The war in Ukraine shows the impact of armies on the climate

War in Ukraine highlights emissions greenhouse gases armies, the calculation of which is very difficult to assess, experts at COP27 explain.

“This is a sector with significant emissions, and no one has really taken on this problem,” said Aksel Mikhaelova, head of the research group on international climate policy from the University of Zurich during the debate.

Scientists have calculated that these emissions are equivalent to 1 to 5% of the total Worldaccording to a report published earlier this month in a scientific journal Nature.

For comparison, aviation and civil shipping account for approximately 2% each.

The most important military forces are the American ones. If they were a country, their per capita emissions would be the highest in the world, equivalent to 42 tons of CO2, according to expert comments in Nature.

“Politics and the shortage of specialists”

Every hundred nautical miles flown by a US Air Force F-35 is equivalent to annual CO2 emissions car in United Kingdomcount these experts.

Ukraine calculated emissions directly and indirectly related to the Russian invasion on February 24, for the first time for the country in war.

The movement of refugees is the equivalent of 1.4 million. tons CO2, Forest firesagricultural fields or buildings 23.8 million, fighting 8.9 million, and rebuilding infrastructure destroyed in seven months of war represents the release of 48.7 million tons, according to the War’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Initiative project.

This counting initiative greenhouse gases war was created two months after the invasion of Ukraine.

The total amount is about 83 million tons. For comparison, emissions Netherlands over the same period, they grow to one hundred million tons, according to the report of this group.

“It shows everything we don’t know about other conflicts, past and present. We never had such details about Iraq, Syriaor other wars,” explained Deborah Burton of Tipping Point North South.

“Why don’t climate experts and UN climate meetings say anything about military broadcasts? ask the authors of the article in Nature.

“To put it simply, the reasons are political and the lack of specialists,” they explain.

“Dead corner”

Initiative for Ukraine aims to eliminate “this kind of dead corner” in the calculations of all global emissionsyou need to be able to reduce them, Lennard de Klerk, a carbon specialist with ties to the private sector and co-author of the study, told AFP.

According to the authors of the Nature study, military emissions should be “officially recognized and accurately accounted for in national inventories, and military activities should be decarbonised.”

“Military data is generally sensitive, but we can get second-hand information: when you know what devices are operating in a certain area, you can calculate the emission rate from a certain class of vehicles,” explains this expert, who estimates the margin of error in 10-20%.

(According to AFP)