How International Economic Sanctions Harm the Environment

Abstract

As soft political tools, economic sanctions aim at isolating a sanctioned state and hurt its economy to force it to change course, policies, and actions. In response to sanctions and to evade their grip, a sanctioned state adopts a range of survivalist, aggressive, and unsustainable policies that reduce the economic pressure of sanctions at the expense of accelerated environmental degradation. While economic sanctions cannot be blamed as the cause of environmental problems in sanctioned states, their role in catalyzing environmental degradation is noteworthy. This paper takes the first step in setting the theoretical ground for exploring the environmental implications of sanctions by developing a generic causal model that explains how economic sanctions can impact the environment. It is shown that sanctions lower the priority of the environmental sector in the public policy agenda in a sanctioned state and increase the natural resource-intensity of its economy. It is argued that although the environmental damages of sanctions are mainly unintended by the sanctioning and sanctioned states, such damages are unavoidable in practice. The study calls for attention to the transgenerational and transboundary environmental impacts of economic sanctions and their justice and human rights implications for which the sanctioning and sanctioned states must be held accountable. Plain Language Summary By targeting the economy of a sanctioned state, sanctions are used to force the sanctioned state's policy makers to change their actions. But the impacts of economic sanctions on a country can go beyond its economic sector and cause significant collateral damages to ordinary citizens and their economic welfare. Economic sanctions are also associated with significant unintended environmental impacts that have major health, justice, and human rights implications. This study explains how the current economic sanctioning schemes turn the environmental sector into an inevitable victim of the battle between the sanctioning states, seeking behavioral change through economic pressure, and the sanctioned state, determined to pursue its so-called "abnormal" plans at the expense of causing damages to its natural resources.

Lifting of International Sanctions and the Shadow Economy in Iran—A View from Outer Space

“…Several other studies focus on the effects of oil price shocks and sanctions on different aspects of Iran's economy, such as GDP growth, inflation, publicly traded companies, environment, export, technology, foreign investments, and oil production [19][20][21][22]. Farzanegan and Markwardt analyze the dynamic relationship between oil price shocks and major macroeconomic variables using a VAR approach [59].…”

“…In addition, this contribution will help to understand the dynamics of the shadow economy in similar economies. Finally, it is an important addition to several recent studies about international sanctions against Iran and already existing studies about its shadow economy [3,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. The paper is structured as follows.…”

Are Economic Sanctions a Barrier to Trade in Environmental Goods? The International Evidence

“…We use a workhorse of the gravity model to investigate the impact of economic sanctions on trade in EGs in target countries. Although economists previously included a battery of common factors of the gravity model as driving forces of trade in EGs, they are still inadequate (Fu et al, 2020;Madani, 2020). To consider this issue and address the estimation bias, full fixed effects in the panel data are applied.…”

Investigating the Impacts of the Political System Components in Iran on the Existing Water Bankruptcy

“…It should not be overlooked that international sanctions-regardless of whether the sanctioned country is the main culprit behind the sanctions or not-can in general play a catalytic role in the degradation of the environment. It can indirectly affect the quality and quantity of environment and water resources [107,108], promoting non-cooperative behavior and short-sighted attitude in the water management sector [109]. Economic restrictions created due to sanctions can reduce the level of priority given to environmental protection and promote the direct use of natural resources to compensate for economic restrictions, thereby increasing efforts towards self-sufficiency in agricultural production.…”