The Environmental Protection During Armed Conflict

The serious natural destruction posed by armed conflicts is self-evident.Due to the highly developed modern weapon technology,human military actions are capable of destroying natural environment in a grievous and irreversible way.International Humanitarian Law,as a branch of international law,which specifically regulates belligerents' conduct during armed conflict,has developed a system,including rules and principles,to restrain natural destruction behavior.From Hague Convention,Geneva Convention to Additional Protocol I,Rome Statute and several specific treaties,we witnessed a significant development of the law of environmental protection duringarmed conflicts.However,serious defects of this legal regime,including the narrow protection scope and the ambiguity of protection standards,make the future potential applications difficult.Environmental ethics is a philosophical thought started at the beginning of 20 century,which advocates the non-Anthropocentrism against the traditional Anthropocentrism view.It also stresses the inherent or intrinsic value of the natural environment itself.The representative thoughts of environmental ethics consist of Life-Centrism,the Theory of animal right,Land Ethics and Ecocentrism.Environmental ethics has not evolved into actual ethic,however,in terms of the advancement of ethic,it is safe to say that environmental ethics mirrors the trend and direction of the development of ethic.From the environmental ethical prospective,two fold of defects can be found in the International Humanitarian Law.Firstly,the protection provided by several Humanitarian Law treaties are limited to the protection of the environmental factors,which are relevant to human or are beneficial to human,namely,the protection of instrumental value.This defect has been gradually improved by the latest developments of International Humanitarian Law.However,it is noticeable that International Humanitarian Law is a legal regime consists of the consideration of military necessity and humanitarianism.The existence of military necessity,as human military advantage,means that no matter how non-anthropocentric a well-structured environmental protection article may be,the essential value of the law of armed conflict is human-oriented.The reflection of which including the defects brought by the ambiguous and high threshold of environmental damage,the difficulty of applying proportional assessment to environment,and the protection based on the principle of distinction without consideration of the particularity of natural environment.Therefore,the environmental protection under International Humanitarian Law is against the requirements of environmental ethics,and the defects it generated are reflections of such conflict.In turn,one can also argue that the deviation of environmental ethic is the very reason of those defects.Thus,military necessity is essentially against environmental ethics.Generally speaking,certain kind of derogation of ethic during armed conflicts can be justified by the special ethic of jus in bello.There are four main theories proposed by scholars,namely,the Consent,the Individual Defence,the Collectivism and the Consequentialism.Nevertheless,the ethic of jus in bello failed to justified the derogation of environmental ethic according to the requirement of environmental ethics.As “another side of the balance” of jus in bello,humanitarianism is understood asmotivated by concerns for human welfare.Therefore,it might seem that the anthropocentric humanitarian ethic is fundamentally different from the ecocentric environmental ethics.Yet interpretation based on the philosophy of “do unto others as you would be done” and “protection for the interest of peace” embedded in humanitarian ethic could be compatible with the requirement of environmental ethics.Therefore,in theory,environmental ethic is compatible with humanitarianism.If environmental ethics becomes actual ethic,it can be applied to guide the development and application of environmental protection in jus in bello.