Environmental Consequences of Conflict

April 22nd is Earth Day, when people all over the world celebrate our planet and try to raise awareness about various environmental hazards it faces. Conflicts pose one such hazard.

Though conflicts such as those in Jammu, Kashmir, Iraq, and Colombia take a significant toll on human populations, they also negatively affect the physical environments in which they occur.

In Kashmir, the land along hundreds of miles of the Line of Control (which separates Indian- and Pakistan-administered areas) has been littered with landmines. Dozens of sites around Iraq have been polluted with high levels of radiation and dioxins caused by munitions used in fighting.

And in Colombia, the ongoing low-level civil war has had an array of negative environmental consequences.

Coca growing—which funds much of the fighting in Colombia—has caused deforestation, which in turn contributes to global warming. Another consequence of destroying the rain forest is a reduction in biodiversity.



COLOMBIAN SOLDIERS ARRIVE IN AN AREA OF RAINFOREST
THAT HAS BEEN CUT DOWN TO GROW COCAINE
Tumaco, 2008
© 2008 Getty Images, Inc.

• Have students read more details about the environmental costs of the Colombian conflict in the "Regional environmental consequences" section of the Regional Implications category of the World Conflicts Today Colombia report.
  
  
• Have students then read about U.S.-led efforts to curb coca growing in Colombia—and problems associated with those efforts—in the "Plan Colombia" section of the Recent Events category, including the last two sections of the Plan Colombia primary source.
  
  
• Lead a discussion about the environmental impact of both the drug trade and anti-drug programs in Colombia.
  
  
• Ask students if they can come up with any creative ideas about how to mitigate the harm done to Colombia's forests, fields, rivers, and air by coca growing and eradication.
  
  
• Assign students to compare efforts made in Colombia to curb coca cultivation to those made in Afghanistan to curb poppy cultivation (used for opium production). Have students write up the similarities and differences they find between the two situations in a 300-word essay.