El presente artículo desarrolla aspectos relacionados con los efectos directos e indirectos, de corto y de largo plazo, que se producen sobre la población, la infraestructura de los países y el medioambiente, en escenarios de conflicto como el que existe actualmente entre Israel e Irán. Y cuando los ataques entre las partes, afectan además instalaciones especialmente riesgosas y críticas como las relacionadas con la Energía Nuclear, las posibilidades de catástrofe se incrementan exponencialmente. Porque aún en los casos de guerras de muy corta duración, los daños colaterales y efectos adversos pueden durar décadas.
On June 15, Israel struck two sites in Tajrish, a mountainous and busy neighborhood that sits along the northern border of Tehran. One of the explosions rocked a busy intersection, the site of the Tajrish Bazaar and a metro station, and ruptured a water main. Water gushed out of the broken pipe, flooding the area and causing disruptions around the Iranian capital.
“People lost access to water in some parts of the city, impacting human health and sanitation,” said Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
The strike on Tajrish happened three days after Israel first attacked Iran on June 12.
Other targets that were hit included an oil refinery in Tehran and the city’s main gas depot; the South Pars Gas Field in the Persian Gulf, and the Fajr Jam gas plant in Bushehr. Israel has also attacked the nuclear facility at Natanz, missile storage and launch sites in Tabriz and Kermanshah, and an industrial complex in the northern provinces. The United States joined the war on June 21, and struck three nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz, and facilities near the ancient city of Isfahan.
Although Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire on June 24, it’s unclear how long the truce will last. Still, even 12 days of war is enough to cause serious health, environmental, and climate damage. The environmental harm can be direct and indirect and short- or long-term.
Direct, short-term impacts. Doug Weir, the director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, an organization based in the United Kingdom that studies the effects of conflict on the environment, said direct environmental impacts of the war include kinetic damage to sites that contain environmental pollutants, including not just the nuclear facilities that have dominated news headlines, but also fossil fuel infrastructure like oil refineries, oil storage tanks, and power plants.
“Energy generating and energy fossil fuel sites are always of concern in these situations, where we see very intense potential for environmental damage and for human exposure,” Weir said.
A recent Conflict and Environment Observatory report shows the pollutants typically generated by major oil fires are varied and dangerous; they include particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, nitrous acid, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and possibly dioxins, furans, hydrocarbons and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Depending on concentrations, all of these can be harmful to humans. Although pollutant levels in the Iranian capital after the attacks on Tehran Refinery and Shahran fuel and gasoline depot have not been made public, they will be affected by the mountains surrounding Tehran, which tend to trap pollution, much like the Los Angeles Basin.
Damage to energy infrastructure can also have knock-on effects by disrupting water treatment and delivery systems, Weir said.
Attacking infrastructure that affects the survival of a population is prohibited under the Geneva convention. “There are rules of engagement,” said Ahmad Rafay Alam, an environmental lawyer and activist. “You’re supposed to target military installations and other parties in the armed conflict. You’re supposed to avoid civilians. You’re supposed to avoid excessive use of force, and you’re supposed to avoid targeting civilian infrastructure or infrastructure that can impact civilian populations.”
While attacks on nuclear power plants are for the most part prohibited under the Geneva Convention, attacks on other kinds of nuclear facilities are not. It’s unclear what the United States damaged during its strikes on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. A full assessment of the radiological and environmental risks of the attacks on those facilities will only be possible when the sites are inspected by independent entities.
What’s worrying here is that the missile sites are in places not accessible to the public, and the design specifications of the nuclear sites aren’t known, the UN University’s Madani said: “No one has done proper studies. No one even knows if proper measures were in place and environmental standards were followed.”
Direct, long-term impacts. Pollutants released by aerial attacks and subsequent fires will eventually fall out of the atmosphere and contaminate soil and groundwater. “This has been an issue that is concerning in the Middle East, and some of these impacts are even transboundary and trans generational,” Madani said. “So, the war might be over, but these impacts would remain there.”
One of the largest direct, long-term environmental and climate impacts of virtually any modern war are the enormous amounts of greenhouse gases emitted, Madani said. These can come from aerial bombardments and the subsequent fires at fossil fuel sites, but also from the machinery of warfare, like the fuel-guzzling planes that carry the bombs.
“Most militaries and armed conflicts are powered by greenhouse gasses,” Alam said. The US Army, Air Force and Navy, together are the largest individual non-country greenhouse gas emitters in the world. “Because all your tanks, missiles, [and] aircraft burn fuel that’s a greenhouse gas. Then a lot of the munitions also use greenhouse gas to get to where they need to go. Then when munitions are used, there is ecosystem destruction.”
Ecosystem destruction can come in the form of damaged natural resources like forests or infrastructure like dams, Weir said. This will have long-term impacts on the environment and climate by destroying natural carbon sinks. In addition to their impact on human health and well-being, these attacks take a toll on wildlife and biodiversity by destroying habitat or polluting the ecosystem.
Indirect impacts. One of the first casualties of any war is that environmental protections and concerns take a backseat to more immediate risks.
“The biggest and first impact is, when there is war and people are dying, no one even has the bandwidth to think about the environment,” Madani said. “To be able to think about the environment and do something for the environment, you have to have shelter, and you should now be worried about tonight and tomorrow. Society cannot think about [the environment], governments cannot think about it, because during a war, survival is what matters.”
This applies to the individual and the collective.
“On the indirect side, we see a whole incredibly diverse range of impacts, from when you undermine environmental governance and the capacity of a country to deal with environmental issues, or you see environmental policies and protections downgraded in relation to conflict and in the post-conflict period, which can then impact or [compromise] the environment over a much longer period of time beyond that initial period of direct hostilities,” Weir said.
Should the war between Israel and Iran reignite, there will be additional environmental concerns. “When you look back historically, at the Iran-Iraq war, we had huge issues around oil pollution and damage to offshore infrastructure and tankers,” Weir said. “And that’s potentially something which we could see if this conflict escalates further.”
There are a lot of potential unknowns at play, especially because Iran hasn’t been at war since the 1980s, so its environmental vulnerabilities during and after conflict aren’t well understood.
“This is unlike some other countries in the region that were exposed to frequent wars,” Madani explained. “A lot of what we don’t know about Iran is the impacts, because the country has not been exposed.”
In the case of attacks on nuclear infrastructure, some impacts, such as exposure to radiation, are more obvious, Madani said. But in the case of secondary effects—like how an explosion at a nuclear facility affects, say, an aquifer—the answers are murkier. “I don’t know if there have been proper geological or hydrogeological studies or not,” he said. “Everything is unknown in the case of Iran, and that is very worrying.”
Still unsure whether the conflict will resume, Iranians are focused on returning to and in some cases rebuilding their homes in places where attacks were carried out. The environment is likely a secondary priority.
Nonetheless, the environmental impacts of this war, thus far short, should be studied. On one hand, pointing out that war is bad for the environment shouldn’t seem revelatory. Of course, war is bad for the environment. But naming how and why is essential for redressing those harms after the fact—and even better, preventing conflict-related environmental damage in the first place.
“That’s why anyone who thinks about the environment or cares about the environment should also care about peace,” Madani said.
Fuente: https://thebulletin.org
