War is a climate killer

War inevitably results in a huge amount of smoke and toxic emissions, increasing the release of greenhouse gases. (Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Wikimedia Commons)

War brings death and destruction – not least to the environment and climate. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offers a depressing reminder of that fact, and further increases the military sector’s already enormous global CO₂ footprint. In addition, the eastern Ukrainian cities where fighting is taking place are home to fossil fuel infrastructure such as chemical factories, oil refineries, and coal mines, the bombing of which produces a cocktail of toxic substances that has devastating environmental impacts. Efforts to arm the two sides, moreover, are consuming materials and resources that could otherwise go towards tackling the climate crisis.

Based on the global CO₂ budget, humanity has less than eight years to ensure it still hits its 1.5-degree warming target. To do so, we need to urgently implement reforms in all areas, to bring about “systemic change,” as the IPCC report from early April puts it. The military sector barely gets a mention in this almost 3,000-page document, however, with the word “military” coming up just six times. You might thus conclude that the sector is of little relevance to the climate emergency.

The reality is rather different. Using military hardware results in huge quantities of emissions. In the war in Ukraine, 36 Russian attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure were recorded in the first five weeks alone, leading to prolonged fires that released soot particulates, methane and CO₂ into the atmosphere, while oil infrastructure has been ablaze on the Russian side too. The oil fields that were set on fire in 1991 during the second Gulf War contributed two per cent of global emissions for

that year.

While greenhouse gas emissions are one of the most significant impacts of war, the quantity emitted depends on the duration of the conflict and on what tanks, trucks, and planes are used. Another is the contamination of ecosystems that sequester CO₂. Staff from Ukraine’s environment inspectorate are currently collecting water and soil samples in the areas around shelled industrial facilities.

The ramifications for the climate can be catastrophic in scale. According to a study by the organisation Oil Change International, the Iraq War was responsible for 141 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions between its outbreak in 2003 and the report’s publication in 2008. By way of comparison: some 21 EU member states emitted less CO₂ equivalent in 2019, with only six states topping that figure.

Post-war rebuilding also produces significant emissions. Estimates suggest that reconstruction in Syria will lead to 22 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. The rebuilding in Ukraine, too, will consume vast amounts of resources. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that at least 5 billion US dollars of reconstruction funding was needed per month. Every effort should thus be made to achieve an immediate ceasefire – both for the sake of the climate and to avoid further human suffering.

Emissions from armed forces and military equipment cause considerable environmental harm around the globe. And yet, bowing to pressure from the US, military CO₂ emissions were excluded from climate treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015. As a result, they do not form part of their binding agreements and are neither surveyed systematically nor published transparently. The consequent lack of data means we can only make vague estimates as to the military sector’s impact on global heating.

According to a study by Neta Crawford, co-director of the Costs of War project at Brown University, the US defence ministry alone is a bigger contributor to the climate crisis than individual countries such as Sweden or Portugal. This makes it the largest institutional source of greenhouse gases in the world. Globally, the military sector is estimated to generate around six per cent of all CO₂ emissions.

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