Intertwined but Apart: Natural Heritage in Cultural Property Protection (Chapter in "Talking Tactics: Environmental Protection and Armed Conflicts")
Publisher: environmental SCIENTIST
Author(s): Emma Cunliffe
Date: 2020
Topics: Governance, Land, Monitoring and Evaluation, Renewable Resources
Countries: Colombia
International attention has focused on the widespread damage to cultural heritage in recent armed conflicts, with conspicuous international effects. International aid to affected sites has increased: for example, the British government created the £30 million Cultural Protection Fund, and multiple countries and private funders contributed to the International Alliance for the protection of heritage in conflict areas (ALIPH) Fund, which contains US$77.5 million. Ratifications of the international cultural property protection laws have also increased, alongside a successful prosecution of cultural destruction at the International Criminal Court (ICC), with another case pending. Yet the destruction of natural heritage has received virtually no attention, even though the humanitarian impact of wartime environmental damage is enormous1 and the ICC Office of the Prosecutor ‘will give particular consideration to prosecuting Rome Statute crimes that are committed by means of, or that result in [...] the destruction of the environment’.
Through a comparison to cultural property, this article examines the protection that international law could provide for natural areas during conflict, focusing on areas dedicated to conservation rather than civilian environmental infrastructure, such as irrigation works. There are both overlaps and major differences in law and current practice, and the comparison suggests new avenues for natural protection.