Abstract International humanitarian law has traditionally ignored the status of the natural environment as ‘cultural heritage’. States’ reluctance to integrate and protect the natural environment as ‘cultural heritage’ foregoes stronger protections and, more importantly, monopolizes the definition of ‘culture’. In particular, Indigenous cultural heritage is dispositively constituted through its relationship with the natural environment. The distinctiveness of indigeneity, manifesting in ways of life, language, cosmovisions, etc. , are products of deep, ancient, and continuous interactions with the natural environment. Alas, when formulating the specialized regime for cultural heritage protection in international humanitarian law, a fundamental divide was drawn between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, the former constituting pristine wilderness and the latter requiring some form of human intervention. Destruction of the natural environment was then seen as merely damage to a renewable, regenerative resource, rather than as a threat to the collective physical and cultural survival of peoples. In this paper, I make two arguments. First, of the specialized cultural heritage regime, the 1972 World Heritage Convention presents the closest integration of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, and protections therein can and must protect the natural environment in times of armed conflict. I argue that obligations under the 1972 World Heritage Convention, where applicable, complement the more permissive obligations contained in international humanitarian law. Second, I argue that the basis for this divide between ‘nature and ‘culture’ in international humanitarian law was ill-founded and based on primitive scientific and non-pluralistic conceptions. Thus, even for cases where the 1972 World Heritage Convention is inapplicable, international humanitarian law must be interpreted to include the natural environment as cultural heritage.
Rohit Gupta (Mon,) studied this question.