Environmental Costs

 Photo credit: Kali Rubaii, (2021), Fallujah, Iraq.

Wars and military operations contribute significantly to climate change. Military jets and vehicles consume petroleum-based fuels at an extremely high rate, and the vehicles used in the war zones produce tons of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and sulfur dioxide in addition to CO2.

Residents of war zones and soldiers suffer many negative health consequences of war’s environmental wreckage. Bombs and other munitions contain toxic substances, including heavy metals, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and dioxin, that, in addition to causing horrific injuries, contaminate soil, water, and vegetation in the aftermath of fighting. Explosive weapons destroy buildings, generating debris and releasing hazardous materials such as asbestos, industrial chemicals, and fuels. Explosives also destroy water supplies and sanitation facilities, leading to pollution from sewage and solid waste.  In rural areas, bombing decreases soil quality and inhibits agriculture by disrupting topography, forming craters, and altering drainage patterns. Unexploded remnants of war remaining in the land injure and kill people for years after the active fighting has ended. 

U.S. military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere contaminate their surrounding environments with oil spills and other toxic chemicals. U.S. military burn pits – open air incinerators used to burn broken-down tanks, the detritus of weapons, computers, batteries, aerosols, metals, and many other types of industrial, military, and medical debris – contaminate the air, ground water, and soil and expose soldiers and civilians to dangerous health pollutants.

At times, environmental destruction is an intentional weapon of war. Ecosystems, animal and bird populations are adversely affected.

Key Findings 

• The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s single largest institutional consumer of oil – and as a result, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.

• Environmental contamination is an important and understudied causal pathway to “indirect deaths” due to war. For example, U.S. service members have suffered from respiratory problems, headaches, and cancers due to their exposure to burn pits in Iraq, and local people living near burn pits say they have similar symptoms.

• People who live, or return to live, in bombarded areas may be at a higher risk of reproductive health harms and other health problems such as cancer. The population of Fallujah, Iraq faced a 17-fold increase in birth anomalies linked with bombardments from the 2003 U.S. invasion and later occupation by ISIS. Bone sampling research in Fallujah detected high rates of environmental toxins.

• Afghanistan is one of the most landmine- and unexploded ordnance-impacted countries in the world. From 2001 through 2018, the Afghanistan government reported 14,693 civilians injured and 5,442 killed from landmines and other explosive remnants of war.

• Many U.S. and U.K. workers in military industries are frustrated with the environmental costs of their field and would welcome a transition to working in the green economy. The military can redirect its weapons and technological production capacity towards civilian uses and decarbonize the U.S. economy, given the right policy environment.

(Page updated as of May 2025)