Sweden
Practice Relating to Rule 45. Causing Serious Damage to the Natural Environment
Sweden’s IHL Manual (1991) refers to Article 55 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I as providing that “the parties shall exercise caution so that widespread, long-term and severe damage [to the natural environment] can be avoided”.
At the CDDH, while expressing satisfaction at the adoption of the two 1977 Additional Protocols, Sweden pointed out that “there were now for the first time explicit rules against … environmental warfare”.
In its written statement submitted to the ICJ in the Nuclear Weapons case in 1995, Sweden stated:
In accordance with an established basic principle, expressed, for example, in the Declaration made by the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, there are impediments to the use of weapons which cause extensive, long-term and serious damage to the environment.