The Environmental and Social Impact of Armed Conflicts

Wars and armed conflicts are often discussed in terms of casualties, displaced populations, and geopolitical shifts – but their environmental and social damage runs far deeper and lasts far longer than most people realize. According to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the impact of conflicts on the environment operates on three levels: direct destruction during hostilities, secondary damage from displacement and economic collapse, and the breakdown of environmental governance that continues long after fighting ends. Understanding these layers is essential to grasping the full toll of modern armed conflict.

What are armed conflicts? 🔗

Armed conflicts are organized, politically motivated acts of violence involving state or non-state actors – or both – using weapons to assert or resist control over territory, resources, or governance. They range from interstate wars fought between nations to civil wars, insurgencies, and prolonged low-intensity conflicts rooted in ethnic, economic, or historical grievances. Unlike isolated violent incidents, armed conflicts are characterized by sustained fighting, military mobilization, and systemic disruption of civilian life. The Geneva Environment Network notes that armed conflicts too often lead to environmental degradation or destruction, with long-lasting effects that increase the vulnerability of affected populations – effects that persist well after peace agreements are signed.

The political and resource dimensions 🔗

Most armed conflicts are not purely ideological. Control over valuable natural resources – oil, minerals, timber, water – is frequently a driving factor or a key sustaining mechanism. The Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) points out that control over militarily relevant critical minerals is becoming an increasingly important strategic consideration for armed actors, as seen in conflicts across Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Southeast Asia. When natural resources fund fighting, ecosystems become battlegrounds in an economic as well as military sense.

Resource-rich conflict zones: Myanmar and northeast India 🔗

Two of the most persistent and environmentally damaging conflict zones in Asia are Myanmar and northeastern India. Both regions are exceptionally rich in biodiversity and natural resources, and both have experienced prolonged armed conflicts that have turned those resources into fuel for violence.

Myanmar: a civil war fueled by resource exploitation 🔗

Myanmar is home to over 3,000 plant and animal species, holds some of Southeast Asia’s largest intact forests, and sits on vast reserves of jade, rare-earth minerals, amber, timber, and gold. Since the military coup of February 2021, the country has descended into a brutal civil war. UN human rights experts warned that the junta has accelerated the exploitation of Myanmar’s natural resources – including timber, jade, and rare earth minerals – to fund its operations, while growing resource extraction, often unregulated and facilitated by armed groups, is degrading the environment, polluting water sources, and ravaging forests.

The consequences are severe. Reporting from the Mekong Eye documents how airstrikes and artillery shelling have devastated entire regions, displacing communities and destroying Myanmar’s rich natural resource base. Armed groups on multiple sides use logging, mining, and wildlife trafficking to raise funds. Al Jazeera’s investigation found that even before the coup, nearly half of Myanmar’s 64 studied ecosystems were already under threat – the coup simply opened the floodgates for those with power to scale up extraction, while poverty pushed ordinary people into illegal resource harvesting out of necessity. Myanmar is now among the world’s most deforested nations as a direct result of its overlapping civil conflicts and military dictatorship.

The climate dimension compounds this further. Research from East Asia Forum identifies a feedback loop: conflict accelerates deforestation, which in turn reduces the natural buffers – such as forests that absorb rainfall and reduce flooding – that communities depend on for climate resilience. Myanmar ranked as the world’s second most affected country by climate-related losses between 2000 and 2019, yet its capacity to respond to climate change has been systematically dismantled by ongoing conflict.

Northeast India: decades of insurgency in a biodiversity hotspot 🔗

Northeast India’s eight states – often called the Seven Sisters plus Sikkim – represent one of the world’s most ecologically and ethnically diverse regions. The area includes the Brahmaputra basin, dense biodiversity reserves, and significant deposits of oil, coal, gas, and minerals. It has also been the site of ongoing armed insurgencies since the 1950s, involving dozens of separatist and ethnic armed groups demanding independence or greater autonomy from the Indian state.

The Transnational Institute describes a vicious cycle in the region: the northeast remains poor partly because of conflict, and conflict persists partly because of underdevelopment. In areas like Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Districts, insurgencies have played out specifically in reserve forest areas, where militant groups operated from within the forests, leading to the departure of forest department personnel and subsequent rampant resource extraction by both rebels and local communities. This turned protected ecosystems into unregulated extraction zones during periods of active conflict.

Decades of conflict have left thousands of civilians killed, generations psychologically scarred, and entire communities displaced. Access to state services – health, education, environmental management – has been severely disrupted. The prolonged militarization of civilian life, particularly under laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), has deepened mistrust between communities and state institutions, making long-term environmental governance even harder to restore.

Consequences on ecosystems, economies, and communities 🔗

The environmental and social damage caused by armed conflict unfolds across multiple dimensions simultaneously – and the effects compound each other over time.

Ecosystem destruction 🔗

Direct battlefield activity – bombing, artillery, the burning of vegetation – causes immediate habitat loss. But the indirect effects are often more lasting. A review of 193 global case studies on war’s environmental impact found that soil contamination from heavy metals and chemical residues, water pollution from destroyed infrastructure, and biodiversity loss from uncontrolled resource extraction are consistently among the most damaging outcomes. Unexploded ordnance renders large tracts of land unusable for decades. Heavy metals from munitions leach into soil and groundwater, entering food chains long after the fighting ends.

Research published in a 2026 journal analysis found that the negative environmental effects of high-intensity, long-lasting armed conflicts persist for around 20 to 30 years after the end of hostilities. Post-conflict countries with weakened governance capacity often lack the resources to implement environmental recovery programs, meaning ecosystems remain degraded and communities remain vulnerable well into what is nominally peacetime.

Displacement and its environmental footprint 🔗

One of the most significant but underappreciated environmental consequences of conflict is mass displacement. CEOBS research highlights that refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) camps frequently end up in or near Key Biodiversity Areas, where residents are compelled to use local firewood and other natural resources to meet basic survival needs. This places enormous pressure on already-stressed ecosystems around camp perimeters. Large-scale refugee movements also create transboundary environmental impacts as neighboring countries struggle to accommodate the influx of people. In Myanmar alone, over 3 million people have been internally displaced by the ongoing civil war, with 1 million Rohingya living in camps in Bangladesh.

Economic collapse and governance breakdown 🔗

Armed conflict dismantles the institutional frameworks needed to protect both people and ecosystems. Environmental laws go unenforced, regulatory agencies lose personnel and funding, and armed groups operate with impunity. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) notes that as ecosystems are damaged by hostilities, climate adaptation becomes more difficult, further compounding the vulnerability of conflict-affected communities that are already the most exposed. This creates a compounding trap: conflict weakens environmental governance, which accelerates ecological degradation, which in turn makes communities more vulnerable to climate shocks, which can reignite social instability.

The economic toll is equally severe. In northeast India, the Transnational Institute documented how the insurgency and consequent counter-insurgency measures paralyzed development, enabling illicit economic enterprises in already militarized zones. Industries like tea and petroleum – vital to the regional economy – were directly targeted or disrupted by insurgent activity. In Myanmar, the combination of international sanctions and civil war has pushed the military government to accelerate resource extraction precisely because conventional economic activity has collapsed, deepening environmental harm as a byproduct of economic desperation.

Climate emissions from conflict 🔗

Armed conflict is also a significant and largely unaccounted source of greenhouse gas emissions. According to CEOBS, the first three years of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine generated 230 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent – comparable to the combined annual emissions of Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. This was the first time such calculations had been made for any conflict. High-intensity warfare requires massive fuel consumption, and post-conflict military spending remains elevated for years as governments maintain security presences and rebuild forces.

International law and environmental protection in conflict 🔗

The international community has slowly recognized the need to protect ecosystems during armed conflict. International humanitarian law provides some protections for the natural environment during armed conflict, but enforcement remains weak and coverage is incomplete. In 2024, the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted resolution 6/12, directing UNEP to develop technical guidance on collecting data about environmental damage associated with armed conflict and to strengthen coordinated environmental assistance to affected countries. It marked a growing political recognition that protecting the environment in armed conflict is integral to achieving durable peace.

The relationship between conflict and environment is not one-directional. Poor management of natural resources and environmental crises can themselves increase the risks of conflict. Food insecurity, water scarcity, and competition over dwindling resources have historically served as triggers and accelerants of violence. This means that environmental protection is not only a post-conflict recovery goal – it is a conflict prevention strategy in its own right.

What do you think? Given that armed conflicts in resource-rich regions like Myanmar and northeast India both exploit and destroy the very ecosystems that local communities depend on, how should the international community balance conflict resolution with urgent environmental protection in active war zones? And considering that the environmental damage from high-intensity conflicts can persist for 20 to 30 years after fighting ends, what role should post-conflict environmental recovery play in peacebuilding efforts?

References

1. https://www.undrr.org/understanding-disaster-risk/terminology/hips/so0202
2. https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/protecting-the-environment-in-armed-conflict/
3. https://ceobs.org/how-does-war-damage-the-environment/
4. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/military-coup-has-exacerbated-already-severe-climate-risks-myanmar-un
5. https://www.mekongeye.com/2025/02/03/war-on-nature
6. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/14/afraid-of-the-gun-military-coup-fuels-myanmar-resource-grab
7. https://eastasiaforum.org/2023/11/09/conflicts-intensify-climate-change-risks-in-myanmar/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_Northeast_India
9. https://www.tni.org/en/article/conflict-and-development-in-northeast-india
10. https://inclusiveias.com/insurgency-in-northeast/
11. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004896972402117X
12. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/27538796251323739
13. https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2025/12/02/from-crisis-to-recovery-managing-the-environmental-impacts-of-armed-conflict/