The intense, dramatic, devastating environmental consequences of warfare have played out battle-by-battle for as long as human populations have fought. Salted fields and poisoned wells were environmental weapons of the classical Mediterranean world. Add a couple millennia of technology, and you get the landscapes of Antietam, Virginia:
and Ypres, Belgium:
Both are examples of ecosystems whose recovery from battle took decades to make much headway and which continues today as the devastated landscapes continue to fit their new ecological properties into the larger whole.
But, as you of course suspect, the most important, far-reaching, consequential environmental outcomes of armed conflict are at higher scales in the ecological hierarchy. Millions of hectares, thousands of years, and orderly, or at least consistent and predictable, changes in landscapes and seascapes and the biosphere as a whole have altered the ecological trajectory of the entire planet. Basically, we’ve been conducting large-scale, diverse experiments “designed” (if not INTENDED) to reveal ecological patterns and processes. The best possible outcome of this course, from my perspective and that of humankind in general, would be that one or more of you find ways to develop the field of study of armed conflict and the environment, devise and apply novel methodologies, and teach them to a whole new generation of passionately devoted students.
But while I’m daydreaming, let’s consider some important and interesting sources of information for the large-scale and long-term eco outcomes of armed conflict, whether or not such conflicts are legally and politically defined formally as “war”. The following annotated description of a selection of very eclectic relevant documents will, I hope, stimulate your own thinking, reading, and writing. As a society, humanity has ignored the environmental “externalities” of war and war-related stuff. If time’s we changed that. Let’s rock!
Elephants are a “keystone” species. Much of the pattern and process of landscapes with elephants results directly or indirectly from their presence. The prehistory and especially history of China can be read in the records of its native population of Asian elephants. Lands changed hands and uses over millennia, mostly in ways involving armed conflict or insurrection and often via direct and brutal military confrontation. The historical ecology of elephants, and the importance of armed conflict in that history, is presented impressively and creatively in “The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China” by Mark Elvin, Yale University Press 2004. A unique and wonderful book.
As the evolution of higher primates began to be dominated by intellectual (vs. purely biological) parameters, human and non-human ape species interacted faster, harder, and more frequently. The long-term changes in primate (and human) culture and cultural change altered—indeed, controlled—the biosphere for a long time. The biosphere we have to work with today is the outcome of these (often, in fact, generally) hostile social encounters. “The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal” by Jared Diamond (Harper Perennial 1992) lays it out for you. It is a story that you have not heard presented in this fashion. It will change your thinking and your vision of humanity vs. the environment.
How and why human populations came into conflict at a critical moment in evolution is documented beautifully by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending in “The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution”, Basic Books, 2009. This book is about how human beings changed each other biologically and socially over millennia of conflict. However, if you switch your perspective when you read it and think about it from the perspective of the ecosystem (vs. the humans what are nominally its subject) you will find many insights regarding and foundations resulting from the impacts of human societal conflict, you will gain valuable insights that “straight” reading of it would not yield.
Little needs to be said regarding “Gun, Germs and Steel: The State of Human Societies” by Jared Diamond, W.W. Norton & Co. 1997. This is an important—essential—exposition of the the social and ecological outcomes of the meeting—mostly via conflict, almost all involving weapons—of human societies across the biosphere. One of the most important books ever written. And, as a bonus, well-written and readable also!
A classic in the field, covering the most critically important and drastically consequential outcomes of armed conflict of societies at large scales is documented in “The Columbian Exchange—Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492.” This is an important and innovative analysis. I strongly suggest that you read it in as much detail as you can muster.
This list could go on for pages and pages and pages. Just to keep you going in your start through this literature, I also recommend:
• “Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World” by Russell Meigs, Oxford University Press 1992 (there are newer editions available)
• “The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and its People” by Tim Flannery, Atlantic Monthly Press 2001
• “Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America” by Paul S. Martin, University of California Press 2005
• “Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the American Prairie” by Richard Manning, Viking 1995
• “America’s Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery” by Thomas M. Bonnicksen, John Wiley & Sons, 2000
• “The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus”, by David Abulafia, Yale University Press 2008
• “Human Impact on Ancient Environments” by Charles L. Redman, University of Arizona Press 1999
• “Terra: Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem—and the Threats that Now Put it at Risk”, by Michael Novacek, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008.
Notes
Source for Ypres image: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1306/4688644558_096568da91.jpg
Source for Antietam image:
http://niahd.wm.edu/attachments/34072.jpg
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