Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

Convened May 1–3, 2024

Addressing Environmental Damage in Ukraine
Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

On May 1–3, 2024, a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) convened a workshop to address the environmental damage resulting from Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of and subsequent war against Ukraine. The damage includes the shelling of agricultural fields and oil deposits; the destruction of infrastructure, which resulted in the pollution of land and water resources, and the environmental consequences of military actions.

The three-day workshop consisted of opening remarks and keynotes followed by six expert panels and a closing session. The goal was to understand the full scope of the damage, highlight efforts to monitor it, and discuss ways to address or mitigate the effects. The panels included Demining Ukraine: Coordinating with Global Demining Efforts to Address Environmental Impacts, Environmental Impacts: Water, Energy, and Health, Environmental Impacts: Land, Soil, & Agriculture, Environmental Impacts: Biodiversity, Environmental Impacts: Risks from Damage to Nuclear Infrastructure, and Quantifying the Cost of Environmental Remediation in Ukraine. Participants of the workshop examined the short- and long-term effects of this damage on Ukraine’s ecosystems, agriculture, population, and society.

This workshop was the latest in a series focused on critical problems faced by Ukrainian science and scientists as a result of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The workshop included the expertise of many Ukrainian officials and scientists working directly on these issues. This Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief is a summary of the presentations and discussions at the workshop; it does not include conclusions or recommendations from the workshop participants.

OPENING REMARKS

Rita Colwell (University of Maryland), co-chair of the planning committee, introduced the topic by reminding the participants that prior to the full-scale invasion, Ukraine had a well-developed national system for collecting environmental data, including air, water and soil quality. A key goal of the workshop was to identify where and how science and technology can address these issues and mitigate the damage done over the past three years.

The issue of environmental damage is not just an academic matter, said committee co-chair Oleksiy Kolezhuk (Kyiv National University). It is critical for Ukraine’s economic and societal future, given a large part of its gross domestic product comes from agriculture. Kolezhuk hoped to not just discuss and assess the level of damage but to propose specific and long-term actions that could serve as solutions to those problems.

Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, opened her remarks by stressing that Ukraine has experienced “unimaginable losses.” She met Ukrainian scientists who were forced to flee to Poland after the Russian invasion and noted that they were building collaborations with researchers in Europe and learning English. “I think the Russian plan was to keep Ukraine from forming ties with the West,” she said. A strong and responsive Ukrainian science and technology enterprise will be essential to the long-term rebuilding of the country, McNutt added.

Through a joint program with the Polish Academy of Science, the U.S. National Academies have provided $8 million in total to 18 Ukrainian research teams to create stable conditions to conduct research that will ultimately help rebuild Ukraine, McNutt said, including one project focused on quantifying the magnetic properties of soil to evaluate the hazards from heavy metal pollution. The National Academies have also launched a Science and Innovation Fund for Ukraine—both for near-term and long-term support for Ukrainian science.

Yulia Ovchynnykova, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, said that Ukrainian science has been affected since 2014 when researchers at her home institution were forced to flee during the war in Donbas. Other institutions, collections, and laboratories have been destroyed. Since 2022, hundreds of scientists have taken up arms in the war; some have been killed in fighting or in shelling of civilian areas, Ovchynnykova said.

Because of Russian occupation of certain areas, the widespread environmental impacts on Ukraine can only be estimated, but well-known examples include the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant; the occupation and damage of the Chornomorsky Biosphere Reserve, and the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, which led to the flooding of tens of thousands of hectares and the destruction of several protected species in these areas (Figure 1).

To counter ecocide¹ from the war, Ukraine needs the support of researchers and labs in the United States and elsewhere to undertake specialized soil analysis, access to up-to-date high-resolution satellite images, and licenses for specialized software, she said.

Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States Oksana Markarova finished the opening remarks by saying that, while the current focus is on winning the war, the environmental impact is an inseparable part of assessing the damage and showing war crimes committed by Russia. Attacks by Russia on industrial elements and infrastructure have led to very damaging results for ecosystems in Ukraine, she said (Figure 2). The new science and innovation fund is important, she added because “after we win, we have to rebuild Ukraine and leapfrog into a better Ukraine,” not just in science and technology, but also in the environment. Markarova said they need to rebuild in a way that creates better conditions for Ukrainians and the natural world.

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DEMINING UKRAINE: COORDINATING WITH GLOBAL DEMINING EFFORTS TO ADDRESS ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

There are now more landmines in Ukraine than almost anywhere on the planet, said panel moderator Gerald Galloway (University of Maryland). The first panelist, Suzanne Fiederlein, director at the Center for International Stabilization and Recovery (CISR), gave an overview of explosive ordinance² (EO) contamination in Ukraine. EO encompasses more than just landmines because, despite being widely used in Ukraine, mines alone are a “small part” of the wider problem, which includes high numbers of projectiles, rockets, mortar bombs, as well as items like drones, Fiederlein said, citing FenixInsight data.

A non-technical survey estimates about 25 percent of the land in Ukraine is potentially contaminated with EO, she said, and this includes both urban and rural areas, as well as damaged infrastructure. CISR’s main publication, the Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction, has found more than 500 types of EO in Ukraine. The wide range of kinds of explosives is important, Fiederlein said, as different munitions need to be handled differently.

Given the widespread impact on people, EO risk education and victim assistance is extremely important, she added, including both traditional and new ways of offering risk education. Coordinating between the many United Nations (UN) agencies, local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and dozens of mine action operators “has been a challenge” in Ukraine, Fiederlein said. The workshop was happening at the same time as the annual meeting of Mine Action National Directors and United Nations Advisers in Geneva, and the importance of clearing agricultural lands, especially in Ukraine, has been getting a lot of attention among those in the demining sector.

Ihor Bezkaravainyi, Deputy Minister of Economics of Ukraine, clarified that the potentially contaminated areas are not just “one super big minefield,” but rather a collection of areas that have been identified as dangerous, and more analysis is needed. The main problem is the levels of ecological damage can be quite different, but some areas are still in active war, so they do not know the full impact.

They are using data-driven approaches, including satellite and spectral imagery to calculate estimates of shells in the field and identify destroyed areas. Ukraine needs not just resources to respond to clearing EO, but experience across the demining, environmental, and construction sectors.

Paul Heslop, Programme Manager for mine action at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Ukraine, said there are two problems in Ukraine: highly contaminated land that will pose technical challenges on the way to remediation, and the large portion of land which is suspected of being contaminated, but is not. UNDP is working with Ukraine on how to prove that land is not dangerous so it can be used again for agricultural and other purposes.

We know there are a lot of unexploded ordnance³ (UXO) in Ukraine, especially with the wide scale use of artillery, Heslop said. There have been reports of Russian forces firing as many 20,000 artillery rounds a day, and with failure rates of between 10–30 percent, there would be potentially a million UXO. We need to think about not just the number of mines, but how the land is going to be used, he added, and “how to not make things worse.” In some cases, destroying in situ may actually be adding further chemical contaminants to the land, he said.

Language is important, especially given the limits of what we know right now, said Chris Whatley, Executive Director of HALO Trust USA. The word “contamination” is commonly used in the demining sector to refer specifically to the removal of UXOs, but the term has wider implications for most people. There is concern about the term “contamination” altering the market perception of Ukraine unnecessarily. This misconception risks making it more difficult for Ukrainian farmers to get capital and depresses the value of agricultural exports, even if the land is safe.

More research needs to be done about the land that has been “touched by conflict” and the impact on the soil, Whatley said (Figure 3). Because we do not know enough yet, we run the risk of creating perceptions of concerns unnecessarily, he said. HALO Trust has recently

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employed a full-time agronomist and is providing soil sampling where they are doing mine clearing to develop this body of research.

Whatley also echoed “how you clear matters.” The HALO Trust is approached weekly by “well-meaning entrepreneurs and manufacturers” about “new” approaches to rapid clearing. But many of these are not appropriate from safety and environmental standpoints.

Jeff Caldwell, head of a Tetra Tech team working on a U.S. State Department project in Ukraine, described how they had revised their original plan and shifted towards training Ukrainian agencies and groups to International Mine Action Standards (IMAS). There is a reluctance to accept methods that have worked around the world. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” he said, adding there are already methods that do not create a high level of damage to the ground. Teams can build technology “on top” of these existing methods, including satellite surveys and drones to reduce the areas known to have explosives.

Less noticed and supported right now is the need to support the fleet of demining machines once they are put into operation, Caldwell said. Donors could work together to support buying the machines and mobile workshops to keep them in order. Another important element is interoperability between both groups and machines, as this is going to be a “long-haul clearance,” and there is a need to plan for it, he added.

An online participant asked about possible issues with demining in places with pre-existing industrial contamination. Heslop noted that the destruction of the Kakhovka dam led to pollutants, landmines, and UXO being taken downstream. This is where work done by the government in terms of soil sampling and identifying different types of contamination will be very important, he said.

Another participant asked if climate change would pose an additional problem to removing EO in Ukraine. Whatley said climate change’s interaction with demining was being felt most acutely in the Pacific, where HALO is working on clearing islands that could disappear before 2050. HALO has seen the impact of extreme weather on the movement of mines and clearance elsewhere in the world, but not yet in Ukraine.

Fiederlein said what was noteworthy about Ukraine was that it was at the intersection of old-fashioned weapons and new ones, but it also has new technology advancing very quickly on identifying areas at risk. In response to a question on the range of technologies being used, Whatley identified two categories: technologies creating efficiencies on finding explosives, including drones, AI, and robots; and modifications of existing commercial and agricultural machinery to do clearance at scale.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS: WATER, ENERGY, AND HEALTH

Any type of conflict creates damage to the environment, but that damage can also create additional conflict, said Bernard Amadei (University of Colorado, Boulder), moderator of the second panel, as he opened the discussion on the nexus of water, energy, and health.

Joseph Hughes (Drexel University) outlined four broad categories of concern: water and sanitation, solid waste, hazardous or industrial waste, and military operations. In eastern Ukraine especially, there has been enormous destruction of both water and wastewater infrastructure at all levels. This has broad health concerns as it is difficult to have good public health without water infrastructure.

Solid waste challenges in Ukraine are on a “scale we’ve never seen before in history,” he said. Rubble in urban areas cannot be just treated as construction waste, given two well-known concerns: asbestos and lead. There is also a technology gap for disposal. Relying on landfills alone is hard to imagine, so there will be tremendous need for recycling and reuse.

Industrial waste from destroyed facilities can have negative impacts on health and ecosystems, including heavy metals and agricultural chemicals leaching into land and waterways, Hughes explained. Military installations also create their own environmental impacts, including explosive waste, sanitary facilities, and burn pits or other damaging waste management techniques. The health impacts are felt both by communities and the soldiers themselves.

As Ukraine tries to rebuild these systems and address waste, we should be “reimagining our approach in these areas,” not just recreating existing systems, Hughes said.

Before the war, all Ukrainians had access to electricity, and very high percentages had access to clean water and clean fuels, said Nazar Kholod, Ukraine Country Coordinator for Net Zero World at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Ukraine’s nuclear industry was one of the most developed in the world, and its renewables use in its energy mix, 12.4 percent, was above the European Union (EU) average. Just before the full-scale invasion, Ukraine was preparing to export electricity to the rest of Europe, an effort that could have potentially reduced the continent’s demand for Russian gas by 17 percent.

Since February 2022, attacks on energy infrastructure have led to cuts in nuclear and hydroelectric power, as well as the destruction of 80 percent of Ukraine’s wind resources and 20 percent of its solar resources. Recovery and reconstruction needs in the energy sector will be in the billions of dollars, Kholod said, and efforts are underway to move away from larger power plants towards decentralized energy sources.

In his research on water systems as weapons and casualties of war, Peter Gleick (Pacific Institute) has found a recent increase in water-related conflict, some of which is attributable to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He noted several categories of water-related impacts and mentioned some water pipelines in Ukraine had been attacked by Russia prior to 2022.

Gleick discussed the impacts from the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in more depth. The reservoir behind the dam provided water supply to hundreds of thousands of people and irrigated more than five million hectares of land. When it was destroyed, four cities and several dozen villages flooded, and between 50–100 people were killed—an estimate which is likely an undercount. Flooding led to bacterial and chemical pollution downstream and cut off water supplies cut for towns and agricultural areas upstream.

Scientists were able to rapidly evaluate the impacts of the dam destruction with both remote sensing and on-the-ground field assessments in very dangerous conditions, Gleick added. They found a sharp drop in water salinity, rapid increases in biological oxygen demand, and phosphorus pollution near Odesa after the destruction. Satellite imagery also showed a large increase in algal bloom in the northwest Black Sea, owing to the massive amounts of nitrates and fertilizer swept downstream.

These events raise important questions around international law and how the international community should respond to such massive destruction, Gleick said, emphasizing that Ukrainian colleagues who are doing the most dangerous parts of this work need support.

Humans can be exposed to pathogens in conflict, especially water-sensitive pathogens because of damage to infrastructure, said Antar Jutla (University of Florida). He and his colleagues are using predictive intelligence to identify areas where pathogens are likely present in order to identify where to intervene before an outbreak. Jutla and his colleagues use remote sensing to identify proxy ecological and environmental variables and to understand outbreaks of COVID-19, cholera, and dengue, he said.

In Ukraine, they most interested in water-borne diseases, especially cholera, given the possibility of water quality decline. Their predictive intelligence model showed a high-risk of exposure of cholera bacteria to the human population in the Mariupol region in May 2022, but given that the population had largely fled, there was no outbreak. His group continues to monitor and produce risk maps every week, Jutla said.

Ukraine has seen average temperature increases over the past century, including a “hot phase” in the last 40 years where temperatures have risen faster than European and global averages, Boris Faybishenko (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) said. At the same time, precipitation has remained the same or decreased, contributing to a water imbalance in the country. Ukraine was already a water-stressed country, and it is among the least water-sup-

plied countries in Europe, with three-quarters of its water provided to residents sourced from rivers.

There is an MIT–Ukraine working group developing a design for a post-war decentralized drinking water supply and treatment system for Ukraine, but currently, much of the population has limited access to clean freshwater supplies, Faybishenko said. Eighty percent of wastewater is discharged back without proper treatment, and 80 percent of natural water sources are polluted due to human wastewater impact.

Both climate warming and the Russian invasion have adversely affected water sources and infrastructure, he explained. Ukraine needs to build better monitoring systems to assess climate changes and consider integrating nature-based solutions like wetlands restoration in addition to engineered water infrastructure.

A participant asked Hughes to further explain what innovations in water infrastructure might be relevant to Ukraine. The “Water 4.0” concept is a “system of systems approach,” creating opportunities for water reuse and filtration, including reverse osmosis, advanced oxidation, and smart water systems, he said. One of the characteristics is decentralized systems and technologies that can be supported with renewable energy.

Another participant asked Kholod if Ukraine was moving towards reducing its reliance on nuclear energy, given issues with nuclear waste. He was confident nuclear energy will stay, in part because of its existing share of energy production in Ukraine and in part because public opinion was not against it. However, more efforts were needed around reducing the use of Russian nuclear fuel and adding small modular reactors in the effort to decentralize energy production. He did note that renewables have “enormous potential” in Ukraine, including bioenergy, solar, wind, and geothermal energy.

DAY TWO KEYNOTE: MAKSYM POPOV

Ukraine has decided that the environment should no longer be the “silent victim of war,” said Maksym Popov, an advisor to the Prosecutor General (PG) of Ukraine. The PG’s office has directed prosecution of war time environmental damage and is investigating 205 cases of environmental damage, 15 of which meet the legal qualification of ecocide, he said. The clearest example of these is the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. The office’s efforts have already led to changes, he said, including a Council of Europe resolution to take all possible action against countries responsible for environmental damage and to criminalize ecocide.

The International Criminal Court has opened an office in Ukraine, and the PG is providing them with all available evidence, Popov added. Their challenges include the absence of legal precedents, difficulty gathering evidence in areas still under occupation, and the absence of clear scientific knowledge about the damage. They are in need of scientific support as well as more technical capacity for prosecutors.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS: LAND, SOIL, AND AGRICULTURE

Deanna Behring (Penn State University) explained the next panel would follow different levels of the impact of war on systems important to Ukraine’s role as the breadbasket of Europe.

Before the war, Ukraine was a leader in exporting sunflower oil, wheat, and corn, said Denys Bashlyk, the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, including a record harvest of 100 million tons of grain. World Bank research estimates direct agricultural losses from the war at $10 billion and indirect losses at $40 billion. While growing seasons were good in 2022 and 2023, attacks on export routes and fields by mortars, shells, and other ordinance created major problems. Bashlyk said that Ukraine considers farmers who continue to work under the threat of bombs and shelling to be “heroes.”

Ukrainian farmers need access to financing, demining, and development and restoration of irrigation infrastructure, he said. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been essential in supporting farmers with fertilizer and seeds and mentioned the previous day’s discussion of quickly identifying unaffected land in potentially impacted areas in order not to support the Russian “illusion” that Ukrainian exports are not safe.

NASA is working with Ukrainian agencies to create a timely assessment of the war’s impact on agricultural land, said Inbal Becker-Reshef, director of the agency’s HARVEST program, including remote sensing in occupied areas.

Becker-Reshef shared that satellite data comparing similar areas in 2021 and 2023 show a dark green area of abandoned agricultural land that has regrown vegetation along the front line of the war. The data also show changes in liberated areas, some of which have been turned back into farmland, Becker-Reshef added. From mapping this data, they estimate 7 percent of Ukraine’s total cropland has been abandoned due to the war. This created a “harvest that never happened” and a loss of $2 billion dollars and quantities of grains and oilseeds that could have fed 25 million people for a year, Becker-Reshef said.

The NASA team is mapping artillery craters, monitoring reclamation of shelled fields, and the impact of the Kakhovka dam destruction, Becker-Reshef said. The latter has massive implications for agriculture, she said, as the areas irrigated by now dried up canals produced many melons, grains, and oilseeds. The NASA team is also estimating yield and harvest for farms inside the occupied areas using comparative data from the Ukrainian controlled land as a reference. Becker-Reshef noted increasing Russian dominance of the wheat markets and their use of wheat to build geopolitical alliances.

Some of the most fertile soils in the world, chernozems, are located in the areas of eastern Ukraine currently occupied by Russia, said Yuriy Kravchenko (National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine). He outlined the different types of soil impacts on agricultural land: mechanical, physical, and biological degradation, as well as chemical contamination. Mechanical degradation includes dug trenches, craters, garbage dumps, and mines and other UXO. Physical degradation includes soil compaction from military vehicles, soil erosion in craters, and soil subsidence in craters refilled quickly by farmers.

Chemical contamination comes from a variety of abandoned or destroyed military weapons, Kravchenko said. Soil near destroyed rockets and mortars shows increases in the amount of specific chemicals, but rarely over allowable thresholds, Kravchenko said. In comparison, soil around destroyed tanks shows dangerous levels of cadmium, iron, and especially high levels of lead. Ecological degradation from the war includes the impact of reduction of vegetation cover, loss of native habitats, fires, decline of plants biomass and species composition, increase of pests, diseases, and loss of predators. In some cases, he noted, farmers are not willing to wait for the government to decide what to do with impacted land and will try to reclaim it themselves—a potentially risky choice.

Reclamation is not just about the recovery of the land itself but the logistical routes, storage facilities, and irrigation systems that allow land to be used for agriculture, said Andrii Martyn (National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine).

One of the biggest economic problems related to land recovery, Martyn said, is the low price of land in Ukraine relative to much of the rest of Europe, in part because Ukraine does not have agricultural subsidies. The costs of surveying and clearing the land after the impacts of war can be much higher than the market value of that land, meaning recovery through private funding is unprofitable. This also impacts local tax revenues, Martyn added, as the government cannot ask for land tax on areas that are considered potentially contaminated and therefore unused. Last year they coordinated data sharing between mine action groups and the state land cadastre or land registry to more accurately determine the land tax status of potentially contaminated plots.

Agricultural businesses, especially small- and medium-sized farms, are struggling because their operational funds have been depleted, said Andriy Zayika, Deputy Chief of USAID’s Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities. Since the war, the USAID agriculture program in Ukraine has pivoted. They now support capacity through providing fertilizer and seeds, investing in expanding long-term storage like grain elevators and silos, and helping to regain the export market and unlock financing for farmers, he explained.

Their policy team has also provided support to the Ukrainian government on legislation to improve water-use regulations, as well as projects by water-user organizations that are updating or replacing inefficient irrigation equipment. But there has been recent reluctance for the government to turn over these systems.

Martyn explained Ukraine had already started reforming water use and transferring ownership to the unions

of water users—the owners of the land serviced by the irrigation systems—free of charge. The challenge is now dealing with war-related damage to this infrastructure. No one local community can reconstruct the Kakhovka dam, but management should be in local hands.

Faybishenko, a previous panelist, said he supported the decentralized use of water in irrigation. Ukraine’s limited water quantity and quality means they need to optimize the use of different kinds of water sources as well as deal with drastic changes in climatic conditions projected further north in Ukraine.

Eugene Stakhiv (Johns Hopkins University) asked about current prospects of agricultural irrigation in Kherson given the destruction of the dam and whether the dam should be rebuilt at all, especially if Russia retains areas currently occupied.

Martyn explained the political position of Ukraine is that the dam should be rebuilt, and there have already been cost estimates. Part of this is due to the security situation: the Dnipro River is a front line and is important to water supply in the wider region, in addition to agriculture. But if Russia retains the occupied areas all the way to the river, Ukraine will not support the irrigation of occupied territories, making the dam reconstruction less likely.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS: BIODIVERSITY

The next panel covered the “most fragile but most hidden” part of the environment: biodiversity of vegetation, animal, and marine systems, said moderator Pavel Gol’din (Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, National Academy of Sciences [NAS] of Ukraine).

All aspects of military actions negatively affect the environment and pose a threat to biodiversity, said Yakiv Didukh, a botanist at the Kholodny Institute of Botany, NAS of Ukraine. While the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution on assessing a wide range of environmental damage, there was no mention of biodiversity losses in this resolution.

On behalf of his research team, Didukh proposed a plan for assessing damage to natural ecosystems with the aim of demanding reparations and preventing negative consequences. This plan includes identification of damaged environmental habitats: a point assessment based on characteristics like scale of impact, area, degree of damage, duration, recovery process, ecosystem service losses, habitat value, and biodiversity assessments.

Researchers will need to assess the monetary significance of each ecosystem service, he said. Calculating these figures can be difficult, but some ways include the cost of the resource, replacement costs, or indicators of energy. Energy indicators are a measure of our attitude towards nature, and in recent years, there has been an emphasis on carbon indicators, as they are easy to convert into monetary units. For example, they calculated average costs for forests aged 100–140 years at $1.28 million per 1 hectare.

There are no exact numbers on the loss of animal diversity in regions affected by war, said Yurii Kuzmin (Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, NAS of Ukraine). What we do have are fragments collected from biologists and advocates, including a recently published paper on amphibians and reptiles by Olexii Marushchak.

The main causes of decreasing animal biodiversity are direct killing by explosives, deaths due to habitat destruction, being run over by military vehicles, and trenches serving as traps where animals cannot escape or are killed by humans. In some regions, animals with small populations can be erased by direct killing, he said. In southern Ukraine, biodiversity loss is difficult to estimate without access, but extensive fauna research in the area before the war will help with this calculation in the future by providing a point of comparison.

Animals are also impacted by environmental and noise pollution, he explained, including the doubling of emaciated dolphins washing up on the shores of the Black Sea. In the case of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, flooding killed animals and brought others downstream as far as Odesa (100 miles away), introducing invasive species. It is possible, Kuzmin said, during post-war environmental restoration, that invasive species will have an advantage.

Anna Kuzemko (Kholodny Institute of Botany, NAS of Ukraine), the co-moderator, noted how many different kinds of victims there are in the war, and introduced the next speaker, Mykhailo Son, a marine biologist at the Institute of Marine Biology, NAS of Ukraine.

There are four main impacts of military actions on marine and estuary ecosystems, Son explained, including direct impacts, man-made disasters with a wide geographic impact, large-scale changes in human economic activity, and general weakening of institutions.

Examples of direct impacts include bombing, oil spills, and pollution from sunken military vessels. These result in destruction of valuable coastal and undersea landscapes, health impacts on seabirds and marine mammals, as well as the effects of oil pollution on small organisms living near the sea surface, and destruction of unique habitats.

Large scale (Kakhovka dam) and small scale (pollution of wastewater) disasters can impact fauna within a much wider zone. In the Black and Azov Sea basins, more than 60 species face significant risks from disasters that are not close by.

Changes in economic activity on waterways impact marine life. There are already reports of invasive species being introduced into the Azov and Black Seas due to uncontrolled ballast waters from Russia’s military fleet and a shadow fleet they use to transport petroleum products, he said. On the Ukrainian side, the destruction of the stable sea-based shipping has now redirected routes towards rivers, including new deepening on the Danube, and a change in routes and port infrastructure itself.

Finally, the war has blocked the work of the Black Sea Commission, which reports on the ecological state of the sea, and has led to weakening of internal Ukrainian institutions focused on conservation and ecological monitoring of waters.

Assessing biodiversity in areas of active military operations is “almost impossible” and has forced us to look at other approaches, said Oleh Prylutskyi (Karazin Kharkiv National University). As previously mentioned, remote sensing is sometimes the only option, but the computing power needed limits it to small areas. In the study of plant growth at the bottom of the former Kakhovka reservoir,⁴ brave biologists have supplemented this work with field data. A great example of using remote sensing for open data is a recent study identifying the damage to forests from fires⁵ and the impacts on future forest management and wildfire risk, he said.

Another method is environmental DNA analysis, including using DNA barcoding on soil samples to figure out the soil microbiota and fungi, as well as using water samples to decipher the diversity of organisms within it based on nucleotide sequences. This is a “great step-up” as it allows us to get much more information in a shorter time frame, Prylutskyi said. He also noted progress in digitizing and making openly accessible existing biodiversity data in Ukraine.

Ukraine was late with a country-wide biodiversity assessment, he said, and as a result, researchers lost a lot of information in the war. While remote sensing can be helpful, most biodiversity research still needs on-site surveys.

Before the war, more than 80,000 square kilometers were protected conservation land with areas of high biodiversity in Ukraine, said Anastasiia Drapaliuk (Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group). The majority of these lands are European-recognized Emerald Network sites and UN-recognized Ramsar wetlands of importance, as well as natural parks and biosphere reserves. More than two thirds of all Ramsar sites and 36 percent of all Emerald Network lands in Ukraine are believed to be damaged by the war, as well as other conservation areas, she said. One stark example is the Sviatoslav National Nature Park, where war-related fires burned almost 70 square kilometers, destroying nesting sites for approximately 100 bird species, followed by flooding from the Kakhovka Dam destruction. In Sviati Hory National Nature Park, an Emerald Network site in Donetsk, Russians destroyed about 60 percent of the pine forest, and management of the area is currently not possible due to danger from mines.

Staffing levels for conservation have been decimated in Ukraine, Drapaliuk added, with only 10 people working on these issues at the national government level. Staffing at the local level is also dramatically lower and NGOs and the environmental community have worked towards supporting conservation staff at these parks.

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Gol’din asked the panelists for their three top priorities for biodiversity assessment and response. Drapaliuk suggested the collection of information into an open database as well as increased financial and personnel support for conservation. Later, she mentioned that the high importance Ukraine places on agriculture threatens conservation lands if Ukraine does not have a strong environmental protection ministry. Prylutskyi’s priority was the development of broad scale biodiversity research in the country and the need for high time-resolution data for remote sensing for more in-depth analysis. Mobile laboratories for express analysis would greatly help in the work, Didukh said.

Co-chair Oleksiy Kolezhuk finished up the day’s panels by identifying common themes across both conversations: Ukraine’s interconnected environmental problems, the need for logistics to support recovery efforts, and how scientific problems in Ukraine are also spilling over into the political realm. Co-chair Rita Colwell added that the calculations for the value of the harvest in occupied territories was “really clarifying” and “astounding,” and she suspected the calculation of the loss of biodiversity would be staggering as well.

DAY 3 KEYNOTE: RUSLAN BEREGULIA

Russia is violating international law by using environmental terrorism methods, said Ruslan Beregulia, head of the Main Directorate for Mine Action, Civil Protection, and Environmental Safety at the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, as he opened the third day of the workshop. “There are so many violations of international law that attention is drawn to the torture of civilians, the execution of prisoners of war, [and] destroyed cities… Ecology, unfortunately, is forgotten in this matter,” he said.

Among the examples of using the environment as a means of warfare, Beregulia identified three key areas. First, the destruction of dams. The explosion of the Kakhovka Dam (June 6, 2023) was not an isolated incident; over 15 dams were destroyed in 2023 alone. The first dam to be blown up was the Oskilska dam in March 2022. Second, attacks on nuclear facilities. Nuclear power plants and subcritical nuclear facilities have been bombed more than 20 times, along with other dangerous actions such as those at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and military operations in the Chornobyl exclusion zone, which have led to radiation contamination of the surrounding territories (Figure 4). Third, the bombing of chemically hazardous enterprises during Russian assaults on cities. For example, during the assault on the city of Rubizhne in March 2022, or the actions of Russian troops in Severodonetsk where approximately 500 civilians had taken refuge, including the bombing of a tank containing about 20,000 tons of ammonia.

The main environmental pollution source from the full-scale invasion is artillery ammunition, and experiences from the First World War show the long-term effects of heavy artillery attack and improper clearing. There are areas that have turned into long-term military landscapes, e.g. in the Serebryansky Botanical Reserve, which has been transformed by ditches, fortifications, and engineering structures. In March 2024, satellite data indicated that some of the forest was shifting to marsh land. Mining is also highly concentrated in the Zaporizhzhia region—the average density was 2-4 mines per square meter, with up to 7 mines per square meter, and these mines as well as secondary explosives pose a significant risk to the environment primarily due to their toxicity, Beregulia said.

Detection of chemical and uranium munitions has become one of the primary goals. That month alone, Russia used more than 1,715 different types of chemical munitions. “Since 2022, the Russian Federation has been using huge quantities of uranium munitions against us,” Beregulia said. Detecting these will increase the evidence

base for Russia’s violations of international conventions and international humanitarian law and enable assessment for demining activities.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS: RISKS FROM DAMAGE TO NUCLEAR INFRASTRUCTURE

Moderator John Zimmerman (James Madison University) opened the panel on nuclear infrastructure by reminding attendees that before the war, 50 percent of Ukraine’s electricity was nuclear power. This is the first time, to his knowledge, that active, mature nuclear power plants have been in the direct path of a war.

While there is a lot of concern about the main facilities and containment structures at Chornobyl, nuclear spent fuel storage facilities were not designed for war-time conditions. In addition, electricity interruptions represent a “terrible strain” on both the conservation measures and the personnel working in them.

Curtis BJ Bjelajac, executive director of the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU), described a few STCU projects relevant to risks to nuclear infrastructure. They are providing and training mine-detecting Belgian Shepherds who work in specialized small areas. They are also working on securing and remediating the Prydniprovsky chemical plant, a uranium processing plant with radioactive contamination.

A previous part of this project created the legislative and regulatory framework for the stabilization of radiological hazards, which could be applicable to orphaned nuclear sources in occupied territories, Bjelajac said, including hospitals with radiological equipment. Finally, STCU is helping develop a regional nuclear forensics hub for the region that will help identify radioactive sources in or transiting through Ukraine.

The psychological trauma from Chornobyl is present in both Ukrainian and other societies, said Denys Vyshnevski, head of research at the Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve. Therefore, any suspicious information, delay of an explanation, or contradictory information about the state of a nuclear facility will provoke panic.

While timely information can be provided to citizens, many of the indicators like concentrations of radionuclides are not very clear to people. In a war, the other side of the conflict will spread disinformation to cause panic through their own information agents to influence the military and civilian morale, and others may want to profit from fear (e.g., giving inflated figures of the radiation threat to sell iodine pills) he said. We need to understand that information is also a resource in this situation and focus on counteracting information pollution.

Vyshnevski suggested making resources on the radiation situation more accessible and refining them to make the information understandable to a wide range of citizens, as well as developing a very wide observation network to allow people to understand the radiation situation in specific locations in real-time.

Mark Zheleznyak (Institute of Mathematical Machines and Systems Problems, NAS of Ukraine), said he and fellow researchers had been “too optimistic” in a September 2022 paper on the ecological footprint of the Russian invasion, anticipating the main activities in response to the war would be rehabilitation of the environment and research to support reparations. As the war has continued, there are far more tasks to attend to, and remediation is no longer the immediate priority. He has focused on research that supports emergency preparation and response to Russian attacks.

These tools include predicting exposure to radioactive elements in the case of an emergency and validating models of environmental contamination and hazards after attacks on infrastructure, Zheleznyak explained. Scientists can create and update models to help make decisions immediately after an attack, as well as identify the evidence of environmental damage: “If we do not do it now… data will be lost,” he said.

Among the projects Zhelenznyak and fellow researchers have taken on is modeling of the impact of the destruction of the Kakhovka reservoir and the potential risks of a Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) accident. Because the reservoir around ZNPP is diminished, there is not enough water to support cooling the plant at full-scale operation. They have also modeled the potential radiological pollution if the cooling pond near ZNPP were destroyed.

Ukrainian scientists working on nuclear issues desperately need support, said Olena Pareniuk (Institute

for Safety Problems for Nuclear Power Plants, NAS of Ukraine). Conducting research near military operations is tricky, and she and others are trying to fight nuclear disinformation from Russia by sharing truthful information about the state of nuclear power plants and the Chornobyl exclusion zone. “It’s essential to hear from people who are actually living and working in Ukraine,” she said. In response to questions, Pareniuk clarified that while Russians had entered the exclusion zone, rumors of irradiation sickness among their troops were exaggerated. She also identified the importance of Ukraine transferring their electricity grid to the EU standard, allowing them to import electricity while the nuclear power plants are operating in safe mode.

Researchers in the exclusion zone were not able to stop their work during the period in which Russia occupied the area, as they were responsible for radio-ecological monitoring for the new safe confinement structure built around the Chornobyl sarcophagus, she said. They also provided safety monitoring on central storage of spent nuclear fuel within the exclusion zone, where all but one nuclear power plant in Ukraine is storing spent fuel.

It is extremely important to explore new approaches to nuclear risk and response, not only radioactive risks but the involvement of resilient communities who face the immediate impact of military operations near these facilities, Pareniuk said. The full-scale invasion showed the need for a new approach to understanding the risk of military aggression. Assembling a real-time exposure monitoring system for Ukraine is important, and she called on the international community to help with this effort.

Learning from prior disasters has made nuclear infrastructure safer, she added. The safety of ZNPP’s backup diesel generators is much higher because of what was learned in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and is the reason why the plant can go back and forth between generators and the grid. It’s still dangerous, she said, “but the whole situation is a great danger.”

QUANTIFYING THE COST OF ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDIATION IN UKRAINE

The workshop has identified data on environmental impacts, moderator Eugene Stakhiv (Johns Hopkins University) said, but ultimately someone has to pay for these damages. We are reasonably able to quantify infrastructure damages, he said, but it is much more difficult to assess the long-term costs of pollution, losses of ecosystem services, and impacts on public health. The latter part is especially important if Ukraine wants to make a claim for compensation for environmental damage, as Kuwait did after the 1991 invasion.

Ukraine also cannot protect or remediate everything; there will be red zones, or areas declared by the government as uninhabitable due to the extreme environmental destruction, contamination, and the presence of unexploded ordnance, similar to those in Belgium and France from World War I. The country must identify what environmental impacts are most important to the economy and ecological sustainability. “Do we have the proper tools and methods to make those tough decisions?” he asked.

Because environmental harm can have many aspects, The Conflict and Environment Observatory tracks both discrete incidents and continuous cohorts in their remote assessments of environmental damage, said Eoghan Darbyshire, an environmental scientist at the observatory. The discrete incident approach addresses direct results from fighting or indirect reverberating effects. The continuous approach addresses impacts that are required to be treated as homogenous. For a comprehensive overview, both are needed.

The observatory collects data by starting with a breadth of incident reports and data from media and satellite data. They calculate a basic environmental risk score based on theoretical harm (e.g., chemical works score higher than a grain silo) and data about the event’s magnitude, as well as proximity to environmental media, such as soil, water, biota, and ecologically important areas to prioritize where to do full assessments.

Remote observations are still limited by a number of factors, Darbyshire explained: they are only snapshots in time, and there are unknowns in the composition of pollution, chemical transformations, and population exposure. Nevertheless, looking at events collectively rather than in isolation gives a fuller picture of impacts, and

their assessments help to identify where ground intervention should be prioritized.

Remote sensing cannot see impacts directly, but it can offer information—land cover use, change detection, spectral data about ecosystems—that can be analyzed and converted into economic projections, said Iryna Dronova (UC Berkeley).

An “important difficulty” in damage assessments is that harm can take many forms, and some cannot be identified using remote signatures. Other damage can be delayed in time and space or cannot be interpreted reliably by remote sensing alone. She identified an example where a change in tree cover was clearly identifiable from high-resolution satellite data, but it would be impossible to confirm the change was because of the war or a pathogen outbreak without on-the-ground validation. It is also difficult to prove a causal connection to the war in terms of data for indirect and delayed damages.

Navigating all these uncertainties can be addressed in a number of ways, including using anomaly indices for things like soil moisture content to separate climate-related drought from irrigation changes brought on by war. Dronova also suggested using “relative risk” data or forecasts based on alternative scenarios, similar to the way scientists predict sea level rise at different levels of climate change warming, as a way to validate damage figures. However, more research needs to be done on quantifying the loss of cultural and social value from forest destruction, which is amplified by human displacement and migration.

“We are much more optimistic” about Ukraine’s ability to track, identify, and retain damage data than some of the other speakers, said Max Nefyodov (Kyiv School of Economics), co-leader of the damaged.in.ua project at Vox Ukraine. Vox has collected information both through drone photography and ground data, including soil samples to analyze different impacts of the war. They have analyzed 1.3 million buildings in 437 settlements for damage, analyzed satellite data to identify likelihood and level of flooding in buildings following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, and analyzed forests at risk across Ukraine from impacts of war.

For the latter, the general analysis shows damage to about 59,000 hectares of forest, although Nefyodov noted this does not necessarily indicate land that has been completely destroyed nor are these the only territories that have received damage. He believes it is a “priority” to focus on identifying and quantifying direct ecological damages because strong methodologies can prove these cases, and it is where the international community can really lend a hand.

The third installment of Ukraine’s rapid damage needs assessment estimated $3 billion in environmental damages and $27 billion in environmental losses, said Oksana Rakovych, a Senior Environmental Specialist at the World Bank. This figure accounts for ecosystem services as well as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of carbon sequestration but does not include impacts to water or demining needs that are covered in other parts of the assessment.

A separate study identified environmental hazards from the war, including air, water, and land pollution—identifying the costs through the lens of health, including health treatment expenses and the loss of human productivity, she said. Air pollution added 3,000 mortalities annually, as well as $1 billion in costs annually for the next 10 years. This study also suggested 25 percent of the people living in conflict zones have been exposed to unsafe levels of pollutants associated with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases as well as cancer, with costs estimated at $2.5 billion a year, in addition to other impacts.

Rakovych covered several challenges that she sees: the Ukrainian legislature does not currently directly acknowledge ecosystem services as an explicit economic item; there are differences between labs in Ukraine when comparing assessments; and there is a lack of strategic planning for reconstruction. When her group asked government ministries about their rebuilding needs, their answers were “unambitious,” limited to basic needs, and planned no more than one year ahead, she said. This is in part because they do not have time to strategize, are dealing with the uncertainty of the war, and are focused on the EU accession path.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Franklin Carrero-Martínez, Senior Director, Science and Technology for Sustainability (STS) Program at the National Academies, described the recently launched Science and Innovation Fund for Ukraine to operationalize conversations like those happening at the workshop. The fund aims to provide immediate support to the Ukrainian research community and build a framework for a long-term innovation ecosystem based on science, technology, and commercialization.

The National Academies has been working on a number of Ukrainian science initiatives since 2022, investing $13 million so far through a variety of partners. The new Science and Innovation Fund aims to improve Ukrainian national security, rebuild the economy and the scientific pipeline of talent, and strengthen links to the U.S. and global science and technology community.

Panel moderators shared their final takeaways at the end of the workshop, including common themes like demining, the interconnectedness of water, energy and public health, difficulties with coordination across ministries and external financial and logistical support, the need for technological innovation, barriers within Ukraine’s own legal system, and the enormous stress Ukrainian scientists are under while trying to do research to support their country.

Gerald Galloway underlined the necessity for funding that should come from nations all over the world that are interested in these issues. Similarly, he stressed the need to learn how to apply some of the techniques for assessment and tackling the issues on a broad scale. He stressed the importance of sharing the workshop’s insights widely not only to aid Ukraine but also to inform global strategies for addressing conflict-related environmental recovery. His reflections covered the need for international funding, technical expertise, and knowledge transfer.

Bernard Amadei posed two key questions derived from the workshop: How do we create a resilient Ukraine? What lessons can be learned from what has been going on? He advocated for a dual approach: the idea of early interventions combined with long-term recovery efforts.

Deanna Behring stressed the value of a variety of data for decision making; knowledge about contamination as it relates to food safety and communication about food safety; technologies for decontamination; and finally, financial and logistics support for farmers to address some of the decontamination work. Her remarks provided a roadmap for integrating agricultural recovery into Ukraine’s broader reconstruction efforts.

Pavel Gol’din focused on the necessity of an assessment of the losses and changes in biodiversity, including on-site field studies and new techniques, better management and postwar recovery of landscapes, protected areas, and biodiversity as a key part of Ukraine’s future sustainable development. He also insisted that the ongoing presence of a Russian army occupying parts of Ukraine is a significant issue and urged the development of emergency plans to address potential future damages.

Anna Kuzemko commended the resilience of researchers collecting field data under difficult conditions and emphasized the importance of shared expertise in advancing Ukraine’s ecological restoration.

John Zimmerman framed Ukraine’s nuclear challenges within the historical context of Chornobyl and Fukushima, noting the cyclical exchange of lessons learned. He raised concerns about the situation at Zaporizhzhia and spoke about the crucial role of transparency and timing in radiation reporting to counter misinformation. He called for robust international support for Ukraine’s scientific and technical communities and highlighted the urgency of addressing nuclear safety as a cornerstone of recovery.

Eugene Stakhiv pointed out the need for improved coordination among ministries and the alignment of Ukraine’s legal framework with EU methodologies. He called for a focused scientific approach to address priorities and bridge the gap between policy and implementation.

Rita Colwell emphasized the importance of disseminating the workshop’s findings to the public, to Congress in the United States, and to the international community. She noted it was important to understand that environmental damage is not restricted to the physical environment but also impacts human health and the human spirit. She

thanked the workshop’s speakers and organizers for their contributions and collaboration, reinforcing the need for continued efforts to address the pressing environmental challenges facing Ukraine.

Oleksiy Kolezhuk summarized key takeaways from the workshop, including the demand for scientific input and the development of systems for data acquisition and analysis. He highlighted the need for environmentally safe demining and decontamination methods, legal reforms to address ecological crimes, and expanded meteorological networks. He also stressed the importance of international collaboration, training specialists, and developing domestic production capabilities for demining equipment. He concluded by addressing the growing weaponization of water and energy and the need for proactive monitoring and decentralized energy systems to mitigate future risks.

DISCLAIMER This Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was prepared by Taylor Kate Brown, Yuliia Bezvershenko, and Claire Duckworth as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. The statements made are those of the rapporteurs or individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all workshop participants; the planning committee; or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

PLANNING COMMITTEE Rita R. Colwell (Co-Chair), University of Maryland; Oleksiy K. Kolezhuk (Co-Chair), Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv; Bernard Amadei (NAE), University of Colorado, Boulder; Deanna Behring, Pennsylvania State University; Gerald Galloway, Jr. (NAE), University of Maryland; Pavel Gol’din, Ukrainian Scientific Center of Ecology of the Sea; Lidiia Iavorivska, Pennsylvania State University; Anna Kuzemko, M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany; Eugene Stakhiv, Johns Hopkins University; and John Zimmerman, James Madison University. The National Academies’ planning committees are solely responsible for organizing the workshop, identifying topics, and choosing speakers. Responsibility for the final content rests entirely with the rapporteur(s) and the National Academies.

REVIEWERS To ensure that it meets institutional standards for quality and objectivity, this Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was reviewed by Pavel Goldin, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Sherri Goodman, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Thor Hanson, Independent Consultant, and Gary Machlis, Clemson University. Marilyn Baker, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, served as review coordinator.

SPONSORS This activity was supported by a grant between the National Academy of Sciences and the Breakthrough Prize Fund. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.

STAFF Yuliia Bezvershenko, Senior Program Officer; Claire Duckworth, Research Associate; Micah Lowenthal, Senior Board Director; and Candace Huntington, Research Associate

SUGGESTED CITATION National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Addressing Environmental Damage in Ukraine: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/29077.

For additional information regarding the workshop, visit https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/addressing-environmental-damage-in-ukraine-a-workshop.

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