THE MILITARY EMISSIONS GAP
Very little attention has been paid to greenhouse gases emitted during war, but they’re getting more difficult to ignore. The Conflict and Environment Observatory Unit (CEOBS) has estimated that the military is responsible for 5.5 per cent of global emissions – the equivalent of the fourth-largest national carbon footprint in the world.
As well as the use of military vehicles and weapons, emissions also come from fires and, eventually, reconstruction of destroyed homes and infrastructure. There’s currently no internationally agreed method to measure and report military greenhouse gas emissions, but according to CEOBS, in 2018, the USA military’s emissions were greater than those of 53 countries combined, while the UK Ministry of Defence accounted for at least half of UK central government’s emissions.
Both the USA and the UK have made commitments to reduce their emissions, but without the means to fully track and report reductions, it won’t be possible to monitor progress. There’s also no formal obligation for any state to report its military emissions to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change. However, in 2021, NATO announced that it was developing a methodology to help its members report their greenhouse gas emissions.
Data relating to some key sources of emissions, such as fires and post-conflict reconstruction, were too poor to include in the estimate, meaning the total could be much higher. There’s also limited publicly available data on emissions from military vehicles, bases and industrial supply chains.
A project carried out by CEOBS and the universities of Lancaster and Durham found no year-on-year improvement in the quality of military emissions reporting by governments. Many countries don’t provide any data at all – including some of the top ten military spenders, such as India, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Emissions had risen among countries that did report, including Australia, Denmark and Italy.
Ukraine estimates the emissions from Russia’s invasion so far as 33 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent from the conflict and 23 MtCO2e from fires. It predicts that reconstruction of infrastructure and buildings destroyed or damaged during the war could emit 49 MtCO2e.