Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The environmental impacts of armed conflicts is often a matter that is overlooked both during and after conflicts. This has been the case historically and continues to be the case in modern conflicts such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Environmental impacts of modern conflicts, however, when put in the context of ever-increasing and increasingly pressing global environmental challenges, require extra care through strengthened governance frameworks. However, literature has shown the general lack of applicability of international legal frameworks pertaining to the matter. Therefore, analysing national-level environmental governance highlights what gaps could be more realistically tackled.
The research of this thesis is conducted at the hand of interviews with relevant stakeholders and literature research. It gives an overview of Ukrainian environmental governance responses to challenges facing forests in Ukraine resulting from the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. This is done first by giving context to the matter through an overview of the primary challenges facing Ukrainian forests. First, I highlight issues primarily relating to littering of explosives in forested areas, forest fires, illegal logging, and contamination of soil and groundwater. Next, a review of Ukrainian governance responses to these challenges is given, underlining the difficulties caused by the simplification of logging procedures, a lack of cooperation between stakeholders, and a lack of standardized environmental impact assessment methodology, among others. This is followed by a series of suggestions given for improving the existing governance framework.