The Use of Nuclear Weapons and the Protection of the Environment During International Armed Conflict.

• Author: Crawford, Emily
• Position: Book review

Erik Koppe, The Use of Nuclear Weapons and the Protection of the Environment during International Armed Conflict (Volume 18, Hart Publishing Studies in International Law Series, 2008, ISBN 9781841137452 x+447 pages)

The 'Doomsday Clock'--a depiction of a clock face, minutes away from midnight--was devised by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1947, as a way of symbolically demonstrating to the world how close humanity was to its destruction as a result of nuclear warfare. Midnight was doomsday; and over the decades, the minute hand has moved according to political and technological changes, indicating how near we have come to our own annihilation. The furthest the minute hand has ever been was seventeen minutes to midnight--the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany in the early nineties. However, in 2007, the minute hand was moved from seven minutes to midnight to five minutes to midnight--the closest the clock has been to midnight since the height of the US-Soviet brinkmanship that characterised the early 1980s. This time though, our imminent demise is attributable to more than just nuclear war:

Climate change ... presents a dire challenge to humanity. Damage to ecosystems is already taking place; flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt are causing loss of life and property. (1) The inclusion of climate change on the Bulletin's radar reflects growing international concern about what many consider to be a clear threat to international peace and security--the deterioration of the natural environment due to global warming and climate change. The ICRC, for one, has for at least the past decade been highlighting the threat to human security posed by conflicts over dwindling natural resources. (2)

These dual threats--nuclear warfare and environmental damage--are the focus of Erik Koppe's book. Koppe takes, as his starting point, a paragraph from the ICJ's Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons (3), where the Court stated that:

... while the existing international law relating to the protection and safeguarding of the environment does not specifically prohibit the use of nuclear weapons it indicates important environmental factors that are properly to be taken into account in the context of the implementation of the principles and rules of the law applicable in armed conflict. (4) Specifically, the essential thesis of the text is whether, in the absence of more...