War is a humanitarian disaster, but the consequences of armed conflict on biodiversity are innumerable and sometimes irreversible. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago is no exception.
Explosions, fires, pollution… Ukraine is a battlefield, and agricultural fields are riddled with countless craters caused by the impact of bombs. War is a human, economic and ecological disaster. More than 20,000 shells are said to be fired every day in Ukraine. Bombs filled with toxic products that pollute the air, land and water.
« With the bombardments, all the relief will be upset and toxic elements can be buried “, describes Guillaume Decocq, professor of ecological sciences at the University of Picardy, who worked on the battlefields of the First World War. ” The bombs, even after the conflict is over, are going to release compounds – so it’s soil pollution and if you restore the land after the war and you grow food, food plants, a lot of these elements may to be found in cultures, and therefore in human food in fine. »
But there is worse. These poisoned lands risk contaminating the most vital of raw materials: water. “ Everything that ends up in the ground can release compounds that will be carried away with the rainwater in depth, until it reaches the water table. “, continues Guillaume Decocq, CNRS research director in ecology.
The poison of war
When peace comes, a more devious war goes on against nature. The shells planted in the ground degrade over time, releasing mercury or arsenic… In France, a century after the First World War, pollution is even getting worse. The battlefields are riddled with time bombs. “The consequences of war are both immediate and very long term. It’s a little bit the problem of conflict zones: we take it for a long time, for a very long time sums up Guillaume Decocq. Ukraine, invaded by Russia on February 24, 2022, will not escape this scenario.
Ukraine represents 6% of European territory, but 35% of the continent’s fauna and flora and numerous nature reserves and wetlands with an international reputation. Endemic species could disappear. “There are rare, endemic plants and animals that are only found in a very small area, where there is fighting. We are not sure that these species will survive until the end of the war”believes Oleksii Vasyliuk, head of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, which has identified two animal species (an ant and a hamster) and 21 plant species listed in the Red Book of Threatened Species in Ukraine now in mortal danger.
Migratory birds and dolphins
Ukraine is also on the most important migratory route for birds in Central Europe.« A large number of birds migrate to Africa or spend the winter in the Kherson region, but they cannot eat or stay there when there is fighting. Their population may decline because they cannot overwinter and migrate as they have for thousands of years. »
A year of war in Ukraine has already caused $35 billion in environmental damage, according to the Ukrainian government. Last November, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of ” ecocide », after the cry of alarm of a Ukrainian scientist for the dolphins of the Black Sea. Several dozen dolphin corpses have been found along the coast. Marine mammals may have been disoriented by the powerful sonars that equip warships and submarines. The figure of 50,000 dolphins killed has been put forward, an extrapolation that ecologist Oleksii Vasyliuk finds very exaggerated, and impossible to verify or refine “ because it is impossible to conduct research at sea or even on the shore. The coast is either mined or occupied. »
Nature, victim of war, is also a weapon of war. Immediately after the invasion, the Ukrainian authorities dynamited a dam on the Irpin river, in the suburbs of kyiv. The area was flooded, the Russian army had to retreat. Kyiv was saved. Even today, the inhabitants have their feet in the water, and a wetland could remain, rich in biodiversity. But for the rest, the war economy ignores the protection of nature and environmental standards. ” Where even yesterday there were steppes and preserved meadows, agriculture is practiced there and raw materials are exploited for reconstruction: cutting wood, quarries, etc. constate Oleksii Vasyliuk. Unfortunately, war damages nature, where there is fighting, but also in the territories that are spared. »