Norms of International Law on Environmental Protection in Wartime: Application and Improvement

The enormous environmental damage caused by war makes it necessary for international law to balance the reality of military necessity with the need to ensure the survival of human beings and other life forms. International law provides a large number of norms for environmental protection in wartime, constituting a legal order including general and special norms of wartime law and wartime environmental protection obligations of international law in peacetime. It explicitly prohibits unreasonable environmental damage caused by military needs in wartime. Contrary to the cognition that there is no international norm to protect the environment in wartime,the key reason that causes the effect of environmental protection in wartime is not as good as expected lies in the different degrees of defects in the application of these complex norms. It is a more important and practical path choice to renew the general principles of wartime environmental protection, expand the scope of application of wartime laws and special environmental norms, strengthen the wartime application of international law in peacetime, and give full play to the maximum effectiveness of the existing normative system than to expect the new convention to accomplish the whole task at one stroke.