War in Ukraine: “A worrying example of how climate change and armed conflicts reinforce each other”

Pollution of the air, soil, groundwater, destruction of nature reserves and their precious flora and fauna… The war in Ukraine is destroying both human lives and the environment. “This is probably one of the best-documented conflicts in history in terms of environmental problems,” Doug Weir, director of the Observatory of Conflicts and the Environment, a British NGO, told Libération a year after the Russian offensive.

Today, three years after the start of this conflict, what exactly do we know about its impact on global warming? According to a report published on Monday, February 24 by a coalition of experts – mainly Ukrainian – called The Initiative on GHG Accounting of War, the climate bill of the conflict “has reached new heights”. For the moment, this document is eight pages long, a more substantial and detailed version (in particular on the sources and methodology) will be published in the spring. According to the researchers’ estimates, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions linked to the war have increased by almost 30% over the last twelve months, reaching almost 230 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) since the start of the conflict, on the night of February 23 to 24, 2022. That is equivalent to the annual emissions of Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and