What will happen to our soil after the war? That in which food was grown. Much of it has been polluted after the explosions and can no longer be used for agriculture. 

What will happen to our forests? Those that burned in the fighting or were mined. Now people are forbidden to go there because of the danger. Wild animals, however, still come there, unwittingly demining what is left of the forests.

What will happen to our rivers and seas? The russians have destroyed large industrial facilities and sewage treatment plants that protected rivers and groundwater from pollution. Water from the occupied regions flows into the Azov and Black Seas, and then into the Mediterranean and on to the world ocean. 

About a third of our territories are no longer habitable or safe for human use. Maybe this is our chance to return 30% of these territories to nature. This is exactly what the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 requires. If not for the war, this goal would seem unattainable. But what will this 30% be like?

The project is funded with the financial support of Heinrich Boell Foundation, Office Kyiv, Ukraine

When russians blew up the Kakhovka dam to cause an ecocide in the south of Ukraine, I was surprised at the absence of the news about this environmental terrorist act among western press sections focused on climate emergency, and I wrote about it for Open Democracy. In my days as a Ukrainian scholar living abroad, with one ear I hear colleagues in the west discussing switching to electric cars, and with the other I hear people in Ukrainian cities and villages hoping to survive another night of drone and missile attacks, and preparing for the possibility of a nuclear explosion at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. This disparity makes me often wonder: where are the CO2 emissions from the warplanes, rocket launchers and drones that daily attack my homeland on the global climate emergency agenda? Or do these machines of murder appear in another apocalyptic reality, compartmentalized as “war”? And what does the state of climate emergency mean for a country that is engaged in an anticolonial struggle for its own existence?

One of the central elements of the imaginary of climate emergency is heat. Through heat this imaginary is populated with dryness, thirst, heaviness of one’s body, lethargic states, dehydration, heat stroke, heart attacks, slow death. I am writing this text in August, from Mykolaiv, my hometown in the south of Ukraine, where a month ago I returned for the first time since russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Heat is pronounced with a long vowel. Learning English as a child, we practiced for hours how to pronounce long and short vowels, studying the difference between saying /i:/and /ɪ/, heat and hit. Walking the streets of Mykolaiv this August, I am learning about /hi:t/ and /hɪt/, slow death from /hi:t/ and the ruins of buildings where the missiles /hɪt/.

In Europe, this summer of 2023 is feared to be the hottest on record. Mykolaiv in August is marked by extreme heat, and when the wind comes, it feels like a hair dryer. Mykolaiv in August is marked by bodies exhausted and carrying heavy bottles of water (the tap water is not potable). It is marked by sites of ruins and the debris of the buildings destroyed by russians (just last month a russian rocket destroyed several apartment blocks, killing two and injuring eighteen). It is marked by the harrowing sounds of air raid sirens that cut the dry air at night and during the day, which locals seem not to notice anymore — their bodies are too tired, there are very few shelters. It is marked by the ghosts of trees cut down last year for the construction of military fortifications. The unbearably hot August in Mykolaiv is an experience of overlapping and entangled violences: the colonial violence of a full-scale invasion, and the violence of global climate emergency. In addition to death by russian missiles, there is slow (or maybe not even so slow) death all over the city. Bodies of dead fish are washed up on the river shore en masse, plants are burnt to blackness in the sun. On the 28th of August 2023, the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center reported that Mykolaiv witnessed a record breaking temperature of +38,5 C.

On 12 April 2022, russia deliberately destroyed a water pipeline that runs to Mykolaiv from Kherson. Mykolaiv had received all its water from the Dnipro river. The city is situated on the Buh estuary and all water surrounding it and the groundwater beneath is salty. For months the city had no centralized water supply, then salty water started running from the taps, and today, almost a year and a half later, and following the Kakhovka ecocide, the water in Mykolaiv apartments is still not suitable for cooking or drinking. The salty water has affected the pipes, which are constantly leaking and breaking, and today everywhere around the city there are maintenance brigades from Mykolaiv’s water utility fixing the water supply system. In our apartment, for almost a week now there has been no water in the tap during the day, and when it starts running again, it often has a tint of brown. Today the city is united through the network of stations with water containers and trails of people carrying water bottles back and forth. The unbearably hot August in Mykolaiv is heavy like water, carried up the stairs, across avenues, and cracked asphalt, all the way to the fifth floor without an elevator, the weight of water bottles achingly living in one’s arms and back.

Dragging water in the unbearable August heat and against the ruins of buildings, one thing is clear to me: there is no time. Worlds are disappearing faster than we are able to mourn them, globally and locally in Ukraine. russia’s war on Ukraine is a war of aggression, where russia does not fight the military on the battlefield, but deliberately destroys livelihoods and ways of living: by blowing up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric station, by targeting critical infrastructure, by bombing Ukrainian grain. As a result, worlds previously populated by people and other species are being erased. Following the Kakhovka ecocide, people in Ukraine and people around the world were crying at the news of people drowning, people trying to save animals, gardens disappearing under water and later buried under silt. For those of us who will survive this war, justice is salty, like the salt of the east of Ukraine and the salt of tears for everyone murdered — for people, but also for mole-rats, pheasants, newts, everyone. After Kakhovka, we cannot speak of environmental justice globally without including Ukraine, and we cannot speak about justice for Ukraine without environmental justice.

If global climate emergency teaches us that we can only combat its deadly effects as a global community, we must also recognise that russia’s war on Ukraine is part of the planetary murder, and we can only stop it as a global community too. At the heart of rapid industrialization and extractivism globally is colonial violence. Fuelled by petrocapitalism, russia is the biggest colonial project today, and it is murdering people and ecosystems not on another planet, but on this planet we share as a global community.

Environmentalists around the world keep warning us: there is no time. People in Ukraine keep warning us: there is no time. Like everywhere in the world, species and ecosystems in Ukraine are at risk of the sixth mass extinction, yet in Ukraine, russian missiles might bring an even faster death than climate emergency, like they already did for the animals and plants that died in water and silt after the Kakhovka explosion: endangered species of newts were washed up on the shores of the Black sea; natural habitats of the Falz-Fein desert stylodipus, an endemic rodent species, were destroyed by the flooding. Even before the Kakhovka ecocide however, Ukrainian environmentalists named twenty plant species endemic to the steppes of the south and east of Ukraine, which are now at risk of extinction because of russia’s colonial invasion and the environmental destruction it brings.

In the unbearable /hi:t/ of August in Mykolaiv, marked by places /hɪt/ by russian missiles, I have met many incredible environmentalists. Despite air raids, loss of access to nature reserves, and mourning for their colleagues who were killed in action, environmental scholars, activists and practitioners in Ukraine continue to tirelessly fight against climate emergency and russian environmental destruction. They continue to fight against violent death in all its forms. It is to their urgent work that I cling amidst all losses. During russia’s war on Ukraine, imagining an environmentally just future globally means standing with environmentalists and all people in Ukraine, it means standing with the biodiverse worlds they are hoping to keep alive.

War against nature — or war for nature?

Forests, steppes and water bodies are the main elements of Ukrainian nature. Since the Middle Ages, each political regime has left its marks on them. The current war also leaves its destructive signs. However, in the flames (and waters) of this war, not only rare species and ecosystems disappear, but also the mistakes of the past, creating conditions for a better future.

Forests

War has a very wide range of impacts on wildlife, caused not only by exploded ordnance, but also by chemical pollution, construction of fortifications, fires, mines, and many other factors. If we analyze the impact on wildlife of the Russian-Ukrainian war in particular, which escalated with the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, the most affected ecosystems are forests.

There is no doubt that trees are cut down for the construction of fortifications and for the domestic needs of the military at the front (heating, cooking) and local residents in the war-affected regions. In the temporarily occupied territories, such deforestation has become uncontrolled, and, in the frontline areas, it has led to an increase in the scope of logging. However, this is not the most important factor, as the war’s most destructive impact on forests is caused by fires resulting from hostilities. This is what makes forests a special "risk group" among all war-affected ecosystems. Explosions from shells, burning of military equipment, and, even more dangerously, the Russian use of incendiary munitions banned by international law, cause a large number of forest fires. This is particularly dangerous given the geography of the war: all the most active hostilities have taken place either in the steppe climate zone (where most forests are artificially created pine forests, which are the most fire-prone category of forests in Ukraine) or in forests in the exclusion zone of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (where a large amount of dead wood has been accumulated). Forest fires have occurred during active hostilities, and often in mined areas. In addition, from the first days of the occupation, Russian troops seized the firefighting vehicles in all regions, so fires were mostly impossible to extinguish when they began to occur en masse during hostilities. Unless they were stopped by rain, fires easily spread downwind until entire areas of forests were burned completely.

In total, during the full-scale invasion, the fire destroyed at least 50 thousand hectares of forests, half of which are located in the Chornobyl exclusion zone. Other forest fires were concentrated mainly in the Siverskyi Donets River valley and in the lower reaches of the Dnipro River — in the forests of the Kinburn Spit and the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve in the Kherson region. Forests are the most endangered category of natural ecosystems when it comes to fires. Forests grow for a very long time before they reach their full potential. In addition, the forests in the steppe zone of Ukraine that is affected by the fires were created artificially in between the 1930s and 1950s. During the Soviet era, forests were planted in southern Ukraine in all areas that were not suitable for plowing, so that state inspections so that state inspections could more easily monitor how the collective farms of the time (kolkhozes) were maximizing the productivity their lands. Also, the climate conditions were different back then — global climate changes, which led to a rapid increase in temperature and aridity, began to progress markedly only in the 1990s. It is very likely that it will no longer be possible to restore forest plantations in these areas.

However, this also does not mean that another indigenous natural ecosystem (e.g., steppe) that prevailed there before the creation of artificial forests will self-regenerate in these areas, because there is a lack of donor sites from which native species could be dispersed to where the fire destroyed the forests in order to restore the natural ecosystems. Therefore, it is likely that this area will be overgrown with dangerous alien plants — invasive species. Among them are tree-weeds, such as silverberry, ailanthus, locust trees, and others. These alien plants, which originate from other continents, are very aggressive and easily take over any area where natural vegetation is degrading. The active spread of most of these plants is directly related to climate change, as they all represent more arid ecosystems than those in southern Ukraine 20 years ago. So the more the climate changes, the easier it is for drought-tolerant aliens to displace native vegetation. Consequently, there will be no steppe or forest replacing the burned forests, at least for many years.

There is another very important factor that should not be forgotten. Forests do not burn down completely, but leave a mass of unburned wood in place of the formerly intact ecosystem — some of the trees have already fallen and are on the ground, while others remain standing. Many trees are damaged by brush fires (right at the surface of the earth), and at first they still retain their green crowns, but eventually they die. Therefore, the scale of the loss of the forest's tree layer will increase. The fires that have already occurred will kill many trees that are still alive or have living parts. In such places, repeated fires are possible, and they will be impossible to stop due to difficult terrain and mines. However, repeated fires will mean that the fire will spread to areas that have not been affected so far.

Given that not all the consequences of fires can be identified before de-occupation and demining, brush fires that are "invisible" from satellite imaging may result in a 30–50% increase in area of affected territories. Undoubtedly, this endangers populations of rare species such as the Eurasian crane, black kite, booted eagle, and the eastern imperial eagle, as well as rare habitat types. The majority of all burned forests belong to the Sarmatian pine barrens habitat type, even though these chalky pine forests are officially protected at the European level and are found only in Ukraine along the Siverskyi Donets River.

Destructive forest fires are a global problem, as woody biomass is one of the main sites of carbon storage on the planet. The increase in the mass of forests on the planet leads to the fact that trees remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and "build" their trunks from it. The less CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more stable the climate is, the more reliably the seasons change, and the weather is less prone to shocks of unexpected temperature peaks or catastrophic atmospheric events. But the number of forests on the planet is not increasing, and therefore every living organism (and even every dead one!) is as valuable as gold. In addition, we must realize that it is not only wood that removes carbon from the atmosphere. Each climate zone has its own optimal mechanism for carbon conservation. In the middle latitudes and mountains, wood is indeed the place where organic matter accumulates. In the north of Eurasia, it is peat, and in the south, it is rich soils that are formed and accumulated exclusively under steppe plants. Of course, we are talking about areas that are not plowed, and it is in such areas in the steppe zone that carbon is most effectively accumulated in the form of fertile steppe black soil.

So, when thinking about restoring nature at the sites of burned forests in southern and eastern Ukraine, there are certainly good reasons to claim that local steppe restoration may be more environmentally friendly and more beneficial to the climate than forest restoration. This assumption makes sense not only because of theoretical ecological principles, but also because in the current climate, it is no longer possible to restore all the forests in this area destroyed by Russian aggression.

Therefore, some forest ecosystems will remain lost forever. It is worth mentioning here the old-growth oak forests near the Bohorodychne village and the town of Sviatohirsk in Donetsk region, where some oaks have been witnesses to historical events over the past 500 years, or the unique chalky pine forests on the high chalk slopes of the Siverskyi Donets River. Since the late 1800s, scientists have been discussing the origin of these unique forests, and in 2019, they began to be protected at the European level as a particularly valuable type of natural habitat.

As with any destruction of natural ecosystems, the loss of forests means that people will not receive enough ecosystem services — the beneficial properties of nature that shape our living conditions. Humid and cool air on hot summer days, and even oxygen in the atmosphere, the containment of dry winds in summer and cold winds in winter, favorite places for recreation and health improvement, and finally timber, berries and mushrooms — all of this is available to people only thanks to forests. And it is obvious that the loss of these areas will mean a significant deterioration in living conditions for every local resident. Residents of the cities of Izyum (Kharkiv region), Sviatohirsk (Donetsk region), Kreminna, and Shchastia (Luhansk region), who return home after the de-occupation, will no longer recognize the local climate, because they grew up in an environment where forests regulated the perception of environmental conditions, significantly mitigating the harsh climate of the steppe zone.

A difficult question is what to do to restore the lost forests after the war. Simply planting a new forest where the old one burned down is not an option. Under current conditions, new forests will not grow there anymore. The climate zones have moved significantly to the north, and now Ukraine's steppe zone is closer to semi-desert. The optimal solution would be to create a completely new landscape, something like the savannah that is typical of East Africa and Central America, where, in more humid areas, broadleaf forests of native tree species will be restored, and around them, steppe will be revived, which was here before the creation of artificial forests in the past. The steppes are the only natural ecosystem that can be truly restored, for example, on the sandy terraces of the Siverskyi Donets and Dnipro rivers. In any case, it will be possible to talk about restoration only if we mean restoration of natural ecosystems, and not repeat the foolish experience of Soviet irrigation engineers who were convinced that it was possible to subdue nature. Attempts to plant pine monocultures again, plowing hot sand year after year, will lead to nothing and will only waste priceless funds from Ukraine's potential recovery fund. However, in the next decade, it will be quite realistic for Ukrainians to see the first results of restoration and finally witness what the Siverskyi Donets River Valley or Kinburn Spit might look like in its natural state.

Restoration of natural ecosystems in the damaged areas will create important conditions for the preservation of habitats that deserve protected status, and thus may well be counted among Ukraine's successes in implementing the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and many other international commitments in the field of nature conservation. Paradoxically, the war may help Ukrainian nature return to a better state than the pre-war one.

Colonization and Carbonization of Ukraine

The large-scale destruction of Ukrainian nature as a consequence of colonialism

A common feature of all empires is contempt not only for human life but also for the natural environment of conquered lands. After all, for the colonizer, both people and natural resources are just tools to achieve their imperialist goals — the conquest and exploitation of new territories, as well as the subjugation of new peoples in order to increase their population.

At the same time, the long history of colonial exploitation of nature, which always involves the indigenous population, leaves an imprint on its collective consciousness. It manifests itself in the fact that the commodity status of the economy and the overexploitation of natural resources continue to be considered normal even after enslaved people have gained independence.

Let's try to understand this statement using the example of the colonization of modern Ukraine by the ancestors of our current enemies: first by Muscovy (the late-medieval Principality of Moscow) and the Russian Empire, and then by the Soviet Union.

The colonial history of Ukraine’s status as the "breadbasket of Europe"

For many millennia, the territory of modern Ukraine was characterized by favorable conditions for human habitation, and therefore it was quite actively inhabited and used by various tribes, ethnic groups, and peoples. The fairly high biological productivity of our ecosystems — various forests, steppes, meadows, and wetlands — played a significant role.

At the same time, due to its location on the border of the steppe and forest biomes of Eurasia, Ukrainian lands were the scene of several fierce wars between representatives of settled and nomadic peoples. Therefore, since the Middle Ages, Ukraine’s natural spaces have remained less developed and more wild than those in Central and Western Europe.

This was especially true of the steppe zone, which for thousands of years was dominated by nomadic peoples [1], and where separate settled localities near large rivers and sea coasts were periodically founded and then destroyed by the onslaughts of other tribes. This way of life on such a large territory was characterized by a special approach to natural resources management: the steppe territories were huge pastures and hunting grounds for nomads and the residents of a small number of settlements. Under such conditions, there was enough space for a relatively wild natural ecosystem with a rich variety of flora and fauna species, and only a small part of the land was used for agriculture.

The situation changed radically with the annexation of the Ukrainian steppe by the Russian Empire in the second half of the 18th century. The destruction of the Zaporozka Sich and the Crimean Khanate, in addition to the tragic social consequences for the captured peoples, also led to the elimination of methods of nature management that had been established for centuries. Active colonization of the Northern Black Sea region began, orchestrated by the Imperial court, and facilitated in every possible way.

During the 19th century, cattle breeding was quickly replaced by grain crop cultivation. The proximity of the powerful ports of Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and other cities made it possible to send the grain produced to other countries. The land reform of 1861 freed millions of former serfs, but also left them in a difficult economic situation, forcing them to look for free land for their livelihoods. In the 1860s, the active construction of railways began. It made it possible to quickly transport large volumes of grain to the aforementioned ports. These two factors accelerated the plowing of the steppe. By the beginning of the 20th century, only steppe areas that remained virgin were those that were too difficult to plow, those that were used as horse farms, and the newly created Askania-Nova reserve.

During the 20th–21st centuries, the area of steppes in Ukraine continued to decrease because of the mechanization of land cultivation and the decline of free-range animal husbandry. This happened because of a lack of understanding of the value of the steppe as an ecosystem and, to some extent, the privileged status of the agrarian sector of the economy.

In addition to significant negative consequences for nature (for example, the complete extermination of the wild ancestors of the native species of horses and tarpans by the end of the 19th century), such rapid colonization of the steppes also had climatic consequences. Virgin steppes, which exist in harsh conditions of constant moisture deficit, form most of their biomass in the root part of plants. Thanks to this, they reliably retain a significant amount of organic carbon in the soil in the form of dead remains of the steppe plants’ roots and the humus produced by their decomposition. On a global scale, the mass of carbon in soils is three times greater than its mass in the atmosphere.

After plowing, a significant proportion of the soil’s organic matter decomposes over the next few years, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — the main cause of anthropogenic climate change. This happens due to the wetting of the soil during rainfall and the decomposition of the labile (mobile) pool of organic matter caused by the activity of soil fungi and bacteria. During this period, the yield of crops remains at a high level. But after this it sharply decreases when the reserves of organic matter available for consumption are depleted. Then the process of soil carbon loss slows down somewhat, unless the land is cultivated annually, in which case it will continue as the humus content in arable soils gradually decreases.

The parallel social consequence of the aforementioned colonization of the Ukrainian steppe was the consolidation of an idea of our country as the “breadbasket of Europe", and later the breadbasket of the world. This metaphor managed to become so entrenched in our collective consciousness that it turned into a point of national pride. At the same time, the environmental cost of such a status is usually not mentioned. However, the high portion of plowed areas (over 90% in some southern communities) is the cause of rapid soil degradation and threatens large-scale desertification of the southern part of the steppe zone in the coming decades.

Solid fields around villages in the temporarily occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as an example of excessive exploitation of nature in post-colonial Ukraine.

Naval forests: how Ukrainian primeval forests were sacrificed to the Russian Imperial fleet

In the context of the Russian occupation of Ukrainian forest regions, it would be appropriate to mention the destruction of tens of thousands of ancient trees for the construction of the Imperial Russian Navy, and its Black Sea Fleet in particular. Several hundred old trees, mostly oaks and pines, would have been used to build one large warship.

Shipping forests were usually chosen near large and medium-sized rivers so that logs of felled trees could be conveniently transported by water to the nearest shipyard. Another mandatory condition for the selection of shipwood was the presence of a significant number of old trees with tall and straight trunks in the forested area. Such trees are protected, and their felling was strictly prohibited — with the exception of moments when quality wood was required to build another ship for the Imperial Navy’s needs.

A total of 101 plots with a total area of about 107,600 hectares were designated for ship groves in Ukrainian provinces, 82% of which were oak forests [3].

After shipwrecks were discovered and described, their numbers steadily declined. After all, the rate of logging significantly exceeded the rate of growth for trees used in shipbuilding, which usually take more than 100-150 years to reach maturity.

Intensive exploratory felling of old trees for the construction of the fleet significantly impoverished the structure of Ukraine's forests, as well as their biodiversity, because the older the tree, the more species of living organisms live on it or feed on it.

More than 150 years have passed since the forests ceased to be used intensively for shipbuilding, but the current number of old trees in Ukrainian forests is nowhere near what it was at the beginning of this wooden shipbuilding period. Selective felling of the oldest trees has now been replaced by industrial forestry practices that use continuous logging, which has its advantages and problems for our forests.

The destruction of the Polish marshes and the Dnipro River within the framework of the Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature

Polissia is a significant historical and geographical region, mainly within the boundaries of the Polissia lowland. It covers the northern part of Ukraine and the south of Belarus. For thousands of years, a characteristic feature of this region’s landscape was the presence of a large number of swamps, which were surrounded by mixed forests. During the Middle Ages and the following centuries of the modern era, the territory of Polissia was actively developed by the Slavs through the establishment of numerous villages and hamlets. This led to a gradual reduction in forests, but until the 20th century, the share of wetlands did not significantly decrease. The traditional economy of the residents of Polissia was adapted to coexistence with marshes, where grass was mowed for cows and horses, reeds were harvested for roofing, and people occupied themselves with hunting and fishing.

Of course, this situation, with its traditionally frugal use of nature, did not suit the Soviet government at all. Every hectare of land was to be involved in the building of the "bright communist future". Especially since there were always ambitious plans to increase the gross collection of grain crops.

Because increasing the productivity of already existing land required modern approaches to land cultivation (an intensive method) and significant investments, a simpler, more extensive approach was decided upon — the requisition of new lands for agriculture. Since there were hardly any unplowed steppes suitable for cultivation at that time, the Soviet authorities decided to focus on the development of swamps, which had to be drained first.

Even though attempts to drain individual Polissian swamps had been taking place since the 19th century, the culmination of this process was Stalin's Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature, designed for implementation during the years 1948–1965. A large-scale reclamation program was launched on the territory of Ukrainian (and Belarusian) Polissia, within which thousands of canals of various sizes were dug. The huge peat sponge, which held billions of tons of water, began to rapidly decrease in size. Collective farms then drove equipment and people to the "liberated" areas for growing crops.

Thanks to this reclamation, large areas of Polissia, previously surrounded by powerful masses of surface water, are now water-deficient. Water in wells is still disappearing to this day in villages near drained swamps due to a decrease in the levels of soil and groundwater.

However, the reduction of water resources and the silting of the rivers of Polissia are not the only significant problems caused by the large-scale reclamation of the region.

More than a third of soil carbon on the planet is stored in peat deposits, which slowly accumulate in swamps over thousands of years. Thanks to this, peatlands hold more carbon than all the forests in the world [5], despite the fact that global forested areas are ten times larger. As long as the ecosystem remains intact, this peat holds large masses of water, which protect it from fires and decomposition. However, as soon as the swamp is drained and the peat loses water, a rapid process of mineralization begins, which is accompanied bylarge-volume carbon emissions into the atmosphere. In addition, peat in drained swamps can catch fire for various reasons, and then burn for weeks or even months, polluting the air in the surrounding areas with toxic smoke and releasing large masses of carbon into the atmosphere.

All these examples can be considered cases of resorcification and carbonization of the Ukrainian economy. The plowing of the steppe, the felling of ancient forests, and the draining of swamps have caused the release of huge amounts of carbon from soils and peat, along with the degradation of damaged soils.

Another component of the Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature was the destruction of the natural habitats along the Dnipro River within the borders of Ukraine by blocking its free flow with a cascade of six hydroelectric power stations with large reservoirs. In addition to meeting the growing energy needs of communist industry, these reservoirs were designed to store water and further irrigate large agricultural areas in the south and east of Ukraine, as well as supply water to primarily metallurgical enterprises.

Even though hydropower is quite developed in the EU countries, not a single reservoir has flooded such large areas of land, which once included dozens of settlements, as the reservoirs of the Dnipro Cascade. Communist gigantomania fully manifested itself in the construction of these reservoirs.

As a result, thousands of square kilometers of rich riverine ecosystems with important historical sites were flooded. The flooding of Great Meadow National Nature Park alone, together with at least five Zaporozka Siches, archaeological monuments of different times, and perhaps the richest spawning grounds and nesting places for birds in Ukraine, are a loss that cannot be fully evaluated in monetary terms.

The efficiency of using water from the Dnipro reservoirs is also an important issue. Due to the shallow depths and large areas of their water tables, several billion tons of fresh water simply evaporate from these water bodies every year. Similar volumes are lost when water is transported through old open channels, where it seeps into the soil and evaporates.

The use of water at water supply facilities is not any better. Due to outdated Soviet-era technologies, water consumption per unit produced remains significantly higher in Ukraine than the EU average.

In this context, the detonation of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, one of the more recent crimes committed by the Russian occupiers, gives us an unexpected chance to review the post-colonial economic model with a concrete example. It also gives us a chance to find a solution that will allow the use of modern technologies to restore the ecosystems of Great Meadow National Nature Park together with the water supply for the population and industry. Such a decision would be a significant step towards the decolonization of our economy and nature.

A chance for "decolonization" of Ukrainian nature

Recently, the preservation and restoration of natural ecosystems has become a general trend in EU countries. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 declares the need to protect at least 30% of the territories and water areas in member states.

If Ukraine decides to join this general European trend, it will have to increase the protected areas by more than four times. Unfortunately, the post-colonial structure of our landscapes will not allow us to achieve this goal simply by protecting existing natural and semi-natural ecosystems. We must also restore part of the ecosystems that have been destroyed in the past.

For example, drained peatlands must be irrigated and restored, wherever the socio economic conditions allow. In addition to the benefits to biodiversity, such a step will be a good contribution to the decarbonization of Ukraine. It will reduce the emissions caused by peat mineralization and peat fires, and help to restore the processes of carbon accumulation by irrigated bogs.

The restoration of the lost steppes could be facilitated by the conservation of lands degraded from excessive and improper exploitation, as well as territories that have been heavily polluted during the current war.

Although thinking about large-scale restoration of Ukraine’s natural ecosystems seems to be an idealistic goal at the moment, it is possible for it to be fully realized, as long as we apply modern scientific data on how these natural ecosystems function. With these ambitious ecological goals, as well as victory in the current war with russia, and confirmation of Ukrainians' right to independence, can all contribute to our chance at decolonizing our attitude towards nature.

As a result of our own expeditions to deoccupied territories in a series of video pieces presented in the Arsenale, we are looking for an answer to this final question. And there are still more questions: are war-damaged lands and water areas capable of recovery if human activity ceases? Is it possible to ban human activity from one-third of the country? Will ecosystems be able to recover to their pre-war state over time, or will they be different? Should humans intervene in the restoration of damaged ecosystems? What risks can await natural areas in the future and during reconstruction?

The answers to these questions depend on the form and degree of the damage, and to which the biotope type the damage occurred. Forests, steppes, and water bodies are the main compositional elements of Ukraine's natural environment. We talk about their colonial past, the destructive war present, and the best possible future — from the point of view of scientists who study these biotopes.

Ukrainian conservationists have different views on the restoration of the damaged territories. Some say it is necessary to preserve war-damaged areas and leave nature to its processes. Others believe that without human management, the land will undergo a new occupation by invasive species, which will prevent local biodiversity from recovering. But managing the recovery of a third of Ukraine’s territory is a task of an unprecedented scale. Are we capable of it?

Before the war, it was impossible to consider that a third of Ukrainian lands could be withdrawn from economic activity and conserved. It was also impossible to imagine that Ukraine would be granted candidate status for EU membership so quickly. However, now that we know that EU membership is a potential outcome of the war, our government needs to become more proactive about conserving lands damaged by the war, in line with EU standards.

The space of the Giardini visualizes one of the manifestations of the danger of war. Marked sticks are installed on the earthen mounds. People use similar constructions for demining and search operations, but also for gardening. In both military and civilian uses, sticks like these help to navigate the area and mark things under the ground.

Currently, Ukraine is the most mined country in the world. Complete demining will take hundreds of years and billions of dollars. For almost 600 days, every day, the Russians have been mining the land of Ukraine.