Weapons Also Pollute

While the United States continues its global crusade against terrorism, civil society groups warn about the environmental impacts of armamentism, which is costing the world around 900 billion dollars a year.

NEW YORK - Amid the unceasing beating of the drums of war against terrorism, just over a year after the Sep 11 attacks on New York and Washington, civil society groups warn about a little-discussed problem: the impact of armamentism and weapons on the environment.

Today, worldwide military spending has risen to nearly 900 billion dollars, an amount almost equal to the average military expenditure when the Cold War was in full swing, according to United Nations calculations.

UN officials and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) alert that military spending not only diverts financial and human resources from productive pursuits, but causes environmental destruction and creates uneven economic and social development

"While the very development and production of weapons (of mass destruction) leaves behind environmental nightmares, their actual use in war could jeopardize the very basis of life on this planet, " warns Jayantha Dhanapala, the UN chief for disarmament affairs.

He urged the international community to recognize the "twin global problems" of environment and underdevelopment as identified at the 1987 Conference on Disarmament.

"These problems can and must be addressed together, in the interest of sustainable development, sustainable disarmament and sustainable international peace and security," stated Dhanapala.

The environmental impact of weapons development was not included on the agenda when more than 100 heads of state met at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), in Johannesburg, South Africa, a gathering that ended Sep 4 amid criticisms from the world's NGOs.

In late May-early June, during the final round of UN-sponsored pre-negotiations on the Summit's agenda in Bali, Indonesia, many NGOs proposed that governments must make commitments to reduce military spending by at least five percent for five years. But their call fell on deaf ears.

"Military production and consumption are a serious impediment to sustainable development," says Pauline Cantwell of the Peace Action, a non-profit group campaigning for disarmament. "They cause pollution and occupy resources that could otherwise be spent on sustainable development."

Peace groups say one way to contribute to the implementation of plans for sustainable development is to stop the flow of weapons from industrialized countries to developing nations, where most people live on less than a dollar a day.

From 1992 to 1999, the developing countries bought all kinds of weapons for a combined total of more than 200 billion dollars, according to the U.S.-based Center for Defense Information, which reports that the United States has been the largest supplier of weapons in the past five years.

The world has suffered 37 major armed conflicts since the beginning of the year. The ongoing "War on Terror", led by the United States since the Sep 11, 2001, attacks, has put many countries under pressure to increase their military spending, says Cantwell.

"That will not be of any help to implement the agenda for sustainable development," she adds.

Noting that states and extremist groups around the world possess weapons of mass destruction, Dhanapala warned of the "serious environmental and economic costs" of producing such weapons in spite of international commitments to do the opposite.

The world's eight nuclear-weapon states maintain over 17,000 nuclear warheads, 93 percent of which belong to the United States and Russia. China has nearly 400 warheads, France 348, and Israel and Britain about 200 each.

India is believed to have more than 30 and Pakistan more than 40 nuclear weapons, according to Sipri, a Sweden-based think-tank that tracks of world weapons production and export.

But the race to spend money goes beyond nuclear weapons. The United States plans to spend over eight billion dollars on its so-called Star Wars research and development while having already spent billions of dollars on this and other activities related to building up its missile defense system, according to the Defense Information Center.

Meanwhile, the UN Development Program (UNDP) reports that more than one billion people do not have access to safe drinking water or adequate sanitation, and each year over three million people die from diseases linked to this deficiency.

Peace groups complain that the WSSD, the 10-year follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, failed to include any reference to the environmental impact of wars, weapons production, and the direct connection between the petroleum industry and the military.

In Dhanapala's view, the Johannesburg meeting was "the ideal moment" for the international community to re-evaluate the central achievement of the 1987 Conference on Disarmament.

According to that meeting: "The world can either continue to pursue the arms race with characteristic vigor or move consciously and with deliberate speed towards a more stable and balanced social and economic development within a more sustainable international political order. It cannot do both."

* Haider Rizvi is an IPS correspondent.