Desk Study on the Environment in Iraq


Book Description

This study focuses on the state of Iraq's environment following decades of armed conflict, economic sanctions and the absence of environmental management principles in national planning. It highlights options to tackle the environmental threats to human health from disrupted or contaminated water supplies, inadequate sanitation and waste systems, as well as for wider responses to address longer-term environmental risks. At present, following the conflict in March/April 2003, restoring law and order is a key priority for dealing effectively with humanitarian and environmental problems.




Kuwaiti Oil Fires: Regional Environmental Perspectives


Book Description

Just before the end of the 1990-1991 Gulf War, more than 700 wells in Kuwaiti oil fields were set on fire. Several international companies and scientific organisations were involved in extinguishing the fires and in assessing the impact of this major environmental incursion. Kuwaiti Oil Fires: Regional Environmental Perspectives summarises these effects. The topics covered include the application of remote sensing techniques to determine the location of wells on fire and plume movement; air quality and particulate monitoring by ground stations and aircraft measurements; organic and inorganic constituents in the air; use of modeling techniques to study dispersion characteristics of pollutants and deposition of soot; and the efforts by the fire fighters in extinguishing fires and capping the wells. A brief overview of the causes of the crisis and the role of regional and international groups in resolving the dispute is presented as well as some basic and useful statistics of the region covering general information on economic aspects and exploitation of oil resources in both Iraq and Kuwait. Problems faced by the fire fighting teams, the preparations made to overcome the problems, and technology used in extinguishing the well fires are also discussed. Numerous colour photographs are used to illustrate the problems encountered and the techniques involved in their solution.




Environmental Protection and Transitions from Conflict to Peace


Book Description

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Environmental protection is fundamental for the establishment of sustainable peace. Applying traditional legal approaches to protection raises particular challenges during the transition from conflict to peace. In the jus post bellum context, protection of the environment and natural resources needs to be considered in tandem with a broad range of simultaneously applicable normative frameworks, such as human rights, transitional justice, arms control/disarmament, UN law and practice, development, and domestic law. While certain multilateral environment agreements, such as the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage protect the environment; international humanitarian law and international criminal law continue to treat environmental protection largely from an anthropocentric perspective. This book is the first targeted work in the legal literature that investigates environmental challenges in the aftermath of conflict. Addressing these challenges, it brings together academics, policy-makers, and practitioners from different disciplines to clarify policies and practices of environmental protection and key normative frameworks. It draws on experiences and practices in post-conflict settings to specify substantive principles and techniques to remedy and prevent harm.




UNEP in Iraq


Book Description

This report is an up-to-date compilation of the various activities undertaken by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. It makes an objective assessment of the impacts of UNEP's intervention and documents the lessons learnt in implementing the activities in a complex situation such as Iraq. The publication provides a significant insight into the overall success of UNEP's intervention in Iraq.




Arthur H. Westing


Book Description

Since the 1960s the environment has become an issue of increasing public concern in North America and elsewhere. Triggered by the Second Indochina War (Vietnam Conflict) of 1961-1975, and further encouraged by the International Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, the environmental impact of war emerged and grew as a topic of research in the natural and the social sciences. And in the late 1980s this led additionally to a focus and debate on environmental security. Arthur Westing, a forest ecologist, was a major pioneer contributing and framing both of those debates conceptually, theoretically, and empirically, starting with Harvest of Death: Chemical Warfare in Vietnam and Cambodia (1972) (co-authored with wildlife biologist E.W. Pfeiffer and others). As a Senior Researcher at the Stockholm and Oslo International Peace Research Institutes (SIPRI and PRIO), and as a Professor of Ecology at Windham and Hampshire Colleges, Westing authored and edited books on Ecological Consequences of the Second Indochina War (1976), Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment (1977), Warfare in a Fragile World: Military Impact on the Human Environment (1980), Herbicides in War: the Long-term Ecological and Human Consequences (1984), Environmental Warfare: a Technical, Legal and Policy Appraisal (1984), Explosive Remnants of War: Mitigating the Environmental Effects (1985), Global Resources and International Conflict: Environmental Factors in Strategic Policy and Action (1986), Cultural Norms, War and the Environment (1988), Comprehensive Security for the Baltic: an Environmental Approach (1989), and Environmental Hazards of War: Releasing Dangerous Forces in an Industrialized World (1990) --- as well as authoring numerous UN reports, book chapters, and journal articles. This volume combines six of his pioneering contributions on the environmental consequences of warfare in Viet Nam and in Kuwait, on the environmental impact of nuclear war, and on legal constraints and military guidelines for protecting the environment in wartime




After the Guns Fall Silent


Book Description

Years after peace treaties have been signed and military conflict is nominally over, anti-personnel mines continue to claim innocent lives. This text offers data showing that landmines victimize civilians in direct contravention of the Geneva convention and examines the impact landmines have on people, on their communities and on their outlook and view of life. The report, commissioned by the VVAF, examines the consequences of landmine use on post-conflict reconstruction and development, on refugee movement and resettlement and on the environment. It also investigates mine clearance and mine awareness and medical, rehabilitative and psychological costs. Using original research, the report uses case studies from countries including Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia. Scholarly and accurate analysis combines with people's own words and real personal stories to present a detailed evaluation of the effect of this most potent of weapons. This work is published by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and distributed in the UK and Ireland by Oxfam.




Building Environmental Peace


Book Description

By analyzing the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) contribution to peacebuilding, this book aims to show how international bureaucracies develop knowledge and thereby come to matter on the world stage. Portraying UNEP as an open system, it explores how a growing understanding within the Programme of how environmental degradation shapes insecurities and vice versa has motivated its work on peacebuilding. The theoretical part of this book addresses knowledge, open systems, and knowledge creation. It then presents a historical discussion of UNEP’s development in an open system context. Finally, it investigates how knowledge emergence on the linkage between the environment, conflicts, and insecurities influenced UNEP’s interests and its work on environmental peacebuilding.