While the human toll of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine may be easier to see and calculate on the surface, the devastation the war is having on nature in that country is harder to determine but is still a war crime.
"Most people pay attention to loss of life and damage to infrastructure, but lots of people and even the national government forget about losses and damage caused to the environment," Ukrainian environmental lawyer Anatoliy Pavelko told the Guardian Saturday.
"If we expect Russians to pay for the damage caused, we should pay special attention to the facts of the crime, and this is a situation where they aren’t properly documented."
Pavelko used to protect rivers as an attorney before the invasion but is now trying to gather evidence to hold Russia financially accountable for the environmental costs the war is having on his country.
Such evidence, according to the report, includes traces of toxins left in the ground after artillery shells strike the Ukrainian soil, chemicals unleashed by bombs and fires, and sewage spilling into the rivers after treatment plants are destroyed.
A Radio Free Europe report from June said that Russia has damaged the ecosystems in the region going back to its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and that damage to nature can last for many years.
In addition to the obvious damage caused in combat regions, the carbon footprint for all the military units preparing to fight can also be devastating in terms of climate change.
A November 2019 report by the Watson Institute at Brown University dealing with the United States found that between 2001-18, the Pentagon released 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases with its invasion of Afghanistan in response to the Set. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
While it is still early in the Russian offensive to determine quantities, or the extent of environmental damage with any certainty, it is also classified by the United Nations as against international law, making it a war crime.
States engaging in military activities and war are required to consider the environmental impact of their operations and should "take effective legislative, administrative, judicial, and other measures, to enhance the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict," a 2019 U.N. report on the subject said.
"States should take appropriate measures, in the event of an armed conflict, to protect the environment of the territories the indigenous people inhabit," the report states, making clear that involved countries also have to plan on providing remediation for the damage that occurs.
"Environmentalists insist that the beauty of nature also has value. People have lost places for recreation, where they spent time with their families and they can’t just be rebuilt like, for example, a supermarket," Hanna Hopko, a Ukrainian activist and politician who is part of the campaign for environmental accountability told the Guardian. "We need generations to see 150-year-old oak trees grow back from first planting," she said.
"Even my daughter will never see this destroyed nature [fully restored], probably only her grandkids."
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