Ecological footprints of war: an exploratory assessment of the long-term impact of violent conflicts on national biocapa
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Ecological footprints of war: an exploratory assessment of the long-term impact of violent conflicts on national biocapacity from 1962–2009 Swapna Pathak1
© AESS 2020
Abstract Most large-scale studies exploring the relationship between natural resources or climate change and conflict have looked at how environmental factors lead to conflict. This paper reverses that causal arrow and presents an exploratory large-N study of 187 countries from 1962 to 2009 assessing the long-term impact of violent conflicts on their environment. I also look at how this relationship is affected by economic and political factors. I use national biocapacity data calculated by the Global Footprint Network as a measure of environmental resources. The results indicate that in the long run, the impact of conflicts on a country’s biocapacity is mediated by wealth and democratization. I find that both wealth and democratization are necessary to mitigate the environmental impact of wars. I also find that countries with high levels of democratization and low per capita GDP and countries with low levels of democratization and high per capita GDP experience a decline in their biocapacity in the long run as the intensity of conflict increases. These findings underscore how advanced, industrialized democracies export the environmental risk of wars onto other countries, which has implications for environmental security and international environmental justice. Keywords Biocapacity · Ecological impact · Conflict · International wars · Civil wars
Introduction “The effects from damage done to the environment and natural resources during times of war...continue far beyond the period of conflict itself. Such effects are passed on to future generations and may extend beyond the borders of the country impacted”. On November 6, 2015, The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) released this statement to commemorate the day that has been declared as the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. This paper presents a “first-cut” or exploratory study analyzing the long-term impact on a country’s environmental
resources as it experiences large-scale conflicts such as international and civil wars.1 Additionally, the paper argues that in the long run, economic and political factors can be instrumental in a country’s ability to protect or manage its biocapacity during and after conflicts. For my analysis, I conduct a large-N empirical study of 187 countries from 1962 to 2009. As a measure of ecological capacity, I use the national biocapacity data calculated by the Global Footprint Network (Network 2013). Biocapacity refers to the Earth’s capacity to absorb the human ecological footprint marked by consumption and waste and keep “producing” natural materials. Therefore, one can think of biocapacity as the environmental “supply” to support human activities, and this study explores how this supply is affected by large-scale social conflicts in the long run.
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