Environmental Terrorism Twenty Years On

The most shocking act of terrorism in 2001 was airplane based. Hostile attackers motivated by intractable visions of religious hatred dropped death on the United States from the skies at the cost of 2,996 lives, including their own. Their actions grabbed the world’s attention, and most of the resources and brainpower devoted to studying terrorism after 9/11 focused on al-Qaeda and other similarly motivated nonstate armed groups (NSAGs). But acts of terrorism are not limited to the use of airplanes as weapons. In 2002, I published one of the first examinations of environmental terrorism: the concept that potentially more damage could be done to a state from those wishing to harm it by attacking its environment rather than its citizens and that water resources, forests and agricultural sites, petroleum and energy infrastructure, and even ecosystems were all likely targets (Chalecki 2002). In the past twenty years, we have seen politically motivated attacks on all of these systems (Asaka 2021; Berkowicz 2011; Remmits and Torossian 2021; Spadaro 2019). Environmental resources continue to serve as both tools and targets of terrorism.

Many analysts and media outlets have confused environmental terrorism and ecoterrorism; however, despite similar-sounding names, they are not the same. Their actions, target audiences, and especially motivations differ significantly and should be separated for purposes of understanding and prevention. Environmental terrorism is committed by those who attack in situ environmental resources or environmentally related infrastructure to achieve political or ideological aims unconnected to the environment itself. These individuals are basically what we now think of as terrorists, but with a new or unconventional target or weapon. Environmental terrorists are anti-environment. Ecoterrorism, on the other hand, is committed by those individuals who target the facilities of resource-extractive industries with the intent to destroy them (Best and Nocella 2006). These individuals have as their motive preserving the ecosystem from what they view as damage caused by human greed, overconsumption, and exploitation. Ecoterrorists are pro-environment.

For environmental terrorists, the tool or target is a critical natural resource, but the motive is to force political and/or ideological change. Sites vulnerable to environmental terrorism include water resources and infrastructures, agriculture and forest areas, mineral and petroleum infrastructures, and wildlife and ecosystem sites. For ecoterrorists, the target is a human-built resource, and the motive is anti-economic, specifically to thwart development. Sites vulnerable to ecoterrorism include industrial farms and agricultural feedlots, housing developments in previously pristine areas, and car dealerships that sell gas-guzzlers. Both strategies are traditionally considered separate from environmental warfare, though it could be argued that any sort of environmental warfare could be viewed as terroristic, in that the effects are indiscriminate, affecting combatants and noncombatants alike.

What separates terrorism from war? Just-war theory, as contained in military rules of engagement (ROEs) and international conventions, such as the 1977 Geneva Protocol I, states that the environment is not to be targeted during wartime, nor is any natural resource that is needed for the civilian population’s survival. Any state not observing these ROEs could be committing war crimes. NSAGs and other terror groups, on the other hand, do not sign international conventions, and even if they were to observe such terms as a matter of custom, it is in their strategic interest not to do so, because the rules of asymmetric warfare suggest that they seize any advantage they can to prosecute their objectives.

When this work appeared twenty years ago, critics raised three distinct objections to my environmental terrorism thesis. First, attacking natural resources in situ by setting a forest fire or destroying a pipeline was considered mere vandalism. Those nonstate actors we called “terrorists” preferred to blow up planes, buses, and crowded shopping markets so as to do maximum visible damage to people and public spaces in an effort to intimidate governments. Because attacks on pipelines and forests usually would not involve direct and immediate loss of life, they were not considered terrorism and hence not a likely security concern (Dalby 2002).

Second, environmental security was, at the time, still a fringe concept. The ideas and priorities of international security practitioners did not consider environmental resources as vital, especially those, such as rivers and forests, that remained in nature. “Real” security meant military assets, preferably prestigious ones, such as nuclear weapons, and anything environmental was the domain of Birkenstock-wearing peaceniks who clearly had no credibility in the regime. Similarly, security was something that was negotiated between states, not NSAGs, and the suggestion that individuals with a plan to attack natural resources could inflict real damage was not taken seriously.¹

Third, it occurred to me that al-Qaeda and other NSAGs might work in tandem with ecoterror groups in future, because both groups reject modernity and have an ideological incentive to destroy modern resource-intensive society. Experts in Islamic terrorism, however, regarded this as very unlikely. I was told that any group that claimed a mantle of religious justification for its actions had doctrinal purity at heart and consequently would never work with ecoterror groups because they would not lower themselves to ally with nonbelievers.

I maintain that these criticisms have been overtaken by events. In the last two decades, resource attacks have cost billions of dollars and caused significant security vulnerabilities, and several have been focused specifically on natural resource infrastructure with the aim of shaking the foundations of the host government. Similarly, the potential for collaboration between ecoterror groups and Islamic NSAGs has grown, even to the point where the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda have openly promulgated “ecological jihad” (Somers 2019). Although environmental protection has not always been a priority for Islamist NSAGs, they have argued that removing as much oil as possible from the ground to sell today robs future generations of their ability to use it for their own needs. It is called israf, or the greedy overconsumption of resources. If governments in the Middle East–North Africa (MENA) region continue producing oil for sale, NSAGs will continue borrowing from the ecoterror sabotage playbook, as they did in 2019, when drones carrying explosives blew up part of the Saudi East–West oil pipeline.

Unfortunately, the concept of environmental terrorism has proven to be durable. Incidents of environmental terrorism have increased since 2002, particularly in the MENA region, but they occur everywhere. Any place where water is scarce, pipelines are plentiful, and forests are dry can make a good target. Natural and environmental resources are such a vital weak point for nations and regimes, particularly in a globally warmed world, that the continued focus on aviation as a potential target puzzles me. Protecting planes is certainly critical to security, but the amount of counterterrorism attention devoted to airlines makes me think that the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t studied ecology. Someone in al-Qaeda did, however, because in 2012, they published a call for Western Muslims to come to the United States and set forest fires as a form of jihad (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2012).

There have been too many instances of environmental terrorism since 2002 to list them all here, but a few of the more notable examples include ISIS’ control of the Falluja dam in 2015 and subsequent downstream flooding to intimidate Iraqi populations deemed to be nonloyal; al-Shabaab’s destruction of Somali civilian water supplies in 2014; the Kurdistan Workers’ Party sabotaging the Iran–Turkey oil pipeline in 2020, costing US$ 250 million in damages and lost revenue; the 2015 destruction of the Catatumbo pipeline in Colombia by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia; and Hamas’ use of kites and balloons to set fires in Israeli farmlands in 2018. ISIS’ state-like pretensions notwithstanding, all of these attacks qualify as terrorism because NSAGs perpetrated them against state governments and cared nothing for civilian collateral damage.

What disturbs me more is the underlying rationale for such attacks. Calls for action from NSAGs to block or destroy water supplies, set fires, or release pests into vulnerable ecosystems indicate that, not only is there increasing recognition that attacking valuable natural resources is an effective way to damage a state or a government, but these resources “belong” to certain people and not others. Hence “their” resources can be attacked in an effort to bring a political opponent or outgroup to heel. Of course, ecologists know this is nonsense. Because all ecosystem services are connected, you can’t destroy some resources without weakening all of them for everyone. This is nihilistic thinking at its finest and appears to be consistent with the “destroy modern civilization” vein of extremism across both radical Islamists and ecoterrorists. We see the same sort of exclusionary thinking in the concept of ecofascism, discussed subsequently.

The development (evolution?) of environmental terrorism must be placed within the context of the larger trends in environmental politics that have been rising since the turn of the century.

Although the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (2022) Sixth Assessment Working Group II report was eclipsed by the news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its findings were dire. Ambient CO₂ concentration stands at 421 ppm and is increasing (as are other greenhouse gases), the effects of climate change are more widespread and more easily felt, and governments continue to make empty pronouncements. Although the climate–security nexus has been examined from an operational perspective (Beauregard 2020), the most recent, twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties was a policy failure, as they have all been.

The worsening climate crisis means that acts of environmental terrorism can have a greater impact now than in previous decades. Drier forests result in a greater potential for more and larger forest fires (National Aeronautics and Space Administration 2019), making pyroterrorism more damaging. Increasing drought results in reduced agricultural output, so an attack on a food supply or agricultural facility will result in greater food insecurity. Attacks on water infrastructure, particularly in hotter, drought-prone areas, can put proportionally larger numbers of people at severe risk of water shortages. Destabilized ecosystems are more vulnerable to the deliberate release of insects and other pests (Monthei et al. 2010), and terror groups themselves can take advantage of climate disasters by using poor government response as a recruiting opportunity (Spadaro 2019, 73). United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres called climate change an “aggravating factor” for terrorism in 2021, particularly because climate change, resource degradation, and poor governance form a vicious positive feedback loop (United Nations News 2021).

To approach the climate–security relationship in a new way, the ecological security argument posits that we must reorient security to rest on ecological stability and health. Conceptually, I like where this argument goes, but if nations of the world made that shift, it could render environmental terrorism that much more dangerous. The War on Terror has already resulted in a “radical extension of state power and surveillance” (McDonald 2021, 24). If the ecological security thesis holds, then damaging another state’s ecology becomes the most radical of all attacks because it strikes at the fundamental system underlying every other system: culture, economics, politics, and security. This could lead to greater expansion of state powers.

In 2022, Freedom House documented the rise in authoritarian states around the world, noting that for the past sixteen years, more countries have seen democracy decline than have seen it improve (Repucci and Slipowitz 2022). Under nonrepresentative governments, the state’s natural and environmental resources are often referred to as belonging to the country and its people but are treated as property of the government or of the ruler and his plutocrat cronies. Public citizens or Indigenous groups trying to protect these resources from looting and overextraction are thereby conveniently labeled terrorists, often with the full weight of internal security brought against them (Global Witness 2020; see also Menton and Le Billon 2021, who point out that there are more killings of environmental defenders in states that are neither strong democracies nor strict autocracies). This gives struggling governments the advantage in legitimacy, because their actions are called statecraft, or national defense, or war—all of which are defined and protected under customary international law. For example, if al-Qaeda or ISIS encourages arson as a weapon, that is terrorism, but if the government of Israel sprays herbicides on crops in Gaza, that is considered self-defense.

Some would-be authoritarians have more recently embraced ecofascism as a legitimate organizational philosophy. Ecofascists believe that race and nationality are literally tied to the natural environment of the country and that “blood and soil” determines who belongs in a country and who doesn’t. The state must then be defended from invasion by immigrants and other nonpure peoples, who supposedly bring pollution and environmental degradation. Natural resources then belong to “us” (whoever that is) and not to “them.” Because ecofascists believe outgroups are threats to the purity of the country, it is acceptable to use any level of violence against them. Disturbing racist undertones aside, ecofascism is just fascism that has been greenwashed, what Nils Gilman calls “avocado politics”—green on the outside, brown (shirt) at the core (Gilman 2020). But until such fascists assume control of the state, they consider terroristic actions to be legitimate. We have seen this argument surface in the shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, in 2019; in both cases, the shooters stated that the targeted populations (Muslims and Mexicans, respectively) were polluting the environment by their presence.

Twenty years ago, I claimed that the distinction between environmental warfare and environmental terrorism mirrored that between conventional warfare and conventional terrorism, but now that distinction itself is blurring. Gray-zone conflict lies between war and not-war. It represents an escalation from hybrid warfare because it embraces long-term strategic disruption, and rather than a clear offense, gray-zone conflict uses “unconventional tactics that do not cross the threshold of formalized state-level aggression” (Carment and Belo 2018). Because gray-zone conflict aims “to achieve desired objectives without the overt use of military forces to avoid the risks posed by direct confrontation” (Azad et al. 2022, 6), a coercive campaign of destabilization, disruption, and subversion suits environmental terrorism to a T.

In fact, environmental terrorism could be considered a subset of gray-zone conflict. Even though “the previous perception of weapons is outdated” (Baird 2006, 418), in situ environmental resources are still not commonly seen as weapons. Attacks on them are usually aimed, not directly at armed forces or governments, but at soft targets, such as part or all of the public and the ecosystem services it needs. And unlike a military campaign with an easily identifiable aim, attacks on in situ resources can have long-lasting disruption and destabilization effects (Briggs 2020), lengthening the time it takes for communities to recover from such attacks. As instances of open warfare decline, gray-zone conflict may become the modus operandi of the twenty-first century. Environmental terrorism, then, opens up an alarming new front for long-term political struggle, made worse by growing populations, a warming climate, and increasingly authoritarian governance.

I’m afraid that as much I would like to put this threat of environmental terrorism behind us, we cannot do that just yet.

I thank Whit Henderson and Toni Kirby for their awesome research assistance.