Environmental Modification:
From Agent Orange to Agent Green

The Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) prohibits using the environment as a weapon in conflicts. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1976, ENMOD entered into force in 1978. This little-known treaty has a remarkable past. ENMOD was inspired by global opposition to Agent Orange and other environmental modification technologies used in the Vietnam War. It was also influenced by 1970s fears that technology was rapidly reaching the point that deliberate catastrophic environmental changes could be triggered as a weapon for hostile use.

Agent Green:
The US biological weapons project that refuses to die.

Biological weapons are being developed to kill illicit crops of coca, opium poppy, and cannabis in forced crop eradication programs. The pathogenic fungi were developed principally by the US for use in narcotics-producing areas globally; but especially Asia and South America. The agents threaten to legitimize agricultural biowarfare, are environmentally unsafe, and threaten wild plants and agriculture in fragile and biodiverse ecosystems. They also endanger human health and, most importantly, the global ban on biological weapons.