The war is degrading Ukraine’s capacity to cope with climate change.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia is the biggest and bloodiest land war in Europe since the Second World War. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), by 16 July 2023 9,287 Ukrainian civilians had been killed in the invasion and another 16,384 civilians reported injured. However, OHCHR admits that the real numbers for civilian casualties are almost certainly higher. This is before counting the tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers killed and injured in the war, a toll that the US intelligence services estimated in April 2023 at 15,500–17,500 killed and 124,500–131,000 wounded.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has also led to the highest number of refugees in Europe since the late 1940s. The UN has registered over 6.2 million Ukrainian refugees across the world, while a further 5.9 million people are displaced within Ukraine (down from 6 million at the end of 2022). Women and children comprise 90 per cent of refugees and 60 per cent of the internally displaced.
In addition to the human impact, the war has devastated Ukraine’s economy. Ukraine’s GDP shrank by 30.3 per cent in 2022, while inflation hit 26.6 per cent in real terms. This situation is leading to perhaps one of the fastest descents into poverty experienced in modern times: the number of people living in poverty increased almost five-fold, from 5.5 per cent to 24.5 per cent of the population, between 2021 and the end of 2022, with an extra 7.1 million Ukrainians falling below the global poverty line.
Ukraine’s GDP shrank by 30.3 per cent in 2022, while inflation in the country hit 26.6 per cent in real terms.
Alongside all of this, the war is having a ruinous impact on Ukraine’s environment and undermining the country’s ability to tackle the effects of climate change. Russia’s missiles, drones and artillery shells have damaged water infrastructure, destroyed energy installations and flattened entire cities. Shelling, unexploded ordnance and landmines have rendered large areas of agricultural land unusable. Fighting and military activity in Ukraine’s forests and greenbelts have damaged water catchments and forests. This damage, along with the rising occurrence and severity of droughts, will increase the risk of large wildfires. It is estimated that the area of forest burned in wildfires was 25 times larger in 2022 than in 2021.
Ukraine was vulnerable to the impacts of climate change even before the destruction wrought by the 2022 invasion. It was struggling with the legacy of economic and environmental damage from the 2014 conflict, as well as poverty, high unemployment and crumbling infrastructure.
Climate change models predict that Ukraine will face rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, more frequent floods, changes in the onset of seasons and rising sea levels along its Black Sea coast. Water security is a particular concern, given that Ukraine is one of the least water self-sufficient countries in Europe. Moderate- and high-emission scenarios foresee the scorching of agricultural land, accompanied by decreases in wheat yields – affecting one of Ukraine’s most important exports. At the same time, the overall decrease in river flows is likely to aggravate pollution and worsen water quality, while rising temperatures will cause wetlands and lakes in the Polissya area and in northern Ukraine to dry up, which could lead to more frequent fires and deteriorating air quality.
Even if the war were to end tomorrow, it has already significantly undermined Ukraine’s ability to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Ukraine’s scope to focus on anything other than day-to-day survival is limited. Many of the experts and professionals who would have otherwise been engaged in addressing the impacts of climate change have either joined the war effort or fled the country. And the war has drained the national finances, as it has the country’s human resources. The government allocated 50 per cent of its 2023 budget to the war effort; its budget deficit in 2023 is forecast to reach $38 billion. With reconstruction costs estimated at anywhere between €411 billion and €750 billion, Ukraine’s fiscal position is unlikely to improve in the near future.
