When we think of wars or political volatility, we understandably think of the immediate toll this has on humans.
Wildlife conservation, on the other hand, is easier to think of as a separate sphere of activities, concerned with planting nice trees or picking up beach-side plastic. But this is not true. In many places around the world, the preservation of biodiversity is directly and closely tied to socio-political situations on-the-ground, and is just as vulnerable to the whims of war or political volatility as are human societies.
In many instances, conflict can have devastating impacts on wild nature. But on other occasions, it creates unforeseen opportunities for conservation. Here are 3 examples of each.
Ecocide in Vietnam.
Sometimes, a direct objective of warfare is the destruction of the natural environment, an act now internationally condemned as “ecocide”. The most famous example of ecocide took place during the Vietnam war, where the U.S military sprayed 30 Olympic swimming pools worth of Agent Orange (a leaf-eroding chemical) from planes and helicopters as part of a programme of herbicidal warfare. In part, this sought to compromise the Vietcong’s use of guerrilla tactics, by removing their ability to find food and to use the jungle to operate invisibly. Agent Orange was responsible for stripping bare a whole seventh of Vietnam’s forest cover, and over half of its coastal mangroves.
The curious case of the unexploding penguins
When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, one of the first things its soldiers did was pepper the beaches with mines in anticipation of an amphibious attack from the Brits. Flash forward 36 years and some of these mines are still lingering in surprisingly large concentrations, including in Yorke Bay, just outside the capital of the Falkland Islands. Surrounded by fences and off-limits to the public, the biggest boom on this beach has been of the penguin populations, that have thrived in an area that might otherwise have become a seaside tourist attraction.
It’s thought that the penguins might avoid blowing up because they are light enough to avoid triggering detonations! Because the mine-filled area has been clearly signposted and poses no threat to humans, locals have been unhappy that the British government is now looking to de-mine this site. Conservationists on the Falklands, however, are optimistic that the de facto protected area can continue to be a penguin hotspot when de-mined, as long as it’s properly managed.
The environmental spillover of humanitarian crises
Often, it’s the humanitarian crises that accompany wars that have the widest-reaching environmental consequences. Refugees and those displaced by conflicts are in no position to consider the environmental impacts of their hunting activities and fuelwood collection. Bangladesh is currently carving up its forests to accommodate the mass exodus of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. During the machete genocide of Rwanda, ethnic Hutu, spurred on by radio propaganda and hateful pulpit preaching by priests, conducted a mass slaughter of their Tutsi neighbours, leading 2 million refugees to flood into camps in bordering countries. The demand for fuelwood led to an area of Virunga National Park larger than Birmingham being deforested.
The most biodiverse slither of Korea
Following the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953, both North and South Korea retreated back 1.2 miles from the ceasefire line between them, and started to build. Electric fences topped with barbed wire and manned 24/7 by thousands of soldiers were stretched 150 miles across the peninsula. This demilitarised zone (DMZ) is today amongst the most dangerous places on Earth. The most recent defector to attempt to flee across it was shot at 40 times, hit 5 times, and found by South Koreans (miraculously still alive) under a pile of leaves. When Kim Jong-Un took power over North Korea in 2011, it only became more dangerous. His order to further tighten border security was reportedly met with fresh mine laying efforts in the DMZ.
But with humans absent from the fortified strip of land in all but the “truce village” of P’anmunjom, something remarkable has happened. An area once ravaged by war and agriculture has recovered to become amongst the most undeveloped and pristine areas in Asia. The forests, estuaries, and wetlands have become thriving ecosystems, harbouring thousands of natural treasures wiped out or under threat across the rest of the peninsula.
Rare red-crowned and white-naped cranes can be seen splashing in the DMZ’s waters. Nearly 100 species of fish, 45 types of amphibians and reptiles and over 1,000 different insect species are also supposed to exist in the protected zone, alongside over 1,600 types of vascular plants, more than 300 species of mushrooms, fungi and lichen and such rare mammals as the Amur goral, Asiatic black bear, musk deer and spotted seal. Hiding in the DMZ mountains, there have even been reportings of rare Siberian tigers and Amur leopards, long thought extinct in Korea.
Mozambique’s civil war and the environment as a revenue stream.
Not long after gaining independence from Portugal in 1975, Mozambique was splintered by civil war, the wildlife consequences of which reached their apogee in one of the country’s most important national parks, Gorongosa. By 1992, over 90% of Gorongosa’s large mammals (elephants, buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, and many antelope species) had been killed, many shot by soldiers.
More generally, the natural capital locked up in many territories forms one of the first revenue streams tapped into by rebels and insurgents upon the breakout of war. For example, conflict diamonds were sold to bankroll civil wars in Angola and Liberia, with the same being the case for rampant logging in Cambodia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. At the same time, resource exploitation can span far beyond the boundaries of wartime, stretching much further into the future, both as a way of funding post-war restoration and to secure the power of the government or entity that has come to rule.
This is exactly what happened in Cambodia, following two decades of warfare and a genocide which led to the deaths of one fifth of its population. Timber played an enormous part in Cambodia’s post-war transition, with one political scientist describing it as “the most politicized resource of a reconstruction process that failed to be either as green or as democratic as the international community had hoped.”
Somali pirates and the Rhodesian War
In the same way that the imminent danger caused by the establishment of forest drug estates in Colombia potentially drives short-term positives for biodiversity, the outbreak of the “bush wars” in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) apparently had some positives for large mammals, who received a decade long respite from poaching because of the dangerous environment created by hostility in savanna habitats. A similar pattern might also hold for the recovery of marine life in some of the waters of the Indian Ocean patrolled by Somali pirates, and thus avoided by commercial-scale fishing expeditions. In 2009, Channel 4 News reported that fishermen in Kenya had reported bumper catches of shark and shellfish because commercial fishing boats from China and Japan had been scared away by Somali pirates. Certain fishermen were subsequently catching £200 worth of fish a day in areas where £5 was the norm.
What war means for wildlife and what can be done about it
So war and conflict has tremendous consequences. Mostly, these are bad. Astonishingly, over 80% of major armed conflict taking place between 1950-2000 were in”biodiversity hotspots”; those relatively small parcels of the Earth’s land surface that host the vast majority of terrestrial life. Sometimes, there can be positives, which conservationists might try to capitalise on. But whatever, the consequences, conflict and war are too important an issue for conservationists to ignore. Here are some of the ways we might incorporate conflict into our decision-making and actions:
1) Provide support throughout the conflict
By delivering support throughout conflicts (and even after), it may be possible to mitigate any environmental risks. As summarised elsewhere, potential strategies include “the development of contingencies to support national institutions and local protected area staff throughout conflicts; collaboration with military professionals to reduce the effects of warfare; natural resource management training for soldiers, humanitarian workers, and peacekeeping forces; promotion of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in postwar recovery policies…and strengthened enforcement of international conventions governing war-related environmental damage”.
2) Or try to avoid conflict zones?
Seemingly at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps we should be directing international conservation funds and resources towards areas where conservation activities are less likely to be undermined by warfare? There are actually ways of determining the likelihood of armed conflict breaking out in a given area, so maybe we should be doing this when deciding where to establish protected wildlife reserves? Indeed, scientists recently attempted to work out the best way to act to target wildlife reserves in Africa whilst factoring in the risk of armed conflict. They found that potentially the most rewarding strategy is not to avoid conflict areas altogether, as some of these host enormous wildlife. Rather, to get the most biodiversity for our buck, we should try to to protect extra areas to counteract the conflict-driven wildlife declines, whilst also excluding very high-risk areas from protection.
3) Help with post-conflict recovery
In the most comprehensive scientific examination of the impacts of conflict on large mammals to date, scientists demonstrated that although pretty steep wildlife declines are the norm in areas experiencing a high-frequency of conflict, even here absolute extinctions are, in fact, quite rare. This leaves open the door for management interventions to help shepherd war-torn ecosystems back into shape. For example, in Gorongosa, large mammals are slowly recovering thanks to an ambitious programme that has reintroduced buffalo, eland, wildebeest and a rare sub-species of zebra from other areas into the park, as well as social investment in the park’s surrounding communities. Mozambique’s wildlife might further be helped by a post-war return of eco-tourism.
In another example, Vietnamese governments and international donors have invested heavily in the restoration of mangrove forests damaged by Agent Orange, partly to help recover wildlife and partly as a strategic ploy to provide coastal flood protection from projected sea-level rises under climate change.
4) Be proactive in capitalising on any positives
When positives do arise from conflict, such as the unexploding penguin paradise in the Falklands, or the Korean Demilitarised Zone, taking actions to ensure that these positives can be sustained in the face of any future tumults is crucial. For example, conservationists in the Falklands are already considering ways of managing the penguin beach once it is de-mined, whilst many have suggested that if North and South Korea were ever to reunify, removing the need for the fenced off DMZ, the area could be made into a celebratory peace park for nature, as a mark of political friendship along the removed border.
The most important thing of all is not to ignore the clear impacts conflict and war can have on the environment.
