3 - Origins and Evolutions of Legal Debates on the Environment-Conflict ‘Nexus’

Summary

Chapter 3 traces the historical origins and evolution of legal debates on the ‘protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict’. It examines legal developments and interpretive efforts of scholars to expand the reach of the traditional jus in bello to account for conflict-related environmental degradation and ‘illegal’ resource exploitation, until the more recent attempts to look beyond the laws of armed conflict and war crimes into IEL and HRL. By charting the different formulations of environmental destruction/exploitation in rules governing war, this chapter sheds light on the changing ideas on the relationship between nature, conflict, and humanity, and the problems/possibilities with ongoing conversations in the field.