Two million hectares or more of Ukrainian forests have already been lost to heavy conflict, with Russian fire, artillery shelling and explosive devices making Ukraine’s eastern forests the most deadly on earth. That is according to new data published by Girst, revealing that 90% of Ukraine’s wildfires have been burning in 20% of the country, 75% of these ignited inside or adjacent to the conflict zones.
It comes as a collective of forest scientists in Ukraine and abroad are studying war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction and mapping out unexploded ordnances that could spur further degradation down the road. According to Grist, these efforts aim to improve the deployment of firefighting and other resources to save forests already vulnerable to wildfires after decades of mismanagement under the Soviet Union, making the country’s forestland a tinder box during fires.
So far, more than one-third of the country’s forests and agricultural lands are covered in unexploded ordnances (or land mines), with Svitlana Hrynchuk, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Minister for Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, claiming that more than 6,500 environmental crimes and a US $40 billion-plus damage bill are “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Including the loss of natural resources (which includes conflict timber trafficked through Chornobyl), that number could be much, much higher,” Minister Hrynchuk noted, adding that the volume of land mines now makes Ukraine’s forests the most dangerous on earth. It comes after a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this year and supported by the Ukrainian government estimated that the total carbon lost since February 24, 2022, had surpassed 230 million tonnes.
Rising 31% from the 12 months to January, Ukrainian emissions now match the combined emissions from Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. The European Forest Fire Information System revealed that fires triggered by combat led to 92,100 hectares of forests burning. Significantly, landscape fires, including those in forests at or near the frontlines, more than doubled to 25.8 million tonnes of CO2, a 118% increase on the wartime average from previous years:
“Ignition points during the war are, for example, shelling at both sides (explosions), firing ammunition, crashing drones, exploding mines, soldiers making campfires,” according to the report’s lead author, Lennard de Klerk. “Due to the ongoing hostilities and mining, firefighters cannot reach the area, so a starting fire becomes much bigger and intense and will only stop once all fuel (trees and bushes) has been burnt.”
What was different about the last year, de Klerk says, was that the weather was unusually dry on the frontlines. Combined with several heat waves, this resulted in a very high Fire Weather Index: “The probability of such weather has become much higher due to climate change. So you see, climate change creates conditions for forest fires, and war is triggering them, causing carbon emissions, which causes more climate change. This is a vicious cycle of destruction.”
As fighting intensified, emissions from military activity have steadily grown over the past 12 months, finally overtaking the other major category for carbon cost – the reconstruction of damaged buildings and infrastructure: “Warfare has now become the biggest source of emissions, the report said. “Fossil fuels burned by vehicles like tanks and fighter jets – major consumers of diesel and kerosene – make up the majority of these emissions at 74 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents.”
Those backing the research say Russia should be held liable for the emissions from the war and the resulting climate-related damage:
“The full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine is entering a fourth year. The analysis shows that environmental damage knows no borders, and the war is exacerbating the climate crisis that the whole world is facing today,” Minister Grynchuk said. “This report is an important document to hold Russia accountable for the harm it is causing to all of us.”
- Click on Wood Central’s special feature to learn about Ukraine’s challenges in reconstructing its forests.
