The Environmental Impact of the Ukraine Invasion

It has been almost three months since Russia invaded Ukraine. During that period Russia has been accused of committing genocide, bombing school children, and has threatened nuclear war. Close to 50 000 people have been killed in the conflict so far, and roughly a third of the Ukrainian population has been displaced. Yet there is another, more silent, victim of this war: the Ukrainian environment. Of course, at the moment the atrocities against Ukraine’s people should take centre-stage (it is however quite worrying how quickly they are disappearing from the world’s headlines), but we cannot ignore that the environment is part of this conflict. The effects on the environment are not isolated, ephemeral, or negligible and must be considered.

Luckily, there are numerous organisations and articles that are covering the effects of the war on the environment, which is relieving to see (I’ve attached some of them at the bottom of the post). If you haven’t been reading about it, I’ll give you a quick summary. Bombings of Ukraine have destroyed toxic chemical plants and industrial sites which have infected people and the soil and caused severe pollution in some areas, a third of Ukraine’s conservation areas have been sites of conflict, battles took place in and around Chernobyl nuclear site between February and March and Ukraine’s wildlife is suffering greatly. These effects are also not temporary. Food insecurity leads to greater reliance on wild game and more unsustainable farming practices. Bombing can make fertile lands unrecoverable - there are still farmlands in France that have not been worked since World War 1, and Ukraine’s exclusion zone, where it has been working on improving the population of its endangered species for at least the past two decades, is being destroyed as we speak. And I haven’t nearly mentioned everything. But with so many other articles covering these effects, I would like my article to discuss something a bit more unique – what all this means for the climate change fight.

Some renewable energy advocates might be feeling guiltily vindicated right about now. For decades they have been warning of the obvious dangers of severe reliance on other nations for the supply of oil and coal. Theoretically, it should be incredibly appealing to politicians to say they are no longer reliant on Russian, Venezuelan or Saudi oil to keep the lights on and markets purring. It makes sense; a conflict like this where worries about oil supply have driven up gas prices worldwide, fuelled growing inflation and put the brakes on markets, should be the perfect example of why home-generated renewable energy is better and safer. It should be infuriatingly obvious but, counterintuitively, I don’t think it is.

A volatile oil environment is not necessarily good for renewables. Read that again. This is not the first time the world has faced oil shocks, there have been many, some more severe than this one. If it were the case that oil volatility ushered in change to renewables, we’d currently be brimming with renewable energy, wouldn’t we?

Yes, I know that is a large oversimplification of the progress of renewable energy technology and its appeal in world markets, but I think there would’ve been a greater desire shown than was the case. Furthermore, this is not economics 101, where consumers can instantaneously switch between two goods when their price rises. Energy infrastructure takes years, even decades to plan and build while oil shocks like these usually only last a few months or years. Governments do not usually make permanent energy decisions based on temporary market shocks. Lastly, I’m not even sure a volatile oil price’s direct effects would be good for renewables, either. This is part of a much larger argument about the pace required to wane off from dirty fossil fuels that I’ll probably get into some other time. But just for now, some context.

Solar panels require polysilicon to be manufactured, which is made from coal. Wind turbines require carbon fibre to be able to have long enough blades, which need oil and gas. The truth is, surprisingly, current renewable energies are not 100% renewable. This makes the manufacturing of renewables (possibly the most crucial stage at this point) reliant on fossil fuels. And if fossil fuels become unreliable like they are now, so does the manufacturing of renewables.

I know these arguments are not fool proof, but they are nevertheless food for thought that the climate change transition is not as simple as one thinks. It is filled with holes and paradoxes and will require great thought at each granular level if it is going to be successful. All I hope is that this conflict makes the world think a bit more about the future of renewable energy and its reliance on fossil fuels.

Lastly, I also want to chat a little about lasting environmental views from Ukraine. I don’t think things like this will stop happening until the world’s leaders start valuing our world enough to have it consciously in mind when making decisions. At the risk of sounding like those blue people from Avatar, humans and the environment are inextricably connected. When we damage the environment, the environment damages us back. When we do not take the environment into account when we make our decisions, the environment will force itself into that conversation, if not now, then later. Someone downstream always has to drink from the water you poison. In some sense, this blog post is a bit premature, as I think most of the environmental damage in Ukraine will only come to light when the conflict has ceased. It will be damages no one thought of (or probably some did and no one listened), ones that will affect people for decades and damage the livelihoods of generations who never even lived during the conflict. That’s the saddest part, I think, that bad decisions by bad humans don’t affect them as much as it does those in the future, and that’s why they do it. I just hope that next time you read the news about the invasion, just spare a single thought for the environment. Thoughts add up, and if enough people think about something seriously, I think you’ll be amazed by what happens.

Thanks for reading.

Fact of The Day

While around 14 million people have been displaced in Ukraine, the UNHCR estimates around 20 million people are displaced due to climate change annually.

Selected Further Readings

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/science/war-environmental-impact-ukraine.html

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ukraine-ground-zero-for-environmental-impacts-war

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/environmental-impact-of-war-in-ukraine/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-war-in-ukraine-could-have-environmental-impact-that-lasts-decades-11650801603

References

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/to-be-clean-and-green-and-hit-net-zero-we-first-need-to-get-dirty-ffkzp9d06

https://www.unhcr.org/climate-change-and-disasters.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/science/war-environmental-impact-ukraine.html

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ukraine-ground-zero-for-environmental-impacts-war

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/environmental-impact-of-war-in-ukraine/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-10/europe-drafts-205-billion-plan-to-wean-itself-off-russian-fuels

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-war-in-ukraine-could-have-environmental-impact-that-lasts-decades-11650801603

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ukraine-nuclear-war-environment/