Putin, End the War in Ukraine

Photo credit: Elena Tita / the Collection of war.ukraine.ua

The human-caused climate crisis is the greatest threat facing humanity today. It presents challenges to populations in every corner of the globe. Food insecurity and more powerful natural disasters will fuel massive conflicts, migration on a scale never before seen in human history, and political unrest around the world. All of this will shake democracy to its core after we have already seen the emergence of far-right extremism in well-established liberal democracies. This is why it is important to keep tabs on current crises that are both contributing to global warming and hurting local populations. To solve climate change we need to be global thinkers and to be effective global thinkers we must concern ourselves with the plight of people in dire circumstances around the world. The people of Ukraine are desperate and they need our help.

On February 24, 2022, Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The attack was an unjustifiable act of aggression and the conflict quickly became the largest land war Europe has seen since the Second World War. The most tragic impact has been the human cost of the war which has been enormous in Ukraine. Over 10,000 civilians have been killed including hundreds of children.1 Just recently, on September 28th, eight people were killed when Russian drones struck a medical center not once but twice in the city of Sumy.2 That same month, a single strike in Poltava killed at least 51 people and wounded 235.3 It is essential that the international community continue to put pressure on Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs in his inner circle to withdraw from Ukraine. The world should not forget about what is happening because now after more than two and a half years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the enormous costs to Ukraine, the world’s food supply, and the environment are mounting.

To summarize the pertinent history for context, in 1917, Ukraine briefly gained independence from Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Nonetheless, by November of 1920, the Soviet Union regained control over Ukraine. Ukrainians were intentionally starved by Stalin’s policy of stealing grain under the pretence that Ukrainian farmers were not keeping up with the production stipulated in his 5-year plan. In the fall and winter of 1932, Soviet police started stealing livestock and any other food they could find. If a Ukrainian was caught hiding food, they would be sentenced to 10 years in prison or face capital punishment. When Ukrainians tried to flee as famine conditions worsened, Stalin closed the borders and families were forced to go back to their homes and starve.4 From 1932 to 1933, Ukrainians suffered under a genocide that much of the world has never heard of, the Holodomor. The result was at least 3.9 million deaths.5 During this genocide, the Soviets targeted Ukrainian religious and political institutions, as well as the intelligentsia. In the aftermath of the ethnic cleansing, hundreds of thousands of Russians were resettled in Ukraine to replace the Ukrainian farmers Stalin killed.4 Stalin’s goal was to rob Ukraine of its agricultural wealth, eradicate Ukraine and its people and extend the borders of Russia. Putin, an admirer of the Soviet Union, has the same aims. This is why Ukraine is fighting back. Ukraine knows that it is once again facing an existential struggle for its survival.

Photo credit: Pavlo Petrov / the Collection of war.ukraine.ua

As a result of the current crisis, Ukraine, despite having been called the “breadbasket of Europe” is once again one of the most food insecure countries in the world. According to the United Nations Food Programme, one in three Ukrainian families are facing food insecurity with that figure being as high as one in two in parts of the east and south of the country. The near collapse of Ukraine’s agricultural sector caused the poverty rate in the country to skyrocket from 5.5% to 24.2% in 2022.6 These consequences have had a devastating impact on the civilian population and these challenges, along with Russia’s military campaign that has intentionally targeted densely populated civilian areas, have caused six million Ukrainians to flee the country. As the nation’s population has now dropped 15% below pre-war levels, the economic impacts have been devastating for Ukraine and will likely continue hurting the country in the form of worker shortages for decades to come.6

The environmental damage inflicted by this war has also been immense. According to the United Nations, the estimated total cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine is $486 billion USD.7 According to a Yale University report, one year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 1,600 tonnes of pollutants have been leaked into bodies of water and about 687,000 tonnes of petrochemicals have been burned as a result of shelling, updated figures would undoubtedly be much higher.8 The destruction of the Kakhovka dam in June 2023 led to huge amounts of flooding. Ukraine’s Environment Minister, Ruslan Strilets, said that the dam's destruction has led to a loss of 14km3 of fresh water, thousands of tonnes of demolition waste washed into the Black Sea and massive amounts of forest having been flooded and destroyed. Additionally, 150,000-155,000 km2 of Ukrainian territory is potentially littered with land mines, ruining a great deal of Ukraine’s precious farmland. To date, Ukraine has tracked 5,000 incidents of war-related environmental damages since February of 2022 when Russia’s full-scale invasion began which have been classified by Ukraine and international observers as ecocide.9 10 To date, the Ukrainian government is currently investigating over 200 Russian war crimes against the environment and 15 incidents of ecocide.

Photo credit: Pavlo Petrov / the Collection of war.ukraine.ua

Another area of concern relating to the war in Ukraine is the amount of carbon emissions which have been directly caused by the ongoing conflict. International mechanisms for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions do not currently include military activities but an extensive analysis has been conducted by Ukraine’s Environment Ministry and several climate NGOs to examine the emissions impact of the war. They estimated the figure of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions since February 2022 to be 175 million tonnes. This calculation comes from billions of litres of fuel used for military vehicles, nearly a million hectares of fields and forests burned, hundreds of oil and gas sites being destroyed, and substantial quantities of cement and steel used to fortify hundreds of kilometres of front lines. Twenty-three million tonnes of CO2 emissions resulted from 27,000 fires caused by the fighting which has burned millions of hectares of land.11 The 175 million tonnes figure is calculated by combining the war-related emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and sulphur hexafluoride, the most potent of all greenhouse gases. This is equivalent to the annual emissions of 90 million cars, which is greater than the annual emissions of 175 countries and it is equal to the amount of emissions produced by Kuwait, Venezuela, or the Netherlands in an entire year.12

The implications for the global food supply have also been devastating. Ukraine’s economy has been essential for generations as it has been considered the breadbasket of Europe due to the country’s grain production. Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil (50% of world exports), the third largest of barley (18%), the fourth largest of maize (16%) and the fifth largest of wheat (12%).13 Before the war, 55% of Ukraine’s land was used for farming and 45% of the country’s export revenue came from agriculture.14 After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine lost the ability to export its foodstuff through the Black Sea. The wartime agreement between Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and the United Nations known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative was reached in July 2022. The deal was responsible for 33 million tonnes of grain and other foodstuffs. Two-thirds of the wheat exported through the Black Sea Grain Initiative went to developing countries that were struggling due to the strained global food supply chains and the resulting sharp increases in the price of grain. 725,000 tonnes of wheat left Ukrainian ports and reached Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, and Djibouti while the agreement was in place.15 After approximately one year of the deal being in place, Russia cancelled the agreement in an effort to sabotage Ukraine’s economy and weaponize food prices around the world once again hurting food insecure, developing countries the most.

It is undeniable at this point that the world has become a more dangerous place. Unprecedented conflicts are raging in the Middle East and Africa, and in the case of Ukraine’s war for its very existence, Europe is once again seeing war. War is a massive contributor to the production of greenhouse gases but the climate movement is more than just about focussing on total emissions and their impacts. When we imagine a sustainable future, we are imagining a better world. A world where children, no matter where they were born, do not have to worry about bombs being dropped on their homes. We imagine a world where the lives of civilians are respected and no one has to mourn the loss of a loved one because they happened to be “collateral damage.” We imagine a world where every nation’s sovereignty is respected and no one needs to fear their country being invaded by an aggressive neighbour. This is why we stand by Ukraine and call on Russia to end their brutal invasion immediately. When we imagine a sustainable world, we imagine a world where human rights transcend corporate profits or geopolitical objectives. This is why the climate movement has an obligation to be a social justice movement at the same time. The two are tied together. Regrettably, we are looking towards an uncertain world where increasingly scarce resources fuel mass migration, political unrest and conflict. Therefore, not only do we have to do what we can to stop the damage of climate change but we must also stand up for the rights and human dignity of others around the world. The world is at an inflection point and how we protect our planet and how we protect each other will be foundational to the world we will all share for generations to come.

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The Canada-Ukraine Foundation works on numerous projects to help Ukrainians living in the conflict zones as well as those resettled in Canada. See the link below to donate.

https://www.cufoundation.ca/our-projects/