War Harms the Environment. Can a Peace Treaty Repair the Damage?

On a sweltering July day, 30 Kurdistan Workers’ Party fighters stripped the rifles from their backs and tossed them into a blazing fire.

The symbolic ceremony last year marked the end of a decades-long conflict with Turkey. Now, one of the big lingering questions is how to repair the grim toll on the environment.

Fighting in the Kurdish region, which stretches across several countries besides Turkey, left scorched forests, water contamination and declining biodiversity. 

Munitions from World War I and World War II still lurk in oceans, posing toxic risks and other hazards. Dangerous dioxins from Agent Orange linger in Vietnam, half a century after the U.S. pulled out of that war. And experts have warned that the environmental-health consequences from the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran will be long-lived.

But researchers at the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health say the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkey have a chance to do something historic: Make environmental restoration part of the peace plan.

“You’ve got to think about this element if you want to establish a lasting peace,” said Kaveh Madani, the institute’s director. “It is a necessity.”

The PKK and Turkey are negotiating over a peace treaty, talks that have stalled this year amid disagreements over disarmament.

Michael Gunter, a political science professor at Tennessee Technological University, has written multiple books on the Kurdish region. Earlier peace efforts by the PKK and Turkey collapsed in 2015, and he said this outcome could be similar. 

“They’re not even in the same universe,” he said of the two parties. “Turkey considers the PKK a terrorist organization that should surrender now. The PKK considers Turkey to have an ultra-nationalist constitution, which should be changed to make room for the ethnic Kurds.” 

Pinar Dinc, a research fellow at the United Nations University institute and lead author of a report about addressing the conflict’s ecological damage, still sees this moment as an opening to push for “green transitional justice” in the negotiations. 

Conventional treaties focus on security, she said, but “if we go beyond this security perspective and think more around holistic peace approach, then we might actually manage to create something new.”

​”Human life and environmental health are so interconnected with each other that if one isn’t holding, the other one will also collapse,” said Dinc. “And then we just see a continuation of all sorts of damage and suffering.”

The institute’s report describes the first step of the framework as strengthening environmental protection and accountability. A healthy environment, including clean air, safe water and fertile soil, should be recognized as a fundamental human right, the report says, and people defending those rights should also be protected. Around the world, environmental defenders are often targets for violence and harassment.

Dinc hopes that environmental repair initiatives in the Kurdish region will be spearheaded by those most affected. After the war began in 1984, more than 3,000 Kurdish villages were razed or evacuated, displacing up to 378,000 people. Nearly 40,000 died.

If local communities oversee environmental restoration, that would bring new jobs to the region and also allow these communities to continue their unique cultural practices. Madani sees it as a potential point of unification. 

“Environment can also be a uniting factor in the process where peace building is happening, where people have a sense of belonging to where they are. The environment can also be a cause, a contributor to the peace-building process and building trust,” Madani said.

The report says local communities working on restoration efforts should be guaranteed equitable access to natural resources, such as water. Cross-border environmental cooperation is vital for joint watershed management.

One way to secure funding for restoration efforts is through the Global Environment Facility, the world’s largest multilateral fund for the environment, and the Green Climate Fund, which aims to address the climate crisis. The report also suggests turning to public-private partnerships and “peace bonds.”

Nazan Üstündağ, an independent researcher and former instructor of exclusionary regimes, autocratization and democracy at the Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin, is a native of Turkey who was not involved in the study. She thinks implementing the report’s recommendations will be an uphill battle.

“We don’t expect, really, that there will be some … clauses in an agreement that are directed towards any kind of restoration, but that the peace process or this process opens up the space for non-armed struggles,” said Üstündağ.

In February, a Turkish parliamentary commission voted overwhelmingly to advance a “terror-free Türkiye” initiative proposing stronger legal reforms and fast-tracking the peace negotiations.

Green transitional justice wasn’t part of that plan. But Dinc and Madani hope it can play a role in the Kurdish region’s future. 

“We live in a dynamic world where things are continuously changing; we learn from the past,” said Madani.