Military rivalries across the world are pushing rival states to increase unprecedented and unchecked militarization in different geopolitical hot-spots around the globe and encourage producing, acquiring and using destructive weapons and military hardware. This trend is contributing to global warming, which in turn causes our planet’s environment to further deteriorate.

As borders between states are unable to stop the effects of environmental deterioration from spreading, from one country to another and from one region to another, the environmental impact of military hardware production, wars and conflicts in one part of the world are affecting countries in other parts, causing weather conditions to severely deteriorate.

The production and utilization of military hardware, including weaponry and military vehicles, require the heavy consumption of energy like coal and oil.

The consumption or burning of fossil fuels releases millions of tons of harmful and poisonous gases into the air that have been previously contained in coal, oil and natural gas for millions of years. Such harmful gases include carbon, dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and sulphur dioxide – all of which cause immense damage to the planet’s environment.

These harmful and poisonous gases cause global temperatures to rise gradually, resulting in our planet’s environment increasingly becoming warmer. The gradual rise in average global temperatures, in turn, causes the polar glaciers to melt gradually, causing global sea-levels to rise which results in more floods, especially during storms. A tsunami is an example of a disaster that the rise in sea-levels can cause.

Because of the rise in sea-levels, coastal areas across the globe have been gradually submerging. Perhaps it will not take decades for the existing global coastlines to disappear, turning millions of inhabitants living in those coastal areas into climate refugees.

Syrian regime’s use of barrel and chemical bombs on civilian targets has been releasing harmful gases into the air, causing a rise in temperatures. Similarly, harmful gases are being released into the air by the artillery firing and missile attacks in Yemen and Ukraine, which also cause a rise in temperature. Such a rise in global temperatures causes the melting of polar ice in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, causing the coastal areas in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand to be vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Already Bangkok (Thailand) has been sinking 10 centimeters every year, placing the city at risk of submerging under the sea within a matter of a few decades. There is the possibility that 6-8% of ‘flood-prone’ Bangladesh may be submerged by 2030. As for Myanmar, a substantial portion of the country’s coastal areas is predicted to be submerged by 2050.

German scholars from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PICIR) warned that if the causes of global warming are not reduced immediately worldwide, a series of unstoppable events will be triggered, causing dramatic rise in sea-levels and the total annihilation of coastal areas inhabited by millions of people.

Therefore, taking the PICIR’s warning into consideration, countries which are the major victims of environmental deterioration, should encourage the reduction of worldwide conflicts and wars since the increasing trend of conflicts and wars is one of the major causes of global warming. Otherwise, millions of coastal inhabitants around the globe face a threat of survival.