In response to the Trump administration’s proposed reallocations within and from the Pentagon budget, Center for International Policy president and CEO Nancy Okail issued the following statement:
“Cutting out-of-control Pentagon spending should be a top priority. A good-faith process of reducing our military budget to actually align with U.S. interests would contribute greatly to a more secure world and a healthier, more equitable and more competitive America.
“What the Trump Administration has proposed is not that. It is merely a ‘reallocation’ — yet another scam to harm marginalized communities, trash the environment, and erode basic rights while redirecting taxpayer dollars to further enrich favored defense contractors and Trump’s billionaire backers.
“As with its other assaults on agencies across the U.S. government, the administration is falsely scapegoating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives alongside efforts to combat climate change as top causes of waste. Targeting these modest yet important programs as a priority for cost savings at what is arguably the world’s most bloated bureaucracy defies credulity.
“It is also not clear there will actually be any cost savings, as what the administration first touted as budget reductions or were just hours later described as ‘offsets’ or ‘reallocations’ that would exempt large swaths of spending and pay for massive new projects and weapons systems. These include boondoggles like a fantastical domestic ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense system and new nuclear weapons that arms experts believe are not only unnecessary, but are so dangerous that they could trigger an accidental nuclear war. Unsurprisingly, many of the companies that stand to make a taxpayer-funded fortune from these wasteful new schemes are headed by wealthy backers of President Trump.
“Trump’s reallocation proposal is little more than a cup-and-ball grift that will continue taxpayer-funded waste at the Pentagon, shuffling it to the personal benefit of Trump and his billionaire associates, while worsening the security threats faced by the United States. A serious process of right-sizing military spending is desperately overdue. Countries that have prioritized their people above their arms industry’s profit margins are outpacing us in health, education, infrastructure, economic competitiveness and overall quality of life.
“While these false cuts are a huge missed opportunity that abandon the powerful anti-war and anti-status quo sentiments that Trump successfully leveraged in his presidential campaign, they also demonstrate that Pentagon reductions are not the third rail they are often believed to be. Pentagon bloat makes us less safe and there is no shortage of seriousplans for strategic reductions that improve human security. Lawmakers and other policy professionals should therefore not merely oppose Trump’s fake cuts, but also present an ambitious and feasible plan for genuine transformations that prioritize the pressing needs of American citizens while ensuring their security.”
In response to President Trump’s comments suggesting denuclearization and reducing defense spending in line with Russia and China, Center for International Policy executive vice-president Matt Duss issued the following statement:
“If Trump is serious about significantly reducing nuclear arsenals and Pentagon spending in step with Russia and China — lawmakers and civil society should stand ready to help do it right, thereby improving national security and human security in the US and globally.
There is no good reason to continue our current trajectory of proliferating nuclear weapons and ever-increasing defense budgets, half of which goes to giant defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, with minimal transparency or accountability. This practice has raised numerous concerns regarding waste and corruption. It is primarily greed, self-interest and a lack of political will that propagates the nearly $1 trillion –half of our discretionary budget—that goes annually to these programs. These spending levels make us less, not more, secure by making conflict more likely and fueling the flawed strategy of American hegemony behind so many of the costly US foreign policy boondoggles of the 21st century and the nuclear near-misses of the last 80 years.
The Trump administration has not always made good on past pledges –including a similar suggestion in his first term— and many of the promises upon which he’s acted do great damage, but this is a promise he should keep for the good of Americans and people around the world.”
The Senate just passed the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), 85-14, sending the military policy bill to President Biden’s desk for final approval. The House approved the bill by a 281-140 margin last week.
“At $895 billion, the NDAA authorizes 21% more for the Pentagon than the $740 billion authorized by Trump’s final NDAA,” said Center for International Policy Senior Non-Resident Fellow Stephen Semler.
Here are some other notable increases in the US since 2021:
Financial hardship, +24%
Food insecurity, +38%
Child food insecurity, +46%
Poverty, +65%
Child Poverty, +163%
Added Semler, “Human security is deteriorating in a country that spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined. This is not the mark of a nation in sync with its interests or its people rather, it signifies a failure in governance.
“The recent surge in Pentagon spending over the last two administrations has not produced the national security dividends political leaders have promised. Instead, it has added fuel to a dangerous and ill-fated foreign policy. Inflating the Pentagon budget only amplifies insecurity, rewards bad actors and increases the risk of more war.”
Anmol Irfan is a Muslim-Pakistani freelance journalist and editor. Her work aims at exploring marginalized narratives in the Global South with a key focus on gender, climate and tech. She tweets @anmolirfan22
For years, gender activists have been trying to draw attention to the disproportionate ways in which the climate crisis has been affecting women and girls. Studies show that by 2050, climate change may push 158 million more women and girls into poverty, which is 16 million more women and girls at risk than men and boys at the same level. For gender activists, there were small victories at this year’s United Nations COP29 climate change conference, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, but overall morale seems low as many find progress within this arena slow and tiring.
COP 29 participants described the discussions as slow in many ways – and the intersection of gender and climate has been one of them. Following the conclusion of the conference, some of the victories recognized with the gender justice space have included the extension of the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender, for 10 years which will help hold governments accountable as they implement their climate policies. There was also an acknowledgement of gender within climate finance goals and an increase in participation of women at the conference, though it was late in the conference. With COP29 wrapped up in Baku this year, gender activists leave Azerbaijan fatigued and unsure about the future of their work.
“I’ve been to so many COPs and this was one of the hardest ones” says Elise Buckle, founder of Climate Bridges and SHE builds bridges, when talking about what it was like to be in the room when gender just policies and solutions to climate change were being discussed and proposed at this years COP29 in Baku. “ We thought we wouldn’t have any texts, and then at the last minute we got it [extension of the Lima Work Programme ] so it gives me hope that this can be a floor not a ceiling”, she adds.
Despite pushing for gender just solutions for decades, many have called this COP a “disappointment” and questions remain about whose responsibility it really is to accommodate the needs of women and girls within climate justice.
What Went Wrong?
Lorena Aguilar, Executive Director at the Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls, describes the conversation around gender justice as constantly being in motion between success and failure. “When you talk about women rights and when you talk about gender equality , it’s like a pendulum, sometimes they [leaders] ignore, sometimes they accept and that’s what is happening with the UNFCCC,” she says.
At Baku, it seems the pendulum swung the wrong way. As one of the nine stakeholder groups of the United Nations Framework Convention For Climate Change (UNFCCC) the Women and Gender Constituency was one of the main groups leading the call for more focus on gender-just initiatives during the conference. Environmental lawyer, researcher and activist Claudia Rubio Giraldo, who was one of the co-coordinators of the Gender Working Groups and the WGC’s representative in the room for many of the gender related negotiations, expected parties to move onto negotiations that built on red lines set by previous discussions.The Women and Gender Constituency typically divides areas around which red lines are often established into three groups: finance and implementation, language, and praxis. Rather than start from this point, Rubio says that backtracking on many previous discussions [by many countries who had an issue with the language around gender] made it tough to be in the room. She points out that despite parameters being set in forums before COP, many parties wanted to re-negotiate boundaries which meant actual action plans didn’t go forward till much later.
“There was a backtracking of previously agreed human rights language,” Rubio says. She’s talking about how the use of the term “women in all their diversity” became an issue at this year’s conference, as many other gender advocates also pointed out.
Much of the contention came from conservative countries, led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia and the Vatican, who felt that the use of the word ‘diversity’ within gender related language meant supporting LGBTQ communities, which is a topic many of those governments still have issues with. But while it’s sometimes easier to pass the burden of this thinking onto more ‘conservative’ countries, Imali Ngusale, founder of the African Center for Health, Climate and Gender Justice Alliance, also adds that there had been speculation that the US was supporting Saudi Arabia, which many believe was for personal gain.
“In the past 2 weeks we saw how parties stepped forward to accommodate women “women in all their diversity”, and other countries opposed this. There’s significant language that remains bracketed around diversity. There’s a war around narratives and that’s how we’re coming to see how different countries and different parties receive lang around it,” says Natalie Sifuma, founder of Sisters in Climate.
Another barrier that gender justice groups faced was the lack of women within decision making and leadership positions. “In terms of the lack of women representation at the highest level of leadership, that’s the same, that hasn’t improved. Only 8% women were represented in the world leaders summit,” Buckle says, adding “ So in a way Cop29 is a mirror of the world. And it’s true there is a backlash on women’s rights in many countries around the world, like the issue of abortion rights in the US, or the more serious situation in Afghanistan.”
She connects the overall backlash against women’s rights in many places across the world – including the US, as many feel has been demonstrated by the recent election – to the backtracking of gender justice in the climate space.
Ngusale also further points out that the lack of gender diversity in leadership is amplified by the fact that women are burdened with unpaid care work across the world, making it difficult for them to also take up leadership positions because they “ cannot be in two places at one time.”
Not A Monolith
But even as we talk about women’s rights across the globe, Aguilar points out that the “women of the world” as it’s often termed, are not all the same. “They try to put all women in the same bag, we need to understand the knots of gender inequality, which can be very different for different women, such as the way that our countries allow us to have control, or how we can have agency,” she says.
This is also what makes it far more complicated for groups like the WGC to advocate for the different needs of women and girls across the world, because they already find themselves fighting for space in these discussions which can make advocating for all the diversity in a nuanced way very difficult.
One example is how cultural norms manifest into gender restrictions differently across the world in ways other cultures or countries may not understand. Mobility restrictions on women due to religious and cultural norms in Kyengeza, Uganda, mean that men are twice as likely as women to travel to purchase improved seeds or visit markets, both of which are crucial factors to agricultural productivity and climate adaptation. This means if the solution international platforms are implementing is something like drought-resilient seeds, women on ground are probably not benefiting from it even if documents say that they should be.
With gender and climate often being an afterthought in policy drafts and papers, it doesn’t leave a lot of room to go into further “knots” around class, access, ethnicity and much more. Aguilar also shares one instance of how a group of low-income women on the coast of Honduras were affected by disaster.
“There were women in Honduras who were told winds of 260 km comings but they didn’t know what that meant, whether that was fast or slow, and so they continued to be on the coast and one of them lost two of her kids,” she says adding that when an NGO came to help them rebuild their house which had also been destroyed, they asked them for land property rights papers which these women didn’t have.
“That’s a group of women that need to be supported,” Aguilar says.
Implementing the Policies
But agreeing that women should be supported is one thing and actually implementing policies that work in the aftermath of discussions at spaces like COP becomes a whole other hurdle.
Some of the biggest barriers within implementation are a lack of accountability and climate financing.
“We want funds that are more liberating. Most of the funds given are not even sufficient to reach the grassroots, so there needs to be a scaling up of global finance in climate action,” Ngusale says, adding that it is crucial that these funds are scaled up in a way that directly funds locally led grassroots level action so the most vulnerable groups of women and girls can be affected.
Unfortunately a big area of contention at this year’s COP – and previous conferences – has been that receiving countries have thought the finance pledges were too low and givers thought it was too high.
But what many activists like Aguilar and Sifuma point out in different ways is that until countries like the US, and international bodies that have undeniable influence over global action – and in this case are also being called to account with regards to climate financing – don’t design implementable policies that take gender into account, nothing will change on ground.
Aguilar shares that many countries being called on for climate finance keep sidelining gender because “they have bigger fish to fry.”
“To which I always ask which fish and how are you frying them,” she says. She adds “You can’t leave half of the population behind. Disregarding the potential of half the world’s population is not logical, it’s absurd.”
On June 5, World Environment Day, the Climate and Militarism Program at the Center for International Policy hosted a webinar about the severe and widespread environmental impacts of explosive weapons being used in the genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Explosive weapons supplied by the United States to Israel (and elsewhere around the world) cause both direct and indirect civilian deaths through environmental destruction and contamination that remain long after the bombs explode.
A recording of this panel is available on the event webpage or on the Center for International Policy’s YouTube channel.
An excerpt from the conversation about the long-term implications of explosive weapons on civilian health, human rights, and global security is below:
What’s happening right now is devastating. Not just the ecological damage – I genuinely worry about the generational effects and the profound health effects that this is going to have in the future, in children, and the cancer rates, and the chemicals that pregnant women are being exposed to… about the long term projections of cancer and pulmonary diseases. These typically have fairly long lag times. For cancer, it’s 20 to 40 years. Now, that could be accelerated by repeat exposures.
My immediate family members were affected by the war [in Iraq]. We had cancer rates spike in our family. You know, I think it’s just a matter of time that we’re going to see a lot of these diseases [in Gaza]. I can only speculate, because we don’t have the capacity to test contamination right now.
This is in large part because we don’t have any more universities in Gaza that are left standing. And so you have the scholasticide on top of the ecocide. And so you really can’t study what is happening.
Because of the ongoing bombing, we’re not able to actually sample the air and sample the soil and sample the water, but what I would imagine is there’s so much heavy metal contamination in the soil that it would probably be rather dangerous to grow anything. And the water situation, on top of dehydration and thirst, and on top of the famine that people are experiencing… With just the sheer amount of bombings, I also worry about the concrete material that is being pulverized over and over and over again.
What we saw immediately in the aftermath of 911 was the increased exposure to a number of not just heavy metals, but you also have asbestos from the buildings, you have building materials, you have pulverized glass, steel, and all these other things… Just from that single event, we saw the ensuing effects over decades. Now Gazans are eight months into this madness and are being exposed to things that I honestly don’t understand, I don’t know…
However, we know that particulate matter doesn’t respect boundaries. It doesn’t respect borders… And so even from just a plain human level, I don’t know who is being exposed to this. I would imagine Israelis, I would imagine people in the surrounding region… The heavy metals are carcinogenic. These things aren’t just going to go away, you have to have efforts in terms of soil remediation. This takes a lot of money, a lot of funding, and a lot of technologies to try and clean it. You know, even in the United States we see Superfund sites, these places become very, very difficult, if not impossible, to really clean.
With military aggression, be it by the United States or by Israel, we tend to see that the environmental effects on civilians aren’t even considered, and this is why these things are so under-studied. I want to make that clear. In Iraq, there were these massive burn pits, just ongoing pits of fire, and the [U.S. military] would just throw everything in there. And that caused so much damage to the atmosphere and the environment. And actually, the only way we know about their health effects is through American soldiers who came home. We do not care – there’s very limited data – on the effects of burn pits on Iraqi civilians. And I think this is very telling of where we are – not only in regard to the overall lack of science regarding lasting military contamination – but that it’s very intentional.
It’s part of the dehumanization where civilian lives are sort of relegated as less-than, as Iraqis and Palestinians. A lot of people of color are just relegated as such. Sort of, ‘you’re just in the way of the bomb.’ And I think that this is the mentality that intense militarism really is centered around.
– Dr. Meena Aladdin, PhD, Molecular Toxicology [comments have been summarized and edited for brevity]
Watch the recording here. The full list of webinar panelists includes:
Rasha Abousalem, Palestinian-American humanitarian aid worker, American Red Cross presenter (IHL/Rules of War), and Adjunct Professor. See her recent article, Gaza and the failed lessons of the past.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last week, environmental and allied organizations announced public support for the finalization of two proposed federal contracting rules: the Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule and the Sustainable Products Procurement Rule.
The Supplier Climate Risk and Resilience Proposal would mandate contractors with $50 million or more in annual contract obligations to disclose comprehensive greenhouse gas inventories and emissions reduction targets, while the Sustainable Products Procurement Proposal would require federal agencies to prioritize sustainable products unless justified otherwise in writing. These amendments signal a commitment to transparency, sustainability, and environmental stewardship within federal procurement practices.
Following the delivery of the letter, the White House announced that updates to the Federal Sustainable Products Procurement rule have been finalized. This is a welcome and positive development that enables sensible policies that leverage public purchasing power to address climate change. It represents a vehicle without which the government cannot fulfill its commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship in its fullest. Building on this development, we continue to urge the administration to finalize the proposed Federal Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule to improve and standardize greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements for federal contractors.
Organizations issued the following statements:
“With greenhouse gas emissions not falling fast enough to meet U.S. commitments under the Paris Agreement, public policy will be essential to accelerating the decarbonization of our economy. There are many creative and ambitious policies being studied by both federal and state-level agencies – but all require better data to implement. The new proposed rules with the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council offer a way of gathering that data,” said Yong Kwon, Senior Policy Advisor at the Sierra Club.
“Contractors who seek profitable deals with government agencies should advance our climate goals and national security – not undermine them. We join in urging the DoD, GSA, and NASA administrators to finalize their proposed procurement rules and move us towards a more secure and resilient future,” said Hanna Homestead, Director of the Climate and Militarism Program at the Center for International Policy.
“Federal procurement policy must urgently address the climate crisis. The Sustainable Products Procurement Rule marks an important step, but it is vital the Biden administration finalizes the Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule as well. Disclosure is essential for the federal government and taxpayers to fully understand federal climate-related risks and opportunities. Pressure to abandon this rule must not prevail— the profits of large contractors and the fossil fuel industry cannot be prioritized over science-based climate policy,” said Elyse Schupak, climate and financial regulation policy advocate with Public Citizen’s Climate Program.
“The federal government has tremendous purchasing power, and thus a tremendous ability to shape the adoption of cleaner materials. These rules will help solidify emissions data transparency and Buy Clean principles for much of the government’s purchasing. The government cannot ignore this critical tool to align markets toward climate mitigation and help set the curve on the innovation and opportunities that will come from setting up cleaner markets and industries,” said Christina Theodoridi, Policy Director for Industry at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Hanna Homestead is the Director of the Climate and Militarism Program at the Center for International Policy.
In February, the Washington Post reported the story of Hind Rajab, a six year old Palestinian child who spent the last three hours of her life trapped in a car with seven dead members of her family, pleading for help. The family was following evacuation orders from the Israeli military when their car was targeted. An ambulance was then dispatched to rescue Hind with permission from Israeli authorities. Despite being clearly marked as a medical transport vehicle, radioing its location, and following the approved route provided by the Israeli military, the paramedics came under heavy fire. Further investigation by the Post found the destruction of the ambulance was “consistent with the use of a round fired by Israeli tanks, according to six munitions experts.” The fragment of a US-made 120mm tank-fired round was reportedly found near the charred vehicle, which had a visible foot-wide hole consistent with the exit of a tank projectile.
Given nearly two weeks had elapsed before it was safe to investigate the scene, experts could not definitively verify the fragment was directly involved in the strike. However, satellite imagery proved that Israeli tanks capable of firing 120mm rounds were in the area when the attack on the ambulance occurred. In December, the Biden Administration bypassed Congress – a highly controversial move – to approve the transfer of nearly 14,000 anti-tank 120mm MPAT rounds to Israel despite evidence of ongoing, indiscriminate, and systematic targeting of civilians.
The transfer of US-made explosive weapons, including 120mm MPAT rounds, 155mm artillery shells, and Mark-84 unguided bombs are playing a central role in the Israeli government’s genocidal efforts to “make Gaza uninhabitable,” resulting in Hind’s death as well as more than 30,000 civilians over the last six months. Even spent, the remains of the round poses a toxic risk. Explosive weapons contain chemicals and heavy metals that contaminate water and soil for generations, fueling displacement and food and economic insecurity that threatens regional and geopolitical stability. Both the detonation and production of explosive weapons contribute to severe and long-lasting-environmental contamination, resulting in direct deaths and civilian harm that continues long after the explosions occur. Recent Pentagon efforts to make munitions “safer” for military personnel not only downplay, but threaten to exacerbate these widespread toxic legacies.
Munitions, made in America
Within the US, the production of explosive weapons has resulted in massive amounts of pollution and ecological destruction. There are currently more than 40,000 military sites across US states and territories that are contaminated with toxic military waste and legacy explosives, creating significant and cascading public health challenges. The DoD has already spent more than $40 billion attempting to clean them up, and recent estimates by the Government Accountability Office found the DoD faces at least $91 billion in future environmental liability costs. Historically-marginalized populations are particularly at risk of harm from toxic contamination. Superfund sites are more likely to exist in low-income areas, and are correlated with lower life expectancy in the surrounding communities.
The US is currently in the process of ramping up explosive munitions production to continue arms transfers and to replenish depleted domestic weapons stockpiles after significant amounts of defense equipment were transferred to Ukraine and Israel over the last two years. Not only are production rates increasing significantly, but the DoD is transitioning from producing larger-caliber munitions containing legacy energetic materials (explosives, nominally TNT and RDX) to those made with “insensitive” high explosives (IHE), also referred to as insensitive munitions (IM). Insensitive munitions are designed to be less reactive to stimuli and therefore safer to transport and store, an understandable goal when stockpiling explosives. This function is perceived to be both necessary and advantageous by the DoD and members of Congress interested in producing a larger war reserve to avoid future stockpile depletion.
In December 2023, defense giant BAE Systems was awarded a DoD contract worth $8.8 billion to produce the insensitive high explosive IMX-101 to be used as a “safe and effective” replacement for TNT in new artillery rounds. IMX-101 is the main explosive fill used in new 155mm M795 projectile production – currently one of the most highly sought-after munitions – replacing the legacy 155mm M107 projectile. While the development of IMX-101 has been in the pipeline for decades, the increased demand for ammunition from Ukraine and Israel, as well as competition to modernize vis a vis China, has spurred Congress to “expedite” testing and oversight to hasten the production of weapons made with IHE.
While offering functional advantages, the full impact of insensitive munitions on human and ecological health is not yet known, and what data is available raises concerns. Experts infer that some of the chemical compositions of IHE are likely to differ considerably from legacy explosives in their properties, and “therefore, also in their effect and behavior in the environment.” Yet, the DoD maintains there is limited information in the literature regarding human toxicity and adverse health effects due to exposure to insensitive explosives, including IMX-101. It is also unclear how environmental assessments and data on IHE that do exist are evaluated or incorporated into ongoing IM manufacturing, training, and operational planning. While IM weapons have been described as a way the military can “have [its] cake and eat it, too,” a closer look at the development of the 155mm M795 projectile made with IMX-101 raises a number of concerns.
IMX-101 appeared on the scene in 2010, after beingnamed one of “The 50 Best Inventions of 2010” by TIME Magazine for its promise to replace TNT as a “less dangerous explosive.” Early testing of IMX-101 weapons wasfast-tracked from what’s typically a five-year test period to two, and did not include comprehensive assessments of the ecological toxicology of the compound or its residues resulting from its production or operational use. Qualification testing of 155mm projectiles made with IMX-101 generallyfocusedon the weapon’s performance, showcasing how IM projectiles can withstand various catalysts while maintaining lethality when deployed as intended. The results were published along with DoD assurances that “IMX-101 and its ingredients were found to be less toxic than RDX and the IMX-101 detonation products were calculated to be benign.” However, research conducted at the DoD’sPicatinny Arsenal used to certify the low-risk profile of IMX-101 shells has since beenretracted due to inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the data. The original DoD 2009 study (no longer publicly available) indicated over 99.99% of all energetic material was destroyed during detonation, signifying the munition did not pose a contamination risk.
Eight years later, subsequent field experiments funded by the DoD Environmental Restoration Program demonstrated that in fact, over30% of some energetic compounds remain after detonation – meaning the IM shell poses a significantly higher risk of environmental contamination than originally reported. Further DoD research has shown IM munitions deposit more residues than legacy explosives. These residues can persist in the environment for long periods of time following detonation, as research has indicated “the half-life of munition particles was estimated to range between66 and 228 years for IMX-101.” A revised 2019 toxicologyassessment of IMX-101 released by the US Army Public Health Center also points to a number of primary adverse health and reproductive effects on animal and plant life following exposure to IMX-101 compounds and recommends further testing, noting the DoD’s lack of comprehensive and long-term studies on IMX’s human and ecological toxicity. Numerous researchers have since published findings on thetoxic effects of IMX-101 and its degradedresidues – including their potential to havegreater contamination risks than TNT or RDX.
Additionally, while research shows the “dud” rates for IM munitions do not differ significantly from legacy explosives, the DoD’s Defense Systems Analysis Center has indicated the disposal of unexploded ordnance (UXO) made with IHE, like IMX-101, may require up to 400% more explosives than legacy munitions given their “insensitive” characteristic. This carries significant implications for post-conflict remediation of unexploded ordnance and pollution of military testing sites. UXO must be removed and detonated, otherwise they degrade and leak poison indefinitely, irreversibly contaminating soil and groundwater.
The challenge of UXO removal is of particular concern in Gaza due Israel’s excessive bombing in urban settings, where munitions experts say there is a higher rate of failed detonation. The use of IMX-101 munitions, including the thousands of 155mm M795 projectiles the US is currently supplying to Israel, has the potential to significantly increase the cost of environmental remediation which is already expected to require tens of billions of dollars and take many years to complete. Environmental justice, including the remediation of ecological damage caused by Israel’s heavy bombardment and ongoing siege, will be critical to the safe return of displaced Palestinians to Gaza and to lasting regional peace.
Despite mounting evidence of the need for greater oversight over insensitive munitions modernization, Congress has continued to loosen the reins. The FY 2024 NDAA passed in December established a new Joint Energetics Transition Office within the DoD to “expedite testing, evaluation, and acquisition” of “new” energetic materials. Military personnel in charge of procurement report they have “a lot of freedom to maneuver now” due to the new programs Congress has authorized.
Aftermathematics
The expedited approval and production of new insensitive munitions without adequate understanding, transparency, or planning in regard to their toxicity or long-term contamination risks comes as research is revealing the extensive impact of legacy RDX and TNT contamination on human health and the environment. For decades, the DoD fought against environmental oversight, claiming “environmental cleanups would come at the expense of the safety of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
According to ProPublica reporting, when the US went to war in Iraq in 2003, top Pentagon officials led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attempted to shield the DoD from nearly all environmental oversight measures to preserve “readiness.” Though these efforts failed, throughout the following years the Pentagon sought to undermine accountability for pollution caused by weapons production, including funding and publishing studies downplaying the health and ecological risks of producing legacy explosives. Today’s focus on weapon’s modernization at the expense of adequate environmental testing sounds eerily familiar. In addition to expediting IMX-101 production, the FY2024 NDAA included authorization for the Pentagon to test warheads and propellants using the insensitive energetic material CL20, despite a 2007 DoD study indicating CL-20 residues likely pose a significant toxic ecological risk.
Efforts to clean up contamination caused by legacy weapon’s production and testing are currently underway within the United States, thanks to the persistent organizing of frontline communities. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced an additional $1 billion in new Superfund program funding, which includes military sites. Other types of military-related pollution such as radiation exposure due to nuclear weapons development and testing and PFAS contamination are also being recognized as serious public health concerns. Veterans who were exposed to toxic substances from burn pits, which include UXO disposal, are finally being provided with health benefits after decades of denied claims. While much more still needs to be done domestically, there are currently no legal requirements to address toxic legacies of war abroad caused by US weapons that are deployed directly by US troops or transferred abroad. Americans rarely have insights into the devastating and destabilizing long-term effects these weapons have on foreign populations.
The DoD procurement decisions being made today will have long-term, global impacts. Congress must realistically assess the risks of IM procurement and deployment in order to make an accurate judgment on if the marginal tactical advantages outweigh the human, moral, geopolitical, and financial costs of ecological destruction. Further, Congress should take proactive steps to ensure the comprehensive health effects are accurately assessed and publicly disclosed. The production of IM munitions must not continue the destructive history of legacy explosive contaminants – which will impact affected communities in the US and internationally for decades, and potentially permanently. Congressional oversight is especially important now as the Supreme Court is likely to overturn Chevron deference this year, limiting the EPA’s ability to regulate and mitigate pollution harms.
The US also has a terrible track record in regard to remediating environmental war contamination.
Given that available data show that insensitive munitions may be more difficult, expensive, and environmentally harmful to dispose of (potentially requiring 400% more explosives to detonate), Congress should ensure this information is incorporated and budgeted for in post-conflict remediation planning. Considering the US Army’s poor history with UXO disposal via burn pits in the past, Congress should ensure that the Pentagon plans for IMX UXOs before deployment and adopts principles for assisting victims of toxic remnants of war into their operating policies. This matters immediately, from the first responders making perilous rescue runs the moment the guns are silenced. And it matters long term, as bomb disposal crews clean up and people return to make a life out of the rubble.
For too long, the true human and ecological costs of war have been excluded from foreign policy discourse. Weapons are ultimately made for one purpose: to kill. “Insensitive” munitions are no different; their use inevitably contributes to the destruction of each other’s children, our communities, and the biodiversity of our earth on which all life depends. The toxic ecological effects of these weapons must not be regarded as externalities or secondary to their battlefield functionality; environmental contamination negatively impacts conditions for long-term peace and global security and should be included in a realistic accounting of the costs of war. Ultimately, the best way to avoid these horrors – from mass death to environmental degradation to unexploded ordnance – is for policymakers to abide by and uphold human rights, and commit to resolving political disputes through diplomatic means.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Center for International Policy joined 22 foreign policy, climate and grassroots organizations calling on Biden administration officials to urgently finalize the proposed Federal Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule to establish standardized greenhouse gas and climate-risk reporting regulations for federal contractors, including military contractors.
“Improving emissions reporting is widely supported – the Department of Defense itself is one of the three federal agencies who proposed the new requirements,”said CIP’s Climate and Militarism Program Director Hanna Homestead. “While more must be done to decarbonize and demilitarize US foreign policy, the proposed rule is an important first step towards accounting for and mitigating the military’s climate impact.”
Amid growing concerns about the unfolding climate crisis from the public, frontline communities, and cross-cutting experts, significant gaps in information about how US government contractors contribute to the problem prevent accountability and actionable solutions.
“A key way the US government can protect national security is to stop funding corporations driving the climate crisis without accountability,” added Homestead. “We cannot address climate change – our greatest collective global threat — as long as defense contractors are allowed to pollute with impunity, contributing to the very instability we say we wish to solve.”
The United States has contributed the largest share of global greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change today. While military contractors receive the bulk of federal procurement spending and emit more carbon pollution than the Pentagon, they are not currently required to comprehensively report on their carbon footprints.
The Honorable Bill Nelson
Administrator
NASA
300 Hidden Figures Way SW
Washington, DC 20546
The Honorable Lloyd J. Austin III
Secretary of Defense
U.S. Department of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
The Honorable Robin Carnahan
Administrator
General Services Administration
1800 F Street NW
Washington, DC 20405
Dear Secretary Austin, Administrator Carnahan, and Administrator Nelson,
We write on behalf of a diverse coalition of foreign policy, peace, and grassroots organizations to express our strong support for finalizing the proposed Federal Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule in a timely manner. This rule will establish a solid foundation to inform and strengthen the federal government’s carbon emissions mitigation efforts in line with President Biden’s whole-of-government effort to combat the climate crisis. We applaud your efforts to improve federal contractor transparency, taxpayer oversight, and national and global security by prioritizing effective, publicly-supported action to address the climate crisis. In keeping with your proposal, we look forward to seeing this rule finalized expeditiously.
The adverse effects of climate change, which are already being felt, pose significant challenges to national and global security. According to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, “Today, no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis. We face all kinds of threats in our line of work, but few of them truly deserve to be called existential. The climate crisis does.” To avoid the worst effects of a warming planet, the consensus within scientific and security communities is clear: we must take urgent action to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, the ultimate drivers of climate change.
The proposed Federal Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule would advance this goal by requiring the largest federal contractors to disclose their Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions, their climate-related risk assessments, and their science-based emissions reduction targets. Improved disclosure and standardization of greenhouse gas emissions reporting is critical to mitigating the federal government’s carbon footprint, and military emissions in particular. The Pentagon is the world’s largest oil consumer, accounting for approximately 80 percent of federal energy use. The top defense contractors, together, are estimated to emit even more carbon pollution than the Pentagon but are not currently required to comprehensively disclose their emissions. Defense contractors are also the largest recipients of federal procurement spending – totaling more than $466 billion in 2023., While greater action must be taken to reduce the military’s overall ecological impact, closing the gap in military emissions reporting is a critical first step to adopting a meaningful climate change mitigation strategy for a more secure and resilient future.
In addition to the Pentagon’s own interests in tracking and reducing greenhouse gas emissions among defense contractors, the American public overwhelmingly supports greater climate action. Two-thirds of adults say large businesses and corporations are doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change and 56 percent believe federal government action on climate change is insufficient. Accordingly, public comments on the Federal Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule were overwhelmingly positive. Diverse comments from the private and public sectors show that the proposed rule will help the federal government address informational gaps on climate-related financial risk and plan against threats to economic and national security posed by global warming. The comments highlight the rule’s long-run cost savings for taxpayers and the perils of ignoring the environmental transition risks of climate change in the federal procurement process. Attorneys general from 17 states and the District of Columbia, as well as legal experts in academia and various non-governmental organizations, affirm the rule’s strong legal basis. In contrast, opposition to the rule is being driven primarily by corporations and trade associations representing carbon-intensive industries, including the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, who face reputational risks from enhanced climate disclosure requirements. We must not allow these firms to further jeopardize our collective health and security in order to maintain their own short-sighted profitability.
The fossil fuel and defense industries should not overrule public interest, scientific consensus, and security expertise by dictating government policy. Contractors who seek lucrative deals with government agencies must advance our climate, economic, and national security interests – not undermine them. This rule signifies progress towards achieving President Biden’s goal of reaching a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, in keeping with the Paris Agreement, and the Administration’s commitment to “meeting the moment” by taking urgent action to address the climate crisis both at home and abroad., We therefore urge you to finalize and publish the Federal Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule in a timely manner.
Signed,
350.org
American Friends Service Committee
Center for International Policy
Climate Crisis & Militarism Project, Veterans For Peace
Climate Generation
Climate Hawks Vote
Common Defense
Elders Climate Action
Foreign Policy for America
Foreign Policy In Focus
Freedom Forward
Georgia WAND Education Fund, Inc.
MADRE
MPower Change
National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies
Presente.org
RootsAction.org
Sierra Club
The People’s Justice Council
Union of Concerned Scientists
Veterans For Peace
Win Without War
Women for Weapons Trade Transparency
Abhi Goyal is a researcher and professional in development assistance specializing in Central Asian politics, migration, and urbanism. You can follow him on Bluesky at abhigoyal.bsky.social
In March 2014, shortly after the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, the United States and Europe imposed a set of sanctions against Russia’s oil sector. These sanctions eventually blocked ExxonMobil’s plans to expand exploration in Russia and drill in new areas like the eastern Black Sea, in a collaboration where ExxonMobil worked with and transferred technology to Russian state oil producer Rosneft . ExxonMobil sought waivers that would allow it to resume these technology transfers, but American and European governments have instead expanded sanctions following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In doing so, Washington and Brussels inadvertently took effective action against expansion of environmental damage in Russia, and created a basis on which a progressive foreign policy can build, purposefully, as part of global climate action—a set of policies that could use this accidental environmental protection as a model for restrictions on American-based multinationals for the sake of limiting extractive industry worldwide.
The Accidental Environmentalist
In 2014 the Russian environmental activist Konstantin Rubakhin called for sanctions as an ecological measure. In the call, he identified foreign extractive industry as a culprit in environmental exploitation in Russia: they “continue to buy Russian natural resources, sell technology, and take advantage of capital of dubious origin, supporting in essence the destruction of my country, and the pressure put on its civil society.” Rubakhin himself had campaigned against the Khopyor nickel mining operation which was owned by oligarchs who themselves financed the mine through European banks.
Sanctions against individuals have been part of an international response to the invasion of Ukraine, but have significant limits for both the anti-war and environmental purposes. The effectiveness of a sanctions regime to change state behavior is increasingly in question, especially as a clouded international financial system allows oligarchs to continue circumventing these sanctions. The circumvention works to the detriment of efforts to compel Russia to end its invasion as these oligarchs help finance the Russian war effort while also profiting from it, and it works to the detriment of environmental causes in Russia that depend on slowing down financing or technological inputs into extractive industry.
At the same time, scaling back of sanctions is meant to reward a reversion from bad behavior (or may end due to an emptying of political will behind them), which means their utility for environmental protection is limited, temporary, and hangs by a thread. Whether because the U.S. or its allies seek to offer a carrot to the negotiating table, the war ends, or efforts to turn U.S. commitment to punish the Russian invasion are successful, the sanctions could someday be removed, and drilling in the Black Sea resume (though there is no guarantee that license for Russian companies to massively expand drilling there would be any benefit to peace with Ukraine in the long run anyway).
Extractive industry across Russia and Central Asia is linked on several fronts to multinational firms and other systems and institutions headquartered in the United States. These firms supply equipment despite restrictions. The U.S. Department of Defense in part due to its own massive energy demands has found itself buying fuel made from Russian oil. Despite popular (though crude and often inaccurate) descriptions of Kazakhstan as part of Russia’s sphere of influence, American investment in Kazakhstan’s hydrocarbon sector towers over that of most other countries. This existing American entanglement with Russia’s energy sector means the sanctions effect on ExxonMobil’s investments is a significant one (the company left behind billions in capital when it left Russia entirely in 2022).
Clearing the Air
A global “sanctions package”—with purposeful, clear, and simple theory of change stopping or limiting environmental damage at the hand of multinational corporations is imaginable. Rather than attempting to shift the logic and behavior of states, it would exercise power to limit the shadow foreign policy conducted by American business to expand extractive industry abroad. Such a foreign policy package would start with bans on technology transfers that allow foreign investment to expand drilling operations, essentially making the state of affairs over ExxonMobil’s exploration of the Black Sea a permanent policy. These could be expanded to other places where oil firms are seeking to establish new drilling operations against the concerns of environmental groups, like the Mediterranean, especially as improved technology makes these remaining oilfields easier to extract.
But these sanctions need not be limited to one sector or one type of policy. A foreign policy green new deal could constrain financing from American or European sources used to expand destructive environmental projects, even when those projects are not conducted by an American-headquartered firm. This could include the Khopyor nickel mine’s financing through Cypriot banks, or the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto corporation’s potentially destructive Simandou iron mine in Guinea, which depends more for financing on its shares on the New York stock exchange (and would therefore be subject to such restrictions) since its Chinese state financiers have been slow to provide funding.
Rulemaking to guide arbitration processes is also a potential target. When the government of Kyrgyzstan nationalized a gold mine owned by a Canadian firm, citing environmental concerns as one reason to do so, the arbitration process between the government and the firm centered on appropriate compensation to both parties as well as payments for environmental protection totalling $86 million (a paltry percentage of the profit the mine has provided over its history). A more climate-conscious set of international arbitration agreements might have guided restrictions on future expansion on the gold mine as a condition for the new owners and determined a higher climate cost for the gold mine’s past environmental damage as part of restitution with conditions that it go to the communities affected by the mine’s notorious groundwater contamination. Global climate sanctions might then bind the new owners to meet these agreements.
Many potential actions along these lines are now possible, with a basis for constraining American business in the name of American environmental interests now established by the 2014 sanctions on technology transfers to Rosneft and later Trump administration refusal to waive these restrictions for ExxonMobil. These are based in existing sanctions law, though a bill under congressional consideration would expand applicability of U.S. actions in the Black Sea to meet climate goals. A progressive foreign policy should reflect the American public’s interest in mitigating climate and other environmental damage. It can also foster goodwill among frontline communities, just as the Biden administration has now determined that defense of Ukraine is an interest that takes priority over ExxonMobil’s new opportunities.
The use of sanctions has a problematic record; as with most U.S. foreign policy it necessarily involves blunt exercise of power, and is questionably useful. However, a sanctions package on global extractive industry might at least demonstrate that a foreign policy undertaken by the state can be compassionate in limiting the impulses of the shadow foreign policy undertaken by American business entities.
Yamini Srikanth is an ecologist and writer whose primary love is trying to build a better world. When not languishing in front of their laptop, they can be found outside poking at any insect, bird, or plant. They can be found online through Muckrack: https://muckrack.com/yamini-srikanth-1
Wildlife conservation has long centered on the imaginaries of a pristine wilderness, untouched by humans, leading to protected areas being formed worldwide. When making protected areas, what are we protecting? Who are we protecting these areas from? These arguments for protected areas rest on a hidden assumption: that humans are always bad for wildlife and nature. What if we dared to imagine – or perhaps, remember, a world and a time when this was not the case?
Conservationists have been long enamored by the idea of protected areas and wilderness. In 2016, conservation biologist Edward O. Wilson proposed the “half-earth” theory. He suggested that it was time to put aside half of the world for wildlife, with the other half for people. In 2019 a group of respected scientists put forth the audacious 30 by 30 plan, which focuses on preserving earth’s biodiversity by excluding humans from protected areas encompassing 30 percent of the earth’s surface by 2030. In 2022, COP15 on the Convention for Biological Diversity discussed this plan, leading to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Despite the scale of the 30 for 30 proposal, one hundred and ninety six countries said yes, signing the agreement. Could it be that countries were finally taking action to limit the sixth mass extinction?
The protection of nature by the exclusion of humans through national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, or other protected areas has long been an unchallenged goal of conservationists. “Half-Earth” and“30 by 30” are recent proposals that build on this assumption, long present in the conservation world. With new data collected from the last decade, some conservation scientists are rethinking that conventional wisdom. It seems, worldwide, making sanctuaries of nature based on exclusion is not as effective as previously assumed.
Reservations about Reserves
In an effort to assess the success of tropical rainforest protected areas at preserving biodiversity, a collaborative effort of scientists examined changes going back 20 to 30 years. In their study, published in 2012, they found that half were failing in their goals, losing species and ecological functions at alarming rates. The determining factor between success and failure appeared to be environmental health of the regions outside the park.
If the area outside of the reserve is a key determinant in predicting reserve health, irrespective of reserve size, and protected areas cannot be infinite, we’re required to fundamentally challenge the idea of a protected area. Boundaries alone are insufficient protection.
Climate change knows no boundaries, and can’t be excluded by a chain link fence around a finite area. A recent study from Britain that looked at both pollinators and predators found that although protected areas harbor more biodiversity than unprotected areas, they both lose species at similar rates. These regions are crucial for rare species, and for the protection of pollinators, even as those pollinators shift their ranges due to climate change. In Borneo, tropical rainforests are under immense anthropogenic pressures from agriculture, and creating protected areas is tremendously difficult. Even under the lowest climate warming scenario, 61% of Borneo’s protected areas will not possess the same climate in 2100. Most of the residents of these protected areas may not be able to live there anymore. Protected areas can’t guard against climate change.
Protected Areas and Imperiled People
Creating protected areas invariably implies the restriction of movement for people, particularly indigenous people, within and outside of the park. One study found that 73% of those living around Kruger National Park had never visited, and those who did were able to do so because of outreach programs. In such preserves, fences are raised between people and nature, severing ties between nature and culture, eliminating and criminalizing traditional use of the land.
Creating protected areas often means the displacement and eviction of nearby residents , especially indigenous people. The violence inherent to displacement cannot be overstated. To sever people from their land, even if they are offered monetary compensation, is a profoundly traumatic experience. A poor and inadequate record of indigenous peoples’ land tenures has led to a vast underestimate of how many people have been displaced by the creation of national parks. We simply don’t know how many have been evicted.
Often, the creation of a protected area is a state-making process, enforcing with violence the authority of the nation-state over those who often find their identity as distinct. The most well-known example is the abuse of people by WWF-funded park rangers in Salonga. Scholars have termed the brutal use of violence in the name of conservation as “green-militarisation”, and its troubling rise as a tactic must be halted.
Ironically, this condemnation of indigenous use often coexists in areas where trophy hunting is legal. It appears using natural resources is not criminal if the government is adequately compensated for the practice through the provision of hunting licenses.
A study that spanned Brazil, Australia and Canada found that the diversity of vertebrates in indigenous managed lands equaled that in protected areas. We aren’t losing the big, charismatic species we associate with wildlife sanctuaries – bears, panthers, and dingoes do at least as well when indigenous people protect them as when people are disbarred. Indigenous-managed lands in fact support more threatened species than protected areas, seemingly providing spaces for the species most at risk.
Indigenous communities who have lived and resided on their traditional land also possess a deep wealth of knowledge about ecosystem functions and biodiversity which often fail to be incorporated into protected area management plans. And yet, we seek to evict, alienate, and act with violence against indigenous communities.
Adapting Together
While protected areas have secured wildlife in the past, the question today is if they are still worth the tremendous economic and human costs, especially as climate change shifts habitats around the erected fences of existing preserves? Justifying the cost, especially for new protected areas, becomes more difficult when viable, more effective, and less challenging alternatives exist.
Recognising indigenous rights and co-creating governance frameworks is one way forward. A collaboration of thirty NGOs identified crucial improvements to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The primary requirement is establishing and securing land tenures and rights for local and indigenous communities for existing and future protected areas. They also call for critical evaluation of protected areas in general, highlighting that they often fail to attain their goals.
In India, the landmark Forest Rights Act (2006) acknowledged for the first time that indigenous people have a right to their land, permitting residence and natural resource use within protected areas. Massive movements across South America, primarily in Ecuador and Brazil, have allowed indigenous people to secure their natural heritage.
Community forests, protections for species rather than areas, and ecological restoration are also conservation without exclusion. Agricultural fields, with small modifications, can sustain tremendous reservoirs of wildlife. Urban biodiversity parks can harbor both common and rare species. Other effective conservation measures allow humans and wildlife to coexist without fences and boundaries.
A wide array of measures and policies exist to make conservation more equitable, and potentially more effective. We need to interrogate and find evidence to explore existing norms of conservation through protected areas. With finite spaces and increasing space requirements, we need to explore how humans and wildlife can occupy the same spaces. Countries like India, Ecuador and Brazil have made great strides, and it’s likely that every country will have many imaginative and powerful solutions to preserve biodiversity for the future.
