War is one of the biggest culprits of greenhouse emissions – the gases that trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere and propel climate change – but to date, countries or entities engaged in war face no penalties for “ecocide,” the deliberate or wanton human destruction of the natural environment.
Now, as the environmental damage in war zones from Ukraine to Gaza is being assessed, efforts are increasing to see penalties imposed for military actions that have caused immense damage to our planet.
In Ukraine, Russia’s ongoing war has produced greenhouse gases equal to the annual emissions of Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia combined, resulting in an estimated $43 billion in environmental damage.
In the Gaza Strip, the carbon footprint, according to a 15-month Social Science Research Network (SSRN) study, has exceeded annual emissions of a combined 36 countries and territories.
No accountability
“Conflict is interlinked with sustainability,” Prof. William Barnett, the Stanford University Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment, told The Jerusalem Report in a recent interview.
“If you look at the planetary boundaries – the framework for the limitations of human activity affecting the Earth system – and consider that those boundaries are essential to human life and that climate is only one aspect of that, researchers question which of the boundaries will give way first,” said the professor, who delivered the keynote address at the recent Drylands, Deserts and Desertification (DDD) Conference at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), there are currently no obligations or standardized methods for governments to collect information on or report about gas emissions linked to military activity.
However, that could soon change. Already, the European Parliament is preparing to enact punishments for “ecocide-like” acts; and a policy initiative introduced to the International Criminal Court (ICC) last December could see such violations added to an existing list that includes war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression.
“Scholars… are part of efforts to create a standard methodology [for quantifying war emissions], but that is all happening in academia or in NGO civil society,” said Prof. Kate Mackintosh of UCLA’s The Promise Institute for Human Rights.
Mackintosh, who was part of an international expert panel that proposed the consensus definition of ecocide in 2021, is confident that standardized emissions monitoring is on the horizon.
“I have no doubt that we’re moving in that direction...a standard methodology for quantifying emissions and then, of course, that should be part of what states take into account when they consider their carbon budgets and set their goals under the Paris Agreement,” she said.
Greening the military
While international bodies are waking up to the damage war is having on the environment, militaries have been slow to implement “greening” initiatives.
In the US, the army has taken steps to develop biodegradable training munitions and lead-free bullets.
The IDF has begun “electrifying” or connecting training base tanks – and in the future, autonomous D9 bulldozers – to electric grids to cut fuel waste. Additionally, army bases throughout Israel are installing solar panels for self-contained renewable energy.
But none of this has reached the battlefield.
A September report by the Israel-based Arava Institute described the situation in Gaza as being “in a state of ecological collapse, characterized by poisoned water, destroyed agricultural land, and air quality tainted by a combination of asbestos and pulverized concrete dust…”
“Gaza’s sewage system was dysfunctional before October 7. Now all services are nonexistent,” said Prof. David Lehrer, director of the Center for Applied Environmental Diplomacy at the Arava Institute and co-author of the “Shared Environments, Shared Futures – A Perspective on Nature-Based and Decentralized Solutions for Gaza’s Recovery” report.
“There is water contamination, water lines are damaged, and energy or electricity is virtually nonexistent,” he elaborated.
Estimates vary depending on the source, but it is believed that between 80,000 and 200,000 tons of munitions were fired or dropped on Gaza between October 2023 and October 2025.
That, according to Lehrer’s report, has created an unprecedented scale of widespread rubble: 61 million tons arising from 200,000 damaged or destroyed buildings – as United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) findings show.
Ecological collapse
Additionally, satellite images show that 80% of Gaza’s trees have been eradicated, constituting the destruction of green spaces that disrupts ecosystems, destroys wildlife habitats, and wreaks havoc on global bird migration routes.
Mixed into the debris are also unexploded ordnances and asbestos. The dust from that combination, blended with toxins released by waste, which Gazans burn for fuel or as an alternative to disposal methods, increases the toxic threat of heart and lung disease and cancer for the 1.9 million people still living in the territory.
“You’ve got rats and cockroaches running freely on the streets – the lack of waste collection encourages that,” said Lehrer, adding, “There’s no governance, and nobody is overseeing civilian life in a situation where civilians can do very little for themselves. Combine that with waste, excess rainwater, raw sewage, rodents… It’s a formula for disease. And it’s going to be a problem for Gaza’s neighbors.”
By “neighbors,” he is referring to the approximately 65,000 Israelis living in Gaza border communities.
Moving forward, a top priority for gaining eco-stability in post-war Gaza is to stabilize the territory.
Anticipating – and steering a path to – imminent access, researchers at the Arava Institute have proposed an incremental recovery model that evolves from addressing urgent and immediate dietary, energy, and hygiene needs to implementing long-term, transformative changes, such as creating offshore artificial reefs from war rubble.
If projects are to succeed, the Arava Institute’s report notes, Palestinians must lead and enact initiatives themselves. “That will ensure that solutions are culturally appropriate, context-specific, and empower local communities.”
Rebuilding and transforming Gaza will be a drawn-out, tedious process.
“The estimates are 10 years. At least. Ten years before the majority of Gazans are living in permanent homes again with energy, proper sewage disposal and treatment, and running water moving through the pipes,” Lehrer said.
Between now and then, the challenge of waste removal and providing clean water, energy, food, and shelter for 1.9 million people remains critical.
On a broader scale, those fighting the environmental war say that current global ecosystem threats are so acute that we don’t have time for other types of war.
“Wars are a distraction. The real threat is climate change,” Lehrer concluded. “That is something we all need to work on together. Wars are making it worse.”■