SUMMARY AND MAIN CONCLUSIONS

Armed conflict in eastern Ukraine has resulted in a regrettable range of harm to the region’s lands and terrain, its surface and subterranean water systems, and its vegetation and wildlife. Hostilities also bring a significant increase in the risk of incidents at industrial and infrastructure facilities.

Under conflict conditions the chief threat is manifest in the risk of environmental pollution resulting from major operational disruptions and related incidents occurring at industrial and other large-scale facilities. Prior to the onset of conflict, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions were home to some 4,500 potentially environmentally hazardous enterprises. Between 2014 and 2017, companies in the region reported over 500 cases of operational disruptions and related incidents, some of which were fraught with potential hazard for both the local population and the environment.

The following list includes industrial facilities damaged during the hostilities that pose the greatest hazard for the environment: the Yasynivka, Avdiivka, and Yenakiieve Coke Plants; the Yenakiieve, Makiivka and Donetsk Metallurgical Plants; the Toretsk Ferroalloy Plant; the Alchevsk Metallurgical Complex; the Lysychansk Oil Refinery; the Donetsk State-Owned Chemicals Plant, Siverskodonetsk Plant “Azot” [“Nitrogen”] and the Horlivka “Styrol”, Sloviansk, Luhansk, Vuhlehirsk and Myronivka Thermal Power Stations

In the course of the conflict, multiple reports were received of damaged infrastructure and power outages at coal mines, leading to the shutdown of mine-water drainage systems, and in a number of cases, resulting in the full-scale flooding in the mines. Currently, in the entire region between Horlivka and Yenakiieve, in the vicinity of Pervomaisk, and in portions of Donetsk, Makiivka, Shahtarsk and Toretsk water drainage systems are largely non-functional. Thirty six of the region’s mines are either being flooded with waste material or have already been flooded completely, rendering them non-operational. Some damaged and suspended mining operations in the Donbas have already been dismantled.

Of particular concern is the danger posed by the flooding of the Oleksandr-Zakhid and Vuhlehirsk mines, as well as the troubling case of the Yunyi Komunar mine – the site of a 1979 underground nuclear explosion, where the groundwater may already be radioactive.

The continued large-scale flooding of area mines will inevitably result in both surface flooding and subsidence of the surrounding area, rendering buildings unusable, engineering and communication infrastructure – gas lines, sewage and water supply systems – inoperative, and polluting surface and groundwater with iron, chlorides, sulfates, other mineral salts and heavy metals.

During the course of the conflict, repeated disruptions of water supply and water disposal systems and facilities have been reported, some describing the discharge of pollutants directly into water sources. Chemical tests conducted at these sites show heightened concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus in the water of the Siverskyi Donets, Kleban-Byk, Kalmius, and Kalchyk rivers, a result that is potentially traceable to the disruption of operations at municipal wastewater treatment facilities.

When compared with data assembled in 2008, sediment drawn from the Karlivske and the Kleban-Bytske reservoirs reveals significant levels of pollution with non-radioactive strontium and barium, both of which are substances used routinely in heavy industry and munitions. In the areas affected directly by the hostilities, the soil reveals systemically elevated concentrations – by a factor of 1.1 to 1.3 – of mercury, vanadium, cadmium and non-radioactive strontium, as well as gamma-radiation in excess of the respective background values measured in areas unaffected by the fighting. Typically, maximum differences with background values reached levels of 1.2 to 2 times higher in some parameters, with occasional pollution values reaching 7 to 17 times that of the background levels. Data assembled by other organizations, including samples taken from within shell craters and other sites revealed heightened pollutant concentrations ranging between 1.2 and 12 times that of background values.

The conflict has rendered the management of household waste problematic, affecting in particular communities located along the contact line. The solution to this household waste problem faces further challenges arising from the presence of the remnants of discarded military equipment, ruined buildings, structures, and infrastructural elements. Their disposal requires additional renovation capacity, and is impossible to undertake without a prior demining of the territory and a thorough clearing of unexploded munitions. Yet, even in the event of a comprehensive demining of the area and disposal of munitions, any future use of land ravaged by combat maneuvers, military exercises, fortification construction, explosions, and the combustion of munitions will require a reclamation and re-cultivation of the topsoil.

Fire, mechanical damage, and illegal logging in the conflict area have destroyed significant sections of forest and valuable windbreak strips. This critical reduction in woodland coverage in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has had a severe negative impact on the field-protective, soil-protective, water-protective, and recreational functions provided by forests and green spaces.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine has damaged roughly 60 natural protected areas in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Currently, a lack of personnel, the suspension of funding for environmental protection activity, and insufficient coordination between environmental bodies and the Ukrainian Armed Forces pose a significant threat to any preservation and/or rehabilitation of the affected areas. The region is also undergoing a developing imbalance in its biological diversity with some species having disappeared and others spreading uncontrollably, exposing both the agricultural and the epidemiological security of the region to heightened risk.

With the onset of armed conflict, environmental activities in eastern Ukraine were virtually paralyzed.

The effect of this initial course of destruction on the environmental protection system in the conflict area is plainly evident.

Much archival material has been lost and not yet restored, environmental monitoring is generally inoperative in parts of the territory, and financial, logistical and manpower issues persist.

On the positive side, an increase in environmental protection expenditures in government-controlled territories is fostering the gradual restoration of the region’s environmental protection system. Specific initiatives aimed at restoring environmental monitoring, water supply and sanitation systems, waste management, forest protection, and the development of nature preserves have been addressed in local planning as well as the national programme, and are in the process of being implemented by local authorities.

These recent, positive changes, however, do not reflect the existence of a systemic, long-term approach. Still lacking is a comprehensive analysis of the environmental situation in the conflict area that demonstrates local needs and which is coordinated with national and international priorities and policies of environmental protection and sustainable development.

The recommendations proposed herein are based on an analysis of the environmental issues confronting eastern Ukraine as developed in supplementary studies conducted by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine; comments and proposals expressed during round-table discussions with national authorities on 4 September 2017; and suggestions offered in other professional publications and raised during additional processes addressing environmental issues, not excluding the question of the eventual environmental rehabilitation of eastern Ukraine.

The recommendations are broken down into four distinct categories:

“Yesterday”: actions required as a foundation for addressing broader issues, and whose implementation should already have begun or is to begin presently.

Systematize all available data on the environmental situation and the genesis of environmental hazard in the conflict area, and enable both the broad dissemination of and access to the respective data to facilitate decision-making.

Take inventory of gaps in information on the environmental situation and sources of environmental hazard in the conflict area, and organize targeted studies to fill those gaps.

Arrange for unimpeded access to supplemental information about the state of the environment and natural resources in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. “Today”: actions required for the reduction of environmental risk, and whose implementation is required in the near future.

Regularly update the inventories of industrial and municipal facilities that currently stand, or possess potential, as significant sources of environmental hazard in the wake of hostilities.

Implement urgent measures to reduce the risk posed by the largest industrial and municipal sources of environmental hazard, including the establishment of sufficient means and resources necessary for effective rapid response to emergencies in hazardous areas.

Political measures that assure the cessation of hostilities near sources of elevated environmental hazard, enable international monitoring, and take a preventive approach to issues affecting high-hazard installations.

“Tomorrow”: actions required for the restoration of environmental activities in the area, and which are TO BE included in mid-term governmental action planning.