ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — Despite being 74 years old, Ukrainian-American Eugene Stakhiv is the best player in the tennis group he organizes each weekend.
Those running around the tennis courts just outside the American capital are mostly younger than Stakhiv, some by up to 30 years. However, although they might be speedier, he usually outplays them, applying plentiful experience and stylish form.
But that’s not Stakhiv’s only accomplishment. His friends, who call Stakhiv by his middle name, Zenko, knew he was a world-class expert on water resources management and engineering, oceanography, and climate change. They also knew he had gone to Ukraine earlier this year.
But Stakhiv didn’t mention that he had been invited by Lviv University to receive an honorary doctorate or that he traveled to Lviv to see, firsthand, the introduction of a postage stamp issued by Ukraine commemorating his achievement as a Nobel Peace laureate.
Remembering Ukraine
Stakhiv is one of the many people of Ukrainian origin around the world who, in parallel with building successful careers in the country where they live, have put much emotion and effort into helping Ukraine.
Stakhiv visits Ukraine frequently but Lviv has a special place in his heart. He likes to say that he was “conceived” in Lviv, where his parents married in January 1944, the year the frontlines steadily rolled toward western Ukraine as the German army retreated from a reinvigorated Soviet military that was massively superior in numbers.
Stakhiv’s father, Yevhen, persuaded his new wife to flee the advancing Soviet army and their son was born on Dec. 21 that year in the Austrian city of Innsbruck. At the time, the hospital where he was born was being rocked by exploding bombs dropped during an allied air attack.
Yevhen Stakhiv had been a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) since 1934 and in 1939 he fought against the Hungarian Army, which was allied with Hitler and sent to occupy a short-lived Ukrainian Trans-Carpathian Republic. It was the first armed resistance anywhere in Europe to a growing, Hitler-led alliance.
In 1942-3 Yevhen worked to organize OUN branches in Donetsk, Mariupol and Dnipropetrovsk to fight against the Nazis and Communists. His older brother, Volodymyr Stakhiv, was a senior aide to OUN leader Stepan Bandera and many other members of the family were in OUN and the UPA partisan army, which fought on until the 1950s.
Stakhiv’s parents were reunited after the war, and their son’s first years were spent in refugee camps in Austria and Germany before his family was allowed to emigrate to the U.S. They arrived in New York City in 1949.
Stakhiv and his brother and sister grew up in the city’s Lower East Side Ukrainian neighborhood, speaking Ukrainian at home, attending St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church on Sundays and Ukrainian school on Saturdays.
“For 15 years, our entire world consisted of a ten-block radius around this Little Ukraine,” he said. The young Stakhiv learned Ukrainian traditional dancing, enjoyed playing volleyball and began a lifelong, involvement with the Ukrainian Plast Scouting movement.
He learned English rapidly when he started attending school, where he excelled and got a scholarship to the City College of New York, gaining a Bachelor of Science degree in meteorology in 1966. Later, he obtained a master’s degree in oceanography from Florida University and a Ph.D. in water systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1989.
Stakhiv has always played an active part in Ukrainian diaspora life. He helps to sustain Plast as a dynamic ingredient of the Ukrainian community and he contributes articles to Ukrainian newspapers and other publications.
A life of research and accomplishments
But most of his tennis group only learned they were playing with a Nobel laureate after seeing a Lviv newspaper article which told of the Nobel Prize he was co-awarded for his work on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The UN team convened three times for intensive three-year periods of research between 1989 and 2001, with Stakhiv twice being the lead author of its reports. In 2007, Stakhiv and other members of the IPCC team were awarded the prize for reports that continue to influence thinking about climate change to this day. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was also a co-recipient that year for his efforts in publicizing knowledge about climate change.
Stakhiv is modest about his accomplishments.
“As with so much in life, sometimes manna falls from heaven, quite unexpectedly,” he said. “In my case, I was fortunate to have a couple of such drizzles — starting with my lovely wife, Alexandra, who I married in 1966 and our, now adult, daughter, Natalia.
“Getting a Nobel Prize is pure serendipity — I happened to be at the right place at the right time. There were many notable Ukrainian scientists and Ukrainian-American scholars of far greater stature who have been nominated over the years but never received the prize.”
Stakhiv has worked most of his professional life at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Institute for Water Resources. The Kyiv Post spoke with him at the corps’ headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, the state where Stakhiv lives.
Historically in America, the army’s engineers bore much of the responsibility for the construction and upkeep of flood defenses, dams, levies, the water and irrigation supply, and hydroelectric power projects. They have mapped out water systems – lakes, rivers, river basins and oceans.
One of Stakhiv’s most prominent achievements was a comprehensive study of the Great Lakes, which straddle the U.S.-Canadian border. Carried out in two five-year-long parts, the research helped establish how the lakes will need to be controlled to adapt to climate change.
Stakhiv has helped develop some of the principal mathematical models used to calculate possible effects of climate change. His expertise has made him much in demand. He advises the U.S. National Defense University on water and environmental security issues, the UN Secretary General’s Global Advisory Board and other UN bodies on water and climate adaptation, and lectures at two universities.
Helping the poor
But Stakhiv is at his most enthusiastic when involved in practical tasks. He has assisted scientists and engineers around the world, including in the Middle East, Afghanistan, South Asia and Latin America.
In April 2003, Stakhiv eagerly accepted a mission to Iraq. After learning how to use a pistol, he arrived in a country whose irrigation systems, vital for agriculture, were destroyed or severely damaged.
He was placed in charge of Iraq’s Ministry of Irrigation and its 18,000 personnel. Over six months he traveled around the war-shattered country, meeting and negotiating with sometimes hostile local leaders and tribal elders in order to prepare a plan — still operating today — that restored the vital water systems, pumping stations and hydroelectric plants.
He is proudest of his work in grim conditions such as Iraq and some of the world’s least developed countries like Bangladesh.
“I improved the livelihood of millions of the poorest of the poor. By implementing water projects that prevented flood disasters and starvation in countries like Bangladesh, I can say that I contributed to saving countless lives,” he said.
“That is the most satisfying accomplishment. To me, as a professional engineer, whose main goal is to solve serious societal problems and improve social well-being, those achievements are far more important than sharing in a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Stakhiv was first sent to Ukraine in 1992 by the World Bank and traveled to other former Soviet republics to assess water needs. In subsequent years, he studied the Dnipro and Dniester River Basins and initiated studies and projects to prevent draughts and flooding and provide hydropower. Some projects continue today.
Being awarded an honorary doctorate in Lviv last March at the city’s polytechnic was a special moment in a life packed with extraordinary achievements.
In a commemorative lecture there, he said he is not confident in international agreements to curb climate change by setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions; he doubts developing nations like China and India will adhere to limits set by rich countries.
But he believes resources should be concentrated on developing technological advances to enable the world to adapt and defend against the inevitable changes.
In his speech, he said that Ukraine has massive potential: its talented and educated youth with access to a good university system. He predicted the next 50 years will be shaped by developments in artificial intelligence, nano, bio and information technologies, which Ukraine is perfectly positioned to play a leading role in.
Stakhiv will retire when he turns 75 in December. But he intends to remain very active and has been asked to deliver lectures in Ukraine and America. He also plans to write a book about Ukraine’s resistance movement based on his father’s memoirs and a naval history of the Black Sea.
