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Dear
friends!
Russia’s
war in Ukraine has now moved into a phase of
positional warfare, in which holding back enemy
offensives and building fortifications is
becoming a central strategy. Few, however, are
writing about the effect that trenches and
dugouts have on the environment. Their
construction requires the use of high-quality
wood, and fortifications also have a negative
impact on the soil cover, which is destroyed
both by engineering work and by constant
shelling. In creating lines of defense, armies
also create problems for the animal world. In
the opening article of this issue,
Oleksiy Vasyliuk, a UWEC Work
Group expert and head of the Ukrainian Nature
Conservation Group, analyzes the main problems
for the environment caused by the active
construction of fortifications. Problems that,
as the experience of World War I, infamous for
becoming bogged down in positional battles,
shows, may plague Ukraine for years to
come:
The war
has affected protected areas across Ukraine
either directly or indirectly. Some of them,
including the famous Askania-Nova
Biosphere Reserve, are under
occupation. Others have suffered significant
damage during the fighting, with administrative
buildings destroyed and injuries to staff. The
war has also had an impact on reserves some
distance away from the frontlines. On one hand,
reserves have seen cuts to funding. On the
other, restrictions have been placed on visits
to conservation areas located in Ukraine’s
western or northern border zones or in the
immediate vicinity of military training areas.
For a report on how Ukraine’s reserves and
national parks are coping with the war, read the
article by UWEC journalist Viktoriya
Hubareva, who visited a number of
reserves and national parks, interviewed their
management and saw how these conservation areas
operate in wartime with her own
eyes:
The
territories of Ukraine’s nature reserve
fund (NRF), including zoos and
botanical gardens, can only survive in such
conditions with the support of foundations and
civil society volunteers. Since the beginning of
the full-scale invasion, the NRF has received
both financial and volunteer support, which has
made it possible to preserve unique collections
and continue the work of reserves, even in the
occupied territories. Find out more in this
article by Oleksiy
Vasyliuk:
Our work
group is continuing to study aspects of
Ukraine’s recovery and involve civil society in
these processes. The future of not only the
country, but also the entire region depends on
how environmentally friendly and sustainable
this process is. One particularly thorny
question today is whether the Kakhovka
reservoir and the entire infrastructure
of the lower Dnieper will be rebuilt, and if so,
how. The UWEC Work Group, like other
environmentalists, is completely opposed to the
reconstruction of the Kakhovska HPP in its
former, Soviet dimensions. This work involves
detailed expert analysis, which we are doing and
publishing in our articles. You can read about
the role of international banks and the
importance of including civil society in the
recovery processes in this article by our
experts Eugene Simonov and
Oleksiy
Vasyliuk:
Work on
analyzing environmental consequences and
supporting projects for Ukraine’s green recovery
is currently ongoing in many areas. It is not
possible for us to cover all of these in
individual texts. So as not to miss out on
important and most interesting projects we have
decided to publish a monthly digest, in which we
will cover such initiatives and studies. We have
already prepared the first edition, and you can
read it in this issue:
In
addition, on February 1 we held our latest
webinar as part of the series we are running in
collaboration with
Reporters
Without Borders and the
Svea Green
Foundation. You can watch the video,
as well as recordings of previous webinars, on
our
YouTube
channel.
We will
continue to monitor the environmental
consequences of the invasion on our website, as
well as on Twitter, Facebook
and Telegram.
We wish
you strength and peace!
Alexej
Ovchinnikov, editor of UWEC Work
Group |
