle East. Wilson Center Global Fellow Peter Schwartzstein offered his take on the importance (and limits) of environmental peacebuilding after Hamas’ attack on civilian and military targets in Southern Israel in early October. Schwartzstein also offered his assessment of the nexus of climate and conflict revealed in Libya this past summer during that nation’s catastrophic flooding.