[CPEO-MEF] "Grappling with environmental risks in the fog of [the Russian-Ukraine] war"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Grappling with environmental risks in the fog of war

By Kristina Hook, Richard “Drew” Marcantonio
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
March 10, 2022

The military escalation and re-invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has sparked a complex humanitarian crisis that worsens daily. On March 10, the United Nations confirmed at least 1,506 civilians have been killed or injured, while noting that these numbers are likely much higher. Even before Russia began its most recent assault on the country, the conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region of Ukraine had claimed 14,000 lives and internally displaced more than 1.5 million people since 2014. Now, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees describes the situation in Ukraine as the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II. Evidence that the Russian Federation has intentionally targeted fleeing civilians and broken ceasefires suggests that the numbers of those killed and fleeing will only grow.

In this chaotic context of acute violence and kinetic warfare, the environmental disasters unfolding across Ukraine fall under the radar. One Ukrainian official tasked with coordinating the humanitarian response described environmental issues as beyond peoples’ ability to process. “Everyone is living under the constant threat of airstrikes,” she said. “It distracts a lot.” Another official at the Ukrainian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources confirmed that while the besieged Ukrainian government is clear-eyed about the short- and long-term risks to human health from invading Russian forces, “people are much more worried about bullets and bombs flying through the air than they are particulate matter floating about or toxic chemicals emitted that may cause cancer. We don’t have such luxuries [to consider environmental risks] at the moment.”


…

For the entire article, see
https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/grappling-with-environmental-risks-in-the-fog-of-war/

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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