The environmental devastation caused by military conflict has been witnessed in the wake of the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the Kosovo conflict. This book brings together leading international lawyers, military officers, scientists and economists to examine the legal, political, economic and scientific implications of wartime damage to the natural environment and public health. The book considers issues raised by the application of humanitarian norms and legal rules designed to protect the environment, and the destructive nature of war. Contributors offer an analysis and critique of the existing law of war framework, lessons from peacetime environmental law, means of scientific assessment and economic valuation of ecological and public health damage, and proposals for future legal and institutional developments. This book provides a contemporary forum for interdisciplinary analysis of armed conflict and the environment, and explores ways to prevent and redress wartime environmental damage.

Preventing War and Promoting Peace focuses on how health professionals can actively engage in the prevention of war and the promotion of peace.

"This book assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war for both interstate and civil wars over the past two centuries"--

Provides a detailed look at how war affects human life and health far beyond the battlefield Since 2010, a team of activists, social scientists, and physicians have monitored the lives lost as a result of the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan through an initiative called the Costs of War Project. Unlike most studies of war casualties, this research looks beyond lives lost in violence to consider those who have died as a result of illness, injuries, and malnutrition that would not have occurred had the war not taken place. Incredibly, the Cost of War Project has found that, of the more than 1,000,000 lives lost in the recent US wars, a minimum of 800,000 died not from violence, but from indirect causes. War and Health offers a critical examination of these indirect casualties, examining health outcomes on the battlefield and elsewhere—in hospitals, homes, and refugee camps—both during combat and in the years following, as communities struggle to live normal lives despite decimated social services, lack of access to medical care, ongoing illness and disability, malnutrition, loss of infrastructure, and increased substance abuse. The volume considers the effect of the war on both civilians and on US service members, in war zones—where healthcare systems have been destroyed by long-term conflict—and in the United States, where healthcare is highly developed. Ultimately, it draws much-needed attention to the far-reaching health consequences of the recent US wars, and argues that we cannot go to war—and remain at war—without understanding the catastrophic effect war has on the entire ecosystem of human health.

and used in munitions. Rather the requirements for the agent’s military effects took precedence. In addition, the interaction among the political, technical, and legal challenges connected with the known or possible risks posed by CW agents is complex and sometimes not well understood. This is usually because technical considerations, when acted on, are almost invariably informed by political ones, such as various legal requirements. The book contains nine chapters covering different aspects of the research on environmental consequences of war and its aftermath and covers in one additional chapter more general issues such as prevention of war and its environmental c- sequences, the legal, political, and technical background to selected environmental and human health effects of CW agents, and the atmospheric transport and depo- tion of persistent organic pollutants under warfare conditions to more specific ones related to two main tragic examples: the war in the Balkans and the Gulf War. Aspects of the war in the Balkans cover contamination by heavy metals in Serbian national parks, the impact of NATO strikes on the Danube river basin, and the problems associated with transuranium elements. The Gulf War in Kuwait covers other problems related to the impact of oil contamination, the impact on grou- water resources, and the soil damage of ground fortifications among other envir- mental and health problems.

Introduction : a new kind of threat -- Saudi Arabia : oil fields ablaze -- Pakistan : loose nukes -- Mexico : a flood of refugees -- China : collapse of a great power -- Conclusions : the coming storm.

Americans are greatly concerned about the number of our troops killed in battle--33,000 in the Korean War; 58,000 in Vietnam; 4,500 in Iraq--and rightly so. But why are we so indifferent, often oblivious, to the far greater number of casualties suffered by those we fight and those we fight for? This is the compelling, largely unasked question John Tirman answers in The Deaths of Others. Between six and seven million people died in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq alone, the majority of them civilians. And yet Americans devote little attention to these deaths. Other countries, however, do pay attention, and Tirman argues that if we want to understand why there is so much anti-Americanism around the world, the first place to look is how we conduct war. We understandably strive to protect our own troops, but our rules of engagement with the enemy are another matter. From atomic weapons and carpet bombing in World War II to napalm and daisy cutters in Vietnam and beyond, our weapons have killed large numbers of civilians and enemy soldiers. Americans, however, are mostly ignorant of these methods, believing that American wars are essentially just, necessary, and "good." Trenchant and passionate, The Deaths of Others forces readers to consider the tragic consequences of American military action not just for Americans, but especially for those we fight against.

SOME PLACES YOU NEVER FORGET... For Amanda Stockenberg, that place was Smugglers' Inn. The seaside inn had been a refuge for Amanda when she was sixteen, a place to find solace, to find herself...and to find love. She can't think of the inn now without remembering Dane Cutter. The then nineteen-year-old illegitimate son of the cook had taught her about love. She'd been ready to give up everything to be with him. But at the end of the summer he, it seemed, was not. Now, ten years later, Amanda once again finds herself staying at Smugglers' Inn, this time for a corporate retreat. The event is her last chance to prove herself to her bosses, so she doesn't need any complications...like finding Dane Cutter still working at the inn. And still as dangerous to her equilibrium as ever. Because suddenly, Amanda isn't sure what she wants—the window office or the window room of a seaside inn. She has one week. Seven days to choose between achieving all her dreams...or reuniting with the man she never stopped loving.

Graca Machel, UNICEF's special rapporteur, also scrutinises sexual crimes in time of war, the fate of orphans, the disproportionate suffering of children endure in civil wars, and their special vulnerability to such side-effects of conflict as famine, disease and social fragmentation. "The Impact of War on Children" is an urgent call to action-for the commitment and tenacity needed to protect children from the atrocities of war. Children present a uniquely compelling motivation for mobilisation, and an opportunity to confront the problems that cause their suffering. This book is complemented by 16 evocative photographs by Sebastiao Salgado, a documentary photographer of world renown, covering Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Rwanda and elsewhere.