Environmental issue: Say no to warfare, yes to green peace

‘Use of weapons of mass destruction endangering life and causing destruction’.

Participants of a seminar on Sunday stated that the frequent and rising use of weapons of mass destruction and explosives were causing irreparable damage to the environment.

These losses in turn have affected the environment, public health and food security; if the nations of the world do not work to curb this menace, succeeding generations will face severe consequences, according to a press release issued by the Human Rights, Environment and Landscape Protection (HELP) forum that had organised the seminar at a local hotel.

Participants of the “International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict,” said modern day warfare had impacted the environment so severely that it had endangered life on the planet.

President of HELP T. Muhammed Jan said the long-term and widespread impacts caused by such degradation was literally killing the environment.

He added that the use of weapons was feeding into more armed conflicts, depleting the world’s water reservoirs in turn contributing to global warming, destroying forests and creating more diseases.

Sanaullah Akhar said that water shortages could lead to inadequate cropland irrigation and decrease in agricultural production.

Intensive bombing and heavy military vehicles travelling over farm soil, much like during the Afghan and Iraq wars, grossly affects the environment and agricultural production, he said.

Other speakers urged the world to play its role in stopping further armed conflicts, appealing to the world’s cognizant leaders to come forward and minimise poverty, starvation, deprivations and other tribulations from the earth and clamp down on conflicts.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th,  2011.