Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Arthur H. Westing

"Among the crucial problems that confront mankind today are those associated with a degraded environment. This book examines the extent to which warfare and other military activities contribute to such degradation. The military capability to damage the environment and to cause ecological disruption has escalated, and there is no sign that the level of conflict in the world is decreasing. The military use and abuse of each of the several major global habitats -- temperate, tropical, desert, arctic, insular, and oceanic -- are evalusated separately in the light of the civil use and abuse of that habitat"--Dust jacket.

Military Impact on the Human Environment

Warfare in a Fragile World

Institut international de recherches pour la paix

"This book describes several weapons of mass destruction and examines the extent and duration of environmental damage to be expected from them"--Jacket.

Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment

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

Pioneer on the Environmental Impact of War

Oxford University Press

The present volume is an outgrowth of a select symposium convened by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in co-operation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Stockholm, 15-18 March 1987.

Arthur H. Westing

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