Environmental dimensions of conflict and paralyzed responses: the ongoing case of Ukraine and future implications for urban warfare

ABSTRACT

Unique within the recent history of environmental hazards, eastern Ukraine illustrates the dangers arising from conflict in an urban landscape heavily modified by human action (including coal extraction and nuclear testing) and requiring active management. To analyze these dynamics and their implications, we examine industrialization in the Donbas region and warfare-accelerated environmental risks. Using primary data and ethnographic interviewing, we compare responses by state and international institutions tasked with monitoring and environmental redress in the context of larger mandates, noting widespread shortfall. This article contributes to emergent environment and warfare related literature by exploring how actors with divergent goals coalesce in downgrading environmental concerns, despite increasing risks, motivation to assist, and widening impact across country and continental divides. Significant for the study of small wars, a lack of international political will for ‘forgotten conflicts’ increases the likelihood of shared environmental risks being treated as simply another policy item to be negotiated. However, environmental disasters routinely cross international borders and pose long-lasting, compounding harm to direct, indirect, and even uninvolved parties. Furthermore, such dynamics may increasingly characterize warfare as urbanization and industrialization continue their global spread, with active war-time environmental management ushering in profound challenges and new areas of needed expertise.

KEYWORDS:

• Ukraine
• Russia
• armed conflict
• environment
• urban warfare
• environmental security
• mining hazards
• war-related environmental damage

Introduction

In February 2014, street-driven protests and state-initiated killings known as the Euromaidan Revolution prompted sitting Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia.¹ Days later, Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was annexed by the Russian Federation utilizing three distinct forces: Russian military forces, the local Berkut riot police, and local volunteers, many of whom were later identified as linked to organized crime factions.² Against the backdrop of revolution-driven national turmoil, pronounced efforts at subterfuge occurred, including the deployment of military forces without insignia (referred to today as the ‘little green men’ or in Russian as the ‘polite people’). These actions accelerated the unfolding chaos and created conflict dynamics that persist today by fostering Russian plausible deniability and early Western speculations as to whether these military operations were in fact authorized by the Kremlin. From the beginning, environmental resources played a significant role in the conflict. On 23 August 2014 the water flowing from the Dnipro River into the Crimean water reservoir was shut off by the Ukrainian government, a waterway that had provided 85% of all water inputs.³ Despite significant water scarcity issues today, the Dnipro River remains shut off and does not provide water to the Crimean Peninsula.⁴ These human-caused water management challenges have unleashed new consequences on the environment, infrastructure, and human health. In 2018, the Crimean Titanium plant ran its water-cooling system dry, releasing toxic sulfurous anhydride into the air that killed the surrounding crops and created multiple cases of respiratory and other illnesses among the local population.⁵

A new front for this conflict opened soon after the Crimean annexation, affecting Ukraine’s two easternmost provinces collectively referred to as the Donbas region. With little evidence of conflict resolution in sight, the United Nations estimates that 14,000 lives have been lost; 30,000 wounded; and 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) created.⁶ Today, the Russian government’s control of Crimea is still contested under international law but is acknowledged by Moscow, in contrast to eastern Ukraine where the Russian government continues to deny involvement⁷ despite a documented military presence inside and on the borders of Ukraine.⁸ International attention to the Donbas conflict ebbs and flows.⁹ Certain events like the 2014 shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 by a Buk surface-to-air missile,¹⁰ the 2018 Sea of Azov crisis,¹¹ and the recent 2021 Russian military buildup along Ukraine’s border¹² receive global media coverage, but daily conflict dynamics operate below public scrutiny and seemingly outside the confines of international legal abilities to resolve hostilities.

A lack of international attention to the conflict shapes on-the-ground dynamics today and has allowed signs of an environmental crisis – the focus of this article – to build.¹³ Of the relatively small amount of focused attention on this conflict, an emphasis on geopolitical ramifications and direct kinetic violence has hindered coverage of the environmental risks and their conflict-driven impacts. More significantly, we argue that this lack of attention has prevented the effective management of these risks by the Ukrainian government institutions responsible for managing them, by the parties driving the conflict or by Western partners with financial or technical resources. In this paper, we contribute to emergent literature on war-related environmental risks by utilizing this case study to explore how a variety of actors with divergent goals nevertheless coalesce in behaviors that downgrade environmental concerns. In doing so, they participate, willingly or not, in structural processes that transform shared conflict-driven environmental risks into political pawns and gamble with long-term human health impacts. Of particular significant for the study of small wars and insurgencies, a lack of focused international attention and political will for ‘forgotten conflicts’ increase the likelihood of shared environmental risks being treated as simply another policy item to be negotiated. Yet environmental disasters routinely cross international borders, and this unique conflict consequence poses long-lasting, compounding harm to direct, indirect, and even uninvolved parties in the original conflict. The ongoing environmental destruction in the Donbas region has highlighted not only the difficulties of environmental management by state institutions in the face of violent conflict, but also the lack of ability or capacity for international organizations involved in conflict management and reduction to effectively engage and deal with environmental issues.

Unlike the geographic locations of many conflicts where international organizations for conflict stabilization are involved, especially those in developing country contexts, the Donbas region is highly industrialized dating back to Soviet Union-era mining and nuclear testing in this area.¹⁴ Prior to the onset of the current conflict, Ukrainian state institutions had a robust, active environmental management program in place to mitigate the risks of the active and inactive extraction and industrial production sites present in the region, including in the Donetsk and especially the Luhansk oblasts. Although not uncommon in pre-conflict Ukraine or the broader region, these protections are relatively rare in most conflict-affected areas. Further, the level of pre-conflict environmental protections underscores the depths that environmental regulation has fallen due to the conflict in eastern Ukraine; in most current and recent conflict locations, state environmental regulatory institutions are nonfunctional or nonexistent.¹⁵ The case of the Donbas conflict also highlights the shortfalls of international partners to engage and solve active environmental risk production while concurrently addressing direct violence. Adding to the growing list of urbanized or industrialized conflict affected areas elsewhere in the recent history of environmental hazards, this contemporary example illustrates the dangers arising from conflict in an urban-industrial environment that is highly modified by human action and requires active environmental maintenance and management. To analyze these dynamics and their implications for the study of war-related environmental risk, we first examine historical industrialization and extractions in the Donbas region. Next, we draw from primary source interviewing to examine current environmental issues in Donbas areas that are difficult for research access and consider their implications for human health and further study. Finally, we juxtapose these findings with data from the state and international institutions involved with monitoring, managing, and assisting with environmental redress in the context of larger conflict stabilization mandates. Uncovering divergent conflict goals yet shared paralysis in the face of increasing risks, we analyze how a diverse web of actors ultimately converge in maintaining status quo structures even in the face of increasing risks, their frequent desire to assist, and widening impact circles across country and continental divides. As we describe new ways of understanding the varied environmental dimensions of warfare against the backdrop of shared (in)effective responses to it, we argue that such dynamics may increasingly characterize warfare as urbanization and industrialization continues its spread. With human populations increasingly modifying natural landscapes, the need for active management and maintenance of these ecosystems is correspondingly growing, ushering in changes to theaters of warfare. The capacity and expertise needed to react to these particular conflict issues by national and international organizations will only become more pertinent and in-demand, with significant implications for training a variety of military and non-state actors in future small wars and conflict settings.

Materials and methodology

This article is based on interviews conducted by the first author across Ukraine (including in the Donbas region as well as Kyiv-based officials and international representatives). These interviews were conducted from May 2018 to November 2019 with scientists, policymakers, government officials, legal experts, investigative journalists, and international organizations. Although Russian-associated conflict actors were unavailable for interviews, we conducted in-depth research into any available official and off-the-record statements made by this set of actors on environmental issues in Ukraine, the Donbas region, or neighboring regions of the Russian Federation. Qualitative data was captured, organized, and analyzed using the observational qualitative data analysis techniques proposed by Ryan and Bernard¹⁶ and Bernard et al.¹⁷ Stakeholder groups were organized by professional and by perceived ideological variation in order to compare potential differences driven by occupational or political differences.

We supplemented this interview data with primary source data of narratives from impacted citizens in the Donbas conflict zone, with other data and documentation shared with us (environmental quality indicators data, policy briefs, photographic evidence, etc.), and by the attendance of the first author at numerous Ukraine-based international and domestic roundtables on solving the environmental crises in the larger context of 2.5 years of ethnographic fieldwork across Ukraine from 2015–2019. Throughout 2020–2021, the first author conducted regular follow-up with local sources to track potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing a variety of environmental technical sources across three languages (Ukrainian, Russian, and English) gathered by Ukrainian, Russian, and international scientists reduced confirmation bias in this politicized context, increasing our confidence of the environmental risk factors present despite political differences over the conflict itself.

Environmental issues in the Donbas Conflict

Scholarly attention to Russia’s asymmetric tactics, ranging from counterinsurgency campaigns,¹⁸ cyber-attacks,¹⁹ and usage of non-state actors,²⁰ has increased in recent years. While the regional role of environment concerns in driving social protests²¹ and analyses of the continuing impacts of major Soviet era environmental disasters like Chernobyl²² are well-established, literature that links these past and present issues in the context of regional small wars and counterinsurgencies remains relatively underexplored. The post-Soviet region has been flagged by scholars as unusually prone to the centrifugal forces that result in frozen conflicts²³ with breakaway states including Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Chechnya, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and – in the Donbas region – the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republics. However, fewer focused studies have examined how these murky conditions of contested sovereignties complicate humanitarian responses to war-related environmental damage.

To build on these literature gaps, we narrowed the scope of our analysis, opting for a deep rather than wide approach in the context of modern Ukraine. Although Russia is a party to the conflicts in both Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and the eastern provinces, the ground dynamics and environmental risks are sufficiently different that we have elected to focus this case study on the latter. In the Donbas region in particular, Russia’s de facto control of escalation dynamics despite their continued denials of ground-level involvement considerably impacts their behaviors, the Ukrainian state’s actions, and an international humanitarian response to environmental risks – thus exerting significant influence over the decision-making and responses of other dominant global powers.

Historical industrialization and pre-conflict environmental risks

Yet despite the political quagmire of these present conflict dynamics, the environmental crisis unfolding in the Donbas region may eventually have occurred in the absence of violence due to the region’s history of extensive mining activity, dense industrial production, and a subsurface nuclear testing site. Dating back to the 1820s, the name ‘Donbas’ refers to Ukraine’s two easternmost provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, and is the shortened form of Donetsky Bassein, literally meaning the ‘Donets coal basin’.²⁴ Mining engineers have extracted from the area’s rich coal deposits for nearly two-hundred years around the Siverskyi Donets river basin. Stretching from the Don River in modern-day Russia to Ukraine’s Dnipro River, the coal basin is approximately 500 kilometers across and totals 60,000 square kilometers.²⁵ To hint at the extraordinarily high degree of extraction activity in this area, Germany’s well-known Ruhr coal basin (which itself involved very careful environmental management and eventual closure) is only one-thirteenth of the Donbas area.²⁶ Far from remote, major population areas are clustered around these historically active mining zones, including Russia’s Rostov province and Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv provinces – each with major urban developments.

The heavy industrialization of the Donbas region dates back to large-scale Soviet industrial modernization initiatives in the area, resulting today in a compressed cluster of formerly active sites with still-operational industrial production facilities. The outbreak of armed conflict, including considerable kinetic violence, has not eliminated industrial activity in the area; instead, industrial activities have only slowed while environmental risks have escalated as risk mitigation and other environmental management operations have diminished or ceased. Prior to 2014, Donbas coal provided a major source of energy for the entire country of Ukraine; 90% of all Ukrainian coal traced back to Donbas’ 900 active and inactive mines (including surface and subsurface mining operations).²⁷ As we indicated elsewhere, ‘in total, 15 billion metric tons of coal and nine billion metric tons of rock have been extracted from the ground in the Donbas … [and] nine billion cubic meters of subsurface shafts and tunnels have been constructed’.²⁸

However, the ongoing armed conflict has exacerbated and accelerated latent risk into an active disaster,²⁹ a factor made clear by a review of environmental statistics gathered immediately prior to the outbreak of armed conflict in 2014. Before the current war, the Ukrainian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources (MENR) designated 4,240 sites as potentially hazardous.³⁰ Specifically, 2,160 sites were deemed potentially explosive due to methane content, 24 were flagged due to radiation hazards, 909 are hydro-dynamically hazardous, and 34 were deemed biohazardous.³¹ Prior to the beginning of violent hostilities, the MENR actively monitored and managed each of these sites to mitigate the environmental and human health risks. Now, as intricately connected underground mines now flood across the Ukrainian government-controlled areas (GCA) and non-government controlled areas (NGCA), threats of heavy metal, industrial chemical, radioactive and other forms of contamination are rising, putting the people in Ukraine, Russia, and beyond who rely on these waters at risk as the surface waters of the Donbas drain into the Sea of Azov and eventually the Black Sea.

How much toxic and otherwise harmful material has been redistributed since the ceasing of management efforts is unknown. Neither the MENR nor any other national or international entity involved in the crisis has been able to conduct a full environmental impact assessment in the NGCAs. However, the few cursory assessments that have been completed indicated substantial contamination of ground and surface water resources in Donetsk and Luhansk, as we outline in the next section.

Compounding war-related environmental risks in the Donbas conflict

While environmental risks are difficult to forecast precisely, concern continues to rise among local environmental and human health experts that the potential for an imminent, severe ecological disaster is real.³² Such events would have a persistent, systemic environmental and potential human heath impact that will transcend political borders, challenge current leadership regimes, and cause increased amounts of human security and health risks unless substantial and costly environmental remediation is performed. While the actual distribution of environmental risk is not wholly known, the perception of risk – and the corresponding lack of action and ability to manage that risk – can be just as harmful to human health and the Ukrainian government’s pursuit of re-establishing its authority over this region. Although the potential scale and extent of an environmental crisis is debated (available calculations are limited by incomplete monitoring and data collection), some flag heightened levels of concern. In one example of such concern, Yevhen Yakovlev, a Ukrainian geologist and the chief researcher at Kyiv’s Institute of Telecommunications and Global Information Space who has been analyzing environmental crises since before the fall of the Soviet Union, stated to us in a 2018 interview, ‘Ukraine is standing before, first of all, an ecological catastrophe … deeper and more dangerous than Chernobyl’.³³

The most pressing environmental hazards in Ukraine are the result of flooding across an inter-connected series of subsurface coal mines, which are spread across the Ukrainian government-controlled side to the area controlled by separatists who receive military, financial, and diplomatic backing from the Russia.³⁴ After the conflict sparked in 2014, water pumping systems were abruptly halted in the separatist-controlled areas, leaving 36 mines flooded and unusable, a fact confirmed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources and other international organization-sponsored monitoring efforts.³⁵ While some experts speculate that the flooding of the mines may have occurred even in the absence of the armed conflict, the current violence prevents these flooding mines from being pumped and thus protected, as doing so requires efforts at both ends of the tunnels which lay on either side of the government-controlled and non-government-controlled areas. In October 2018, local inhabitants of the occupied Donetsk region reported that all workers tasked with pumping the mines connected with the now-defunct Mykytivsky Mercury Plant were suddenly dismissed.³⁶ Reports of Russian servicemen in chemical protection suits marked ‘radiation hazard’ soon followed, leading to speculation that radioactive waste materials are being exported from Russia for burial and storage in occupied Ukraine. We are unable to independently confirm this latter report. However, if confirmed, such actions would constitute a direct violation of international law.³⁷

With workers dismissed and mine pumping and management ceased, the flooding mines now follow a dangerous regional pattern of environmental degradation. As waters flood the mines and solubilize and transport toxic pollutants – especially heavy metals – dangers of water toxicity escalate. Potentially even more significantly, the possibility of radioactive contamination is rising as well due to the region’s Soviet nuclear heritage. As we stated earlier, our privileged review of Ukrainian scientific and other internal documentation showed that nine billion cubic meters of mining tunnels exist underground in the Donbas region, a legacy of intensive coal mining in eastern Ukraine.³⁸ Tunnel walls contain radioactive materials from sub-surface nuclear detonations carried out during the Cold War era. If flooding continues, a complex of heavy metal and radioactive contaminants – ranging from mercury to uranium – can be solubilized by the groundwater entering the mineshafts and be transported throughout the water system, a process that the MENR has determined is already underway.³⁹ As this war will soon enter its eighth year with no sign of a conclusion apparent, a host of other war-prompted destructive impacts are likely to accumulate and may even claim more lives than the original active violence caused by the armed conflict given the long-lived persistence of heavy metals and industrial pollutants in an ecosystem.

International awareness of current environmental risks

The environmental impacts wrought by the ongoing conflict are clearly acknowledged both by Ukrainian authorities and by the international community.⁴⁰ For example, former Deputy Head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – the organization named by Russia and Ukraine in the Minsk Protocol and following Minsk II addendum as the official international conflict monitor – Alexander Hug repeatedly appealed for cease-fires to halt the shelling that regularly flared around residential neighborhoods and vital infrastructure, including water filtration systems and chemical plants, noting that a continuation of the current trend could result in ‘an environmental disaster’.⁴¹ In our review of Russian media, we were unable to find direct commentary from the Russian government on Donbas environmental issues, although any environmental crisis would likely spill over into Rostov province of the Russian Federation which borders Donbas. Despite its acknowledged control in Crimea, the Russian government has been similarly reticent to comment publicly on environmental issues in the peninsula either. In surveying any other high-level political statements made on Donbas environment issues, the most detailed acknowledgement came from former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker in 2018, stating that the ‘heavy industries, flooding of the mines, the dumping and storage of waste, including some radioactive waste’ posed enormous environmental risks.⁴² In noting the ‘tremendous long-term implications for the health of the inhabitants there’, Volker estimated that this environmental damage may result in the potable water supply to be cut off for up to one million residents,⁴³ a fear further evidenced by the findings of recent environmental survey work completed by the Ukrainian MENR that found 30 of the 35 GCA water points and 24 of 26 NGCA water points were contaminated above MENR water quality standards and deemed non-potable, though testing at these same monitoring sites just a few years previous deemed all of these points as potable.⁴⁴ This worsening of water access is significant, as our interviews with Ukrainian environmental experts confirmed the political representatives’ statements and indicated to us that approximately 3.4 million people already lack access to safe water as a result of environmental degradation caused by the conflict. In interviews conducted by the first author of this article in the fall of 2018, humanitarian organizations also confirmed that residents of the most environmentally-impacted areas are no longer able to drink or even clean their clothes with the local water supply. Without pumping and filtration, the mineral concentrations (total dissolved solids) of the water are dense enough to discolor clothes.

While Ukraine’s former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Ostap Semerak insisted that his department is closely monitoring the threats after such statements, other questions regarding the bureaucratic coordination capacity needed to confront this crisis remain.⁴⁵ Despite several bureaucratic reshuffles of the MENR in 2019–2020, little movement or furthering awareness of these issues, domestic or international, has resulted. The environmental issues were first raised by Ukrainian media sources during the Petro Poroshenko presidential administration, but the subsequent Volodymyr Zelenskyy presidential administration has also not taken significant action on these issues. The physical ability of the Ukrainian government to access NGCA impacted areas remains in question.⁴⁶ Given the many protracted, contentious aspects of the Ukraine-Russian conflict, some international actors had originally initially expressed optimism that technical assistance for reducing these environmental risks would prove palatable to both the Ukrainian and separatists-controlled sides, including their Russian benefactors. This optimism was bolstered by the long-standing support of many Western governmental programs for environmental humanitarian initiatives, especially Scandinavian governments.⁴⁷ Yet this technical assistance has not materialized despite the privately expressed desire by Western and international partners to provide it, the urgent humanitarian need for it by millions of impacted citizens in eastern Ukraine, and growing concerns that the ever-growing accumulation of environmental hazards stand to impact millions of citizens beyond Ukraine and Russia.

Paralyzed responses to urgent environmental issues

The serious risks posed by the environmental issues prompt us to return to the future possibility of environmental impacts extending beyond Ukraine and even Russia in the latter section of this article. First, however, we present the results of our qualitative data analysis which illustrate the impact of contested sovereignties in three major areas related to the environmental crisis. We explore Ukrainian, Russian, and international response paralysis to environmental risks through contestations over the following three questions: 1) Who should monitor the environmental risks? 2) Who is the proper authority to respond to the environmental risks? and 3) How can an appropriate environmental response be funded? Without firm control of the Ukrainian state – or open acknowledge of the Russian government influence over Donbas separatist regimes – little action is taken, all escape accountability, and political will remains muted. Further driving the conflict dynamics themselves, the neglect of the citizens’ basic provision of services in the NGCA areas also undermines political will to reintegrate the region, both at the government level and in public opinion.

Non-functioning monitoring of environmental risks

Prior to 2014, the Ukrainian military had an office dedicated to environmental impact assessments, but after the armed conflict erupted, Ukraine’s limited state resources were prioritized elsewhere. Roundtables have been held to consider the possibility of re-opening this office or establishing a working group, but the office remains de-prioritized.⁴⁸ Regional monitoring also collapsed in 2014, prompting one formerly monitoring scientist to rue the NGCA area as a ‘black hole of data collection’ and another monitoring organization representative to concur that ‘we are ecologically blind’, while monitoring elsewhere around Ukraine’s GCA areas continues unobstructed and is even being upgraded.⁴⁹ Presently, water monitoring in the GCA areas is being restructured in line with the provisions of the European Union Water Framework directive. Still, the lack of monitoring and data collection from 2014 to the present in the NGCA areas, with the exception of one scientific report prepared for the international non-governmental organization Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue,⁵⁰ poses a serious scientific hardship in tracking trends and leaves many scientific assessments relying on probable estimations but not hard data. As conflict dynamics alter the ecological environment, including accelerating risk factors, this lack of monitoring necessitates that any type of policy efforts be based on incomplete scientific data. Environmental scientists were able to obtain some data from the occupied Luhansk province that revealed a rate of diarrhea in children 68 times higher than that of adults, indicating serious environmental health risks especially for children.

Furthermore, the outbreak of armed conflict resulted in greater rates of classifying information derived from non-governmental sources, a scenario compounded by the inherent secrecy and deception of this context’s hybrid warfare tactics – which Dunn and Bobick have called ‘war without war and occupation without occupation’⁵¹ due to the unacknowledged influence of Russia in the NGCA regions – and their resultant bureaucratic confusion and distrust. This particular type of deception-driven armed conflict amplifies existing issues with opacity and disincentivizes needed reforms, such as standardization with United Nations principles of transparency. Moreover, governmental bureaucracies in both Ukraine and Russia are shaped by the Soviet Union’s legacy in technical and professional culture ways. As one interviewee remarked, ‘data-sharing and transparency are impossible in Ukrainian and Russian bureaucratic traditions’, although we note that ongoing e-governance reforms in Ukraine may eventually change this perception. Without needed transparency reforms or an impetus to do so, some interviewees argued that existing environmental data are rarely shared with the citizens in the NGCA who are directly impacted by the accumulating risks. Furthermore, the risks of nuclear contamination worsen the odds of data being made publicly available, as nuclear issues are most often automatically classified and withheld from the general public and even from scientists in an environment characterized by suspect loyalties.

The pressures of war currently prohibit data exchange among Ukrainian and Russian scientists. The complex nature of this armed conflict is particularly accentuated by the reality that Russia continues to deny any official presence in Ukraine,⁵² despite evidence to the contrary,⁵³ while maintaining its control over conflict escalation dynamics. Interviewees recommended privately that international organizations should encourage all parties to the conflict to officially open channels for technical sharing between scientists and academics in Russia and in both the GCA and NGCAs of Ukraine. This technical sharing is needed to supplement the higher degree of data collection possible in the GCA, especially important as environmental issues are stemming from the flooding of the mines which cannot be tackled or monitored from one side alone. One international organization representative expressed that pushing for scientific research sharing, as cleared by intelligence services, may allow for coordination among hostile parties and possibly even cooperation in the future. At present, some Ukrainian scientists are hesitant for their data to be used for policymaking, particularly as the resultant solutions may cost the equivalent of millions of U.S. dollars, without confirmation that their colleagues on the other side of the contact line are tracking similar figures. Further underscoring this need for monitoring, a 2018 environmental assessment published by the OSCE listed systemization and gaps assessments for monitoring as an urgent need that should be been addressed ‘yesterday’.⁵⁴ An additional public report by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue issued the same warning.⁵⁵ While the OSCE has praised an ‘increase in environmental protection expenditures in government-controlled territories’,⁵⁶ a lack of control over the NGCA area calls into question whether these resources can be applied most effectively, particularly in the NGCA and bordering areas.

Delayed claiming of authority and accountability

Interviewees stressed that the environmental monitoring challenges alone are daunting to overcome. The Ukrainian government’s lack of physical access prompted the description of the NGCA areas as an ‘ecological black hole’, while the Russian government cannot officially call for monitoring or scientific data sharing without formally confirming their control or even outsized influence over NGCA separatist leadership. In addition, paralysis over environmental risks has resulted in a failure of both Ukraine and Russia to fulfill their state responsibilities to their citizens inside and outside of the conflict area. Any environmental emergency would immediately impact major population centers across four Ukrainian provinces (the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts) and at least Russian province (the Rostov oblast).⁵⁷ A lack of mobilization in the face of urgent risks, especially public actions or messaging by the NGCA and Russian Federation authorities, is notable. One Ukrainian scientist confirmed that the geography of the Donbas region, especially a downward slope of the land from the NGCA to the GCA, is such that without regular, efficient pumping on the NGCA side, GCA pumping is of limited value. The importance of environmental issues has been raised during the Minsk conflict resolution proceedings, which include participation by Russia and Ukraine. Several years have passed since a statement was drafted calling for the establishment of an environmental working group, envisioned to include international experts. Likely due to the political pressure of response, it appears that some Ukrainian authorities are also slow to champion this issue set, privately making the case that these issues ‘do not exist for them judicially’ until the armed conflict is concluded. Noting the now eight years of armed conflict, one Ukrainian scientist stressed that ‘ecological and physical laws do not care’ about such legalities.

Russian paralysis on assuming any degree of responsibility for these issues, or pressing the NGCA to do so, again rests on their lack of willingness to acknowledge their government’s physical presence in Ukraine.⁵⁸ A core component of their conflict strategy in the Donbas region has rested from the beginning on maintaining plausible deniability (as much as possible) or promoting alternative narratives that distract from their ground presence and outsized influence. For Ukrainian politicians, environmental issues also stand to be ‘very politically unprofitable’. As Ukraine’s de jure authority and Russia’s de facto authority collide, a psychological inertia has emerged including among Ukrainian leaders. The Ukrainian government is overburdened by a variety of issues that are connected with the reality of governing a nation-state with occupied, inaccessible territories in their southern (e.g. the Crimean Peninsula) and eastern (e.g. the Donbas region) territories. With this inertia expressed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this strain on resources has only grown. Many aspects of the government have weathered significant changes and expanded roles in an overly condensed time period, especially for an emerging post-Soviet democracy like Ukraine.

The lack of a formal war declaration in Donbas also has many bureaucratic chain reactions that reverberate through the Ukrainian government’s bureaucratic structure at the federal and local levels. Some federal bureaucratic entities existed prior to the conflict, including the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Interior (responsible for emergency services), and the State Security apparatus. However, the armed conflict, as well as the reform impetus sparked by the 2013–2014 Euromaidan Revolution, has left no bureaucratic structure unchanged. Other entities, particularly the Ministry for Temporarily Occupied Territories and the Ministry of Information Policy, have been created in response to rising issues. The combination of this complicated national bureaucracy, including its interactions with regional authorities and Ukraine’s Parliament (the Verkhovna Rada), have resulted in what one interviewee called a ‘bureaucratic nightmare’. With no single head to blame in the event of an environmental crisis, a window to avoid active responsibility and the political toll of involvement on an unpopular political issue has subsequently emerged. Given the number of bureaucratic actors, public accountability is spread so thin that impacted citizens struggle to know precisely who to contact or how to do so. This chain reaction in turn contributes to the estrangement of citizens to the Ukrainian government and harms the common vision needed to a successful territorial reintegration. Fearing the worst, one interviewee dejectedly exclaimed, ‘I really truly believe that unless there is a [publicized emergency] with victims, nothing will be done’.

Finally, the question of accountability is complicated by the competing sovereignties that exist within both Ukraine and Russia regarding the overlap between official and unofficial actors in the actual wielding of political power.⁵⁹ Unofficial actors, including complex webs of organized crime and oligarchic structures exert significant political, economic, and social power in this context, often rivaling, surpassing, or acting in concert with official directives. The region’s lack of regulation, even in the face of an urgent environmental crisis, has been made worse by the murky chains of command in this context; yet this lack of regulation has also proven extremely profitable for such non-state actors. In words echoed by multiple interviewees, this scenario has spawned ‘huge levels of contraband, commerce … Big money is made there. This situation is very comfortable for [these actors] because the corruption cannot be controlled during the war. No will [to act]’. These realities further constrain decision-making calculus and reduce incentives to take action.

Financial, technical, and international assistance gridlock

The effects of ongoing warfare with contested sovereignties also dictate the inertia of progress on establishing the funding protocols for the majority of environmental needs in Donbas. Representatives of international organizations initially expressed private optimism that environmental issues would be ‘low-hanging fruit’ for promoting coordination and less controversial than more intractable aspects of this complicated armed conflict. They had hoped that environmental issues, which are relatively easy to get buy-in from impacted citizens and that clearly impact both sides of the contact line, could be the foundation for conflict resolution between the Russian and Ukrainian-aligned sides through relationship building and slow steps of cooperation. Instead, as one international representative expressed, ‘every aspect of environment issues in Ukraine have been challenging’ as they are linked to broader issues of the clash between de jure and de facto sovereignty.

In particular, Russia’s continuing influence and the lack of an explicit war declaration complicates the response of Ukraine as well as the actions of international partners. Foreign governments, particularly Scandinavian countries who often fund environmental projects in low- and middle-income countries, are open to providing technical assistance and funding for environmental risks in the Donbas region. International technical assistance is crucial to prevent the flooding of mines and the possibility of nuclear and other contamination. In particular, Ukrainian scientists and experts stressed the example of the German Ruhr mine and the long-term planning that accompanied this process. They highlight German legislative solutions as an exemplar, including a special tax where revenues were reserved for Ruhr closure. Despite the willingness and ability of international partners to provide technical expertise and funding for this humanitarian crisis, the paralysis nevertheless remains.

In interviews, Ukrainian and international actors privately repeated the need for a ‘very clear signal from the international community and technical assistance and the details of how it could be monitored’, but this signaling has not materialized. While the United States often takes on open and/or behind-the-scenes coordinating roles, its overt involvement stands to worsen the political situation by providing Russia with an international foil, a dynamic incentivized by recent domestic power grabs and internal Russian constitutional changes lengthening Vladimir Putin’s presidency. European nations like Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, France, and Austria could play effective roles in championing this issue. Yet, their relative silence on this issue may again rest in the fact that any efforts to control flooding and introduce mine pumping involve working in both the GCA and NGCA. Disastrous outcomes and optics would await a diversion of foreign funding into the hand of the separatist fighters, especially if such funds were covertly used to purchase weapons for or from the Russian military. Corruption across all sides of this conflict continues to impact the limited choices available and underscores the clear nexus of corruption to national security threats. The tax system and enforcement codes in Ukraine (and the broader region) are also a labyrinthine structure that is open to evasion and manipulation; thus, the German example would also have to be adapted in ways conducive to the existing environment.

As issues of public funding are considered, it is important to recognize that the protracted nature of the conflict has resulted in a paralysis and perhaps even a worsening of the ability for Ukrainian citizens to reestablish ties across the NGCA, the GCA, and Ukraine more broadly. This trend was repeated by nearly all interviewees, and as the conflict will soon enter its eighth year, the work of rebuilding social ties continues to increase. Russian activities drive the kinetic conflict while avoiding retribution, sparking individual clashes while constraining Ukrainian responses. The cloaked causality of many conflict-related actions amplifies suspicions while fostering accusations of betrayed national loyalties and whisper campaigns that are difficult to explicitly challenge. One Ukrainian scientist declared, ‘land is not a war trophy’, but the protracted, murky, and contested sovereignties of this conflict highlight how any victors in this context are also unclear.

To summarize the overall web of inaction on this humanitarian crisis, we note how paralysis to increasing environmental risks has characterized the actions of 1) the occupied Ukrainian government, due to their issues with reduced capacity, reduced incentives for tackling unpopular issues, and fear of constituent blame in a fragile political climate, 2) the occupying Russian government, primarily as they refuse to acknowledge their physical presence in Ukraine even as these environmental issues stand to harm their citizens, 3) the citizens in the NGCA, as their health and environmental indicators cannot be tracked in real-time, 4) the citizens of the GCA, as they have few options to address their concerns due to the ever-increasing complexity of bureaucratic structures in their conflict-affected regions, due to the prioritization of other military efforts, and as any move to reduce their own harm also involves corresponding efforts in the NGCA, and 5) of the international community as they are also disincentivized to provide technical assistance that may fall into the wrong hands and as a lack of an official war declaration allows the Donbas conflict to be more easily ignored in political spheres despite the growing human suffering.

The global impacts and implications of Ukraine’s environmental crisis

The potential spread of environmental risks

After concluding the qualitative data collection for this article in November 2019, we have subsequently followed up with interviewees and informants to track any ensuing movement on Donbas environmental issues, finding that the COVID-19 pandemic has only furthered slowed much-needed progress. Environmental issues pose an almost unique challenge to sovereignty as most pollution does not respect political borders.⁶⁰ As the saying holds, ‘wind blows and water flows’, whether that wind and water is clean or not. In the current unfolding environmental crisis in Ukraine, much of the water flowing – whether as groundwater or surface water – has been contaminated by unmanaged mine sites and other environmentally damaging activities that occur during warfare. Additionally, the evidence we reviewed demonstrates that the flooded mines are releasing large amounts of methane, a powerful climate change-driving greenhouse gas.⁶¹ Both of these hazards pose threats to human health that extend past the borders of Ukraine and, due to their persistence in the global ecosystem, will continue to drive environmental risk long after kinetic violence concludes. The potential impacts of this environmental crisis stand to be both regionally specific and globally impactful. The pollution produced in the Donbas region is not restricted to the political boundaries of the Ukraine and could potentially travel past these borders into either shared waters, such as the Sea of Azov, or across the borders of other nation-states with pernicious effects. Pollution does not respect political borders, nor the sovereignty of nation-states.

Toxic pollution is known worldwide to be one of the single largest sources of human death and suffering,⁶² and non-toxic pollution also impacts fragile ecosystems including by driving climatic change.⁶³ When an environmental crisis unfolds in a contested conflict context, Ukraine illustrates that environmental spread of a potential disaster across national boundaries stands to be even more complex and contentious. The environmental hazards in Ukraine, exacerbated by military activities and the current response paralysis, constitute a threat to the broader international community even as they challenge existing understandings of warfighting accountability. Longstanding debates regarding environmental sovereignty must also adapt to the paradigm shift we argue is occurring due to increasingly industrialized warfare contexts. The 1990s witnessed a burst of scholarly writing on environmental security, which as quickly criticized as a post-Cold War tactic glorifying militarization.⁶⁴ The intersection of politics and environmental resources have resulted in research clusters around biopolitics, scale, and global environmental justice which attempt to engage questions of environmental degradation and state sovereignty, although little agreement has been reached.⁶⁵ Dalby has argued that humans are not only actors within environments but now producers of new environments,⁶⁶ and others have echoed similar themes of human activity altering the entire system in which they operate.⁶⁷ Environmental issues have long constituted a thorny problem set for international governance systems and nation-state sovereignty structures. In the modern global environment, primed from the international implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, national sovereignty debates around war-related pollution are likely to become even more complicated even as human security risks rise.

The case of Ukraine foreshadows these coming debates, particularly if the more dire environmental estimations come to pass.⁶⁸ Ukraine’s ability to respond to a myriad of sovereignty challenges in Crimea and the Donbas region has been profoundly shaped by Russia’s conflict strategies, which have muted international responses by allowing for the Kremlin’s plausible deniability. As new questions of sovereignty emerge, the potentiality that global climate change will benefit some nation-states more than others, including Russia,⁶⁹ is a strong possibility. If permafrost thawing uncovers large swaths of land unlocking new possibilities for agricultural production and mineral extraction in Russian territories,⁷⁰ new Arctic passages or Northern Sea Routes will also increase Russian access to trade, offshore oil, and other benefits.⁷¹ In other global locations, climate change stands to usher in harmful impacts including increased rates of extreme weather and its consequences like drought, flood, and disease.⁷²

National and civic leaders, researchers, and citizens alike are increasingly and publicly stating concern for inaction around global environmental issues. Importantly, many argue that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) – either in addition to or instead of the UN Environmental Programme and the UN Framework Convention – should take leadership on issues of human-caused climate change and other human-caused environmental effects with the goal of more tangible, decisive action. While the UN Security Council has recently rejected a draft resolution to integrate climate-related security risks into its conflict-prevention strategies, pressure may continue within international policy circles to link human security, conflict resolution, and environmental issues.⁷³ The UN Human Rights Council recently declared a ‘safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment’ a human right, lending credence to such speculations.⁷⁴ Given war-related environmental risks in Ukraine, we note the likely international intervention should such a disaster unfold.

The increasingly likelihood of conflict in industrialized environments

The ongoing conflict in the Ukraine highlights the dire need for international conflict resolution institutions, military policy planners, and humanitarian aid organizations that work in conflict zones to build the capacity to concurrently address the issues of direct violence and environmental hazards. As human-inhabited landscapes become increasingly modified and in need of preventative maintenance to reduce environmental health hazards and as conflicts become increasingly likely to erupt in industrialized areas, conflict-intervening organizations must be prepared for future warfare. They must also be prepared to address a range of related sub-issues that may also escalate, impacting effective policy intervention and direct environmental hazard reduction. Recognizing this fact, the U.S. military is taking steps to prepare for these cases by building environmental hazard assessment and risk reduction into their Small Wars doctrine and education and developing units to conduct these actions.⁷⁵ Similar developments are needed across military and non-military units to address what is most likely an increasingly environmentally hazardous future.

While the climate change/conflict nexus is still hotly debated, it is clear that environmental challenges are increasing flows of internal displacement and migration.⁷⁶ It is estimated that currently about 24 million people are displaced annually due to ecological disasters, with many displaced from rural to urban areas.⁷⁷ The potential relationship between forced migration and violence is also contested, but several recent studies suggest that increased rates of rural-to-urban migration are likely to lead to higher rates of crime and violent conflict.⁷⁸ Further research into the factors – such as institutional capacity, social welfare, economic opportunity, and assimilation policies – that can mitigate conflict occurring in migration-receiving urbanized landscapes is needed to understand the causal mechanisms for environment-related conflict (and provide the political will to address it). As the case of Ukraine makes clear, environmental management in urban conflict zones is challenging, deprioritized, often under-staffed, and frequently under-funded despite substantial risks to human health. If the urban-based conflict rates do increase, the Ukrainian context illustrates the need for new forms of environmental training and institutional support for the domestic and international institutional actors tasked with conflict stabilization.

Recently, the United Nation Environmental Program (UNEP) has explicitly recognized the need for integrating environmental protection and resource management into peacebuilding strategies and programs. The UNEP has articulated guidance on environmental management and relevant international laws for active conflict areas in their initial assessment of this nexus, entitled, ‘Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict: An Inventory and Analysis of International Law’.⁷⁹ While still in developmental stages, these steps and those by affiliated organizations has spurred activity from researchers and practitioners alike.⁸⁰ However, as the case of Ukraine makes clear, such environmental considerations are not yet integrated into applied action frameworks, mandates, and norms.

Conclusion

In considering the policy and research implications of our case study, several points emerge for immediate consideration. First, action is urgently needed in the face of very real environmental risks in the Donbas region. The Ukrainian government faces recognized capacity challenges but must prioritize care for the citizens under its control.⁸¹ The Ukrainian government, including the Zelenskyy presidential administration, continues to claim its sovereignty over the Donbas region and the Crimean Peninsula; its vocal advocacy for NGCA citizens in international arenas and in domestic political debates should be considered a nonnegotiable component of such claimed sovereignty.⁸² These steps to fulfill its social responsibility to its citizens are also necessary to counter separatist efforts to sow disenfranchisement and messaging that NGCA populations are willfully neglected by Kyiv, despised by Western and Central Ukrainian citizens, and forgotten by the outside world.⁸³ We have reviewed data indicating that Ukrainian towns near historic subsurface nuclear detonations are experiencing radiation levels 9 to 14 times higher than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommendations – and the resultant health impacts will continue to mount.⁸⁴ These costs will impact international donors, Ukrainian national and regional governments, and the Russian government, whose foreign policy recently seems to be shifting toward encouraging more economic independence among the NGCAs.

Moreover, if Russian-backed separatists are allowed to control water and other natural resources, as well as to set the terms of any response to the flooding of mines, a perverse incentive structure will be maintained: it will remain in the interest of Russian-backed separatists for local resources to be degraded and unusable because it will continue to provide them a mechanism of control and power – i.e. the local population will be more reliant on them to provide water and other resources to meet their basic needs.⁸⁵ This incentive structure could permit, then facilitate, continued environmental continued degradation in the perceived interest of the occupiers, significantly harming the people of the Donbas, and degrading local ecological resources. Ironically, our research indicates that this environmental crisis would likely spill over into Russian territories due to their geographic proximity to the impacted areas – and possibly into the global ecosystem as well.

The expanding ecological crisis in eastern Ukraine demands coordinated action by Ukraine and Russia, mediated by other governments, the European Union, or the United Nations. Should direct dialogue prove futile, extraordinary efforts to prevent a cross-border disaster must be discussed.⁸⁶ International and regional environmental regulation – instituted, monitored, and enforced – must be leveraged to stymie the catastrophic damage unfolding. With the environmental crisis exacerbating the growing humanitarian crisis, it must be recognized and addressed, not buried away like much of this ongoing conflict has been. It also must be factored into emerging theoretical notions of state sovereignty, especially on the topic of environmental issues and increasingly likelihood of conflict in industrialized environments that require active environmental risk even during wartime. Social scientists must grapple with the new warfare reality characterized by these types of environmental risks and seriously question whether our present theorizing is up to this challenge, while policy planners must integrate these ideas into future small wars mandates and trainings.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Oksana Yanchuk for her invaluable research and translational assistance; Dr. George Lopez (University of Notre Dame) for his review of an earlier version of this research project; and Nataliya Gumenyuk and Dr. Yevhen Yakovlev for investigative journalism and research contributions, respectively. The first author acknowledges generous funding support from the U.S. Fulbright program, Ukraine; the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows Program; the USAID Research and Innovation Program; and the University of Notre Dame’s Anthropology Department, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Kellogg Institute for International Development, and Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame; Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame; Nanovic Institute for European Studies, University of Notre Dame; National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows Program; University of Notre Dame Anthropology Department; U.S. Fulbright Program, Ukraine; and USAID Research and Innovation Program.

Notes on contributors

Kristina Hook

Kristina Hook, PhD is Assistant Professor of Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University’s School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding, and Development. Dr. Hook received her PhD from the University of Notre Dame and served as the inaugural Executive Director of George Mason University’s war prevention initiative, the Better Evidence Project. For her current book project, she conducted multi–year ethnographic fieldwork in Ukraine through Fulbright, National Science Foundation, and USAID research fellowships. An anthropologist, she has worked in twenty–five countries, specializing in genocide and mass atrocity prevention, human rights, and emerging technologies. Prior to her time in academia, Dr. Hook served as a U.S. Department of State policy advisor for conflict stabilization.

Richard Marcantonio

Richard Marcantonio, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Marcantonio’s current research integrates social and environmental science methods and theories to develop a concept of environmental violence, the process by which humans are harmed and/or have their everyday lives altered by human-produced toxic and non-toxic pollution. Central components of this work include Earth Systems and human niche construction theory, an understanding of global environmental change and risk, and the identification of patterns and processes, global to local in scale, that facilitate and result as a function of environmental violence.

Notes

1. Galeotti, “Hybrid, Ambiguous, and Non-Linear.”

2. Ibid; see also, Dunn and Bobick, “Empire Strikes Back”; and Howard and Pukhov, Brothers Armed.

3. Ukraine Crisis Media Center, “Environmental Disaster in Crimea”; and UNIAN, “Klimkin.”

4. Ibid.

5. Mendel, “4,000 Children Flee Pollution”; and Ukraine Crisis Media Center, “Environmental Disaster in Crimea.”

6. UNIAN, “Donbas War Toll Rises.”

7. Despite significant efforts at deception, a substantial body of scholarly works, legal proceedings, and journalist findings demonstrate that eastern Ukrainian separatists receive technological, financial, military, and diplomatic support by the Russian Federation. See, Dunn and Bobick, “Empire Strikes Back”; Galeotti, “Hybrid, Ambiguous, and Non-Linear”; Maiorova, Donbas in Flames; Marten, “Russia’s Use of Semi-State”; Government of the Netherlands, “MH17”; and Walker, “New Evidence Emerges.”

8. Walker, “New Evidence Emerges”; and Galeotti, “Hybrid, Ambiguous, and Non-Linear.”

9. Shekinskaya, “Thousands of Ceasefire Violations.”

10. Government of the Netherlands, “MH17.”

11. Referring to a November 2018 incident in which Russian-flag bearing ships seized three Ukrainian naval vessels and 24 sailors, see, Reuters, “Russia Detained 24 Ukrainian.”

12. McCleary, “Russian Buildup Near Ukraine.”

13. Hook and Marcantonio, “War-Related Environmental Disaster”; Ramos and Kovalenko, “Implications of the War”; and Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas.

14. Hook and Marcantonio, “War-Related Environmental Disaster.”

15. Ibid.

16. Ryan and Bernard, “Data Management.”

17. Bernard, Wutich, and Ryan, Analyzing Qualitative Data.

18. Rigi, “War in Chechnya”; and Kim and Blank, “Insurgency and Counterinsurgency.”

19. Goldsmith and Horiuchi, “Impacts of Russian Interference”; and Brandt and Taussig, “Kremlin’s Disinformation Playbook.”

20. Hook, “Hybrid Warfare”; Marten, “Russia’s Use of Semi-State Security”; Harris, “Russia’s Fifth Column”; Johnson, “Hybrid Warfare”; and Swan, “State Report.”

21. Shakirova, Ramziya and Sally Stoecker. Environmental Crime and Corruption; Bridges and Bridges, Losing Hope; and Evans, “Protests and Civil Society.”

22. Charles, “Russia’s Forest Fires”; Plokhy, “Chernobyl”; Williams, “Radiation Carcinogenesis”; Nussbaum, “Chernobyl Nuclear Catastrophe”; and Vartanyan, “Some Ecological-Hydrogeological Lessons.”

23. Sterpu, “Frozen Conflict.”

24. Hook and Marcantonio, “War-Related Environmental Disaster”; and Maiorova, Donbas in Flames.

25. Ibid.

26. Hook and Marcantonio, “War-Related Environmental Disaster.”

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., 4.

29. Marten, “Russia’s Use of Semi-State Security.”

30. MENR, “Donbas Ecological Risks”; Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas; and Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), “Environmental Assessment.”

31. Ibid.

32. MENR, “Donbas Ecological Risks”; and Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas.

33. see note 26 above.

34. Dunn and Bobick, “Empire Strikes Back”; and Galeotti, “Hybrid, Ambiguous, and Non-Linear.”

35. Gumenyuk and Nazarov, “Donbas”; and Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas.

36. UNIAN, “Environmental Hazard.”

37. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Joint Convention.

38. See also, Hook and Marcantonio, “War-Related Environmental Disaster.”

39. MENR, “Donbas Ecological Risks”; Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas; Hook and Marcantonio, “War-Related Environmental Disaster”; and OSCE, “Environmental Assessment.”

40. MENR, “Donbas Ecological Risks”; Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas; and OSCE, “Environmental Assessment.”

41. Losh, “As Fighting Surges Again.”

42. Volker, “Special Session.”

43. Ibid.

44. MENR, “Donbas Ecological Risks”; Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas. Sampling data from both NGCA and GCA is also available by request from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue.

45. Gumenyuk and Nazarov, “Donbas: New Exclusion Zone”.

46. Ibid.

47. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Aid in Support of Environment.”

48. E.g. Simon, “Stop to the Killing.”

49. See, Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, “Five Years of Fighting.”

50. Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas.

51. Dunn and Bobick, “Empire Strikes Back,” 405.

52. TASS, “Peskov Commented.”

53. Galeotti, “Hybrid, Ambiguous, and Non-Linear”; Government of the Netherlands, “MH17”; and Marten, “Russia’s Use of Semi-State Security.”

54. Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), “Environmental Assessment.”

55. Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas.

56. OSCE, “Environmental Assessment,” 14.

57. Hook and Marcantonio, “War-Related Environmental Disaster.”

58. TASS, “Peskov Commented”; and Maiorova, Donbas in Flames.

59. Rigi, “War in Chechnya.”

60. French, “Reappraisal of Sovereignty.”

61. Yakovlev and Chumachenko, Ecological Threats in Donbas.

62. Landrigan et al., “Lancet Commission.”

63. NIC, “Implications for U.S. National Security”; and Steffen et al., “Trajectories of Earth System.”

64. Dalby, “Recontextualising Violence”; and Peluso and Watts, “Violent Environments.”

65. Dalby, “Anthropocene Formations”; French, “Reappraisal of Sovereignty”; Green and Colgan, “Protecting Sovereignty”; McCarthy, “Scale, Sovereignty, and Strategy”; and Smith, “Against Ecological Sovereignty.”

66. Dalby, “Recontextualising Violence.”

67. Lansing, “Complex Adaptive Systems”; and Meadows, “Thinking in Systems.”

68. Dalby, “Biopolitics and Climate Security”; Dalby, “Recontextualising Violence”; and Steffen, Rockstrom, Richardson, “Trajectories of Earth System.”

69. Dalby, “Anthropocene Formations.”

70. Perelet, Pegov, and Yulkin, “Russia Country Paper”; and Wallace, “Arctic is Warming.”

71. McCarthy, “Global Warming Opens Artic.”

72. International Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change and Land.

73. UNSC, “Security Council Fails.”

74. UN HRC, “Human Rights Council adopts four resolutions on the right to development.”

75. US CSC, “Small Wars 8095.”

76. Mach et al., “Climate as a risk factor for armed conflict.”

77. IEP, “Ecological Threat Register 2020.”

78. Abel et al. “Climate, Conflict, and Forced Migration”; Ghimire et al., “Flood-induced Displacement and Civil Conflict”; Gleick, “Water, Drought, Climate Change”; IEP, “Ecological Threat Register 2020”; Kelley et al., “Climate Change in Fertile Crescent”; and Reuveny, “Climate Change-induced Migration.”

79. Mrema et al., “Protecting the Environment.”

80. Environmental Peacebuilding Association, “Environmental Peacebuilding Knowledge Platform”; and UNDG, “Natural Resource Management.”

81. US CSC, “Small Wars 8095.”

82. see note 76 above.

83. see note 77 above.

84. Abel et al., “Climate, Conflict, and Forced Migration”; Ghimire et al., “Flood-induced Displacement and Civil Conflict”; Gleick, “Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria”; IEP, “Ecological Threat Register 2020”; Kelley et al., “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought”; and Reuveny, “Climate change-induced migration and violent conflict.”

85. Mrema, Bruch, and Diamond, “Protecting the environment during armed conflict.”

86. EP, “Environmental Peacebuilding Knowledge Platform”; and UNDG, “Natural Resource Management in Transition Settings.”