Article

Mars meets mother nature : protecting the environment during armed conflict

Peter J. Richards, Michael N. Schmitt

• Stetson law review, Vol. 28, issue 4, 1999, p. 1047-1092

English

Also published in Karen Hulme (ed.), Law of the environment and armed conflict, 2017.

This article examines the conjunction between modern jus in bello normative constructs and the environment. It begins by briefly and selectively tracing the common historical thread of wartime environmental damage, as well as the legal responses thereto, so as to render the contemporary prescriptive climate more contextually comprehensible; after all, law develops in, and responds to, specific social, political, economic, and historical contexts. Particular attention is paid to two determinative events : Vietnam and the Gulf War.

• Full text