Oh, the army tried some fancy stuff to bring them to their
knees. Like Agent Orange defoliants, to kill the brush and trees. We’d hike all
day on jungle trails through clouds of poison spray. And they never told me
then, that it would hurt my health today. (Agent Orange Song—Country JoeMcDonald)
Many of us remember shocking images of environmental
destruction from conflicts across the globe; from the spraying of the poisonous
chemical Agent Orange over the forests in Viet Nam in the 1970s, to the burning
oil wells in Kuwait in the 1990s.
Sadly, Viet Nam and Kuwait were not isolated cases. Armed
conflicts around the world, and their aftermath, continue to impact the health
and well-being of people and the environment through pollution, infrastructure
damage and the collapse of governance. The use of chemical weapons in the
Syrian conflict as well as the burning of oil fields by the Dae’sh terrorist
group are poignant recent examples.
Since 1999, the United Nations Environment Programme has
conducted over twenty post-conflict assessments, using state-of-the-art science
to determine the environmental impacts of war. From Afghanistan to Kosovo to
the Gaza Strip and Sudan—armed conflict causes significant harm to the
environment and the communities that depend on natural resources.
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