Page 201 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

an international convention to outlaw action to influence the environment for
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military purposes.” The draft convention unveiled by the Soviet Union in
September 1974 sought to forbid contracting parties from using “meteorologi-
cal, geophysical or any other scientific or technological means of influencing the
environment, including weather and climate, for military and other purposes
incompatible with the maintenance of international security, human well-being
and health, and, furthermore, never under any circumstances to resort to such
means of influencing the environment and climate or to carry out preparation for
their use.” 59
The UN General Assembly, taking note of the Soviet draft convention,
decided that the subject deserved further attention and, with the United States
abstaining, voted to turn it over to the Conference of the Committee on Disar-
mament. To avoid further embarrassment, the administration of President Ger-
ald R. Ford (Nixon had resigned) insisted that the qualifiers “widespread, long-
lasting and severe” be put back into the convention. The final treaty, Convention
on the Prohibition of Military or Any other Hostile Use of Environmental Mod-
ification Techniques, was a watered-down instrument that applied only to envi-
ronmental effects that encompass an area on the scale of several hundred square
miles, last for a period of months (or approximately a season), and involve serious
or significant disruption or harm to human life, natural and economic resources,
or other assets. Such language implicitly legitimized the use of cloud seeding in
warfare, the diversion of a hurricane, and other, smaller-scale techniques. The
convention, however, does not prohibit “the use of environmental modification
60
techniques for peaceful purposes.” It was designed to be of unlimited duration
and contains provisions for periodic meetings of the parties to assess its effective-
ness and for emergency meetings to respond to perceived violations.
ENMoD was opened for signature in Geneva on May 18, 1977. It was signed
initially by thirty-four states, including the United States and the Soviet Union,
but did not enter into force until october 5, 1978—ironically, when the Lao
People’s Democratic Republic, where the American military had tested Proj-
ect Popeye and had used weather modification technology in war only six years
earlier, became the twentieth nation to ratify it. After a delay of more than
a year, the convention entered into force for the United States on January 17,
1980, when the U.S. instrument of ratification was deposited with the United
Nations Secretariat. 61
When the wording of ENMoD was being negotiated, environmentalists
were disappointed with the process and urged the United States not to ratify the
treaty. They saw many flaws in the document, including its vague wording, its
unenforceable nature, its overly high threshold for violations, and the fact that it

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