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By Klaus Moegling
The peace ecology approach is a relatively new discipline in peace studies. The ecological perspective on peace refers both to environmental destruction during normal military operations in peacetime and to ecological destruction during wars. Peace ecology addresses peace between people and societies, as well as peace between humans and their ecological context, and in particular the connection between these two perspectives.
The poisoning and destruction of the environment, with serious consequences for humans, animals, and plants, is only now gradually coming to public attention on the fringes of the current protests by the environmental and peace movements. However, the Norwegian peace researcher Johan Galtung already addressed this aspect with foresight in 2004:
“One thing is the damage done to the ecosystem, another is the reinforcement of the general cultural code of domination over nature, which is also part of the rape syndrome. Countless millions of people are watching not only how people are being killed and wounded, but also how nature is being destroyed and going up in flames.”
The two world wars of the 20th century transformed numerous regions into devastated landscapes contaminated with weapon remnants. According to estimates by the Fraunhofer Institute, approximately 1.6 million tons of conventional munitions and approximately 200,000 tons of chemical munitions lie on the seabed of the Baltic and North Seas. Sea mines, bombs, and poison gas grenades rust, become porous, and release their toxic cargo into the environment, so that the poison enters the human food chain via fish.
The two atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 caused a quarter of a million deaths in 1945 alone and have resulted in radioactive contamination of these regions, numerous cancer deaths, and children born with genetic defects.
As early as 1961, pesticides were used in Vietnam on the orders of US President John F. Kennedy to deprive the Vietcong of cover in the defoliated rainforest and destroy their rice fields. From February 1967 onwards, the herbicide Agent Orange was used to defoliate the Vietnamese rainforest and destroy the Vietcong’s rice fields as part of the largest chemical attack in history during the Vietnam War. The dioxin it contained has not been removed to this day and is responsible for massive cancer rates and genetic defects in Vietnam. In total, the US Army sprayed 70 million liters of herbicides from the air over Vietnam, with devastating consequences for nature and human health.
Burning oil wells during military conflicts in the Arab world, such as in the Iraq War, caused massive CO? pollution of the biosphere. Another example is the burning oil wells in Saudi Arabia during the Yemen War.
The 30 years of bombing in Iraq are particularly noteworthy, during which hundreds of thousands of combat aircraft missions were carried out, dropping deadly bombs and causing massive environmental destruction. Over this period, the US and its allies killed a total of 2.7 million people in the course of the 2nd and 3rd Gulf Wars and subsequent missions, an average of 270 people per day.
Furthermore, massive ecological damage was caused by bombing, the burning of oil facilities, and the use of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition, according to journalist Jacob Reimann (2021):
“On February 24, 1991, the US began its ground invasion of Kuwait and was able to recapture the entire country within a few days. Retreating Iraqi troops set dozens of oil facilities on fire and opened Kuwaiti oil terminals, triggering a devastating environmental disaster in the Persian Gulf. The US fired 320 tons of radioactive DU ammunition in Iraq in 1991. Cancer rates skyrocketed. As with the US chemical warfare in Vietnam using Agent Orange, DU also affects the youngest the hardest: in just ten years, the number of birth defects in Basra increased seventeen-fold. The US has created a new class of human misery and suffering with its DU ammunition.”
But uranium ammunition was not only used in Iraq. The uranium ammunition used by NATO in the former Yugoslavia, among other places, also poisoned the environment and created areas contaminated with radioactivity. Radioactive ammunition was also used in Iraq and is now being used in Syria, especially for tank-busting weapons. As a result, there is an increase in the number of children being born with severe deformities, who are often unable to survive.
Karin Leukefeld, a correspondent accredited in Damascus for many years, reports on the health consequences of depleted uranium ammunition, which—in addition to its immediate destructive effect—is highly toxic to the environment, animals, and humans, including future generations:
“The consequences of the depleted uranium ammunition used by the US and its allies in several Gulf Wars are still being borne today by families in southern Iraq and west of Baghdad, in Fallujah. Countless children are born dead or with severe deformities: with open backs, fused legs, external bladders, one eye or no eyes at all, open skulls, to name just a few examples.”
Uranium ammunition is also being used in Syria. When fired, the uranium burns at up to 5,000 degrees Celsius, turning into nanoparticles that are 100 times smaller than red blood cells and falling to the ground as radioactive fine dust that contaminates the environment.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, estimates that approximately 2,000 nuclear weapons tests with the explosive power of 29,000 Hiroshima bombs have been conducted underground, in water, and above ground. Nuclear weapons testing is responsible for extensive radioactive contamination of various regions and for approximately 2.4 million cancer deaths today. The US conducted a total of 1,032 tests between 1945 and 1992. Between 1949 and 1991, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear weapons tests in Semipalatinsk in the Kazakh steppe alone.
However, no one knows exactly how many millions of people actually developed cancer and died as a result of the above-ground tests in particular. In its study “Threat to Life from Radioactive Radiation,” the organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) puts the number of victims even higher than ICAN.
The study, led by Munich biochemist Prof. Roland Scholz, concluded as early as 1997 that external radiation exposure from bomb fallout alone could cause 3 million additional cancer deaths worldwide by the year 2000. Added to this would be the consequences of the incorporation of radionuclides through food and breathing air. This internal radiation could cause an additional 30 million victims.
The Russian attack and the war in Ukraine since February 2022 have caused massive environmental destruction, affecting people, buildings, infrastructure, and the biosphere. Thousands of detonations from bomb and missile attacks, explosions, exploding fuel depots, burning meadows and forests, the danger of radioactivity escaping from attacked nuclear power plants, extensive CO? emissions from the operation of thousands of military vehicles and fighter jets, destroyed landscapes, and mined terrain are the result of this war.
A study by de Klerk et al. (2023) found that within one year of the war in Ukraine, both sides of the conflict emitted approximately as much CO? as Belgium did in total in the same year. This amounted to 119 million tons of CO? equivalents.
Stuart Parkinson and Linsey Cottrell (2022) further summarize their study on climate damage caused by the military and wars as follows:
“If the world’s armed forces were a country, they would have the fourth-largest national carbon footprint in the world—larger than Russia’s. This highlights the urgent need for concerted action to reliably measure military emissions and reduce the associated carbon footprint—especially as these emissions are likely to increase after the war in Ukraine.”
Susanne Aigner (2022) adds another threat to this damage and destruction in her report on the ecological consequences of the war in Ukraine:
“There are also other types of radioactive contamination, one of which can be traced back to the war in Donbass: since the war began in 2014, the old coal mines there have not been properly pumped out and maintained. As a result, around 200 mines, some of which were dug using nuclear explosions, have been flooded, causing chemicals such as mercury and arsenic to spread into the groundwater. Measurements taken by the Ukrainian Ministry of the Environment in 2016 showed that radiation levels in wells throughout the region were ten times higher than the limit.”
Olena Melnyk and Sera Koulabdara (2024) estimate that approximately one-third of Ukrainian soil has been contaminated by toxic substances such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury as a result of the war. Soil and its fertile layer took thousands of years to form and has now been poisoned and rendered unusable for agriculture within a few years of war.
The US and England also supplied uranium ammunition to Ukraine in 2023. It is now assumed that uranium ammunition is being used by the Ukrainian side, with corresponding serious health consequences for the civilian population. It is also assumed that the Russian side is using chemical weapons.
The war in Ukraine is leaving behind a devastated environment, for which the Russian Federation will have to pay billions of euros in reparations, although ultimately only the superficial damage can be repaired. The profound impact on human health due to inhaled emissions and toxins, drinking contaminated water, and exposure to radiation cannot be fully reversed compensated for with money. Nor can the hundreds of thousands of dead and seriously injured on both sides be compensated for with money. What is a life or a leg worth?
Hungarian climate researcher Bálint Rosz (2025) summarizes the CO? emissions caused by the war in Ukraine in the first two years of the conflict, up to February 2024, and compares this with the annual emissions of 90 million vehicles with combustion engines:
“As more and more experts are trying to emphasize, the war between Russia and Ukraine is also causing significant environmental and climate damage. The latter could be a particularly worrying development, as human civilization itself is waging a war against climate change. According to preliminary estimates by De Klerk and colleagues, military activities and the destruction of related infrastructure in the first 24 months of the war (from February 24, 2022, to February 23, 2024) led to significant additional greenhouse gas emissions, further exacerbating global climate change. Cumulative emissions during this period are estimated at around 175 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO?e), which is equivalent to the annual emissions of a highly industrialized country.”
This does not yet take into account the CO? emissions that will be generated by the necessary reconstruction of Ukraine and, for example, by the concrete and steel production required for this, as well as the emissions from construction vehicles. The same applies, incidentally, to the almost completely destroyed Gaza Strip.
Israel’s campaign of destruction against the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, a disproportionate response to the brutal attack by Hamas, is causing catastrophic environmental destruction in addition to the appalling suffering of the Palestinians.
German journalist Marisa Becker (2026) speaks of ecocide in Gaza, i.e., the attempt to systematically destroy the natural living conditions of a population in order to destroy its existence. She refers to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which estimates the amount of rubble to be approximately 61 million tons by September 2025. The rubble is said to be littered with unexploded ordnance, asbestos, and chemicals. Untreated sewage flows into the ground and unfiltered into the sea. Becker also refers to documentation by the NGO Forensic Architecture: approximately half of the wells in Gaza have been destroyed. Two-thirds of the water tanks can no longer be used. 83% of the plant life has also been destroyed. 70% of agricultural land is no longer usable. Almost half of the greenhouses have been destroyed.
The destruction of the natural environment and access to clean water and self-produced food was carried out systematically by the Israeli military. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Israel would currently be charged with ecocide, as this is not yet an official statute of the Rome Statute, which forms the basis for proceedings before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
However, an initiative by the Stop Ecocide International foundation, which is campaigning for the Rome Statute to be amended, aims to change this. Ecocide, or systematic ecological destruction, is to be added to the existing criminal offenses of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. Marisa Becker (2026) already sees initial progress in this area: “Stop Ecocide International has already achieved its first successes: at the beginning of December, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) published comprehensive guidelines on dealing with ecological damage. In these guidelines, the Hague Tribunal explains in detail how serious environmental damage can constitute certain crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC under the Rome Statute.”
Neimark et al. (2024) estimated that the CO? emissions from the necessary reconstruction of the Gaza Strip destroyed by the Israeli military alone would exceed the emissions of 130 countries and be comparable to the emissions of New Zealand.
This list could be continued with numerous other examples: the use of cluster munitions by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, barrel bombs by the Syrian military, sunken Soviet nuclear submarines in the Baltic Sea, CO? emissions from military movements in the air and on the ground, rocket attacks in Iran, Israel, and the Gaza Strip, and a terrible war on the backs of the civilian population in Sudan.
Wars are not only the cause of climate damage, but the climate crisis that is already occurring is in turn a further cause of military conflicts and the destruction of political systems, especially in the poorer regions of the world, according to Michael T. Klare (2015), professor of peace and global security at Hampshire College in Massachusetts:
“The strongest and richest states, especially those in more temperate climates, are likely to cope better with these stresses. In contrast, the number of failed states is likely to increase dramatically, leading to violent conflicts and outright wars over remaining food sources, agriculturally usable land, and habitable areas. Large parts of the planet could thus find themselves in situations similar to those we see today in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Some people will stay and fight for their survival; others will migrate and almost certainly encounter much more violent forms of the hostility that immigrants and refugees already face in their destination countries today. This would inevitably lead to a global epidemic of civil wars and other violent conflicts over resources.”
To combat the climate crisis, resources are often diverted to finance warfare and weapons systems. In particular, the huge sums of money that will be spent in the future within the EU, and also in Germany, on special programs for the procurement of weapons systems will be lacking in sensible climate policy – not to mention the enormous arms investments of the US and Russia and their unwillingness to combat the climate crisis.
This means that global military activities can be both a cause and a consequence of environmental destruction. The environmental and peace movements therefore have substantial common ground: the demand for an end to environmental destruction by the military and wars, combined with demands for internationally coordinated disarmament that run counter to current arms build-up trends, These issues should be addressed by both the environmental and peace movements as central expectations of politics. In this context, the question of financing the elimination of environmental damage caused by the military must also be raised. In addition to the warring parties responsible for the damage, producers in the arms industry should also be called upon to contribute. It is particularly unacceptable for the arms industry to privatize its considerable profits while socializing the costs to the state and taxpayers. Such externalization of costs and internalization of profits in the arms industry is no longer acceptable. It is completely incomprehensible why, for example, the manufacturers of landmines should not also pay for their removal and for compensation claims by victims.
Above all, the exclusion of the military as a climate polluter from the Kyoto Protocol and the attempt to leave this non-binding in the Paris Agreements, particularly under pressure from the US, further highlights the international dimension of the problem. The United Nations in particular is called upon to include environmental issues related to the military and military operations more bindingly in international climate agreements. It would be easier for them to incorporate a peace-ecological perspective if corresponding international civil society pressure were to be built up through coordinated NGO initiatives, e.g., through the Fridays for Future movement, indigenous NGOs, ICAN, IPPNW, Greenpeace, and the traditional Easter March movement, or other activities of the peace movement.