The Environmental Impact of Italy’s Chemical Weapons Use in the 1935–1936 Italo-Ethiopian War: A Case Study of Tigray’s Scarce Water Bodies

Abstract

The 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia marked a deliberate escalation in environmental warfare, with chemical weapons systematically deployed to poison Tigray’s water ecosystems. Focusing on the Tekeze River and Lake Hašenge, this study examines how mustard gas, phosgene, and other toxins transformed these vital water sources into instruments of mass ecological disruption. While historiography has detailed Italy’s violations of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the long-term contamination of aquatic systems remains underexplored. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, military records of soldiers participated in the war, United States Chargé in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) telegram reports, League of Nations reports, and eyewitness based accounts and literatures—journal articles and books this article argues that Italy’s chemical attacks—particularly the 1935–1936 assaults on the Tekeze River and Lake Hašenge—were designed to render Tigray’s waterways unusable and uninhabitable, causing cascading fatalities among humans, livestock, and wildlife, including outbreak of disease as a result. It adds that warfare, such as the Second Italo-Ethiopian contributes to the environmental degradation in Tigray.  The long-term contamination of aquatic systems underscores the deliberate militarization of ecosystems, a facet underexplored in existing historiography.