Limiting the Misuse of the Environment during Peacetime and War - The ENMOD Convention

Abstract

The ENMOD Convention of 19761 that entered into force in 1978 is an outlier in the area of arms control law and even more in the field of controlling conventional weapons via international treaty law. The Convention consists of ten articles and does not protect against the use of a conventional weapon in a narrow meaning, but rather it protects against the use of new means of warfare. The Convention tries to close loopholes that existed until the 1970s by laying down the prohibition of the misuse of the environment as a weapon or for non-peaceful purposes. It prohibits the hostile use of techniques that modify the environment and the use of environmental degradation as a weapon. Because of the advances of science and technologies, and as the protection of the environment is one of the key challenges of the 21st century, the object and purpose of the Convention is even more relevant today as it was during the 1970s. As long as powerful states like the USA, China, and Russia are states parties to the ENMOD Convention, there is at least some protection by virtue of international treaty law against the hostile use of techniques changing the environment. Whether the examples of these techniques might be part of a science-fiction scenario, as it appears at first glance, is doubtful and will be seen in the future. Although the ENMOD Convention does not protect against biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, and the aim is not to protect the environment as such, the areas of the ENMOD Convention overlap with other inter-national treaties, as the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, and it can be seen today as one element of a multilayered disarmament regime.