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Updated Resources - August 2, 2023
Burning forest in Balabanivka locality of Mykolaiv city after Russian shelling on August 10 2022. (Dsns.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Kyiv Independent: Newsfeed
Novaya Gazeta Europe: Newsfeed
The Insider: Newsfeed
Pod of Beluga whales in the archipelago of Franz Josef Land, Barents sea, Arctic. (Kirill.uyutnov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
WHAT'S ON OUR MIND
Amidst discussion on the prospects for peace, experts mull the viability of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and tally the costs of war, both in lives lost and dollars spent. This week we include their perspectives - and many more - but the crux of our focus alights on a ‘cost’ that is often overlooked in this accounting: the environmental price tag of the war in Ukraine. Where last week’s update tackled the war’s impact on our already precarious nuclear climate, today’s highlights another way war impedes addressing the urgent needs of our day - our global environmental health and security.
Out of Ukraine, Mother Jones profiles Dr. Olga Shpak - a Ukrainian biologist and member of the Track Two network who built a life and a career in Russia - highlighting the devastating upheaval wrought by the war for both a tenacious individual and for an entire generation of scientific development and discovery. Wired offers a look at Ukrainian ecologists’ wild donkey-driven approach to aiding wartime ecological recovery in the steppes. We also share a comprehensive report from the OECD on the environmental impacts of the war and the outlook for green reconstruction in Ukraine. Meduza further offers a compilation of images showing ecological devastation on the 'forest front'.
Russia’s increased military activity and trade on the Barents Sea are examined from perspectives of both arctic environmental experts and indigenous activists in a piece from The Guardian. The Moscow Times surveys a second ‘war’ waged by the Kremlin, in which environmental NGOs are the adversary and censorship is the weapon of choice.
In the Overview The National Interest offers outlooks for negotiation, complete with historical comparisons. In videos, an interview from several months ago with Boris Kagarlitsky, the Russian independent scholar and journalist arrested July 26 on suspicion of ‘justifying terrorism’. Find also the co-founder and senior editor of The Kyiv Independent on why he does not see Russia’s war in Ukraine as ‘Putin’s War’.
In the Arts, Al Jazeera reports on the Bolshoi’s tour in China, the Wilson Center shares how Kharkiv’s Yermilov Centre reaches frontline civilians through the visual arts, and Mashable highlights an exhibit that melds ecology and imperialism.
In How to Help, learn more about the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Work Group.
Find these stories and many more in today’s resource update.
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