PURPOSE: The United Nations General Assembly by the Resolution A/RES/56/4 declared 6 November as International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. It is estimated that nearly 1.5 Billion people, which is estimated 20% of the World Population living in conflict affected areas and fragile states. These areas include Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and Colombia led to extreme loss of natural resources. In Afghanistan deforestation is at peak as 95% forest is vanished in some areas. In 2017, toxic chemical clouds were observed in the Mousal city instate of Iraq which affected the landscape and people. major hotspots of biodiversity was found removed in Colombia and Congo which have provided space for refugees and other extremist groups. Due to the conflicting zones, it has caused illegal logging, massive poaching, and breeding grounds for invasive species and also unregulated mining. In Congo, the population of elephants have been distributed. In Yemen and Gaza, water infrastructure including pump stations groundwater usage network and desalinations plant have badly damaged due to horrors of wars and causing environmental and public health risks. The United Nations attaches great importance to ensuring that action on the environment is part of conflict prevention, peacekeeping and peacebuilding strategies, because there can be no durable peace if the natural resources that sustain livelihoods and ecosystems are destroyed.

FORUM: "Climate and security: environmental impact of armed conflict and climate-driven security risks." International Day for the Protection of the Environment in War and Conflicts 2025. Armed conflict increasingly generates severe and lasting environmental harm, with direct implications for international peace and security. Warfare damages ecosystems; contaminates air, soil and water; destroys agricultural land; accelerates deforestation and biodiversity loss; and devastates urban infrastructure. These impacts erode livelihoods, aggravate humanitarian need, fuel displacement and entrench cycles of instability by intensifying competition over scarce resources. The United Nations estimates have found that a quarter of the world’s population, approximately 2 billion people, live in conflict-affected areas.1 This widespread conflict not only destabilizes human populations but also drives the degradation of natural resources, which include renewable resources like water, land, forests and other ecosystems. In turn, this environmental decline deepens fragility and worsens humanitarian crises. Illustrative cases underline the global scope. For instance, in Sierra Leone, even two decades after the end of its conflict, the conflict’s legacies include degraded water resources and farmlands and weakened environmental governance. 2 In Gaza, the collapse of urban systems has generated hazardous rubble and wastewater discharge and contaminated soils and groundwater, posing grave public health and ecological risks. 3 In Sudan/Darfur, climate variability and land-water stress intersect with fighting, accelerating deforestation and aquifer depletion and deepening humanitarian needs. 4 In Ukraine, 5 strikes on industrial and energy infrastructure, contamination from munitions and mines, forest and peatland fires, and massive debris have created cross-border pollution risks and long-term remediation needs; extensive croplands are mined or contaminated, threatening food security. These examples, in addition to others in Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, show that environmental degradation is both a casualty and a driver of insecurity. The discussion will, however, be anchored in a growing normative context: the observance by the General Assembly of November 6th as the International Day forPreventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict (Assembly resolution 56/4); the International Law Commission’s draft principles onprotection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts; the Kunming-MontrealGlobal Biodiversity Framework; and relevant United Nations Environment Assembly resolutions encouraging assistance and recovery in conflict-affected areas. It is in this regard that the Security Council has acknowledged climate- and environment-relatedsecurity risks in several country situations and thematic debates, encouraging risk assessment and mitigation that uphold international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

Answer to the Guiding questions:

- 1. How should the Security Council more systematically reflect conflict-linked environmental risksin mandates, reporting and political guidance? How can missions and United Nations country teams better integrate environmental risk management,mine actionfor agricultural recovery and nature-based stabilization into planning and resourcing? - 2. What measures should parties adopt during hostilities to minimize environmental harm? - 3. What are the steps needed to advance implementation of international human rights obligations and the principles on protection of the environmentin relation to armed conflicts, including training, reporting and cooperation on investigations, remediation and accountability, including for the proposed crime of gecocide? - 4. What are the minimum standards and support needed for safe debris management, hazardous-waste handling and resilient urban reconstruction? - 5. Which financing options can expand predictable support for environmental recoveryand climate adaptation in conflict-affected. Follow the conversations with the hashtags: #EnvironmentalProtection, #EnvironmentconflictDay, #6november.

EVENTS: On November 6th, at United Nations Headquarters in New york; The UNEP, the UNDP, the UN-HABITAT, the PBSO, the DPA and the UNDESA will organize a webinar to observe the International Day for preventing the protection of the environment in war and conflicts 2025. The topics of the discussions will showcase how to use all of the tools at our disposal, from dialogue and mediation to preventive diplomacy, to keep the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources from fueling and financing armed conflict and destabilizing the fragile foundations of peace.

On November 6th, At the UNHQ, Starting at 16:00 PM EST, the U.N. Security Council will held a meeting entitled ''Climate and security: environmental impact of armed conflict and climate-driven security risks". Under the agenda: Threats to international peace and security. The Briefers was:

• Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs

• Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme

• Charles C. Jalloh, professor, University of Miami Law School, and member of the International Law Commission

• Civil society representative.

Armed conflict increasingly generates severe and lasting environmental harm, with direct implications for international peace and security. Warfare damages ecosystems; contaminates air, soil and water; destroys agricultural land; accelerates deforestation and biodiversity loss; and devastates urban infrastructure. These impacts erode livelihoods, aggravate humanitarian need, fuel displacement and entrench cycles of instability by intensifying competition over scarce resources.

Key objectives are to:

• Elevate recognition of conflict-driven environmental harm as a security risk that

• compounds humanitarian crises, undermines governance and can fuel renewed conflict;

• Draw lessons from diverse conflict contexts on impacts on ecosystems,

• agriculture, water systems, urban infrastructure and public health;

• Identify practical tools to prevent, monitor and remediate environmental damage during and after conflict, integrating these into political, peacekeeping, humanitarian and development responses;

• Promote United Nations system coherence (United Nations Environment Programme, Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Department of Peace Operations, United Nations Development Programme and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and partnerships with regional organizations and international financial institutions to align financing for remediation, stabilization and climate adaptation.

Related Documents: Letter dated 28 October 2025 from the Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General (S/2025/687). Register to participate!

PUBLICATIONS: Environmental vulnerability and conflict occurrence are tightly related. Conflict and environmental risks are simultaneously on the rise globally, and these two phenomena often interact both in cause and consequence. Findings from recent studies suggest that ecological sustainability and peace are positively correlated. Here we replicate approaches by previous studies and then re-test the relationship. We deploy correlation and general linear modeling approaches to analyze the direction and strength over time of multiple global conflict, peace and fundamental ecological indicator datasets at the country-level for the period 2010–2022. Our results indicate that peace and ecological sustainability are inversely related. In general, our results indicate that the countries experiencing the highest rates of peace are those that are the least ecologically sustainable, while the countries most vulnerable to environmental risks and experiencing conflict are those countries contributing the least to ecological sustainability issues through their consumption. Understanding and attending to this paradox is essential to ensuring global peace and sustainability in an increasingly conflicted world. Read the full publication.

Comprised of three volumes, the Law of Environmental Protection guides you through the fragmented and conflicting environmental protection laws and regulations put into effect in recent years. For nearly four decades, The Law of Environmental Protection has served private, public, nonprofit, and academic practitioners, scholars, educators, students, and more as an invaluable resource on environmental law in the United States. Read the publication!

The role of fair and equitable benefit-sharing in environmental peacebuilding. Attention will focus on how fair and equitable benefit-sharing can contribute to sustainable and inclusive approaches to the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources by supporting consideration of the human rights of indigenous peoples, the rights to culture and food of local communities, and the human rights of rural women, as part of peacebuilding processes. Read the full report!

Expert Knowledge on Environmental Peacebuilding: the social context of its diffusion in international politics and what it says about it. The goal here is to learn more about the social complexity and context of the production of expert knowledge on environmental peacebuilding (EPBL) and its diffusion in international politics in the period from 1990s to 2008. It was also discussed what the analysis of social context says. Read the research paper!

STATEMENTS: Read the Secretary-General of the United Nations message on International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict 2025; November 6th and the Speech delived by Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive director during the United Nations Security Council Briefing on Climate and Security – environmental impact of armed conflict driven security risks.