Human activity, especially the significant emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, accelerate climate change. In other words, our previously balanced climate system has been “broken”. I compare its condition with a spinning top that spins steadily at first, but then it started swaying in various directions and we need to somehow survive under conditions of such movement.
Furthermore, it takes place during the ongoing war… These days, our project APENA3 — “Strengthening the capacity of regional and local administrations for implementation and enforcement of EU environmental and climate change legislation and development of infrastructure projects” is coming to an end. It is being implemented with the support of the European Union and it officially started in 2019. We started working on regional climate strategies for pilot regions of Ukraine in 2021 and the main activity was done during the full-scale war – from 2022 to 2025.
Despite the war, APENA3 project worked continuously. On February 24, 2022 in the morning, a couple of hours after bombardment of Kyiv, I participated in the 55th online session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), right from a bomb shelter. On this session, we had to approve a summary for policymakers on the report concerning climate change impact, vulnerability and adaptation.
As head of the Ukrainian delegation, I took the floor and told delegations from all over the world that the underlying cause of climate change and the full-scale war instigated by Russia against Ukraine lies in humanity's excessive reliance on fossil fuels. So, war and climate change are closely linked as they have common roots, that is the dependence of societies on fossil fuel. Impact of war on climate and environment has not been sufficiently studied yet, however it is definitely negative, both direct and indirect.
According to the official data, during the full-scale war 30% of forests in Ukraine have been destroyed. Forests, same as swamps and oceans, absorb carbon and purify the air. According to estimates of the experts, during three years of a full-scale invasion additional emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to approximately 230 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent that equals to cumulative annual emissions of the following four European countries: Austria, Chechia, Slovakia and Hungary. These additional emissions deplete our common global carbon budget to the point when living conditions on big territories of our planet will become unacceptable.
