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On April 1, 2013, CBS News reported a segment about the Syrian city Maarat Nouman, which had been the target of the government's indiscriminate parachute bombings. Maarat Nouman is a city the Syrian northwest, which had a population near 60,000 inhabitants. The civil war has created devastating results in other Syrian cities as well. Today two-thirds of Maarat Nouman lies in ruins, with only 5% of the population remaining. Most of its citizens fled as refugees.
War and violence manifest little respect for human life, creation, and our environment, and create great tragedies. It's sad to see so many valuable resources used for the benefit of human development turned to rubble. Pope Francis I urges us to respect "each of God’s creatures and respecting the environment in which we live."
We hear a lot about "global warming" from the perspective of creating pollutants from factories. However, we will focus on the environmental impairment, emanating from civil and international conflicts. Since the 1990's to our present time, civil and international wars, particularly in Africa and Asia, have had fatal consequences for human life and the environment. The death toll of human beings has been in the millions. Environmentally, these wars have contributed much to disease, famine, and the destruction of nature. Indeed a country's entire infrastructure can collapse through internal and international strife. I have composed a list of those harmful war tactics which upset our eco-system. Please be aware that these maladies are the result of conflicts. They do not include the other harmful environmental problems.
I begin with drinking water necessary for survival. Weapons have contaminated drinking water with biological poisons. They also have destroyed sewage plants, which contaminates fresh water. The pollutants likewise filter into rivers and seas.
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