Scorched Earth

Environmental damage in conflict zones is not a secondary concern. It is a fundamental dimension of how war harms people and communities. When a river is contaminated by military runoff, the people who drink from it get sick. When agricultural land is saturated with unexploded ordnance, farmers cannot safely work their fields. When forests are burned or cleared, the communities that depend on them for food, fuel, and livelihoods lose a critical resource base. These are not abstract environmental problems. They are direct threats to human survival and well-being.

The scale of the problem is significant. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), armed conflict is one of the leading drivers of environmental degradation globally.^[1] In the past six decades, at least 40 percent of all internal conflicts have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources, and post-conflict environments routinely show elevated levels of soil contamination, water pollution, and biodiversity loss. These are not incidental side effects. They are predictable outcomes of how modern warfare is conducted.

There is also a justice dimension to this issue that deserves attention. Environmental damage in conflict zones does not affect everyone equally. Wealthy communities and individuals have more options: they can relocate, purchase clean water, access medical care, and rebuild. Poor and marginalized communities, including rural farmers, indigenous groups, and displaced populations, often have no such options. They are left to live with contaminated land and water, with no resources to remediate the damage and no political power to demand accountability. This pattern of disproportionate harm is a core theme of environmental justice, and it runs through the Nagorno-Karabakh case with particular clarity.

Beyond the immediate human costs, environmental damage in conflict zones creates long-term instability. When natural resources are degraded or destroyed, competition over what remains can intensify. Water scarcity, food insecurity, and loss of livelihoods are all documented drivers of social tension and, in some cases, renewed conflict. This means that failing to address environmental damage after a war is not just a humanitarian failure. It is a strategic mistake that increases the risk of future violence.

The scientific community has increasingly recognized these dynamics. The field of conflict ecology has grown substantially over the past two decades, producing rigorous research on how military operations affect soil chemistry, water quality, biodiversity, and ecosystem function.^[2] This research provides the empirical foundation for much of what this book covers. It also makes clear that environmental damage in conflict zones is measurable, documentable, and in many cases preventable, if the political will exists to take it seriously.

Finally, there is a moral argument for taking environmental damage in conflict seriously. The natural world has intrinsic value beyond its utility to humans. Ecosystems that took thousands of years to develop can be destroyed in days by military operations. Species that exist nowhere else on Earth can be pushed to extinction by habitat destruction. These losses are irreversible. Once a forest is gone, once a species is extinct, once an aquifer is contaminated beyond recovery, there is no going back. The permanence of these losses demands that we pay attention to them, document them carefully, and work to prevent them wherever possible.

Key point: Environmental damage in conflict zones is not a side issue. It is a direct cause of human suffering, a driver of long-term instability, and a moral challenge that demands serious attention from policymakers, researchers, and citizens alike.

Understanding why environmental damage matters is the first step toward doing something about it. The chapters that follow are designed to give you the knowledge and analytical tools to understand what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh, why it matters, and what it tells us about the broader relationship between war and the natural world.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is one of the most protracted and complex territorial disputes in the post-Soviet world. At its core, it involves competing claims by Armenia and Azerbaijan over a mountainous enclave in the South Caucasus. The region, known as Nagorno-Karabakh in Russian, Artsakh in Armenian, and Dağlıq Qarabağ in Azerbaijani, has a mixed ethnic and cultural history that stretches back centuries. Understanding the basic contours of the conflict is essential context for understanding the environmental damage it has caused.

The modern phase of the conflict began in the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union was collapsing. The predominantly Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, which was administratively part of Soviet Azerbaijan, began pushing for unification with Soviet Armenia. This demand escalated into armed conflict as Soviet authority disintegrated. By the time a ceasefire was reached in 1994, Armenian forces controlled not only Nagorno-Karabakh itself but also seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan. Approximately 600,000 to 700,000 Azerbaijanis were displaced from these territories, and tens of thousands of people on both sides had been killed.^[3]

The 1994 ceasefire froze the conflict without resolving it. For the next 26 years, the line of contact between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces remained one of the most heavily militarized borders in the world. Periodic skirmishes, sniper fire, and artillery exchanges were common. A major escalation in April 2016, known as the Four-Day War, resulted in significant casualties and territorial changes before a new ceasefire was brokered. Throughout this period, the environmental consequences of the frozen conflict received almost no international attention.

The situation changed dramatically in September 2020, when Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive to retake the territories it had lost in the 1990s. The 44-day war that followed was one of the most intense armed conflicts in the post-Soviet space. Azerbaijan deployed advanced drone technology, including Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones and Israeli-made loitering munitions, alongside conventional artillery, rocket systems, and ground forces. The fighting caused massive destruction across the region, including in the city of Stepanakert (known as Khankendi in Azerbaijani) and numerous villages and towns throughout the conflict zone.

A Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement signed on November 10, 2020, ended the fighting. Under its terms, Azerbaijan regained control of significant territories, including the districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and the strategically important city of Shusha (Shushi in Armenian). Russian peacekeeping forces were deployed to the remaining Armenian-controlled areas. The agreement left the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh unresolved, and tensions continued in the years that followed. In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a further military operation that resulted in the dissolution of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh and the mass exodus of the remaining Armenian population from the region.

Throughout all of these phases of conflict, the environment has been a silent casualty. The weapons used, the infrastructure destroyed, the land abandoned, and the populations displaced have all left marks on the natural world that will take years, if not decades, to fully understand and address. The following chapters examine these marks in detail, drawing on the best available evidence to build a comprehensive picture of the environmental costs of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

It is worth noting what this book does not attempt to do. It does not take a position on the political or territorial questions at the heart of the conflict. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have legitimate grievances, and the history of the region is genuinely complex. The focus here is strictly on the environmental dimension: what happened to the land, water, air, and ecosystems of the region as a result of military operations, and what the consequences of that damage are for the people and wildlife who depend on those natural systems.

Timeline of key events:

• Late 1980s: Ethnic tensions and political demands for unification escalate in Nagorno-Karabakh
• 1991–1994: Full-scale war between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces; ceasefire reached in May 1994
• 1994–2020: Frozen conflict with periodic skirmishes along the line of contact
• April 2016: Four-Day War; limited territorial changes and significant casualties
• September–November 2020: 44-day war; Azerbaijan retakes significant territories
• November 10, 2020: Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement signed
• September 2023: Azerbaijan's military operation leads to dissolution of Republic of Artsakh and mass displacement of Armenian population

Each of these phases of conflict has left its own environmental footprint. The 1990s war created the initial wave of damage, including abandoned infrastructure, contaminated sites, and disrupted land use patterns. The frozen conflict period saw continued militarization of the landscape, with trenches, fortifications, and minefields spreading across agricultural and forested land. The 2020 war added a new layer of destruction, with modern weapons systems creating new contamination patterns and infrastructure damage on a large scale. Understanding this layered history of environmental damage is essential for assessing the full scope of the problem.

This book is organized to take you from the general to the specific, and then back out to the broader implications. It begins with the big picture, examining the historical relationship between warfare and environmental destruction, and then zooms in on the specific case of Nagorno-Karabakh, before zooming back out to consider what this case tells us about global environmental security and the prospects for sustainable peace.

The first chapter establishes the conceptual framework for the rest of the book. It examines historical patterns of environmental destruction in armed conflicts, from the use of herbicides in Vietnam to the oil well fires of the Gulf War, and introduces the key mechanisms through which military operations damage ecosystems. This chapter provides the analytical vocabulary and conceptual tools that are used throughout the rest of the book.

Chapter 2 introduces the Nagorno-Karabakh region itself, focusing on its ecology and biodiversity. The South Caucasus is one of the world's recognized biodiversity hotspots, and Nagorno-Karabakh sits at the heart of this ecologically rich zone.^[4] Understanding what was at stake environmentally before the conflict is essential for assessing the significance of the damage that followed.

Chapters 3 and 4 form the empirical core of the book. Chapter 3 examines the weapons used in the conflict and their specific environmental effects, with particular attention to chemical contamination, heavy metal pollution, and the long-term hazards posed by unexploded ordnance. Chapter 4 looks at the destruction of infrastructure and its cascading effects on ecosystems, focusing on water systems, forests, and agricultural land. Together, these chapters provide a detailed account of how the conflict has damaged the natural environment of the region.

Chapter 5 shifts the focus to human health and environmental justice, examining how environmental damage affects civilian populations and why the burden of that damage falls disproportionately on the most vulnerable communities. This chapter connects the environmental analysis to the broader humanitarian dimensions of the conflict, making clear that environmental damage is not just an ecological problem but a human rights issue.

Chapter 6 examines the intersection of climate change and conflict dynamics in the Caucasus region. Climate change is already affecting the region through changing precipitation patterns, glacial retreat, and increased frequency of extreme weather events. These changes interact with conflict-related environmental damage in ways that amplify both sets of problems, creating cascading crises that are harder to address than either would be in isolation.

Chapter 7 addresses the critical question of documentation and accountability. How do researchers and organizations document environmental damage in active conflict zones? What legal frameworks exist for holding parties to a conflict accountable for environmental destruction? And what are the practical challenges of collecting evidence in a region where access is restricted and political sensitivities are high? This chapter draws on the work of organizations like UNEP, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and various NGOs that have developed methodologies for environmental damage assessment in conflict zones.

Chapters 8 and 9 turn to the future, examining what post-conflict environmental recovery looks like in practice and how sustainable reconstruction can be designed to prevent future instability. These chapters draw on case studies from other post-conflict environments, including Bosnia, Kosovo, and parts of the Middle East, to identify what works and what does not in environmental remediation and green reconstruction.

The conclusion brings together the key lessons of the book and reflects on what the Nagorno-Karabakh case tells us about the broader relationship between environmental protection and peace. It argues that environmental restoration is not just a technical challenge but a political and moral imperative, and that sustainable peace in the region will require serious investment in healing the land alongside healing the human relationships that the conflict has damaged.

Throughout the book, several cross-cutting themes recur. These themes are worth keeping in mind as you read:

• Persistence: Environmental damage from military conflict does not disappear when the fighting stops. Contamination, habitat destruction, and ecosystem disruption can persist for decades or even centuries.
• Interconnection: Environmental systems are deeply interconnected. Damage to one component, such as a river system, ripples outward to affect soils, vegetation, wildlife, and human communities in ways that are often difficult to predict.
• Invisibility: Much environmental damage in conflict zones is invisible to the naked eye. Soil contamination, groundwater pollution, and biodiversity loss require scientific measurement to detect and quantify.
• Inequality: The burden of environmental damage falls most heavily on those with the fewest resources to cope with it. Environmental justice is inseparable from social justice in conflict-affected regions.
• Opportunity: Post-conflict reconstruction offers a genuine opportunity to build more sustainable and resilient communities, but only if environmental considerations are built into the reconstruction process from the start.

A note on sources and evidence: the documentation of environmental damage in Nagorno-Karabakh is incomplete, for reasons that are explored in detail in Chapter 7. Access to the conflict zone has been restricted, political sensitivities have limited independent monitoring, and the scientific infrastructure needed for comprehensive environmental assessment has not been fully deployed. This book draws on the best available evidence, including satellite imagery analysis, reports from international organizations, peer-reviewed research on conflict ecology, and documented accounts from journalists and NGOs who have worked in the region. Where evidence is uncertain or contested, that uncertainty is acknowledged explicitly. The goal is to be as accurate and honest as possible about what is known, what is suspected, and what remains unknown.

This is ultimately a book about consequences. The decisions made by political leaders, military commanders, and weapons designers have consequences that extend far beyond the battlefield and far beyond the duration of the conflict itself. Those consequences fall on farmers who cannot plant their fields, on children who drink contaminated water, on wildlife that loses its habitat, and on ecosystems that took millennia to develop. By understanding these consequences clearly, there is hope that future decisions can be made more wisely, and that the environmental costs of conflict can be reduced, even if they cannot be eliminated entirely.

The land does not forget what happens to it. Long after the last soldier has gone home and the last peace agreement has been signed, the soil, the water, and the living things that depend on them carry the memory of what war has done. Understanding that memory is the first step toward healing it.

Whether you come to this book as an environmental researcher, a policy analyst, a student of geopolitics, or simply someone who wants to understand the full costs of armed conflict, the aim is to give you a richer, more complete picture of what war really costs. The human toll is always the most immediate and the most heartbreaking. But the environmental toll is real, it is significant, and it deserves to be understood.