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Someone living around minefields answers in the BBC story: "Falkland Islanders weren't enthused by the idea, to put it bluntly," says Barry Elsby, a member of

Someone living around minefields answers in the BBC story: "Falkland Islanders weren't enthused by the idea, to put it bluntly," says Barry Elsby, a member of the Falklands Legislative Assembly. "We would rather have left the minefields as they were. They are all clearly marked, clearly fenced. No civilian has ever been injured. We said to the British government, 'Don't spend the money here, go to some other country where they have a much greater need to free up farming land.'" "Unfortunately," Elsby adds, "the British government have signed up to the Ottawa convention, which puts a duty on them to do this." It looks a somewhat similar nature reserve to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which also acts as a superb nature reserve (also a BBC story): http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-is-arguably-a-nature-reserve http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclus...

duncan_bayne 9y ago
Wow. I'm genuinely surprised to find _anyone_ okay with living near minefields. My opinions are probably coloured by growing up with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees as childhood friends. Their families had strong, and uniformly negative, opinions about landmines. Sounds like the circumstances were very different.
- ptaipale 9y ago
  Obviously. The main difference in circumstances is indiscriminate use near farming lands and dwellings. Landmines can be used properly or improperly. If you lay them properly, map them, and clear them when not needed, they're not any more risky than the typical remains of war (unexploded bombs and shells); less so in fact (considering Molotov breadbaskets scattered by artillery or air). The Ottawa convention will be observed by those parties who anyway would have used mines responsibly (and thereby would have had a cheap, domestic defensive weapon, instead of paying big bucks to high-tech munition makers). And those parties who we can expect to behave irresponsibly didn't join the convention in the first place.

duncan_bayne 9y ago

Wow. I'm genuinely surprised to find _anyone_ okay with living near minefields. My opinions are probably coloured by growing up with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees as childhood friends. Their families had strong, and uniformly negative, opinions about landmines. Sounds like the circumstances were very different.

ptaipale 9y ago
Obviously. The main difference in circumstances is indiscriminate use near farming lands and dwellings. Landmines can be used properly or improperly. If you lay them properly, map them, and clear them when not needed, they're not any more risky than the typical remains of war (unexploded bombs and shells); less so in fact (considering Molotov breadbaskets scattered by artillery or air). The Ottawa convention will be observed by those parties who anyway would have used mines responsibly (and thereby would have had a cheap, domestic defensive weapon, instead of paying big bucks to high-tech munition makers). And those parties who we can expect to behave irresponsibly didn't join the convention in the first place.