By Nikoloz Mosidze, Bachelor’s Degree in Law, Legal Researcher at “Platform for Peace and Humanity” for Ukraine Program.

The destruction of the natural environment as a result of armed conflict is not a new phenomenon and occurred in previous centuries. However, in a world where the process of urbanization rapidly takes place, where countries incessantly develop their lethal weapons, the natural environment in cities will face unprecedently high risk during urban warfare, more than ever in history.

While urban combats became practically inevitable methods of modern warfare, it is time for belligerent parties to consider the protection of the urban natural environment, as it is also heavily affected by the effects of explosive weapons, landmines and unexploded ordnance. Accordingly, this post assesses whether the legal regime of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) sufficiently protects nature in cities.

Urban Natural Environment: An Important Civilian Object

The definition of the natural environment is not provided in treaty law. However, it is generally accepted that for the purposes of IHL, the natural environment is a civilian object that contains everything that exists or occurs naturally, […] including fauna, flora, oceans and other bodies of water, soil and rocks.[1] Accordingly, the greenery and blue spaces in cities shall be considered as civilian objects. This is also logical from the rules of IHL, as under the Article 52 of the first Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (AP I), all objects which are not military objectives are civilian objects. However, once parts of the natural environment are used for military purposes, they lose protection and become legitimately targetable.

Every urban area is covered by some elements of the natural environment. Urban forests, parks, botanical gardens, plants, and trees found in the streets, rivers, lakes, ponds and even seas in coastal areas are important parts of the urban natural environment that provide many benefits to cities. For instance, urban greenery has a vital role in carbon sequestration, along with the prevention of urban heat islands. It also combats air pollution and improves soil and water quality. While the urban blue spaces regulate climate, provide drinking water supply and reserves for residents and prevent floods. Besides, both elements of the natural environment ensure wildlife preservation as well as the physical and psychological well-being of civilians.

Considering that on the average urban natural environment is substantially smaller than man-made complexes, the preservation of urban green and blue spaces is crucial, especially in industrial cities struggling with environmental issues. Moreover, as the majority of armed conflicts occur in developing countries, the damage inflicted to the urban natural environment by urban combats can be even more problematic, as resources for restoration are costly and limited.

Natural Environment During Urban Warfare 

Once parties unleash the war and fighting moves to cities, the parts of the natural environment will inevitably suffer. However, the extent of harm will largely depend on the duration, intensity and missions of the military operation. While it is unlikely for short-term urban clashes even for strategically important cities to have a severe impact on the natural environment, prolonged battles or sieges with continuous aerial and artillery bombardment will seriously affect it as it happened in Aleppo in Syria, Mosul in Iraq and Mariupol in Ukraine. How exactly can urban warfare affect urban green and blue spaces in the cities?

  • Direct damage as a result of the nature of weapons

The stark reality of urban warfare is the active and massive usage of dangerous heavy explosive weapons: non-guided rocket artillery, heavy mortars, large bombs, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), cluster munitions and even short-range ballistic missiles. The character of these weapons is dangerous to the natural environment, as they contain chemically-toxic elements, that severely harm the urban ecosystems.[2] Therefore, parts of urban greenery will be unavoidably damaged as by the effects of explosive weapons.

The belligerent parties can deliberately shell and conflagrate the urban forests, parks, and trees in public and private properties in order to deny the concealment, cover and camouflage to combatants, ammunition depots and military vehicles of adversary parties. Military forces can also target wooded hills or mountains in the cities, as they are effective locations for artillery emplacement, surface-to-air missile systems, counter-battery radars and for sniper divisions.

The location of bunkers, military camps, or trenches in urban greenery can also cause targeting, but in the latter case forests will most likely receive collateral damage. Nevertheless, regardless intention of attack (be it deliberate or unintentional), under Additional Protocol I it is strictly prohibited to employ any methods or means of warfare that severely impacts the natural environment.[3]

  • Collateral damage while attacking military objectives

The practice of urban warfare shows that defenders mainly use civilian objects such as mid to high-rise flats and administrative buildings, as a method of warfare, which gives them the possibility to hide and maneuver. Therefore, the most damage will be inflicted on the trees and plants in the epicenter of the fighting. However, if the fighting intensifies and engulfs every district of the city, in order to avoid damage to civilian infrastructure or to hide their military objectives, belligerent parties can use urban greenery in cities and peri-urban areas. Consequently, the likelihood of destruction of the whole urban ecosystem significantly rises.

 With regard to urban blue spaces, armed forces can target the bridges on the rivers, as well as floodwalls in order to impede the usage of military vehicles or boats for conducting military operations. Alternatively, either the defender or attacker can use flooding as a method of urban warfare to route the enemy, as used in Ukraine last year. There is also a practice of targeting dams and/or dykes in urban areas which can cause substantial destruction to the natural environment due to mass water leakage.

The urban greenery, waters and air can receive severe collateral damage as a result of targeting heavy industry complexes too, such as oil and chemical facilities that are constructed within or on peripheries of cities. The leakage of dangerous substances and chemicals from heavy industry facilities can cause immediate harm to the natural environment, such as severe and long-term contamination of air, soil and water. For instance, targeting petrochemical plants and oil facilities in the Serbian city of Pancevo, seriously affected its natural environment.  It is reported that hundreds of Ukraine’s heavy industrial facilities in urban and rural areas were damaged by the effects of explosive weapons.

  • Damage from active usage of elements of the natural environment and remnants of war

Combatants can use urban trees and forests for military purposes for various reasons: to strengthen trenches and barracks or create underground shelters, and provide camouflage for military vehicles and ammunition. However, the practice shows that not only do combatants exploit urban greenery, but civilians also heavily damage it by cutting down trees for heating and cooking purposes or to make coffins and bury the deceased. Due to the overexploitation of urban greenery by civilians, nearly all of it was destroyed during urban and siege warfare in Sarajevo and cities in Syria more recently shared the same fate.

Moreover, heavy fighting in cities is associated with a large number of unused and exploded ammunitions, parts of destroyed vehicles, landmines and unexploded ordnance that are left in the urban environment. The toxic components of explosive weapons can significantly pollute soil and watercourses of the urban area and, moreover, endanger the health of the civilian population. Besides, the contamination of urban blue spaces by explosive weapons causes long-term maritime pollution as a result of the effects of heavy metals and toxic substances, thus endangering their biodiversity.

Urban Natural Environment: Practically Unprotected Target Under IHL

Treaty IHL under Article 35(3) of AP I provides rules for the protection of the natural environment against widespread, long-term and severe damage. The elements have cumulative nature and each of them must be realized in order for the threshold of harm to be fulfilled.[4] According to Article 55 of AP I the protection also includes a prohibition of the use of methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause such damage to the natural environment and thereby to prejudice the health or survival of the population. The natural environment is also protected under rules 43, 44 and 45 of customary IHL as identified by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).[5]

However, it can be argued that the current legal regime that IHL offers to the urban natural environment is not suitable to ensure meaningful protection. This primarily stems from the fact that, while damage inflicted on the urban natural environment might fall within ‘severe’ and ‘long-term’ criteria, as the level of harm might be irreversible and lasting for decades, the area of destruction most likely won’t meet the element of ‘widespread’, which must include areas of ‘several hundred square kilometers long’ as interpreted by scholars and the ICRC[6]. Under this criterion, the extent of destruction to the urban natural environment must engulf at least 300 square kilometers,[7] which exceeds the actual territories of the absolute majority of the cities in the world.

The practice of urban warfare in the last decade shows that the size of all small and major cities in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine where heavy urban clashes took place, ranged between 14 (Marinka in Ukraine) to 190 (Aleppo in Syria) square kilometers. Based on the greenery data in several European cities, the natural environment in war-torn urban areas of Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine on average would vary from minimum 10 to maximum 50 percent – 1.4 to 80 square kilometers. However, even if the urban natural environment constituted 90 percent of the whole territories of the cities, the ‘several hundred square kilometers’ criteria would still not be fulfilled.

Accordingly, due to the cumulative nature of Art. 35(3), the urban greenery and blue spaces that factually suffered ‘severe’ and ‘long-term’ damage during urban warfare, are not included within the protection provided by IHL, which leaves them the most vulnerable victims of armed conflicts in the cities.

Image: satellite view of the besieged city of Bakhmut, Ukraine (Source: https://twitter.com/Maxar/status/1611067709491679232)

[1] International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), ‘Guidelines on the protection of the natural environment in armed conflict rules and recommendations relating to the protection of the natural environment under international humanitarian law with commentary’ (ICRC, 2020), 15.

[2] ICRC, ‘Explosive Weapons with Wide Area Effects: A Deadly Choice in Populated Areas’ (ICRC, 2022), 59.

[3] Ibid, p.31.

[4] Ibid, p.30.

[5] See Jean-Marie Henckaerts, ‘Customary International Humanitarian Law’ (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

[6] Ibid, p.34.

[7] Karen Hulme, ‘Taking care to protect the environment against damage: a meaningless obligation?’, (2010) 92 International Review of the Red Cross, 683.