Цей запис також доступний українською.
The Kurakhove urban municipality is located in the Pokrovske district of the Donetsk region, and its administrative capital is the city of Kurakhove. Throughout the full-scale war, the municipality has been subjected to shelling and accompanying destruction as a result of Russian aggression. Evacuation from the towns and villages of the municipality is carried out every week, and according to the head of Kurakhove City Military Administration Roman Padun, its population has more than halved. However, many people remain on their land and continue to farm.
The negative effects of the war on the environment in the municipality are obvious but still require more expert assessment. The team of To Clean Springs took it upon themselves to investigate its soils, as their composition and condition underwent significant changes as a result of shelling, damage and hostilities in the Donetsk region. In cooperation with local authorities and the police, they attempted to document the environmental damage caused by the Russian military aggression in this municipality and to determine ways of possible elimination of the negative effects.
The results of their work can be found here:
The team found that by May 2023, no similar assessment of environmental damage from soil contamination had been developed. And the method of assessing damage, approved by the Ministry of Environment of Ukraine, does not have a clear list of documents necessary for performing assessments.
Thus, the project team conducted laboratory tests and compiled a list of necessary documents for damage assessment. They basically created a methodology (procedure) for recording the damage to the environment of the municipality due to soil pollution. And taking into account the detected pollutants, the team also proposed ways of possible soil recreation.
Since the project engaged the local military-civilian administration, the Ukrainian Institute of Technical Ecology and the Institute of Soil Protection of Ukraine, as well as scientists and experts in land use, environmental issues and lawyers, its results are worthy of attention and dissemination among those municipalities that have similar research needs for their lands.
For more detailed and specific information on the results of this project, please contact Kostiantyn Svetov, Project Manager, for a detailed Report at ua.dgerelo@ukr.net
An additional outcome of the project is that during the planning and implementation of the activities, the team worked out the procedure for the interaction of NGOs with local authorities, the military, and with state bodies responsible for assessing the damage.
“The main achievement of the project is a clear definition of the public’s competence when documenting environmental damage,” said Kostiantyn Svetov, Project Manager.
According to the Analytical Report, “The NGO can help the owners of land plots in collecting the necessary documents, but an NGO cannot be a plaintiff in these cases. In accordance with the legislation of Ukraine, the owner of the land plot is the proper plaintiff as the person entitled to demand compensation for damage.”
Research materials were submitted to the State Environmental Inspection of Ukraine for preliminary analysis and possible calculation of damages due to land contamination.
“Our NGO helped the local authorities of Kurakhove to complete the work in the war zone within 6 months. The problem is that the local authorities, taking into account hostilities, the availability of experts, the procedure for using budget funds, as well as their actual availability, are unable to perform this work,” said Kostiantyn Svetov. “The formal procedure for the purchase of soil research services alone, without execution of works, funded from the budget, takes 3 to 4 months, provided there is a contractor with proper permits available. And the status of an NGO allowed us to carry out work on lands belonging to water conservation zones, private property, etc. When the ordnance explodes, it does not choose the boundaries of the land plot, but the legislation allows the use of municipal funds only on municipally owned lands, which is a very big problem for performing the damage assessment.”
***
The research was conducted by the team of To Clean Springs!, an All-Ukrainian Environmental NGO, as part of the Environmental Policy and Advocacy Initiative for Ukraine (EPAIU) implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation with the support of Sweden.
The project report reflects the position of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the position of the International Renaissance Foundation or Sweden.
