Preventing State Crimes Against the Environment during Military Operations: The 1977 Environmental Modification Treaty*

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a third specific arms control treaty, namely the 1977 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD). After having considered ENMOD and assessed its applicability to certain environmentally destructive tactics employed by combatants during the Vietnam conflict and the Gulf War, it is reasonable to conclude that ENMOD has limited utility for curtailing state crimes against the environment during war. In view of about 12 percent of Vietnam's land area having been damaged by defoliants and land-clearing, it is reasonable to conclude that the effects of the defoliation and land-clearing operations indeed were widespread. The chapter determines whether Iraq in having employed tactics that damaged the Persian Gulf environment violated international law, by using the environment as a means of warfare. The combination of defoliation and land- clearing methods used to destroy vegetation in the Indochina peninsula altered and damaged the region's terrestrial and marine environments.