Editor’s Note
In recent years, the escalation of geopolitical tensions and military conflicts extending far beyond immediate human and economic devastation, has inflicted profound and frequently overlooked damages upon environmental foundations and natural capital. The inextricable nexus binding national security, economic resilience, and ecosystem sustainability demands that traditional crisis management paradigms give way to multidimensional analyses and innovative policy frameworks.
Acknowledging this strategic imperative, the Journal of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics has dedicated its inaugural special issue to The Environmental and Economic Impacts of War and Regional Tensions. In this volume (Vol. 5, No. 14, Winter 2026), through concise analytical papers and policy briefs, we endeavor to critically examine the multifaceted dimensions of ecological and economic crises from diverse scholarly perspectives.
The collection of articles featured in this issue addresses a broad spectrum of critical concerns: exploring the impact of geopolitical shocks on the nexus of trade freedom, energy consumption, and poverty, alongside analyzing macro-level environmental economics in post-war eras. Furthermore, a substantial portion of the contributions offers operational frameworks for crisis mitigationsuch as assessing hidden ecological debts and proposing green rehabilitation models for watersheds, designing policy mechanisms for renewable energy transition and grid resilience during shortages, employing circular economy principles and industrial symbiosis to manage cross-border crises like dust storms, and utilizing modern construction technologies integrated with water and energy recycling systems for sustainable green housing reconstruction.
The collective findings of these studies indicate that the environmental fallout of conflict is multi-layered, continuous, and latent, manifesting primarily through hidden ecological debts, natural capital erosion, and institutional fragmentation. The analyses demonstrate that geopolitical shocksby disrupting trade and exacerbating povertycompel local communities toward the overexploitation of base resources while impeding transitions toward clean technologies; meanwhile, conventional, purely physical post-war reconstruction efforts merely compound systemic vulnerability. Consequently, the core policy takeaway of this special issue is the imperative shift from traditional supply-driven frameworks to green reconstruction models, enhancing resilience through energy decentralization, embedding circular economy principles, and fostering cooperative environmental diplomacy. Ultimately, enduring national resilience and sustainable peace in the post-crisis era can only be achieved by internalizing ecological costs and integrating environmental indicators at the very core of developmental planning.
Undoubtedly, the policy recommendations and insights derived from these studies can not only serve as a constructive guide for internalizing environmental costs within macroeconomic decision-making processes, but also pave the path of transition from traditional approaches toward resilient and sustainable paradigms. We extend our sincere gratitude to all authors, esteemed reviewers, and members of the editorial board whose scholarly engagement ensured the academic excellence of this issue.