The United Nations General Assembly is preparing to vote this week on whether to mandate a new UN scientific study on the effects of nuclear war, something that hasn’t been done by the organization since the 1980s.
[Update, Nov. 1: The resolution was approved by 144 countries; 30 abstained; Britain, France and Russia voted no]
A resolution sponsored by 24 countries, ranging from those affected by the legacy of nuclear testing, such as Kazakhstan, to NATO members, like Norway, that support the use of nuclear weapons in their defense is being discussed in a UN committee on disarmament.
The resolution would set up a panel of independent scientific experts to examine the “physical effects and societal consequences of a nuclear war.” An updated study would go beyond the effects of blast and fire to also consider impacts on public health, global socioeconomic systems, agriculture and ecosystems.
The need for the study is indisputable. The last UN study was done in 1989. Scientists from around the world have been calling for a better understanding of the effects of nuclear war. Calls in Scientific American, 100 of the world’s top medical journals, the G7 National Academies and the United States Congress are growing increasingly urgent. The UN, representing all countries, nuclear-armed or not, is the ideal place to convene this research.
The evidence of harm of any use of nuclear weapons is backed by a wealth of robust research, including from testimonies of communities impacted by nuclear weapons, and it must be central in efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. A report published by the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2023 lays out the current state of this research, which spans from environmental effects of detonations to the disproportionate harm on women and girls from nuclear war. A new contribution to this body of literature is a recent International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons report on the consequences of nuclear weapons on children.
Additionally, an important study in the scientific journal Nature Food in 2022 modeled the impact of a regional nuclear war in South Asia on global crop production. It showed that the soot and debris produced by nuclear explosions would block out sunlight over large areas, causing famine that would lead to two billion people starving to death. Yet, there is no UN-mandated study that brings all of this information together in one place.
The world today looks much different than in 1989. The rapid pace of technological advances and effects on things like telecommunications and global banking are likely to be far different than how they were assessed before the vast use of cellphones and personal computing. The integration of economies and the mechanisms of transnational shipping have also changed rapidly in the last 35 years.
The time is now right for scientists to review the improvements in our understanding of the effects of nuclear war and to identify the gaps in our knowledge, using the major progress in climate and scientific modeling tools that have been made in the past three decades. A new UN scientific panel would be able to use the tools to provide much more accurate and comprehensive findings on the results of nuclear weapons on human health and the environment. We have the lessons from the pandemic as to what happens when there is a massive shock to global markets that can be examined in looking at compound effects of nuclear war on the current interconnected socioeconomic structures worldwide.
With nuclear-armed countries now involved in wars in Europe and the Mideast as well as nuclear tensions roiling the Korean Peninsula, the risk that such weapons could be used is currently as high — or even higher — as it has ever been. So, policymakers and the public need and deserve clarity on the risks, based on the best science available of the results of nuclear war.
The governments that are considering opposing this study need to consider what signal their resistance sends. Are they trying to actively suppress evidence that might inform policies? As the tobacco industry did about smoking? People have a right to know the truth, as they do about climate change or other threats to public health, including pollution. For a government to vote against research would be a dereliction of its duty to ensure the safety and well-being of its citizens.
All governments should support a new scientific study to examine how a nuclear war could damage all of us.
This is an opinion essay.
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the need to know more about effects of nuclear war?
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Melissa Parke is the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2017. She formerly worked for the UN in Gaza, Kosovo, New York City and Lebanon and served as Australia’s Minister for International Development.
1989 is the last time the citizens of the world examined the effects of nuclear war? It is time for a reassessment – would the disastrous blockage of the sunlight solve the climate crisis? (Even as billions of people died.) As people living in an area that would see very short growing seasons, would we be able to adapt to a world cooler by ten degrees? The suicidal mindset of the (mostly) men who could trigger a nuclear war can only be offset by refusing to give these weapons space anywhere. The decision to back away from the violence and fear implied in “deterrence” would be a turning point for the human race to actually create the peaceful world preached by every religion.