During war, environmental concerns are hardly the first thing on people’s minds. But after the conflict ends, damage to the environment is often one of the war’s lasting effects.
This is why Brendan Duprey, an American environmental specialist who is part of a larger organization called the Truth Hounds, is monitoring the environmental impact of the war in eastern Ukraine.
With the help of locals, he is trying to build a rich database tracking the situation in line with the standards of the International Criminal Court, or ICC. And his mission aims to fill a gap in public knowledge about the Donbas war and, potentially, bring those responsible for the damage to justice.
Before him, there had been just a handful of reports on the subject. But “much of the data collected was recycled from other reports and failed to obtain first person accounts of the problems along with factual evidence,” Duprey told the Kyiv Post in a recent interview.
“(My) research filled this gap by collecting extensive data from first person accounts and triangulating it with additional primary and secondary source literature to verify those accounts.”
Truth Hounds’ mission
Since their foundation in 2014, the Truth Hounds’ mission has been to document war crimes and crimes against humanity in different countries of eastern Europe and the Caucasus – namely Georgia, Belarus, Armenia and Ukraine. Their goal is to hold perpetrators accountable before the ICC.
The organization has been monitoring the situation in Eastern Ukraine since the very beginning of the conflict in April 2014 between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed fighters and in Crimea since the Russian invasion.
However, after the passage of a May 2016 United Nation resolution calling for the protection of the environment in areas affected by armed conflict, the organization enlarged its mission.
“The resolution called for all member states to continue to support the development and implementation (of) projects aimed at preventing or reducing the impact of armed conflicts on the natural environment,” Duprey said. The Truth Hounds called Duprey and made him responsible for monitoring these environmental changes in eastern Ukraine.
Early in 2019, he published his report, “Assessing Environmental Impacts of Armed Conflict: The case of Eastern Ukraine.” Duprey’s research largely addresses the environmental impacts of shelling and military positions, as well as the indirect consequences of the war.
Shelling is by far the most detrimental. It has caused multiple forest fires and the destruction of infrastructure for providing water, electricity and gas to the local population. It has damaged industrial hazard sites and harmed or even destroyed nature preserves and other natural heritage sites.
Duprey also notes that coal mines close to cities like government-controlled Toretsk and Russian-occupied Horlivka are connected by underground passages. These sites could be flooding, creating a significant risk of ground contamination “due to the acid going into the water,” he said.
The ongoing conflict and shelling make it increasingly difficult to prevent flooding and guarantee the safety of the area. But the potential consequences of such a flood is huge.
According to the Hromadske independent television channel, which carried out its own investigation of the environmental risk in eastern Ukraine, the “Donbas mines have only been flooded once — during the Second World War. Then, the Soviet Union needed five years to get rid of all the water.”
The war has also affected other local industries. The Avdiivka coke plant, the Bakhmut Agrarian Union’s pig farm, and the phenol plant in Novhorodske have all been seriously damaged too.
The shelling near the Bakhmut pig farm “blew up a part of the tailing pond for the pig waste… which went into the local water waste and made people and cattle sick,” Duprey explained.
On one occasion, a switch pipe in the occupied territories was hit during the shelling and exploded. Because these pipes are often near pipes with clean water, the explosion contaminated the local water supply. People who then drank the water had to be treated in the hospital, Duprey said.
The report also highlights indirect consequences of the conflict that prevent the adequate management of high-risk sites. For example, the near absence of maintenance in the grey zone — a strip of land between government-controlled and occupied territories — and tax cuts both limit local environmental programs. This, in turn, increases the risk of long-term environmental issues.
No effective measures
Ukraine’s Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources is somewhat conscious of the situation, Duprey says. It has even called for a more comprehensive analysis of the environmental situation.
But if the government’s official position is to call for more research on this subject, its actions do not reflect this.
In April 2014, Ukrainian authorities passed a law that established a moratorium on regular and ad-hoc inspections of industrial sites in the conflict zone.
“Do you think that these sites are complying with regulations?” Duprey said. “The potential for them to emit pollutants and not follow safety procedures is very high.” That law was aimed at keeping industries from leaving the area because complying with environmental regulations is costly, he says.
“They created this law to reduce the ability of inspectors to go there and check the sites,” he added.
Original work
Despite these problems, Duprey sees some possibilities to improve the environmental situation in the region. He hopes that a ceasefire can be effectively implemented in Donbas in order for inspectors to access the grey zone and assess the damage.
In the meantime, he is currently working to create a real time database “where local people can upload information – pictures and video clips – of environmental issues that are happening constantly.”
This could, in turn, inform decision-makers and the public. By raising national and international awareness, Duprey hopes to build up popular pressure to push the government to take effective action to preserve the environment — or at least to avoid a catastrophe. But it will take time. Once such a database exists, locals must be trained to use it and keep track of incidents.
Duprey and his team hope that their findings can also be used as an index for further research on the environmental effects of war — “not only in Eastern Ukraine, but in other conflict areas around the world,” he says.
