|
Dear
friends!
“The war
is slowing down… All processes are becoming more
complicated and slower,” Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky
recently said. But this
does not mean that the danger for people and
nature has grown any less. In fact, the
likelihood of a disaster is as high as ever, and
has not receded since the destruction of
the dam at the
Kakhovka hydropower plant. For
example, the IAEA is currently
reporting on an increase in
military activity near the Zaporizhzhia
nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, the
war goes on, and it is as important as ever to
understand what is happening, to speak about it,
and to find solutions and ways out which will
allow us to restore both the cities and nature
that have suffered from the conflict.
The
restoration of Ukraine was the main subject of
discussion at the URC23 conference which took
place in London in June. While the conference
can hardly be labeled “shameful” – as was the case with last year’s
meeting in Lugano – no ambitious solutions were
presented during the event. Ukrainian
environmental journalist Viktoria
Hubareva has prepared an exclusive
overview for UWEC Work Group of what happened in
London at the end of June.
In order
to develop a recovery plan for Ukraine, it is
also necessary to understand the consequences of
the full-scale invasion. As we have already
noted on several occasions, many consequences
are of a transnational character. The war is now
increasingly spreading beyond the borders of
Ukraine and Russia. Military drones have twice
been recorded falling onto Romanian
soil
in recent days, and the serious impact of
military activity on transborder territories
such as the Black Sea are clear. You can read
about the negative effects of the full-scale
invasion on the waters of one of the region’s
most important seas in the article by Sofya
Sadohurska, an expert from the Ukrainian
environmental organization
Ecodia.
Another
example of cross-border influence is the
militarization of borders. This is felt
especially strongly in Poland, Lithuania and
Latvia. These countries are not only Ukraine’s
most active supporters, but have a more
comprehensive view of the war. Following
the migrant crisis
on the border with Belarus in 2021, they took
the decision to build and strengthen fences
along their frontiers. Ukraine is also
reinforcing its border with Belarus. A barrier
like this is seen as one of the ways of
demilitarizing the border with Russia after the
end of the war. However, these decisions, driven
by security policies, have an extremely negative
impact on the environment. Read about the impact
of fences and enclosures on wild animal
populations in Vadim Kirilyuk’s
article:
As we have
previously reported, the war also has
consequences in regions far from the combat
zone, where nature is also suffering as a result
of the invasion. The imposition of sanctions and
the refusal to finance the war through the
purchase of carbon-based fuels in Russia has
seen the aggressor begin to seek other sales
markets. The most prospective of these is China,
to which Moscow now plans to redirect its gas
supplies. This, however, will require the
building of new infrastructure, which will
potentially pass through the unique natural
landscapes of Altai or Tunka. Unfortunately,
today there is almost nobody left to protect
them, and stopping the construction of a
pipeline, like several years ago, will be
impossible – largely thanks to the designation
of NGOs such as the Altai Project
as “undesirable.” You can read about
the possible consequences and how Altai may
suffer from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in our
article:
You can
also learn about the increasingly intense
persecution of environmental activists in Russia
and Belarus since the beginning of the
full-scale invasion by watching recordings from
our webinar, organized in collaboration
with RSF
Sweden
and Svea Green
Foundation.
The
destruction of nature as a result of Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine is increasingly frequently
being described as ecocide. But while this term
has a long history – discussions of what
constitutes ecocide have been ongoing since the
1970s – it remains not only unrecognized in
international practice, but there is no
established definition at national level. What
do we understand by ecocide? To what degree are
Ukraine and Russia willing to integrate ecocide
into their legal system? Which other countries
recognize ecocide? How is data on ecocide being
gathered in Ukraine? We have tried to answer
these and other questions in our introductory
article on the subject:
We
continue to follow the environmental
consequences of the invasion on our website,
on Twitter (X)
and on Facebook.
We wish
you strength and peace!
Alexej
Ovchinnikov, editor, UWEC Work
Group | 
