You're listening to AC N A podcast. There is a scene in the recent Blockbuster movie Oppenheimer where the team that successfully made the atomic bomb cheers its leader Robert J Oppenheimer. But all the atomic bomb creator can see through the smiles are the faces of those seared by the explosion. It's a master class in movie making. But it's also a lesson about the realities of war in today's world. Ukraine's ongoing battle against Russia has taken
a steep toll on its people. The human cost has been well documented, thousands dead, millions displaced and many lives completely torn apart. But other victims of this war don't usually make it into the headlines. They are the wild animals whose habitats are destroyed, the vibrant wetlands that have been stripped bare and the rivers that are now poisoned because of heavy chemicals and machinery, oil.
I'm Julie Yu. And on this special episode of the climate conversations, I want to talk about a different casualty of war, the environment. Alexei Marshak is a conservation biologist at the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group. He's among many Ukrainian scientists who have risked safety to document the impact of war on the country's natural biodiversity.
We don't go to the area where active war actions take place because it is dangerous and no one will allow us as civilians to go there. But some of our experts already work on the occupied territories. They continue their research in terms of biodiversity. They continue to make records on different representatives of biodiversity, especially rare species,
dangerous conditions have made it harder for him to survey threatened species. But Alexi says collecting data now may provide evidence for Russia's environmental crimes which he calls ecocide.
If you are talking about all the animals that died, that failed to for example, breed during breeding season that no more have safe migration roads, et cetera. This is all eco site. We are collecting the evidences of these war crimes against nature. Everything we can do is collecting the evidences.
He explains in detail what this eco site really looks like
if we call about direct impact, it is physical destruction of wildlife, physical destruction of natural habitats when constructing any military buildings, digging trenches. And on this is pollution with different chemicals from projectiles from bombs, from different shellings, which has also a long term deteriorating effect on the nature. I mean polluting the soil, then polluting the plants, then the fauna,
the earth. He says struggles to cope with the influx of heavy metals and toxic chemicals. You can imagine millions of gallons of oil from incinerated tanks seeping into the ground. The estimate is that one third of Ukrainian soil is contaminated forests and national parks spanning nearly 2.5 million hectares have been damaged. Some 160 nature reserves are at risk of degradation and destruction and nearly 1500 plant and animal species faced a threat of extinction.
Water sources have also been contaminated due to attacks and industrial facilities.
These are heavy metals which are pretty widespread among different types of artillery projectiles, different types of bombs. A lot of chemicals from destroyed uh machinery from tanks from marine ships, oil, I mean gasoline, a lot of substances that usually kills everything when they appear in the water, for example. And of course, different chemical parts of explosives. We are the most mined area in the world right now.
Even comparing to the second world war, even to comparing with the for example, different Balkan conflicts,
even the Majestic Dnipro River which serves as a vital source of water transport, power and food bears the scars of the recent bombing of the Kharkov Dam in southern Ukraine, homes and farmlands were destroyed. Some 20,000 animals including endemic species were possibly killed when the dam was destroyed. Ukraine's Environment Minister warned that mines on earth by the flooding could wash on to other European countries shores.
Then there is a nuclear fear. Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors and one of its four power plants has been the site of intense battle damage to any of these units. Or nuclear waste storage sites could have a devastating impact. Rebuilding war torn. Ukraine is also expected to be carbon intensive, generating nearly 50 million tons of emissions almost equivalent to Singapore's annual carbon emissions. The very sustenance of Ukraine is threatened too as vast
tracts of agricultural land lay Barret and unusable. A stark reminder of the prolonged aftermath of war.
I should mention that now, more than 30% of Ukrainian agricultural areas are no more accessible and cannot be used in agriculture at all for many, many years, for decades.
But dedicated scientists such as Alexei Mary are not about to give up. They work relentlessly to gather data and document a tool seeking to bring those responsible to justice. It's not clear just yet when this war will end and how much time effort and money will be needed to rebuild Ukraine the wounds of the environment, however, will take several lifetimes to heal.
I think about 200 years or something like that when people are leaving these areas, activity of humanity is very limited on these territories. The nature itself will recover quite fast.
Alexi believes that the international community could be a beacon of hope. The creation of protected nature reserves and war torn territories would also provide a sanctuary for wildlife to thrive. Once again,
what the international community can do for us is to support our projects, to support our scientists and environmentalists and giving us ability to use the most modern technologies, technologies of assessing the biodiversity, state, technologies of monitoring and so on.
My conversation with Alexi serves as a reminder that nature is not left out of the chaos and destruction of war on an already fragile planet. There are profound consequences of conflict that may take decades to erase. But in the face of adversity, environmentalists such as Alexi continue to soldier on recording and planning for the long road to recovery. I hope you enjoyed a rather different episode of the climate conversations. Please do leave a comment or review of
this episode on Apple podcast or Spotify. I love to hear from you. My name is Julie Yu and the team behind this podcast is Jacqueline Chen Tiffany Yang, Joanne Chen Sn and Christina Robert.