Concrete Impacts: A Supply Chain and Life Cycle Analysis of the US Military's Environmental Footprint

军队是世界上资源最密集的机构之一，无论是在国内还是在国外，都需要大量的材料和能源。因此，军队也是污染最严重的机构之一，但人们对军队对气候变化和其他形式的环境退化的影响知之甚少，也不知道他们的总物质消耗。此外，关于军事资源使用和环境破坏的可靠数据的可获得性变化很大，取决于军事透明度、军事行动背景和各国之间更广泛的排放报告要求。我们的初步研究表明，一种新颖、可行的方法可以检查军队的材料足迹，即关注原材料在全球军事和民用供应链上的物流。例如，通过集中关注碳氢化合物燃料的采购、购买和分销，我们揭示了美国军方是比多达140个国家更大的污染者。然而，完全缺乏对原材料采购及其流通供应链的系统研究，包括由此造成的环境破坏。这项研究将以我们之前关于美国军事行动对气候影响的研究为基础，研究其他对环境有重大影响的材料。我们将收集和整理二手数据集，使我们能够量化和可视化美军采购和使用三种看似平庸的材料——沙子、水和混凝土——当美军在2003-2011年占领伊拉克期间大量采购和部署时，这些材料会对环境、社会和经济产生严重影响。我们将从美国国会预算办公室提供的公开报告和国防后勤局的个别采购订单中获取这些数据，并根据需要补充《信息自由法》要求的数据。作为21世纪最广泛的军事行动，2003-2011年的伊拉克战争提供了一个理想的研究案例，因为采购和供应链记录在电子表格上，可以进行分析，因为对这些数据的分析可以帮助研究人员、政府和公众以新的、动态的方式了解外国干预的后果和影响。我们将开展一系列活动，使这些数据有用并可供一系列用户使用，包括政策制定者和美国军方本身。首先，我们将创建一个GIS数据库，整理当前不同的数据集，并在地理位置上定位沙子、水和混凝土的采购、分配和使用情况。这种空间方法将使我们和其他研究人员能够考虑围绕战时美军物质实践对社会、经济和环境影响的各种相邻问题。此外，根据我们之前对美国军用燃料消耗的研究，我们将对我们研究的所有材料进行生命周期分析，不仅计算这些材料在实践中对气候变化的影响，还计算其他环境后果，如当地空气污染影响。我们将把所有这些数据、我们的分析和可视化整理到一个面向公众的数据实验室网站上，使任何有网络浏览器的人都可以自己对数据进行高性能的定量分析。此外，我们将在2021年11月于格拉斯哥举行的COP26下一轮全球气候变化谈判之前，在常规分析之外，撰写有关战争对环境影响的政策相关文献。我们寻求扩大与非学术合作伙伴的联系，如美国和英国军方、气候和环境政策制定者以及我们当前网络内外的民间社会团体。

Militaries are among the most resource intensive institutions in the world, requiring vast volumes of material and energy for both domestic and foreign operations. As a result, militaries are some of the most polluting institutions as well, but very little is known about military contributions to climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, nor about their total material consumption. Furthermore, the accessibility of reliable data about military resource use and environmental damage is highly variable, and depends on military transparency, the context of military operations, and broader emissions reporting requirements between countries. Our preliminary research has shown that one novel, workable approach to examining a military's material footprint is to focus on the logistics that move raw materials move across global military and civilian supply chains. For example, by concentrating on procurement, purchase, and distribution of hydrocarbon-based fuels, we revealed that the U.S. military is a larger polluter than as many as 140 countries. However, a systematic study of the sourcing of raw materials and their circulation supply chains, including the resultant environmental damage, is entirely lacking. This research will build on our previous work on the climate impacts of US military operations to look at other kinds of materials that have significant environmental impacts. We will source and collate secondary datasets that allow us to quantifying and visualize US military acquisition and use of three seemingly banal materials - sand, water, and concrete- that have serious environmental, social, and economic impacts when purchase and deployed in the large volumes that the US military did during the occupation of Iraq from 2003-2011. We will source this data from publicly available reports produced by the US Congressional Budget Office and individual procurement orders made by the Defense Logistics Agency, supplemented with data from Freedom of Information Act requests as needed. As the most extensive military operation of the 21st century, Iraq from 2003-2011 provides an ideal case study because procurement and supply chains are documented on digital spreadsheets and accessible for analysis, and because analysis of that data can help researchers, governments, and the public understand the consequences and impacts of foreign intervention in new and dynamic ways. We will undertake a number of activities to make this data useful and available to a range of users, including policymakers and the US military itself. First, we will create a GIS database that collates currently disparate datasets and geographically situates the procurement, distribution and use of sand, water, and concrete. This spatial approach will allow us, and other researchers, to consider all manner of adjacent questions around the social, economic, and environmental impacts of material practices of US military during wartime. Additionally, following our previous research on US military fuel consumption, we will conduct life cycle analyses on all the materials we study, calculating not only the climate change impact of these materials in practice, but also other environmental consequences, such as local air pollution impacts. We will collate all this data and our analysis and visualizations thereof onto a public-facing data lab website, enabling anyone with a web browser to conduct high-powered quantitative analysis of the data for themselves. Further, we will produce policy-relevant literature on the environmental implications of war beyond the usual kinds of analysis in time for the next round of global climate change negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. We seek significant outreach to non-academic partners, such as the US and UK military, climate and environmental policymakers and civil society groups in our current network and beyond.