On 6 November 2026, the world observes the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. Declared by the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution A/RES/56/4 on 5 November 2001, this day was established to confront a truth that wars often hide: the environment is always a casualty, and often a cause.
For 2026, the United Nations has not announced a separate annual theme. The focus remains on its core mandate: raising awareness that lasting peace is impossible if the ecosystems, natural resources and livelihoods that sustain communities are destroyed. Global advocacy for 2026 centres on three intersections: climate change, conflict, and environmental degradation; preserving ecosystems during and after conflict; and strengthening environmental peacebuilding and post-conflict restoration.
The numbers are stark. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), at least 40 percent of all internal conflicts over the last 60 years have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources high-value resources such as timber, diamonds, gold, oil, and coltan, and scarce resources such as fertile land and water. Conflicts where natural resources drive grievances or finance armed groups are twice as likely to relapse within five years if environmental dimensions are not addressed in the peace agreement.
War poisons more than politics. It poisons the ground itself. History is a catalog of that poisoning. In Vietnam, 20 million gallons of herbicides including Agent Orange destroyed 20 percent of forests and cropland, with dioxin contamination still causing birth defects 50 years later.
In the 1991 Gulf War, over 600 oil wells were set ablaze, burning 6 million barrels of oil per day, creating black rain that fell as far as Turkey, and releasing 1.5 billion barrels of oil into desert soils that remain toxic today.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, competition over coltan, cobalt, gold and timber has financed armed groups for three decades, driving deforestation in Virunga National Park, the last refuge of the mountain gorilla, while turning mines into war zones.
In 2023, the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine released 18 cubic kilometers of water, flooded 600 square kilometers, wiped out irrigation for 1 million hectares of farmland, and sent 150 tons of oil into the Black Sea estuary assessed by UNEP as a disaster of which ecosystems will take decades to recover.
In Gaza, Sudan, Syria, and Myanmar today, UNEP post-conflict assessments show the same pattern: destroyed water infrastructure, sewage in drinking water aquifers, heavy metals in soils from munitions, and 40 -70 percent of agricultural land left uncultivated or contaminated.
The environment is not collateral damage. It is a weapon, a target, and a victim; what international lawyers call the triple wound. As a weapon, water is dammed or poisoned, forests are burned to expose enemies, and crops are destroyed to starve populations.
As a target, oil refineries, industrial zones, and power plants are bombed, releasing persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals into air, soil, and rivers.
As a victim, wildlife is displaced, protected areas become battlefields, and environmental governance collapses when rangers flee and laws go unenforced. And the wound lasts longer than any ceasefire.
UNEP studies of 40 post-conflict countries found that soil contamination from munitions reduces crop yields by 30-50 percent for up to 10 years. Water contamination from destroyed infrastructure takes on average 12 years to restore to pre-war levels. In Lebanon after 2006, 15,000 tons of heavy fuel oil coated 150 km of coastline, and fishing communities lost livelihoods for three years. In Afghanistan, decades of deforestation linked to war have reduced forest cover from 6 percent to less than 2 percent, accelerating desertification and displacement.
This is why international law matters, and why this day matters.
International Humanitarian Law prohibits methods of warfare intended to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment under Articles 35(3) and 55 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes intentional environmental damage as a war crime when it is clearly excessive to military advantage. Yet enforcement remains weak. The environment has no battalion, no spokesperson at peace talks.
On 6 November, we therefore call for three accelerations:
1. Legal Acceleration: From Principle to Accountability
We already have the principles. We need enforcement. In 2022, the International Law Commission finalized its Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts (PERAC), 27 principles covering before, during, and after conflict. In 2026, the challenge is implementation: states must integrate PERAC into military manuals, rules of engagement, and arms transfer assessments. Environmental damage must be documented by UNEP and others from day one of a conflict, not ten years later. And peace agreements must include environmental clauses as Colombia’s 2016 agreement did, with 20 provisions on rural land reform, demining of forests, and water protection so that exploitation does not restart war.
2. Prevention Acceleration: Treat Environmental Degradation as Early Warning
If 40 percent of conflicts are linked to resources, then resource governance is conflict prevention. Where water tables fall, where land titles are unclear, where mining revenues are secret, conflict risk rises. UNEP’s Environmental Cooperation for Peacebuilding program shows that joint management of shared water, shared forests, or shared grazing lands can prevent escalation. Niger and Burkina Faso’s shared management of the Sirba River, Kenya’s community conservancies that bring pastoralists and farmers together, and the Mekong River Commission’s joint data sharing are examples. Environmental peacebuilding costs a fraction of peacekeeping: restoring a watershed costs $200-$500 per hectare; deploying one peacekeeper costs $30,000 per year.
3. Restoration Acceleration: Fund the Environment as Recovery
Post-conflict recovery typically funds roads, ministries, and security forces. Rarely does it fund the environment. On average, less than 2 percent of post-conflict aid goes to environmental restoration. That must change. Restoration is livelihood. Clearing mines from farmland in Cambodia allowed rice yields to triple. Restoring mangroves in post-war Sierra Leone protected coasts and revived fisheries that employ 70 percent of coastal populations. Decontaminating soils in Kosovo allowed families to return.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) explicitly includes conflict-affected ecosystems. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Target 11 calls for restoring 30 percent of degraded ecosystems, many of them degraded by war. Funding environmental restoration is not charity. It is relapse prevention.
To every young person reading this in Lome, Kyiv, Khartoum, Gaza, Yangon, Goma, Bogotá: The future will not be built only in negotiation rooms. It will be built in the forests you replant, the rivers you test, the wells you protect, and the mines you transform into community farms.
To our partners in governments, the UN, regional bodies, and environmental organizations: Publish military environmental impacts. Adopt PERAC. Make environmental clauses mandatory in peace agreements. Fund UNEP rapid assessments within 30 days of a ceasefire.
As UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen has said: “There can be no durable peace if the natural resources that sustain livelihoods and ecosystems are destroyed.”
On 6 November 2026, we remember that the earth does not take sides. It bleeds with every side. Protecting the environment in war is not an environmental luxury. It is a security necessity, a humanitarian necessity, and an intergenerational duty.
A war that destroys the environment steals not only today, but tomorrow.
UNEP — at least 40% of internal conflicts linked to natural resources over last 60 years; conflicts twice as likely to relapse. Source: UN Environment Programme, International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.
UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/56/4, 5 November 2001; declaring 6 November as observance.
ILC, Draft Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts (PERAC), 27 Principles, adopted by UNGA 2022; UNEA Res. UNEP/EA.2/Res.15 (2016).
