Ukraine and greenhouse gas emissions
Ukraine, located in Eastern Europe, has a complex relationship with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, shaped by its historical and geopolitical context. Emerging from Soviet-era industrial practices, Ukraine faces significant environmental challenges, including a legacy of pollution and an inefficient energy sector. Despite possessing rich natural resources, the country was ranked as the seventeenth highest GHG emitter globally by 2013, although its emissions are relatively minor compared to larger nations.
Ukraine is actively engaged in international environmental initiatives, participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, which aim to reduce global emissions. The country has made strides in reducing its GHG emissions, with a reported decrease of 63 percent from 1990 levels by 2014, and an ambitious goal to cut emissions by up to 69 percent by the end of the decade.
However, the transition to sustainable energy and effective environmental management requires significant support and resources. Ukraine's reliance on mechanisms like carbon trading offers potential for improvement, although it faces criticism regarding the effectiveness of such approaches. Ultimately, while Ukraine grapples with its environmental challenges, it remains committed to participating in global efforts to mitigate climate change and enhance sustainability.
Ukraine and greenhouse gas emissions
Historical and Geopolitical Context
Only three years after an independent Ukrainian republic was established in 1918, the country was occupied by its Russian neighbors and shortly thereafter, during World War II, became a constituent of the Soviet Union. Following that war, the Soviet Union imposed its repressive communist regime on most of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine. Later, the Soviet Union attenuated its internal repression, but it could not quell the growing political unrest that led to its dissolution in 1991. Peoples in one-fourth of the area of the former Soviet Union, including satellite states such as Ukraine, seceded, forming fourteen independent countries.
Five years before Ukrainian independence was restored, the worst accidental nuclear disaster in history occurred in Ukraine. On April 26, 1986, at 1:23 a.m., a massive explosion tore through the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, destroying the reactor block and igniting nearby buildings with fiery graphite projectiles. The disaster followed a poorly executed experiment conducted at low power under unsuitable cooling conditions. Even though thousands of metric tons of neutralizing agents were poured over the core reactor, the fire continued to burn; the core melted down, solidifying and sealing the entrance to the nuclear plant.
This process took approximately ten days, during which time 71 percent of the radioactive, fuel-containing reactor core remained uncovered. As a result, approximately 135,000 individuals had to be evacuated from the 30-kilometer so-called forbidden zone, which took 800,000 persons called “liquidators” to clean up. It is estimated that the radioactivity released by the Chernobyl explosions was at least two hundred times that of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Millions of people were put at risk, as deadly radioactive particles raced across the globe from western Russia, through Europe, and across the Northern Hemisphere, where death rates from childhood leukemia increased in Canada and the United States.
The Chernobyl disaster typified the environmental problems the independent Ukraine would inherit from the Soviet Union. These problems had their root in a decaying industrial infrastructure whose decay was exacerbated by substandard workmanship and planning. Adverse health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster continued to plague survivors, many of whom immigrated to countries both within and outside the former Soviet Union, including the United States. It is in this context that Ukraine’s approach to climate change and global warming must be understood.
Impact of Ukrainian Policies on Climate Change
The United Nations has been instrumental in forming and advancing Ukrainian policies on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Ukraine is an active participant in international initiatives related to improving the global environment and a party to nineteen conventions, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol introduced so-called flexible mechanisms, such as emissions trading and joint implementation, to help Eastern European Annex I countries achieve their commitments to limit and reduce GHG emissions by trading carbon offsets with wealthier countries such as Japan.
The commitments of Annex I countries include monitoring and reporting GHG emissions. By 2000, the Annex I nations were to have reduced their emissions to the 1990 baseline listed in Annex I of the UNFCCC. Per the Kyoto Protocol, Annex I countries must control their annual GHG emissions, limiting them to specific percentages of their baseline emissions when averaged over the period from 2008 to 2012. The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) focuses on legislative documents for procedures and compliance with UNFCCC, as well as creation of infrastructure required for the Kyoto Protocol’s flexible mechanisms. Joint implementation allows nations to attain cost-effective reductions in GHG emissions, which may help promote development of new, low-GHG-emission technologies.
In March of 2005, Ukraine presented its policy on climate change and its plan for implementing the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol to a group of Japanese investors. Eighteen projects were submitted to the Commission on Climate Change for a variety of carbon funds, including those directed at energy conservation, renewable energy sources, biogas, and mine methane utilization. Emission reduction units (ERUs) would be transferred to the partner country, Japan.
Ukraine as a GHG Emitter
Paradoxically, though Ukraine has some of the richest environmental and natural assets in Eastern Europe, it has historically been one of the most heavily polluted and least energy efficient countries. According to the UNDP, Ukraine has a history of substandard environmental management, which has increased its incidence of natural and anthropogenic disasters. As of 2008, 40 percent of Ukraine comprised eroded land, and the area of eroded land within the country was increasing at a rate of 80,000 hectares per year. In addition, most of Ukraine’s power plants, installed in the 1930s and 1940s, are considered obsolete and are operating at 28-30 percent of capacity. Not surprisingly, therefore, Ukraine was the seventeenth highest GHG emitter as of 2013. (However, the country's contributions to greenhouse gas emissions are dwarfed by those of the larger countries above it in the rankings; the top ten GHG emitters, as of that time, accounted for nearly three-quarters of global emissions.) Though GHG emissions remain a problem for Ukraine, the country has worked to reduce emissions over the first two decades of the twenty-first century and has had some success in doing so. In 2018, Ukraine's environmental minister announced that the government would reduce emissions by 66 to 69 percent compared to 1990 levels; at that time, the most recent figures, from 2014, showed that emissions had already been reduced by 63 percent from 1990 levels.
Summary and Foresight
Despite these problems, as well as ongoing political unrest in Ukraine and its neighboring former Soviet states, Ukraine wishes to be involved with protecting the environment of planet Earth. A relative newcomer to this cause, Ukraine requires assistance in implementing treaties such as the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, relying on the United Nations. The UNDP, for example, has agreed to help Ukraine in the preservation of bio systems via effective management of natural resources. UNDP is addressing these issues with initiatives that limit GHG emissions by promoting energy efficiency, such as a pilot project in Rivne, Ukraine, that aims to reduce GHGs through improvements in the communal heat supply.
In addition, Ukraine uses carbon trading and is transitioning to sustainable energy development while adhering to the flexible mechanisms set forth by the Kyoto Protocol. However, mitigating the effects of GHG emissions through the practice of carbon offsets is not without its critics; some believe it allows countries, organizations, and even individuals to continue polluting the environment by simply paying a fee, the premise being that if one country can reduce emissions more efficiently than another country, the second country can pay the first one to reduce emissions for both. In addition, loopholes allow poorer countries to sell inexpensive offset credits to heavily polluting countries, which can then sell them for profit.
Ukraine, like other Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries, is an industrialized, developed Annex I nation, but a poor one that has suffered from many wars fought on its land and Soviet-era repression. A top-twenty emitter of GHGs, Ukraine possesses an outdated industrial infrastructure inherited from the Soviet Union. Joint implementation may be a positive solution to Ukraine’s environmental problems, allowing carbon trading with wealthy countries. Ukraine could use the resulting funds to improve its environment and transition to a sustainable development model, fostering environmentally responsible economic growth.
Key Facts
Population: 44,033,874 (July 2017 estimate)Area: 603,550 square kilometersGross domestic product (GDP): $368.3 billion (purchasing power parity, 2017 estimate)Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): 922 in 1990; 482 in 2000; 443 in 2006; 366 in 2012Kyoto Protocol status: Ratified February 4, 2004
Bibliography
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"Ukraine." Climate Action Tracker, 30 Apr. 2018, climateactiontracker.org/countries/ukraine/. Accessed 18 Sept. 2018.