In the May issue of the "EurSafe Newsletter," published by the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics (European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics), an essay by the head of the Department of Logic and Methodology of Science at the Institute of Philosophy of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Philosophy Tetiana Hardashuk was published "From environmental weaponization to environmental peacebuilding".
Relying on the facts of the current Russian-Ukrainian war, the author shows that with the increasing power of environmental weapons, the environment and natural resources are not just "silent victims" of hostilities but are a direct target of the enemy, who uses natural objects and their properties as a means to weaken the army and civilian population, their psychological, moral, and political resilience, as well as to undermine the economy. Such actions of turning what is not a weapon in the usual sense of the word into a weapon are called weaponization.
The weaponization of the environment, vital resources, and civilian infrastructure as a result of Russian aggression has reached enormous proportions, with an ecological footprint and cost that are difficult to assess. Therefore, the preservation and restoration of the environment and natural resources should be considered an important task and a form of activity to ensure resilience both now and during post-war reconstruction. Economic growth and improvement of material well-being should not come at the expense of environmental degradation, but preserving nature should also not occur at the expense of people's well-being. Finding a balance between these two challenges is a difficult but necessary task to solve.
According to information from the Institute of Philosophy of the NAS of Ukraine