Kyivset out its plan on Tuesday at the UN climate summit, Cop30, in Brazil.Ukraineplans to file the claim through a new compensation process being set up within theCouncil of Europe.
The main source of the extra emissions is the fighting itself. Fuel burned by tanks and aircraft and the steel and cement produced for the front line are major contributors.
There are also fires that firefighters cannot go and extinguish in combat zones and civilian planes forced to reroute around Ukrainian territory. The war has destroyed trees through these fires, which further adds to the climate impact.
Nearly one million hectares burn as war ravages nature across Ukraine
Climate damage
In total, experts from theInitiative for GHG Accounting of War, an association funded byUkraineand European governments, say the war has produced the equivalent of 236.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
According to Lennard de Klerk, a Dutch carbon-accounting expert who works with the group, that figure is nearly equal to the annual emissions of Ireland, Belgium and Austria combined.
Pavlo Kartashov, Ukraines deputy minister for economy, environment and agriculture, told RFI that Ukrainians are facing many pressures at once.
Every day people are dying, we have energy problems... but one day Russia will have to be held responsible for all the damage it has caused... including damage to the environment, water, animals and soil, he said.
Kartashov also spoke to Reuters about the environmental toll. We have huge amounts of additional CO2 emissions and greenhouse gases, he said. A lot of damage was caused to water, to land, to forests.
A member of the Russian delegation atCop30declined to comment on Ukraines announcement.
Europes climate progress overshadowed by worsening loss of nature
Wartime emissions
The Initiative for GHG Accounting of War produced the emissions estimate now used by Kyiv.
De Klerk told Reuters that he helped Ukraine calculate the damage figure usinga 2022 studyin the journal Nature that puts the social cost of carbon at about 185 dollars a tonne.
The social cost of carbon is an estimate of damages to society from CO2 emissions. He said this calculation fed into Ukraines overall claim.
Ukraine is preparing to submit its climate-related demand through the new Council of Europe process, which has already received some 70,000 claims from Ukrainian individuals for wartime damages.
All of the claims, including any filed by other legal entities such as companies, will be decided by a claims commission.
It remains unclear where the compensation will come from. De Klerk suggested that the billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets could be used to cover successful claims.
Originally published on RFI
