Deforestation - Military Context

Military Context

While the preponderance of deforestation is due to demands for agricultural and urban use for the human population, there are some examples of military causes. One example of deliberate deforestation is that which took place in the U.S. zone of occupation in Germany after World War II. Before the onset of the Cold War, defeated Germany was still considered a potential future threat rather than potential future ally. To address this threat, attempts were made to lower German industrial potential, of which forests were deemed an element. Sources in the U.S. government admitted that the purpose of this was that the "ultimate destruction of the war potential of German forests." As a consequence of the practice of clear-felling, deforestation resulted which could "be replaced only by long forestry development over perhaps a century."

War can also be a cause of deforestation, either deliberately such as through the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War where, together with bombs and bulldozers, it contributed to the destruction of 44% of the forest cover, or inadvertently such as in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa where bombardment and other combat operations reduced the lush tropical landscape into "a vast field of mud, lead, decay and maggots".