Leaders are in Brazil for this year's Climate summit to map a path to cutting emissions.

But wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine are unleashing unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases and pollution.

So why isn't the environmental cost of war on the agenda?

That is war now one of the biggest threats to the global climate.

This is Inside Story.

Hello, Welcome to the program.

I Madrian Finnigan.

Speaking at this year's COP thirty in Brazil, UN chief Antonio GUTIERREJ called the inability to limit global warming to one point five degrees celsius a deadly moral failure.

But does the same apply when it comes to protecting the environment in conflict.

Israel's two years genocide on Gaza has created sixty one million tons of rubble, with nearly a quarter of that contaminated with asbestos and other hazardous materials, and scietists warned that Israel's use of water, food, and energy as weapons of war in the Strip has left farmland and ecosystems facing irreversible collapse.

In Syria, President Ahmad Sharar has cited his country's worst drought in more than six decades as evidence of accelerating climate change had worn that it could hinder the country's post war recovery.

So why isn't conflict seen as a climate issue and why is the environmental tool of war so often ignored?

Will put those questions to our guests, but first a report from Alexandra Bias.

World leaders and top scientists gather in Brazil for the UN's Climate summit seeking unity.

COP thirty faces a tough task preventing climate cooperation from collapsing.

It's been ten years since the Paris Agreement's act SAC that now seems like a rare achievement.

In recent years, the number of global conflicts has surged to the highest levels since World War II.

From Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the conflict in Sudan and Israel's genocide in Gaza, wars have been raging, taking terrible tolls on civilians, governments, but also the environment.

Two years of non stop Israeli bombardment has flattened Gaza, poisoned the soil, and contaminated the water and air.

The catastrophic environmental situation in Palestine is a significant factor contributing to global climate change, highlighting the urgent need for immediate international action to achieve climate justice and protect both humanity and the environment.

The latest UN figures show ninety seven percent of god trees and agricultural land have been destroyed, seventy eight percent of its buildings have been damaged, creating more than sixty one million tons of debris containing asbestos, heavy metals and toxic chemicals.

Clearing those ruins and rebuilding could take decades and generate at least thirty one million metric tons of environmentally damaging CO two.

And that's just Gaza.

Monitors say Russia's war with Ukraine has accelerated the climate crisis, generating at least two hundred and thirty million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and leaving twenty three percent of Ukrainian territory unusable, containing millions of land mines.

Killside and environmental destruction is a form of warfare, as Ukrainians by this point know all too well, and so does Russia, and that's why they are deliberately targeting the environment and people's livelihoods and homes and therefore also destroying lives.

Last month, a number of governments passed a motion at a major conservation meeting in the UAE recognizing ecoside as a serious crime, an act of violence towards nature as genocide is to people.

The human victims of war are clear, but there's growing awareness of a quieter, longer lasting battle also being carried out against the planet itself.

Alexander Bayers Al Jazeera for Inside Story.

Let's bring in our guests.

From Turin, we're joined by Cpe Macintosh, deputy Chair of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of ecoside.

From Berlin, we're joined by Elaine Dondarra, a disaster risk specialist.

And from Bellam in Brazil, where COMP thirty is being held, we're joined by Farai Magou, director of the set of the Natural Resources Governance.

A warm welcome to you, or Kate, let's start with you.

As we heard in Alexandra's report, then, the climate cost of the first two years of Russia's war on Ukraine was greater than the annual greenhouse gas emissions generated individually by one hundred and seventy five nations.

The first sixty days of Israel's war on Gaza estimated to have generated more than two hundred and eighty thousand metric tons of CO two that's more than the annual carbon footprints of more than twenty of the world's most climate vulnerable nations combined.

Now a naive question, perhaps, forgive me, but why isn't ecoside, a weapon designed to make land uninhabitable with calculated blows against the environment and the very foundations of life, prosecuted as vigorously as the crime of genocide.

Well, the crime and ecoside does not yet exist in international law.

But your question, I really like the way you put it, because when I speak to people about the crime of ecoside, it seems to be a matter of common sense.

Everyone understands that destroying our shared global environment should be an international crime, but it isn't yet.

So it has been proposed to be a new crime, the fifth crime, to be added to the statue of the International Criminal Court, by the Pacific island states of Vanuati, Fiji and Samoa.

But that has not yet happened.

Can it be committed?

Is it a crime that can be committed in peacetime as well as an act of water?

Things like intent need to be proven for a case of ecoside to be brought before a court.

So the definition of ecoside that's been proposed by the Pacific Island States would be a crime that could be committed in time of peace or war.

It's own crime, an individual criminal responsibility, and an international crime, so very serious one.

So a prosecutor would be required to prove intent.

The level of intent that has been proposed is that someone would have to know that there is a substantial risk of this damage being committed and still have gone ahead nonetheless with the destructive acts.

So that's the proposed crime, which as I said, has not yet being codified, is not yet on the statute books, although the term ecoside is becoming more and more widely used, I think to describe something which is almost a sort of instinctive understanding there's something that should be illegal under international rule.

Let's go to a bellum.

Then we're Cop thirty is currently being helpful.

I why do you think that world leaders and climate negotiators have thus far largely avoided addressing the environmental toll of war.

Well, I think the are avoiding the subject because the environmental crimes, whilst they are very devastating on the African continent, are also producing the raw materials that drive the global economy, especially the industrialized countries.

Hence, when we talk about the environment, it's like we a voice crying in the wilderness.

Because most of the countries, like China, the United States, they are big consumers of conflict minerals which are extracted at a great social, ecological costs to the African continent.

So whenever we try to bring up the environmental cost of conflict, it's something which nobody wants to hear about, because if all there are to be held accountable, Africa is a continent that has been hemorrhaging in order to make other countries rich any great.

And that's why bringing up the subject self environmental responsibility always clears problems to be on the common pasion in stakeholders involved.

Elaine, We've all seen the awful pictures of the physical destruction in countries affected by war.

We saw them again in Alexandra's report.

Can can you give us some specific examples of how warfare has degraded the environment and in places like Gaza, like Syria, like Sudan.

So yeah, I think we are past the age where you can separate war from climate because when military activities destroy life supporting systems, this is not just a humanitarian failure.

It's actually a fundamental risk to human security and global climate stability.

And we see this across really every case that you can look at.

In Gaza, for example, the destruction of centralized water and sanitation systems means that the raw sewage infiltrates both the Mediterranean and the groundwater drinking water aquifer.

It pollutes the soil and the air that people around up breathing.

But we see it in other contexts as well, like Syria and Yemen, places that already struggle with drought and food security, where military targets are often critical water and energy infrastructure, and the collapse of such systems such as wastewater systems and oil facility such as we've seen off the coast of Yemen, lead to massive, persistent pollution and ecologically vital seas that are primary food source and livelihood for many communities.

And we also see it in Ukraine.

If you mentioned the destruction of the Kovka Dam, where the single act wiped out thousands of square kilometers of vital wetlands, contaminating vast areas with heavy metals and sediment, and not to speak of the sheer amount of unexploded ordinance and minds that are gathered across the landscapes.

Kate, you said that the crime of ecoside isn't yet codified in international law.

Why not?

What are the main political and legal barriers to including ecoside alongside crimes against genocide and crimes against human I mean, all three of them go hand in hand, absolutely.

But I think that understanding is something which has been accelerating in recent years.

So as I said, there is a proposal now to include environmental destruction the crime of ecoside in the Statute of the International Criminal Court, and we hope will be watching in December at the annual meeting of the International Criminal Court to see if progress is made on that.

In terms of the North South dynamic, so the Pacific island states that are in the forefront of this new crime, specifically the state of Vanuati in particular, they've been quite explicit about saying that they see this as the first crime that has been really suggested by the Global SAUF.

So the other crimes of course were somewhat so they are international, but they were drawn up at a time when there was still colonies and colonialism was strong.

After the Second World war.

They really see the crime of ecoside as being something that's been pushed by countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, around the extraction of critical minerals, as something that responds to a mood and an imperative that's coming from the global South.

So that's one of the dynamics.

But I think that we're moving to a point where it's increasingly obvious that regulation of the climate system, protection of our shared environment cannot be left to the discretion of individual states.

We saw the International Court of Justice in July of this year come out with its powerful advisory opinion in which it emphasized that there are binding legal obligations on states to protect the climate system, that this is not a matter of setting discretionary targets under the Paris Agreement.

There's binding international law.

And the idea of a crime of ecoside is very much in that same vein that at a certain point, at a certain level, it cannot be up to an individual state to decide whether or not massive environmental destruction is permitted, because wherever that destruction, wherever those specific acts are committed, the effects are on all of us.

It's a crime against all of US.

It's almost the quintessential international crime.

All right, Kate alluded to what you were saying in your first answer a few moments ago.

If we can go back to that, do you think that leaders there at COP thirty are perhaps avoiding the topic because it implicates so many powerful actors, the States themselves, or their arms industries, fossil fuel producers, or their own geopolitical interests.

Yes, of course, definitely, because when you look at it, conflict that has happened beating Ukraine, Palestine at the passive equipment is also seen a spark in the demand for minas like Corpa, the countries La Zambia.

You've seen a rise in the demand for copa because it is a very important raw material for arms manufacturing.

You've also seen places like Niger Delta where the soil has been poisoned because of oil companies, most of them headquartered in powerful western nations.

We've also seen in the conflict in Carbo Delgado in most big which is also intersecting with other climate disasters like cycling thread in the light so again slight background rich nations.

They've got their own geopolitical interest but they also have combinies.

I think if you listen to President Donald Trump, he is a very strong fan of oil.

There is an addiction for fossil fuels in the Western world, which is spiking in this time or a critical time for climate change.

So most of them they don't want the responsibility because there's also growing demand for climate reparations from Africa.

Africa is also demanding that because it contributes only four percent to the global carbon emissions.

Hence there is need for a date forgiveness on the basis of climate responsibility of industrialized nations.

So nobody wants to take responsibility for this grave situation that the world is in.

But we all know there is a footprint that shows which countries are driving the demand for minerals.

And we're also talking about the rise in demand for critical so holdly critical minerals right now.

Like if you go to the countries where these minerals are being extracted, there is very little consumption of those minerals at all.

Most of it is for exports.

So the countries that are receiving these critical minerals, they want to hide behind the finger.

They want to pretend they don't know the ecological impacts or their extractive visit again the consumption patterns all the countries where these resources.

Are coming from, Okay, Elaine.

Coming back to Gaza for just a moment.

Israel's relentless bombing campaign destroyed or severely damaged water and sanitation systems, agricultural land, aquifers beneath the ground.

How does that environmental damage translate in the long term?

Will the environment in that part of the world ever recover?

Will Gaza ever be habitable again?

The long term consequence of the complete destruction of Gaza is that it inhabits its ability to heal itself because we have effectively eliminated nature safetiness.

When you lose over ninety percent of your tree crops and farmlands, as Gaza has, you also lose the ability of the land to absorb brain, which leads to flooding like we've seen every winter.

You use the natural system's ability to filter the air and to fight disease.

With the twenty five tons of medical ways that remain untreated every month, we also see a twenty five percent fold increase of water borne diseases.

So when we destroy the ecosystems that sustain us as humans, the forests, the wetlands, the farmlands we destroy nature's capacity to absorb shocks to fight disease is that affect the whole planetary systems.

So the toxic flow from these damaged areas, whether through polluted seas or carried by migratory animals, becomes a transboundary concern for health and security across entire continents and will take many generations to address.

But here I also want to get back to what Kate so eloquently set.

These are shared environments, right, and these are shared resources, so they also offer a unique opportunity for cooperation even between conflicting parties.

Kate, If and when ecoside is recognized as a crime, how would prosecutions work?

Who could be charged?

Are we talking about political leaders CEOs entire states?

Could the law be applied retrospectively?

And to what extent?

Should countries who take military action against another be held account for the environ mental damage that they cause?

Should they be required, for instance, to pay climate reparations bill for example?

And I think it's really important to emphasize that the crime of ecoside would be a crime of individual criminal responsibility, So we're not looking at a state being prosecuted for ecoside.

It wouldn't be a government or a country, it would be an individual decision maker.

And the interesting thing about that is it's one of the only types of international law which could help hold corporations, so corporate leaders CEOs accountable.

Most international law is binding only on states, but here we are able to look at corporations and again picking up on the point that was made from our African colleague, corporations are often driving some of the most destructive practices.

So any individual who by their own actions could be said to be responsible for the level of harm that is defined in the crime of ecoside could be prosecuted.

So that means that it will have to be somebody extremely senior whose decision making power effects has a massive impact.

So we are looking at potentially CEOs or perhaps chair chairs of the boards of directors of corporations, government ministers, heads of states.

There's an issue with holding heads of state responsible while they're still in position, but senior governmental leaders, senior corporate leaders are the kind of profiles that we might imagine could be investigated and prosecuted for a crime of ecoside because of how powerful they are.

Turning to your other point, about accountability for conflict environmental damage and in particular perhaps conflict emissions.

Returning to the initial point, conflict emissions, the greenhouse gas emissions that are released by conflict activities are generally not reported.

There's no obligation to report them.

So the devastating fear is that you mentioned at the beginning of this segment will not feature in the national targets for reduction that are being discussed in Belen At the moment, military ambissions are not reported, and this is a major thing that needs to change because obviously, if such a significant contribution to greenhouse gases and climate destruction is not taken into account, we're completely misguided in terms of the ambitions that were being set and the goals that are being aimed at.

International criminal law does provide for reparations for victims, but that can be quite difficult to achieve because it depends on the resources of one individual.

A far more effective legal means for reparations is to look at state responsibility, because states, of course do have the resources and capacity to compensate for their unlawful acts.

All right, let's go back to Bellin.

Then, do you see any possibility that this link between climate and conflict will eventually be recognized at the highest level and be integrated into the agenda at climate conferences like COP thirty.

Well, I think we're still far away from talking about climate agenda that is inclusive at the moment.

I think there's still a lot of thing pointing, accusations and counter accusations and denials.

But in the minuhial climate change is devastating.

It is a conflict amount of flyer, especially on the African continent where it may not be responsible for some of the conflicts, but it is definitely exacerbating the conflicts, like you've seen in the Eastern d C where there is and for a about col tent in the automatically becoming conflict zone in the also see Femen in other things happening.

It's such a region.

Eleaen.

What would a just recovery look like for places like Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, One that the addresses both the human suffering caused my acts of war and also the climate damage done by them and who should pay A very.

Good question, I think, one that should entail more conversations with those affected.

As Kate mentioned, there really is very little data on the ground on a granular level of what is happening exactly in these zones, particularly if we look at deforestation as well in South Lebanon, in Israel, in South Sudan.

There are really so many areas affected that we don't have a good data a picture of.

So it's really important to involve people into the conversation and to acknowledge that these aren't just short interim situations.

They require more long term, holistic solutions.

So if we look at Palestine, it's not a question of can people live in the situation for two years and survive, it's a question of how do we look into the future and rebuild communities for them to sustain themselves.

And our work mainly focuses on doing that through decentralized infrastructure, so small scale infrastructure for wastewater treatment, solar panels, or atmospheric water generators that can alleviate some of these environmental pressures while immediately addressing the humanitarian needs that exist.

It's all about cooperating with local partners, of promoting dialogue and to address some more innovative pathways to remedy those toxins.

For example, bio remediation for the soils and the rubble, as well as alternative food systems that can use irrigation water, such as treated wastewater.

So really thinking more innovatively, working with nature, not against nature, and also acknowledging that a lot of the people most affected are those marginalized farming communities that do already have a close relationship with their environments.

So water restoration, rubble remediation and building back those ecological buffers will be vital.

All right there, I'm afraid we must leave it.

Many thanks indeed to you all for taking part today.

Kate McIntosh, Elaine Dondra and I We've got friback very briefly just to say goodbye at the end of the program.

Ferai Mugoul, thanks for watching.

You can see the program again at any time by going to the website at alta zero dot com.

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From me, Adrian Finnegan and the team here in Doha, We'll see you again.

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