More river pollution from untreated urban waste due to the Russian-Ukrainian war: a perspective view

ABSTRACT

Since 24 February 2022, the Russian-Ukrainian war has impacted Ukrainian water resources including river pollution. In this perspective paper, our proposition is that the Russian-Ukrainian war causes likely more river pollution with untreated urban waste compared to the pre-war period. In order to check this assumption, we synthesize the current knowledge with a focus on the Dnipro Basin, containing 80% of the national water resources. Our synthesis reveals three main arguments. First, water-related infrastructures that were damaged as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war are the important causes of pollutant release to water systems. These infrastructure damages are estimated, on average, for rural (30% of irrigation systems) and urban (35–40% of treatment plants and sewage connections) areas or both (40–90% of bridges and dams). Second, water pollution sources tend to change towards direct inputs of untreated urban waste with multiple pollutants compared to the pre-war period. Third, our illustrative example for nutrients, a painkiller, an antibacterial agent, and microplastics from urban waste showed an increase of 2–34% in their loadings into the Dnipro River due to damaged sewage pipes and wastewater treatment plants in 2022. In addition, 20–62% of those pollutants are from untreated urban waste (point sources). We propose a framework for future steps including visualizing (V) and integrating (I) the impacts into tools for quantification as well as translating (T) those quantified insights into actionable strategies and assessing (A) their feasibilities for pollution reduction.

Highlights

• The Russian-Ukrainian war damaged 30–90% of water infrastructures in the Dnipro Basin

• River pollution sources tend to change towards untreated urban waste compared to the pre-war period

• River pollution is estimated to increase by 2–34% in the Dnipro Basin due to damaged sewage and treatment

• Untreated urban waste is responsible for 20–62% of pollutants in rivers of the Dnipro Basin

• The VITA framework is proposed for actionable pollution reduction strategies

KEYWORDS:

• Russian-Ukrainian war
• water pollution
• Dnipro basin
• water infrastructures
• urban pollution
• rural pollution

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support of the CLIMAAGRI4Ukraine project between Wageningen University & Research and Ukraine, and the WIMEK (Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research) scholarship during the revision phase. This perspective paper was also supported by the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1943815X.2023.2281920