An Essay on the Relationship of Warfare Ecology to General Ecology

Abstract

Warfare represents not only tragedies for societies and casualties and suffering for people, but also a great menace to environmental health and most living organisms. In a short time, warfare mobilizes a massive amount of energy, matter and information without a transparent and shared control of actions usually adopted by societies during peace-time. It comprises a very special "extreme" tool to reduce competition, to increase equity or paradoxically to create privileges among people and societies. When observed from an ecological perspective, warfare appears as an adaptive response to local or regional perturbations. Climate changes or resource-availability perturbations often are the cause of warfare, although ideological conflicts often mask the environmental proxies. Environmental perturbations, when associated with inter-ethnic competition, create favorable conditions for new periods of warfare. The ecological consequences of warfare largely depend on the technologies adopted by opponents and often the use of chemical (contaminants) and biological (origin of new manipulated diseases) weapons create a damaging scenario that can persist for a long time in territories and regions. Warfare ecology can have a major role in warfare processes not only in terms of awareness and mitigation of the effects of warfare on people and living systems, but also by educating policy actors to preserve and conserve resources. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.