Genesis of Ukraine conflict-22: Environmental Dimensions

 Russia’s horrific, terrifying invasion of Ukraine has focused attention on Russia’s role as one of the world’s top three suppliers of fossil fuels. The United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia are among the top nations in the greenhouse gas sales business.

As our economy has become more and more dependent on energy as a necessity of daily life, the need for a reliable and affordable source of energy has become ever more obvious. For all the problems with fossil fuels, they remain our main source of energy. Although the fossil fuel industry would like us to increase our dependence on their product, it is clearly not in our interest to do so.

The profound linkages between conflict and the environment, the vital importance of a healthy environment to post-conflict peace and stability, and accordingly, the fundamental importance of addressing the environmental dimensions of war, is now widely causing concern.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has immediate consequences for human rights and human lives. These impacts will be magnified by the war’s potentially catastrophic environmental impacts, which themselves pose both immediate and long-term threats to human rights, health, welfare, and livelihoods.  

More than 1,000 people and  156 organizations from 75 countries issued an open letter through the Environmental Peacebuilding Association   Association in the first week of March 2022,  to express their solidarity with Ukraine as it faces attacks from Russia — and their concern over the environmental and humanitarian toll of the war.

The letter states that attacks on civilian and military sites are causing air, ground, and water pollution, especially in such a heavily industrialized country, and that the war threatens the food security of people in Ukraine and other countries that rely on its wheat and corn exports.

“Every conflict has a unique environmental narrative,” Doug Weir, the director of research and policy at the Conflict and Environmental Observatory, an organization aimed at increasing awareness of the environmental impact of military activities, told Insider. “For Ukraine, it revolves around the number of technological hazards posed by its large industrial and energy sectors and the increasing intensity of Russia’s military actions.”

They recalled that the intentional takeover and occupation of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster site creates profound and potentially long-term risks to the people of Ukraine and to nations throughout Europe.

Already, Russian military operations at the Chornobyl site have mobilized radioactive dust and increased detectable radiation, raising serious concerns that Russian troops and equipment may spread radioactive material into new areas. More troublingly, the Russian seizure of a nuclear containment facility that has no military objective should be a matter of profound concern to all nations. 

Nor is Chornobyl the only nuclear site at risk. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported missile strikes near two separate radioactive waste disposal facilities. Military operations in a country with fifteen active nuclear reactors pose unprecedented risks, which could jeopardize the environment and public health of Ukraine and large swaths of Europe for generations. 

The environmental risks of the invasion to the Ukrainian people extend well beyond the potential for intentional or inadvertent nuclear disaster. Russia’s military operations in a heavily industrialized, densely populated nation containing numerous refineries, chemical plants, and metallurgical facilities further compounds the threat of these hostilities for Ukraine’s people and their environment, both now and for years to come.

Attacks on civilian and military sites have caused major fires in fuel storage areas threatening serious air, ground, and water pollution, while a gas pipeline was ruptured during fighting in Kharkiv. We are also concerned that contamination from Russian depleted uranium munitions will add to the toxic legacy of the invasion.

Widespread attacks on civilian infrastructure, including targeting of water infrastructure without a definite military advantage, are clear violations of international law. Moreover, fighting near hydroelectric dams risks catastrophe.  

Fighting in the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve–the largest protected area in Ukraine and a listed Ramsar wetland–has generated fires that can be seen from space. The war also threatens the food security of millions in Ukraine and many other countries that rely on its wheat and corn.

While we may not know the full environmental impacts of this war for some time, history shows that the effects will be far-reaching and long-lasting. Thus, there is a need for rapid environmental assessment, long-term monitoring, and accountability.

Finally and fundamentally, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the economic weaponization of Russia’s oil and gas resources against those nations who would come to Ukraine’s aid is a stark reminder of the recurring intersections between fossil fuel resources and violent conflict.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its latest stark warnings about humanity’s dwindling window of opportunity to avert truly catastrophic and irreversible climate chaos, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a grim reminder of the vital importance and urgent necessity of ending the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

The Open Letter also expressed solidarity with people and nations around the world, including countless Russian citizens, who have called on Russia to immediately end this illegal war and withdraw its troops from Ukraine.  It further calls on:

• Russia to end immediately the targeting of and fighting near nuclear and chemical installations that pose extraordinary risks of long-term, widespread, or severe damage to human health and the environment, both within and beyond Ukraine.
• Russia to urgently clarify whether its forces have fired or deployed depleted uranium munitions in Ukraine.
• The international community to recognize and protect environmental defenders in Ukraine. 
• The international community to mobilize the financial means and technical expertise for remote rapid environmental assessment of the conflict, support local efforts to identify and monitor conflict-linked environmental damage, and build capacity for clean-up. 
• Relevant authorities–including the International Criminal Court, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Environment Programme–to monitor and investigate potential violations of international law protecting human rights and the environment during armed conflict.

The longstanding Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the eastern portion of Ukraine has already had significant environmental consequences, which a full-scale Russian invasion could further exacerbate.The eight-year conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which has killed 14,000 people, has shown how war can compound environmental problems.

This area, part of the Donbas—short for Donetsky Bassein or “Donets coal basin”—is one of the world’s largest coal mining regions, containing 900 active and inactive mines, as Kristina Hook and Richard Marcantonio reported for the Bulletin in 2018. These mines are on average over 2,300 feet deep and need to be regularly pumped to prevent groundwater from flooding them.

Before the conflict began, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources identified 4,240 sites as potentially hazardous, due to methane leaks, hydro-dynamics, biohazards, and radiation. Before the war started, the ministry monitored these sites to manage environmental and health risks.

In 2018, Ukraine’s minister of ecology, Ostap Semerak, warned of a potential “second Chernobyl” if Russian-backed separatists intentionally flooded the abandoned YunKom coal mine, where underground nuclear tests in 1979 created a cavernous glass-lined chamber almost 3,000 feet underground called the Object Klivazh.

But in April of that year the separatists did just that, turning off the pumps, causing low-level radioactive waste to be carried out with the floodwaters.

Environmental management of industrial sites has also been limited during the conflict. In the port city of Mariupol, residents endure the constant belching of soot and smoke from two steel plants as well as shelling and rocket fire from neighboring Russia.

Then there is the possibility that Russia could—intentionally or not—strike one of Ukraine’s 15 nuclear power reactors, writes Bennett Ramberg, a former foreign affairs officer in the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and the author of Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy.

Located at four different sites around the country, these reactors supply approximately half of the country’s energy needs, and attacking them would significantly hamstring a military response by Ukraine—but not without turning the reactors into radioactive mines.