Topic: Impact of War on Agriculture
Country: Portugal
Delegate Name: Ellen Patenaude
School: Traverse City West High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Portugal position papers GLIMUN 2008 committees
The impacts on countries from war is huge. Especially if the country is big on agriculture. During war the workforce can be destroyed. It ruins their land if it is burned, neglected, poisoned, or there are land mines in the fields. Also, farmers were sometimes drafted to be soldiers for war, so they were taken away from producing foods. Oil fields and structures are destroyed. The water and air gets polluted. Man and animals are killed. Warfare absolutely corrupts a country's agriculture when it's bad enough. Portugal has had some rough times during war, and their environment has paid for it.
During World War I, gases were spread throughout the trenches to kill the soldiers. All these gases poisoned the battlefield and evaporated into the atmosphere. Most countries somewhere deal with this problem. Another major problem, especially for Portugal being so surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, was that after the war people were careless and were dumping chemicals or detonating unused weapons at sea. Which has greatly hurt the water. It is still a costly operation cleaning it all. In 1925, Belgium and France made chemical disarmament plants. A treaty was signed that forever banned gaseous chemical weapons.
Portugal is the most polluted country in Europe. The Portuguese government is going to control the pollution by doing two things. Supplying good water to their people and removing waste from the ocean is one. The second is getting control and correcting the effects from past toxic pollutions. Currently, Portugal's regions are coming up with ideas of how to calm and control this issue. We are persuading industry to achieve pollution control measures.
Portugal having had a large stockpile of land mines destroyed is really wanting the agriculture to improve. In February 2003, 231,781 anti-personnel mines were destroyed . Portugal is moving towards a better environment and getting past the impacts from war in their country. “Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.” – 1992 Rio Declaration.
