Assessing the Effectiveness of International Humanitarian Law in Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict

International armed conflicts increasingly generate complex and often irreversible environmental harm, ranging from contamination of soil and water to transboundary air pollution and long-term ecosystem degradation. International Humanitarian Law (IHL) contains specific rules addressing environmental protection, notably Articles 35(3) and 55 of Additional Protocol I, as well as the 1977 Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD) and relevant customary norms. Yet the effectiveness of these rules remains deeply contested, particularly considering contemporary conflicts such as the 1991 Gulf War, the Kosovo campaign, the Syrian civil war and the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict, where large-scale environmental damage has rarely translated into legal accountability.
This paper evaluates the competence and effectiveness of IHL in safeguarding the natural environment during armed conflict through doctrinal analysis and selected case studies. It argues that, while IHL provides an important normative baseline by recognising the environment as a civilian interest and constraining certain methods of warfare, its protective potential is undermined by high and indeterminate thresholds, limited applicability to non-international armed conflicts (NIACs), weak enforcement mechanisms and inadequacies in addressing new technologies of warfare. The paper further explores the under-utilised interaction between IHL and principles of international environmental law, such as precaution, due diligence and the no-harm rule, and assesses emerging proposals to recognise ecocide as an international crime under the Rome Statute. Building on this analysis, it advances a reform agenda centred on clarifying treaty thresholds, extending protections to non-international conflicts, institutionalising robust monitoring through satellite and scientific evidence, and establishing specialised chambers or mechanisms for environmental war crimes. The paper concludes that without such doctrinal, institutional and technological innovations, IHL will remain normatively expressive but practically limited in delivering meaningful environmental protection in times of war.