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Dear
friends!
We
send you our warmest wishes for the New Year. We
hope that in 2025 you will be surrounded by the
support of friends, family and community, and
that your ideas will develop and come to
fruition. May you be accompanied by inspiration,
success and joy!
We
naturally hope that this year Russia’s war in
Ukraine will come to an end. Even if it does,
this will not mean that our work will be done.
The manner in which the country is rebuilt will
determine not only Ukraine’s future, but that of
the entire region. Today, when
environmental movements all over the world are
coming under pressure, it is important that
islands of ‘green development’ appear
everywhere. And Ukraine has the
potential to become one of these centers.
However, a lot of work needs to be done in order
to achieve this.
One
of the main problems that will face Ukraine
after the end of the war is, of course,
landmines. There is no historical precedent for
mining on such a vast scale in a European
country. Almost 30% of the country is
mined –
a statistic which puts Ukraine ahead of even
countries such as Afghanistan and Syria, where
wars lasted for decades. Oleksiy
Vasyliuk, head of the Ukrainian Nature
Conservation Group and UWEC Work Group expert,
explains what methods can be used to solve the
problem, where demining operations can begin and
which areas to leave for the preservation and
development of nature:
Agricultural
areas suffer most from mining. As of January
2024, Ukraine has lost almost 20% of its
cultivated land since the war began. Many of
these areas are either under occupation,
contaminated by military action, or both.
Restoring agricultural land after the war is an
important process that will allow the country
not only to recover economically, but also to
improve the ecological situation by cleaning the
soil. Ukrainian scientist Oksana
Datsko’s article, written especially
for UWEC Work Group, looks at what methods have
already been tested and can be
used:
Renewable
energy, which is also one of the drivers of
Ukraine’s “green recovery,” has suffered from
military activity as a result of Russian
aggression. The issue of energy independence is
acute today for a country which has been the
victim of a particular kind of hybrid warfare:
hydrocarbon blackmail. As of January 1, 2025,
Ukraine no longer allows Russian gas to transit
its territory. But how does Kyiv plan to solve
the energy issue in the future? What role can
renewable energy sources play, especially given
that the war years have significantly restricted
the generation of green power? Read more in the
article by our regular contributor
Viktoria
Hubareva:
Nuclear
energy is considered by many to be an
alternative to renewable energy sources.
However, the war has shown that this is an
inherently risky direction, since it is
vulnerable to use as an element of blackmail in
the event of a conflict. For almost three years,
Ukraine and Russia have been balancing on the
brink of a nuclear catastrophe, and shelling
continues to take place in the immediate
vicinity of nuclear power plants. For this
reason, Ukrainian environmental initiatives such
as Razom We Stand are calling to prioritize the
development of energy-efficient projects, rather
than the creation of energy hubs around nuclear
power plants or hydroelectric power plants. Read
about this and other environmental consequences
of the war in Ukraine in our regular
review:
Unfortunately,
the consequences of the war for zoos and animal
shelters, whose inmates have suffered greatly
during the war, are rarely discussed. One of
UWEC Work Group’s Ukrainian editors,
Yuliia Spinova, has written a
special feature on this issue, beginning with a
look at how various zoos were forced to rescue
animals that suffered from military actions
during World War II. Unfortunately, Ukraine is
now experiencing this challenge in the 21st
century, with many of the country’s zoos having
become shelters for injured animals, while other
zoo animals have had to be evacuated to zoos
abroad.
You
can find more coverage of the environmental
consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of
Ukraine on our website, on
Twitter
(X), Bluesky, Facebook and
Telegram.
We
wish you strength and peace!
Alexei
Ovchinnikov, editor of UWEC Work
Group
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