cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5683395
No silence is more haunting than the one following an explosion. It does not only concern what war takes away from human life, but also what it takes away from nature: forests turned to ash, fields reduced to dust, waterways contaminated by military vehicles and weapons. In Ukraine, this silence has a date, 24 February 2022, but also an echo that extends beyond the present.
Wars do not end when the guns fall silent: they continue to cause damage for decades, frequently far from the eyes and geopolitical priorities of the moment. It is with this awareness that an unprecedented event is taking place: Ukraine intends to ask Russia for $43 billion in climate compensation.
That Kyiv intended to file this claim was already known, but today, Tuesday 18 November, the figure was made public for the first time. This is not a generic compensation for environmental damage, but a precise calculation of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the attack, to which the “social cost of carbon” is applied, a yardstick used in climate studies to assess the economic impacts of global warming.
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The historical significance of this request is not only technical, but also legal and political. For the first time, an attacked country is arguing that an aggressor state must be held accountable for emissions caused by an illegal act of war; and the international mechanism to which Kyiv will turn – established by the Council of Europe following a UN General Assembly resolution – will accept claims for environmental compensation based on climate damage for the first time. The claim that Ukraine will file in 2026 will thus set an important precedent for other countries.
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The request is based on the report Climate Damage Caused by Russia's War in Ukraine – 36 months (opens pdf), a pioneering study that calculates the emissions generated by the conflict: 294 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. This figure alone exceeds the annual emissions of 175 countries worldwide.
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