Since the renewed hostilities began on 2 March 2026, Lebanon has faced a collision of human tragedy and ecological collapse with consequences stretching far beyond the immediate conflict.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 1,116 people had been killed, including 83 women and 121 children.

A further 3,229 individuals have been injured, and more than 1.2 million have been displaced. Additionally, 189,000 others have crossed Syria.

However, the toll goes beyond human lives, as the land itself has been devastated.

The physical landscape left behind has been profoundly or even irreversibly altered. Across southern Lebanon, up to a quarter of building have been damaged or destroyed, with more than 10,000 civilian structures, including homes and schools, obliterated.

And beneath this visible destruction lies a deeper wound with forests burned, farmland poisoned and the environment that sustains life, systematically degraded.

Nearly 46,479 hectares of land have been lost, including vast areas of forest and farmland. Lands along the Blue Line in Aita al-Shabaab, Ramiya and Marwahin have been stripped of their fertility, with herbicides up to 50 times higher than normal lacing the soil — said to reflect a scale of exposure likely to contaminate water used by communities and drastically reduce crop regeneration for multiple growing seasons. 

At the same time, civilians remain trapped as humanitarian aid is being slowed down and increasingly constrained.

Socio-economic collapse

The ongoing Israeli strikes have hit Beirut and multiple other regions simultaneously, while critical infrastructure, including bridges over the Litani River, has been systematically destroyed, further isolating civilians and obstructing humanitarian access.

The bombing of critical infrastructure not only restricts movement but also disrupts humanitarian supply chains and delays medical care, multiplying the harm to civilians and amplifying the impact of each strike far beyond its immediate target.

In some areas, entire neighbourhoods have effectively been cut off, restricting evacuation routes.

As of now, approximately 136,000 remain internally displaced, many living in precarious conditions with limited access to clean water and healthcare.

Education systems have also been disrupted at scale.

The scale of destruction is striking not only in the sheer number of lives lost but also in its structural impact, turning what might have been short-term displacement into enduring vulnerability. Although some may view these impacts as unintended consequences of military operations, the extent and frequency of the harm suggest that such outcomes may no longer be considered incidental.

Even so, this convergence of armed conflict and environmental destruction, culminating in socio-economic collapse, is neither incidental nor random.

What international law says

It reflects a pattern of harm whose scale and predictability raise serious legal and moral questions.

Under Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (1977), parties must avoid methods of warfare likely to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the environment.

The principles of proportionality and precaution, which require that foreseeable civilian harm, including the destruction of farmlands, water systems, or infrastructure essential for survival, be minimised and not exceed any anticipated military advantage, are central to this framework and apply generally across the conduct of hostilities.

These obligations are reinforced under customary international humanitarian law (ICRC Rules 7 and 14), which protect the natural environment and civilian objects in armed conflict, while the Martens Clause reminds parties that civilians and combatants remain under the protection of the principles of humanity and public conscience even where specific treaty rules may not explicitly apply.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 8) criminalises attacks that knowingly cause widespread, long-term, and severe environmental damage disproportionate to the military gain, and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (Protocol III), which restricts incendiary weapons in areas where civilians are concentrated, adds further normative constraints.

Taken together, these standards provide a framework through which the current scale of destruction can be assessed.

Forests, farm land, bridges, roads

The widespread burning of forests, contamination of agricultural land, and systematic damage to infrastructure, particularly bridges and roads that sustain humanitarian access, suggest impacts that extend beyond immediate military objectives and into the conditions necessary for civilian survival. 

In this regard, the threshold between incidental damage and potentially unlawful conduct becomes increasingly narrow.

Indeed, some might argue that such damage is the result of lawful attacks on legitimate military targets and therefore falls within the accepted limits of collateral damage.

However, this position becomes harder to sustain where the effects are both foreseeable and reverberating: isolating communities, obstructing aid, and degrading civilian infrastructure, essential ecosystems over multiple seasons, which also result in income loss for rural communities, increased food prices, and a greater reliance on imports in an already fragile economy. 

Nevertheless, despite the existence of these legal standards, enforcement remains profoundly inadequate.

Investigations into environmental and civilian harm during armed conflict are politically constrained, delayed or absent altogether.

The gap between legal obligation and practical accountability means that violations risk not only persisting but also becoming normalised and accepted as inevitable consequences of war.

The convergence of human suffering and environmental destruction, therefore, signals a systemic erosion of the conditions necessary for civilian survival, raising urgent questions of legality, accountability, and precedent in modern warfare.

Without immediate, coordinated action, including international accountability for the atrocities and violations committed, the foundations of life itself are imperilled.

Lebanon now clearly illustrates, once again, how protracted conflict can cause irreversible damage, not only undermining communities, but also the ecological and infrastructural frameworks on which society depends.