 Good evening. Good evening. Are we ready? Hello. My name is Alexandra Maida. I'm a co-founder of the foundation Citizens of Nature, just established foundation, brand new. I was a journalist for 20 years and I'm going to be a moderator of this debate. Some technical information. We have three guests. We have Evgenia from Ukraine, Nicolai based in Geneva, and Doug from Great Britain. Hi, Doug. Do you hear us? Hi, Doug. I can hear UNC. Can I just need everyone? Okay. So we're going to have like three presentations that we have a short discussion here and then we will give you a voice for questions from the audience. Okay. Let's start. We have 16 days of July and this is 143rd day of Russian invasion in Ukraine. Since February 24, thousands of innocent people died. Country is being destroyed and families are separated. But there is a silent victim of this conflict, the environment. And about environmental crimes we're going to talk today and they are, of course, strictly linked to the issue of human life and human and public health in Ukraine. So we have war on one of the most industrialized territories in Europe. More than 4,000 mining, metallurgical and chemical companies with dangerous installation only in Donbas. When destroyed, they can pollute the environment including Ukraine's major river, which also flow through Russia, Moldova, Belarus. There are hundreds of warehouses in Ukraine with billions of tons of toxic wastes. There is a great risk of damaging them. Russia has attacked nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, pipelines, fuel storage facilities and other industrial infrastructure. Russian troops occupied more than 900 natural reserves. They play a huge role in protecting biodiversity and saving the climate. Forests and peat bogs are burning, releasing toxic compounds into atmosphere. We expect further destroying of natural systems that people depend on. Even when the fighting stops, ecological effect will be felt for the future generation, loss of ecosystems, poison water and soil air pollution. Of course, the invasion also treated not only Ukrainian but also global climate goals. Our guests today are monitoring and reporting on Russian environmental crimes, fighting disinformation and pushing for international legal solution that can protect ecosystems during armed conflicts. Let's get to know them. So our first speaker is Yevgenia Zasiadko from Ukraine. Yevgenia is the head of the climate department in the Ukrainian environmental NGO called EcoAction. After Russian invasion, she is monitoring potential negative environmental and climate damage, advocating for banned fossil fuel from Russia in Europe. Our second guest is Nikolai Denisov from Geneva, Switzerland. Nikolai is the co-founder and deputy director of ZOE, Environmental Network, and on profit in international organization in Geneva. Nikolai holds PAG in Geography and Environmental Studies. It has also over 30 years experience with environmental issues. He cooperated with UN and European institutions. And our third guest is Doug Weir, Great Britain. Hi, Doug. Doug is a founder of the non-profit organization called Conflict and Environment Observatory. He has a lot of experience with wide range of domestic, regional and international initiatives. And now he is focused on legal framework, frameworks protecting the environment in relation to armed conflicts. Okay, so our first speaker is Yevgenia. Yevgenia, I would like to ask you to make a short introduction about your organization and then you will show your presentation. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Yevgenia Zasiadko. As I was told, I'm ahead of the climate department in the Center for Environmental Initiative Eco-Action. It's already the full name, but shortly everybody is calling it Eco-Action. Who we are, it's civil society organization that unites efforts of experts and activists in a joint struggle of protecting the environment. In this goal, we are trying to unite, like, different directions. And because of the war, we now have 12 directions where we work energy efficiency on monitoring the environmental effect of this war on climate and energy policies and many others. It's the biggest environmental enjoy, we have 30 people, so we are trying to cover as much as we can to actually make this change in the future, like more ambition, more green. Before the 24th of February, we've been based in Kyiv. A lot of my colleagues, during the February, they just left the city because it was too dangerous state. And now, like, some of our colleagues are already back to Kyiv, but not all of them are including me. I'm in Europe, for example. But at the beginning of the war, I've been in Kharkiv, it's my home region. With my parents, I just arrived home on the 23rd in the union at 6 p.m. Just to visit for the weekend and on the 24th at 5 a.m., everything started. So nobody believed, nobody, we've been prepared. We had a plan, but unfortunately, it's our reality now. But we managed, and in two weeks, we actually started to monitor the effect to the environment from the war. We also started to advocate for embargo of fossil fuels from Russia, because we see this as one of the most important instrument how to stop the Russia, because they're receiving a lot of money from it. We also work almost on the same direction that we did before. It's agriculture, it's industry, it's energy policy, including anti-nuclear renewables, energy efficiency, or just transition, why so? Because somehow it's my colleague a few days mentioned that actually we are kind of prepared for the last years to this war, so now we can use this expertise that we had before, we can use them now. And that's why we didn't change a lot our direction, we just add a few more to actually help to stop this war. And as I mentioned, we are monitoring the potential and one environmental impact caused by Russian aggression in Ukraine, why it's potential and why we are not calling this environmental crimes or any other, it could sit or any other terminology. At the beginning, actually everybody started to use the terminology of environmental crimes, but we understood that it's not right from the legislation perspective to use such terminology because we need a lot of evidence, we need photo-video proof, we need to know what kind of situation with the environment before the Russian actions and unfortunately the monitoring system in Ukraine are not fully covered everything, so that's why we started to monitor a potential environmental effect and in the future we are going to collect evidence, going to work on laboratory assessment and after some of these cases can be actually be called an environmental crimes. So far today we, a collection is monitoring 377 cases, you can see the red and the blue numbers, it's how many cases we could monitor in each region, unfortunately it's not full information because it's hard to know what's happening on the occupied area and it's actually been happening during the last eight years where Donbass has been occupied and we don't know what's happening there, so that's why it's not full picture and unfortunately nobody in Ukraine knows the full picture from the impact to the environment including ministry. On such monitoring is actually working not only a collection, the Ministry of Environment including the State of Environmental Agency, other civil society initiative like Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, SAVDNIPRO and we are using different ways to do it but we are cooperating, we are trying to work and actually a collection see now our goal in this part is communicate because still it's not enough visible as like humanitarian loss which is the most important information during this war but this part would affect us a lot after the war without like how long we can live without clean water, how long we can live without like food and this polluted soil, so it's important to know at least like now what's happening and I'd like to proceed when we would have a chance to do it. Here on this graph you can see all these graphs you can find on our website, it's called echoaction.org.ua and we have like a few graphs, it's updating every day when we find in different cases so we add them to our database and at the same time you can see the updated information, there's another map that I didn't add here, so there is an example so you can even click on the example and it would be like a short information with a link where it happened, when and the resource information where we found it. We are monitoring on different categories, it's industrial damages, it's energy security, it's nuclear security why it's different because like energy and nuclear is actually the same but the nuclear, it's a huge effect on us, it would affect like the whole world if actually Russia would do something, they still occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant station in the beginning of the war they occupied Chernobyl zone, there was a huge forest fire in the zone and now we are like because we're monitoring the news so we see that Russian missiles are flying over the nuclear power plant station in Ukraine, we have four nuclear power plant stations which is functioning in the Chernobyl zone and all of these facilities they can threaten the whole world if something is going to happen so experts saying that if Zaporizhia would blow up it means second Chernobyl is happening and it would affect all of us so that's why we are monitoring like it's separately but also other categories it's marine ecosystem, it's ecosystem and it's livestock and I would just briefly like step on some examples of what we monitored so it's Lysychansk oil refinery it happened in March 22 Lugansk region Lugansk Oblast as we call it like it's not regions in Ukraine it's Oblast so you can see Russia hit such facilities so we now monitored by information from the Ministry of Environment Russia hit around more than 40 oil facilities including refinery so it's a huge impact to the environment from such actions also Russia is hitting a chemical plant in Severodonetsk it's in use from June 12 it's in Donetsk Oblast in Ukraine Ukraine is industrial country as it was mentioned previously we have around 27,000 facilities in Ukraine from the industry from like industrial facilities it's chemical it's heavy metals plants and a lot more around 3000 is dangerous facilities so if Russia would hit them it would be like a cut seed in Ukraine so that's why like even though maybe I can't say that Russia is actually like hitting such facility or they want to create a cut seed but by the action they actually creating it so there is information that in some villages Ukrainians don't have access to the clean water the underground water is polluted that's why action already said a few filters to some settlements so at least they would have access to the clean water and could survive but unfortunately there is some occupied area like Mariupol where people don't have access to any water and it's it's very scary it's Harkiv Oblast and as I told it's my home region it's in use from June 14 it's how the land and region looks like it's not only in Harkiv region it's in Donetsk Lugansk-Herson-Mikoliv in all these regions is when the whole world is speaking about food security and how everybody would be suffer from the hunger that's what Russia is doing now they destroy our land they destroy the weed that grow and there was like a lot of news how Russian just put the fire on the land and the weed what just burned so we lost like a lot of even though they occupied some of our facility which the storage is with weed and other production they are now actually stealing it and sending through other countries like Turkey and selling it to other countries but also they are just throwing that product that's growing up this year this is another example another news which has happened actually today it's 16 July in Bessarabia Ukraine it's Odessa region in national park Tuzlevskillumane dolphin dice again why again because it's not the news it's actually happening for a few years already or a few months is Russia's mind they are Black Sea and there's off sea so it's it's not only causing the impossible to use the Black Sea or off sea for the shipping it's also causing effect on the animal and ecosystem in the Black Sea and there's off sea so such animals as a dolphin and other they're just dying because of mice because it's blowing up and the numbers I think we don't know now and actually from the national parks unfortunately we don't know the whole information what's happening there especially on the Kipai Teteria because a lot of people who work there they just or they now focusing on humanitarian support or they just moved because it's too dangerous to stay there so we don't know the whole volume mashed up of of this course from Russian actions Ukraine is also one of their most mined contaminated countries in the world why how it's related to to the environment to unmind Ukrainian territory usually to utilize these mines it means to blow up and it means that heavy metals and other chemicals would like go to or to the soil or to the groundwater and the pollution is would be on our territory and it's like huge territory I'm sorry yeah I will switch it here and after come back at 20 percent of Ukrainian territory is occupied by Russia and it's only occupied but actually they've been also on north and where they didn't occupy it and they left that part so actually the mined territory in Ukraine is like around 40 percent or something like that so it's a huge plus for example I see that news from Harkiv region they can make it like automatically so they just send it they are standing in the border with russia and just send it by some machines so just like automatically in some moment can blow up and kill the people and kill everything is around so it's a huge effect and you can see this like only occupied at 20 territories of Ukraine it's 55 percent of united kingdom and it's 36 percent of germany the trash is currently occupied it's and like we are fighting for this territory at the last what I wanted to also mention it's in four months of war it's 100 000 hectares of Ukraine burned up you can see how many it's information from NASA it was published by ukrainian society organization nature conservation group so they analyze NASA images and collected the whole information where the fires happened on our territory so you can actually see where the Russia was and how it's affected our territories also Russia destroyed or occupied 90 percent of ukrainian's wind power plants and 30 percent of solar power plants it's not directly is affecting the environment but actually they destroyed our energy system and I don't know around more than thousands settlements cities in ukraine they now without electricity or Russia constantly like shilling bombing this such facilities and it's unfortunately it's destroying but ukrainian energy experts are doing as much as they can to keep give people an energy heating and everything too so the people would have these resources to survive and the last what I wanted to say it's what should be done as I mentioned we're also working on the sanction on an embargo against Russian fossil fuel so you can see it's the information from today it's 63 billion euro Russia received from the February from EU for the exporting oil gas and coal Europe is actually made the sanction on oil and coal but coal is going the sanction is going to start in august so they all this period from February Russia actually received money and they sell it until now oil is going to sell until the end of the year so Russia still would be received this money until the end of the year and the gas is actually not even on the table it's not discussed to put a sanction on gas just I came here from a Brussels and we had a meeting with different decision makers and they said okay we need to arrive this winter but they are not seeing this from a side so somehow they still believe that Russia is going to give them this gas and they would not just like close this pipeline and stop it they did the same last autumn and last winter so it's kind of already there was even not warring Ukraine and still they believe that Russia is going to give them this we lost last five months and we are not prepared for it I mean like Europe and Ukraine and if Russia is going to stop it and we are not ready it would be like a very harsh winter in like our lives so that's why it's actually important to not wait until Russia is closing pump plan and work ahead this actions and stop finance this one stop to give Russia this money and actually to win this war as fast as we can so it's important to stop any connections with Russia so what I wanted to say is Russia is a terrorist state and it should be threatened treaty like a terrorist state no any other partnerships with Russia working together anything it shouldn't be do and Russia should be treated as a terrorist state thank you thank you Evgenia and Nikolai now it's your presentation the same the same request to say some words about your organization thank you thank you very much can I have the presentation up already because I think I have some slides in there so I work for something which was called ZOE environment network it's located in Geneva Switzerland ZOE actually means life in Greek it's like me as a ZOE middle life and we are a non-profit so kind of an NGO and a lot of our work is related to the environmental analysis environmental communication so we believe that information can help the world better understand environmental issues and that it can make a difference so we'll put a lot of energy into sort of explaining complicated things in a simpler way geographically we work globally with many partners including the United Nations organizations the development banks the bilateral assistance but also regionally and they will focus on the European neighborhood very much Eastern Europe the Caucasus Central Asia but also the Middle East and so that's where we have most of our geography expertise and then thematically we cover a fairly broad range of issues from climate by diversity waste to something which we call environment and security or environmental conflict and they were similar to Doug who is the next speaker and then of course lately we have been focusing a lot on the situation in Ukraine the publication we have here is our annual report I have a few copies with me here including the map which was on the front cover of the presentation so please feel free to pick it up later now in terms of working with Ukraine experience goes back many years in particular through our cooperation with the United Nations Environment Program and so this is an extract from a work we have done with it around 2006-2007 around the connections between security and environment in Eastern Europe and what's interesting you see on the map to the left you see some of the areas which we identified at that time as areas where the connections can be particularly strong and you see Donbas, you see Crimea, you see the border between Ukraine and Belarus so all these areas which have indeed been the place of fighting in the last four months and where also the accompanying environmental damage was significant and another interesting thing following on the pre-lunch presentation we did talk a lot in this report about energy as a geopolitical weapon because indeed Eastern Europe is located in a particular way sort of between the European Union and Russia and that time already it was fairly clear that the energy and the pipelines and the fuel supply was increasingly used as a geopolitical weapon by Russia. Now when the war in Donbas started in 2014 after the after Crimea was annexed and the war in Donbas started we thought it important to start following the environmental site of the conflict we had work was done before that with regional authorities helping them to look at the coal mining and the environmental issues of coal mining, access to information etc so we thought it's important to start monitoring the damage and we worked against the OEC organization for security and cooperation in Europe looking at the various dimensions of environmental damage mapping it these are some examples on the left it's integrated assessment of environmental risks from damage to industrial infrastructure Ukraine is an industrialized country Donbas is one of the most industrialized areas in Europe so of course fighting in such an area and it has still in such an area interruptions to supply of electricity supply of water supply of gas has implications which also have environmental consequences and then a particular dimension of the coal mines many of which started to get flooded in the course of the conflict partially due to the interruption of electricity supply partially due to the decision of the defect authorities on the side of the contact line which was not controlled by the government of Ukraine and this process continue now and then damage to nature Evgenia touched a little bit about that as well so it already started there that many protected areas of Donbas were hits were damaged were excavated there were fortifications built some of them were split the contact line went through them so this all we have seen there and it all started to repeat itself on a much larger scale with the invasion in February of this year so the same things which we have been witnessing in Donbas for eight years we start seeing in Ukraine now all over the country in Donbas to monitor the the developments we have developed together with the OEC an information platform Donbas environmental information system where we try to register records the different incidents in systematic way and try to store them and make them available for the analysis so we decided to do the same for Ukraine as a whole trying to look at the broad range of possible of possible issues which can lead to environmental consequences the consequences again this is a recap if any already spoke about that but we are dealing with the health implications but we're also dealing with the impact on agriculture we spoke about that a little bit before lunch we talk about water pollution with potential and transboundary effects we talk about nature and what's also important it's the whole destruction significant disruption to the environmental management infrastructure to the institutions to people to monitoring systems it's much more difficult to manage the environment of a country which is at war and this damage is significant and despite the fact that a large part of Ukraine's environmental expert community professional community has been able to continue working it's being of course extremely difficult to do that and the global dimension for all of us of course I think we also spoke about this in this meeting several times already that with this happening there is much less room for dealing with global environmental issues so a climate change is one of the victims in the long term not only because of the emissions but simply because of the refocusing of attention now back to the situation so this is a this is a screenshot of a information system that we're we're managing monitoring the incidents with potential environmental consequences these are Ukrainian cities what you see here are dates up at the end of May early June now another month has passed and now there are about 7000 incidents in about 1000 cities towns villages that are in the system and again it's not everything there is more this is based on available information open sources governmental communications but definitely there are more things there and there is a circle in the left you can see the red part is direct damage so it's actually shelling is a bombing and explosions which constitutes a big part of the incidents the rest relates to issues with the supply of water of electricity with the disruption of daily operations of cities but still the most of the damage comes from direct shelling and bombing of most of the time civil infrastructure in those cities and the same goes for industrial facilities by now here we have about 400 facilities about 700 incidents again this is only part of the actual situation many of these facilities are highly dangerous the chemical plants there are oil depots there are there is infrastructure there are water dams there are bridges and trying to qualitatively assess the risk levels again we can see where the where the potential environmental risk is concentrated which is again which is Donbas which is a little lower Dnipro area in the south of Ukraine and of course areas around Kiev and Harkov which well Kiev by now is no longer the areas around Kiev are no longer occupied by the damage that does happen and it happened there and there is still considerable risk and Harkov is still under fire speaking of fires we cooperate with a group called the Eastern European Fire Monitoring Center in Kiev which professionally monitors in particular wildfires all over Ukraine on the left so when we worked in Donbas it was striking how wildfires really traced the allocations of combat and it was also very clear that the density of fires per square kilometer was notably higher in the areas of fighting than in the surrounding areas and basically we see the same with respect to the current situation so on the top you see this year examples from Donbas and around Kiev where fires basically trace the front lines and the density in these regions is definitely higher than than in the surrounding oblasts of Ukraine and in the expressed and figures forests burn about 10 times more per square kilometer in terms of area burns and 15 times for pine forests in the areas of combat as opposed to areas which are outside so this is a very very clear impact of the war on the natural heritage of Ukraine Ukraine is an important generator of electricity from nuclear power and it has 15 reactors on four nuclear power plants and then there's Chernobyl area which doesn't have operating reactors and in a way it's the first time I think we did work on a case study with Doug I think he said it's the first time that this kind of war is waged in a nuclear country so it's highly unusual and it's highly dangerous and until now there were dozens of incidents of different level at the nuclear power plants and other nuclear installations for instance the waste storages nuclear waste storages and other places we shall have to do with the nuclear energy and nobody really knows where this will lead but if you remember and yeah this is an example of Chernobyl where troops simply moved through on the way to Kiev at the beginning and then they stayed there and then the power supply was cut to the cooling facility for spent fuel and there are many other dangerous incidents there each of them had the potential to become something more likely didn't happen but if you do remember what happened when Chernobyl actually blew up for the scale of the disaster was continental and we definitely don't want this to be repeated what next of course depends not on environmentalists and not on the environmental side of things we need to look at the broader context on the scenarios from the Red Cross no rocket science but a good illustration of how things may develop and the best case scenario is de-escalation the worst case scenario the expansion was a potential for use of nuclear weapons hope this will not happen what it basically shows that it's extremely difficult to play anything humanitarian or environmental with this broad range of possible options so we need to be prepared for various possibilities various situations what can we do meanwhile at least from our side we believe it's important to continue documenting the damage and that's what ecoidea is doing that's what we are doing that's what many other organizations are trying to do and this means improving the information base this means looking at details verifying the information which is very difficult because in many places you cannot go right now so field assessment is not possible satellite assessment has limitations but still something needs to be done we need to look at specific cases we need to look at the dimensions which are under explored at the moment for example nature it's much more difficult to trace damage to nature because the nature areas those which are damaged are very much behind the front line information flow is very very difficult it's inconsistent so we need to find the ways to really understand what is happening there and things are happening according to experts from Ukraine who are able to monitor specific situations specific protected areas and of course collaboration communication and advocacy this again what we've been talking about and this requires a lot of interaction among the players what for we need all this well first of all the moment it's possible one needs to start detailed assessment of the situation in particular in the field and this also has to be done through by major international organizations who has the mandate for that we're able to do that I'm talking about UNEP United Nations Environment Programme I'm talking about the OEC and also the European Commission has a role to play there so all these assessments will need background information that's exactly what's may help that we're doing now and then of course eventual compensation for damages that's what Doug will be talking about in the next talk and then the recovery the recovery of the nature of Ukraine and the green recovery of Ukraine at large the Lugano conference in Switzerland adopted the resolution just a week ago then eco idea played a role there if I understand eco action sorry now just a range of two actions on the very short term side of things so this is the immediate assessment and quantification of the damage the minister of the environment for Ukraine environmental inspectorate put together an expert team and we actually have some experts from this team here in the room who happen to work there there are about 70 people looking at different semantic tracks we all are to some degree in touch with some of the subgroups there Doug is also part of the whole exercise so the idea is to try to figure out using also international experience how damage can be quantified and how it can be made legally defendable which is of course a totally different story because it also depends where and in what context and again we leave it to Doug and then a very long-term perspective this is the map from France it's area near where there was very heavy fighting during the first world war which is like 100 years back from now and this zone whoosh the red zone here other areas which were damaged heavily stratifying in the first world war where the chemical weapons for very rudimentary where heavy machinery was also not as heavy as we have it today but still they were damaged to such an extent that were completely unusable for agriculture at the time considered totally out of the question there are still there are still munitions there there are still unexploded ordnance there and in fact some of these red zones are still not possible to use they are still of limited the access is still limited and according to what the French experts and authorities are saying with the current rate of removing the remnants of war of current well it's not exactly demining I think there are mines as well but the overall complex of things at the current rate of removal it may take several hundred years more to make these red areas totally usable now what we're dealing with Ukraine is of a larger scale of deeper consequences how long time that will take remains to be seen but we may need to be prepared for a very long-term situation and we may need to prepare to face the fact that some of the areas which are already damaged already polluted may not be brought into a normally regular use for many many years thank you thank you very much and our third speaker is Doug Doug do you hear me hello okay your organization called conflict and environment observatory what do you do conflict and environment observatory is a UK charity which monitors the environmental dimensions of armed conflicts and military activities and I've had the same thing on my slides excellent there we go fantastic thank you very much for the introduction to speak today and compliance to our previous speakers and yeah I'm going to talk a little bit about the legal framework which is intended to protect the environment in relation to armed conflicts yeah it's interesting at times it feels very remote from the monitoring work that we're doing and the kind of damage we've been talking about in the same way that you're talking about in the same way that you know we have international humanitarian law and yet we still see the huge and terrible humanitarian cost of the conflict in Ukraine but it's part of a process of establishing and developing norms around the importance of environmental protection in relation to conflicts so just very briefly yeah our organization again and not profits and we do remote monitoring of environmental issues in armed conflicts we work on promoting environmental mainstream awareness within militaries within humanitarian mine action sector and we also do quite a lot of work around the legal framework and have done for some time and that will be the focus of my my talk today so just to step back a little bit to understand where this has all come from our sort of current understanding or framework protecting the environment in conflict dates back to the 1970s very much like the environmental movement as a whole actually it came out at the impacts we saw in the vietnam war which included this use of agent orange, defolience, mechanical destruction of forests, use of napalm, all of these issues and it was very visible this environmental damage and it also happened at a time when the environmental movement was first beginning so since that time of the 70s these developments in the legal framework and in how we understand and perceive the importance of environmental protection has been driven by how we think about the environment as societies it's gone forward in jumps and steps in response to particular incidents like 1991 Gulf War in Iraq where you had these 900 oil wells which were burning for months and months on end very visible incidents of harm and it's also been driven by our understanding of how the environment is impacted by war so from 1990-99 onwards we've had an environment program doing post-conflict environmental assessments of the environment and that's provided us a much richer understanding of the different ways that the environment is impacted by war but irrespective of its knowledge and of the existing law the framework is still extremely permissive and compliance with it is very poor so the process I'm going to talk about today has its origins in 2009 and it's not often that a UN report has a significant impact but back in 2009 this report came out which catalogued the state of legal protection for the environment at the time and essentially much of the focus was on international humanitarian law and a couple of components of that which offer some protection for the environment but it was clear that there were other fields of law environmental law human rights law security law criminal law which actually could also offer components of protection to the environment so the recommendation of this report was that the UN's international law commission pick up this topic and work with it to try and see if a more coherent framework could be developed so the international law commission it is part of the United Nations system it makes recommendations on the codification and progressive development of international law to governments and to the UN General Assembly and it picked up this topic in 2013 giving it the title of the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts or PARAC this is really important this in relation to because historically the law had just been applicable during conflicts but what we saw from all the reports over the years was that the environment can be damaged in the preparations for war it can be damaged particularly in the post-conflict phase when you have very little environmental governance for example or legal systems breakdown very little governmental capacity to protect the environment it can also be harmed during situations of occupation as we see in occupied Palestinian territories for example and so this PARAC approach changed the kind of temporal approach to environmental protection and it also changed the legal approach so this was bringing in humanitarian law human rights law environmental law but also the practice of states and international organizations so it was a real mixing pot from the outset governments weren't very enthusiastic and although the international law commission can come up with draft articles which can then become new international conventions states particularly the nuclear weapons states were very reluctant that should be the case and so the outcome is going to be non-binding principles and pitch it here to the special rapporteurs who've worked on this project over the last 10 years at the same time the international committee of the Red Cross was also been updating its guidelines for militaries on protection of the environment again this has taken about 10 years to do and these were launched in 2020 they've been talking a lot with the international law commission and so the principles for the international law commission has come up with are very closely based on international humanitarian law which is the focus of the Red Cross and which is the law that applies during conflicts elsewhere there are other components of this PARAC landscape these are kind of civil society initiatives so Geneva Water Hub have developed a list of principles around the protection of water infrastructure and together with Harvard Law School we've come up with a suite of principles for victim assistance for those affected by toxic remnants of war so it's this increasingly sort of rich landscape and all of these approaches bring in these different legal frameworks so there's a lot to feast your eyes on in this slide but essentially this is where we are today um this year 2022 this autumn in fact the international law commission's principles of which there are now 27 are hopefully going to be adopted at the UN General Assembly um this is kind of the culmination of all this work and as discussed these principles can be sort of divided up into general principles which kind of apply all the time or not specifically in a bit of conflict those that apply during conflict and these are the ones that are based on international humanitarian law principles for situations of occupation and then also these post-conflict principles i'm not going to talk about all of them um there's a ton of them but i will just pick out a few um which will give you a sense of um the kind of approach that's being taken so this one draft principle 18 on protected zones is part of or connected with draft principle 4 on the designation of protected zones and these are rules which have been developed for really important biodiversity areas so that militaries can decide between themselves and say look this area is ecologically important and we shouldn't fight in here we both agree to not place any military equipment in this area because of its environmental ecological importance and that one was kind of based on um a similar principle for safe zones for humanitarian access which is part of international humanitarian law over here to the right this is an example of progressive development so you may be aware that over the last few years there's been quite a lot of attention on the field of business and human rights and what corporations do in terms of human rights due diligence and environmental due diligence and these two have a particular focus on for example uh mining companies operating in areas affected by conflicts like the democratic republic of the congo for example and these introduce principles around reducing environmental and human rights damage um but also establishing a system of liability and this kind of steps beyond the current law so this is how the international law commission progressively develop and develop the law um but it's quite an interesting example which again meets in connects up with these wider movements around business and human rights maybe on the left so this is another example of the approach that's been taken and this is one called I apologize to translators evolutionary interpretation so occupational law dates from the mid 19th century it hasn't really developed at all in that time um and it hasn't taken in sort of contemporary or modern environmental thinking there is a rule in occupation law that allows occupying powers to use some of the natural resources of the area that are occupied and what the international law commission has done has tried to shift this to introduce the concept of sustainability into here so there's a test that you can't just use an entire forest in an unsustainable way if you're an occupying power so it's in this case it's bringing the law kind of up to date with the 21st century and finally down here this was another an interesting approach around remnants of war so you'll be aware that there are international bands on land mines on cluster munitions and these treaties they ban the weapons and also create obligations to clear the land mines and clear the cluster munitions what the international law commission has done has introduced toxic materials into this approach so it's not just explosive remnants of war it's now also toxic remnants of war and this actually links back to how the remnants of war used to be seen in the 1970s when they were seen as the material remnants of war which is all the stuff which is left over after conflicts and over the years this became much more focused on land mines and cluster munitions because there were international campaigns on them and now it's gone kind of full circle to actually looking at conflict pollution as well as explosive remnants of war there's a stack more I could say about all of these principles it's a huge piece of work there are all these principles and also the commentaries which explain how all these principles work so the question now we have all this law we have these principles hopefully this autumn we will have this stuff adopted and approved by states but as I've said it's not going to conclude with a treaty many of the principles will be non-binding as we've seen the kind of temporal scope and the thematic scope like the before during and after conflicts and all the different issues they touch makes them really valuable from a normative perspective what's been really interesting for us working on this is the way that it's encouraged states and other stakeholders to actually talk about the environmental impacts of war and created a process where that could happen and that's something which is really important to continue but then this question of implementation how do states implement it the international law commission said well it's up to governments how they implement it and we can see sometimes it's yeah it's quite problematic so France historically as a nuclear weapons state has been really opposed to this whole process and then at the same time in the wake of an invasion of Ukraine France is standing up in the OSCE doing performative diplomacy about how concerned it is about the environmental impacts of the invasion whilst at the same time it's been trying to block and obstruct the development of the law to protect the environment in conflict so there is yeah hypocrisy and issues around how states are approaching this whole issue of conflict in the environment so a couple of years ago we looked at how the principles could be implemented and looked at some of the challenges and some of the opportunities like some of them are you know not all the principles are relevant to all states like there are some states who have never been in occupying power and will never be in occupying power and so other principles as relevant to them example the normative status of the principles varies quite a lot some of them those that are based on international humanitarian law maybe law that states are obliged and signed up to there are other principles based on things that international organizations in the UN do in conflict areas which don't have a solid legal basis there's also a question of how do you support and encourage states to implement them and how do you monitor what they're doing and then finally how do you make this visible and you know so far this has been a conversation amongst lawyers and government lawyers and a few civil society stakeholders like us how do you get the message out and make this something which is visible and understood by people and which comes to life essentially so I suppose for you guys looking thinking about the EU with a focus on the EU around probably around 60 countries have commented on these principles while they've been developing over the last 10 years some have had a lot to say some of them not very much at all support across the EU is actually pretty good not across all of the principles necessarily unless you have a Nordic government who are super supportive of the process but actually there are very few who are objecting and up house them Czech Republic have been quite difficult France as a nuclear weapon states they want the freedom to use nuclear weapons which obviously cause massive environmental damage and then Slovakia being quite problematic as well but mostly European countries have been pretty good on this and there are countries in there like Cyprus, Romania, Portugal, Spain who are actually really really supportive so just to conclude and happy to answer any questions afterwards these principles which you may or may not have heard of are the most important advance for the law protecting the environment in relation to our conflict since the 1970s this year it just happens that there's also a war with massive environmental damage taking place in Ukraine but this is the year where these principles will be adopted and it's also this boundary point between the development of the principles and then how we have to implement them as I've mentioned this kind of non-binding nature makes it really even more important that we have an effective implementation mechanism for them but ultimately as I said at the outset you know while they're extremely powerful piece of work obviously Ukraine reminds us that environmental protection in war will always be limited it's the nature of war itself and particularly when you have belligerents like Russia who have no concern for international humanitarian law and certainly no concern for protection of the environment but there will be other conflicts where these principles will help to reduce environmental harm I'm sure and I guess what Ukraine's also remind us which linking back to Nikolai's slide on the nuclear situation in Ukraine that these non-development and rules around environmental protection and conflict it can never stop it's never a there's no an end point because new situations are always occurring and here for example Ukraine's shown how nuclear infrastructure can be affected by conflict in ways that people really hadn't thought about before so this is a process which has to be ongoing and it's not just going to stop in 2022 because some rules have been agreed so I'll leave it there and yeah happy to answer any questions thank you very much thank thank you we are we are just in time we have half an hour so I'm going to ask a few questions to our guests and then I will give you a voice Evgenia I'm wondering how information gathering looks like in time of war how do you get your information is isn't some kind of information from the ground from the people living Ukraine or from journalists or maybe remotely gathered data and I can imagine it could be dangerous to make some documentation when the war is going on but on the other hand how complete are they you already said it's not complete we don't we know we don't know a lot of things going on and my second question is about emission and Ukrainian goals because you said that 30% of solar power plants have been destroyed already and 80% of power plants right and on the other hand Ukraine want to reduce its emission by 7% until 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality until 2060 right so how do russian actions treat in these goals thank you for the questions regarding methodologies of using open sources because it's a creation a civil society organization it's even though we are the biggest environmental enjoy it's impossible to cover the whole Ukraine plus the war is going on and it's dangerous to go for example close to the front line and do any check up and collect the data so that's why our methodology is based on collecting media source it's region original national we're just monitoring the media resources sometimes it's hard because it's a moment if during the first months let's say Ukrainian media is published everything what's happened sometimes even too quick so the government to ask like people please don't share any photo don't share any video like rapidly after the heat or the bomb happened because it's dangerous and russia can do the same in a few minutes or in a half an hour so that's why it's a moment the media also started not to publish and so for example they publish and use like three industrial facilities been bombed in mclive or in her son in charkas but we don't know what kind of facilities and because we're monitoring only media resources sometimes too hard to understand what else like and for this we are also using a local telegram chat like a lot of communication Ukraine is now like all information resources is going through just local channels people just publishing and discussing this channel different information so there is sometimes you can find also like more detailed information what actually happened there but not a correction and not probably any organization government or civil society i don't know the full picture of impact of environment even though they're like the government is working now on methodology that mclive mclive is mentioned about the working group so they try to understand the financial damage to the environment but even the ministry is saying that this reparation would not enough to actually restore the environment in Ukraine and it's not enough so that's why they're working how to actually make Russia pay fully so from my perspective I see this also as an instrument so that Russia would not have any other resources to attack us in the future and anybody else because Ukraine are not the first one it was Moldova it was Georgia and other countries today Russia participating in the wars or in the conflicts so it means that the Russia should bestow and one of the instrument it's financial and regarding climate yes really we are committed in national-determinated contribution we adopted in July 2021 it's a part of the Paris agreement it and it's actually been expected from the whole countries in the world so you should commit your greenhouse gas emission goal like reduction until 2030 and because previous plan of Ukraine wasn't been so much ambition and actually we plan to raise our emission after updating we made made at least real committed to reduce even though me as a climate activist I'm not saying I never been satisfied with that goal it was just seven percent during the next ten years and we can actually do more but now all this commitment is just like cancelled and in Ukraine it's even impossible to speak about climate because like people are dying and who would be thinking about climate now about climate change when actually like everything is burning but Russian actions actually affect not only Ukraine from this side it's also affect Europe Europe also committed to be a climate neutral until 2050 for the European continent including Ukraine for example but now when the war started a lot of countries are looking for the other resources to not depend on Russia so they are switching to call again they also looking for any possibilities but they are not usually based on energy efficiency or renewable energy so they are not committed to actually be more independent from the fossil fuels resources from there not to depend on such terrorist side like terrorist state like Russia or Iran or any other countries which is not so democratic as European Union and they again would be depend on such country and in the future at maybe it would not bring a conflict or war in Ukraine but it would it can affect any other countries who would again receive money from you a huge amount of money and affect this and in the future if we are not committed to the climate goals now it will affect us like and we would never reach their per se goal of 1.5 degrees until 2050 and climate neutrality until 2050 it would like affect us a lot like from many other perspective and like you remember what happened like a week ago the Europe was like burning and still the south of Europe have plus 46 degree people just burning not from the bombs and fires like in Ukraine but from the heat of the sun and heat waves and it's going to be like race every year and the Russian actions is actually like cancelled some of actions that Europe can do and finance and move towards that goals thank you very much and Nikolai I would like you to elaborate more about danger of nuclear attacks of nuclear targets you said about 15 reactors thousands of incidents and we can frankly say that this attacks can be called like terrorist acts they already been called like ecocide so is the security of nuclear facilities at risk how high is the treat really and the second question connected not only with nuclear treats but pollution itself is it could the pollution issue go abroad not only Ukraine but also to I don't know Russia Belarus Moldova Moldova or eastern part of Europe you you said about water pollution and of course including Poland yes the questions are actually connected for the nuclear we had a panel yesterday and then I borrowed some slides from there and also we're working with Doug on a case study to look exactly that and now indeed it's actually not easy to say what may happen concretely but what we can say at any case that waging a war in a country which generates nuclear power is highly dangerous and well one example that IAA which is a very conservative organization and basically is very cautious in what it's saying they are talking about the tangible risk of a nuclear accident in Ukraine that they're trying to somehow mitigate the probability of but still they see the they see the threat of that and rightly so Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is for the moment the biggest in Europe and its reactors more modern than reactors in Chernobyl they are more safe but still nuclear plants are not designed with a war in mind so there are stress tests the stations are secured against the crash of a passenger aircraft usually there is a missile shield but again this is not meant against the purposeful targeted attack and we have seen and Fukushima that's even modern designs do not always stand against an attack which is not even purposeful so what can happen in reality of a war it's it's very difficult to say but we can say that it's highly dangerous and also one dimension is that in fact Zaporizhia for instance is now a place where Russian attack infrastructure is being deployed and of course in view that the retaliation will probably not happen but of course in the reality nobody knows so this is a highly dangerous game now this is sort of direct physical risks are related to direct impact but there are many other risks and I already said already was speaking about the interruption of power to the Chernobyl storage of spend fuel and this doesn't seem like a big deal but power is needed for cooling and the power was restored luckily after a few days but had it not been restored again the risks were significant the same applies to a simple fact that the personnel of the power plants which are supposed to guarantee their safety has been working on the stress on the deures both in Chernobyl and now in Zaporizhia and this is not what power plants again how power plants are designed they're designed in view that the teams which ensure their safety they operate on the normal conditions what can happen when you have stressed people when you have people who are not able to fully perform their duties some of the employees have been removed from their duty there are stories about hijacking of people so all these situations are not something that nuclear power plants are designed for so the risks definitely are high now how it's very difficult to say I mean for this I would actually leave it to experts in nuclear power and nuclear power engineering because only very specific calculation very specific modeling can actually tell us what will happen but again thinking back about Chernobyl these kind of accidents can have very large scale consequences and the Chernobyl disaster had continental scales on Norway was affected the UK was affected France there's no guarantee that something like that will not be repeated speaking of pollution which is not radioactive I think indeed water is probably the most at risk in fact already already during the eight years of of the of the war in Donbass there was a lot of discussion about the impacts of the flooding of the coal mines because mining waters are highly contaminated and the Donbass area is very porous there are many connections underground between different mines and eventual connections with groundwater so as the mines get flooded and the water level raises in there they eventually come in contact with groundwater and also with surface water and now both ground and surface water is used in Donbass at the source of drinking water for industrial supply for domestic supply so potentially there are very tangible risks of this water being contaminated so that's speaking of health but the thing is that Seversky Donetsk is a transboundary river so it does flow eventually to Russia and then the water enters the sea of Azov which is connected to the Black Sea and at least one mine in Donbass is known as being contaminated with the products of a nuclear explosion was peaceful explosion back in the Soviet times and again it's very very difficult to say what the actual danger there is but so there have been assessment that there is a possibility that some of the radioactive product there will also enter the Seversky Donetsk and then will actually be carried out to the Sea of Azov there is no conclusive evidence about how strong this kind of pollution may be but there are experts in Ukraine hydrogeologists in the Academy of Science of Ukraine who believe that the risk is also significant so and okay there is another example which is quite recent it's Mariupol as of style as of style wastes storage facilities and there was a lot of discussion of what will happen when sulfur containing wastes if sulfur containing wastes enter the sea of Azov in case the containment is broken again I haven't seen I haven't seen solid calculations but at least potentially there is an issue when heavy industry facilities on the coasts are attacked this use of Azov as a shallow sea so potentially the impact could be significant but I cannot say how significant okay and Dag the question for you you were talking about some legal options I'm wondering if Ukraine already has some legal possibilities to look justice look for justice for these damages and you were also talking about this 28 principles which are due to be agreed this autumn in few months and you're talking that not every states are super optimistic about it and enthusiastic and I'm wondering what would be your recommendation for all of us like for journalists activists politicians the green european family let's call it to help on this subject what can we do at what level like european parliament national local is there something we can do yeah two big questions there I'll maybe start with the first one on compensation and redress and accountability for Ukraine this has been a major focus of the Ukrainian government since the outset of the conflict unfortunately the precedent is not particularly strong for seeking reparations for environmental damage from conflicts the main example is the UN compensation commission which was established by the UN Security Council in the after the 1991 Gulf War but Iraq didn't sit on the UN Security Council and there was a clear mechanism for how Iraq's money could be directed towards this compensation through oil sales but at the same time that did set a precedent part of the claims it dealt with were relating to environmental damage many of which were linked to these oil well fires which burnt for a very long time and fast forward some years to the international court of justice and there was a case between Costa Rica and Nicaragua the amount of damage was relatively small compared to UN compensation commission's work on Iraq but it established the principle that environmental damage in and of itself could be compensated so it didn't have to be environmental damage linked to a human use of the environment and that producing a cash value so we have those two precedents which can be built on and ultimately it's not necessarily a legal question there are many methodologies out there for calculating environmental damage and financial losses from damage they're used in peacetime for example the key question is is there a forum where this could take place internationally and the current suggestion is that the UN general assembly could potentially set up a process looking at compensation claims the second one is where is the money going to come from obviously Russia has a lot of assets internationally many of which have been frozen in a lot of countries and so there's a question for particularly the west is it willing to establish two precedents one is that the UN general assembly can establish post-war compensation commissions you could see some UN security council members who like starting wars not necessarily being particularly keen about that precedent because it may be them who are having to pay compensation at some point in the future the second precedent and question is how willing would western countries in particular be to establish that you can seize private assets and while there's been enthusiastic noises from the UK and some from the US Switzerland for example are not particularly keen so there are two quite big hurdles to get through and then there's the process should those hurdles be be reached then fantastic could set up a process it can look at all the different bits of environmental data that are being gathered it can use that to help allocate claims against a pot of money which could sell which could go to addressing environmental damage but this isn't going to happen overnight if this is actually set up we're looking at five years 10 years 15 years 20 years couple of years ago Saudi Arabia was still doing cleanup of some of its coastline which was damaged in the 1991 Gulf War and which UN compensation commission had paid for and that's two decades after the conflict so this isn't going to be some magic fix for environmental damage in Ukraine and at the same time we feel it's quite problematic this kind of rush that the government has made towards trying to come up with financial methodologies for for loss and damage which you can understand the political motivation but it doesn't necessarily tell us about all the different kinds of environmental damage which have been caused is you know environmental damage isn't just a question of financial loss there's the cataloging the impact on nature and ecosystems for example which may not have an immediate financial value and moreover you know when a commission is set up that's when you're going to decide on the rules for how losses and damage allocated and cost it up and the kind of information and data which will help support that so it's very much getting ahead of itself at this stage to be rushing towards methodologies um on the second question around the parrot principles and how we can promote them in the European level and certainly the role of its greens within the EU can take um so at the EU level it would be fantastic to see a resolution in the European Parliament for example calling for all European states to implement the draft principles as I said before so far over the last 10 years this conversation has mostly been between government legal advisers lawyers and relatively few civil society organizations like ourselves but we know at the stage where the world kind of needs to be aware that these principles exist because otherwise they're not going to have any tangible impact on protecting the environment and so a European Parliament resolution would be a really good way to do that get that conversation going on a whole European level on a national level yeah implementation of these principles is a national question for governments and their militaries and it would be fantastic to have pressure in states to force militaries to address these principles and to think about them uh to implement them what's the point um so there's a work which national green parties could be doing to help uh develop national legislation around implementation of these principles about reporting about what are you doing to actually implement them and to reduce environmental harms and the environmental impact of your activities um and then on the local level for green party members across the region awareness raising I think um again these principles they're not very widely known publicly the story around them is quite complicated their scope is so wide it's quite difficult to get across um and yeah this is a story that really needs to be told because they are potentially a very powerful tool but they're not going to be powerful if nobody knows about them so yeah it would be fantastic to see uh greens across the Europe EU and globally sort of take these pair of principles to heart and to uh work to help implement them and raise awareness of them thank you very much okay we still have some short time for let's say three questions from the audience and three quick answers if anybody wants to ask if you don't mind thank you hello everyone I'm Marina Nikolaeva I'm from Ukraine currently I'm based in the in Porcel actually I know each other with Nikolai with Doug hello Doug and I'm very glad to meet here Evgenia who is the representative of the biggest NGO in Ukraine now I would like to say that maybe a few words about the company that I have joined it uh just last week um uh company name is Pax for Peace and uh we work in same area Zoey cobs and a collection and um I think that now it's a time to join our efforts in monitoring of evidence collection on the of the incidence from the military actions in Ukraine so I came here to meet all my friends and to meet Evgenia and I would like maybe to say a few words about uh what we are going to do uh the first of all we understand in Ukraine that our task uh for today uh maybe the crucial task is to collect evidence it's what doing dealing a collection and Zoey and cobs and Pax will do same with satellite monitoring and we are going to analyze what is impact of this military incident on the environment and then we are um uh we have uh additional task uh to have some advocacy issues uh in the uni region uh to bring some environmental issues uh that needed for Ukraine uh and uh as you can see here is the great speakers from united kingdom from Geneva from Ukraine national international companies and in fact it's really inspiring and our Pax company from netherlands and all these people uh trying to try to help uh to hold Russia accountable for all the distractions that brings in Ukraine and if you can imagine uh the huge amount of these destruction uh it's just no unprecedented case is this for and uh it's a big and long process uh to achieve our goal that is uh really we need to restore our environment and in Ukraine so uh that only first step that Ukraine is doing now it's fix all the evidence and all the incidents from russia military action so next steps is to calculate next steps to find that uh doc talked about to find some commission maybe for an example of uni compensation commission maybe another one now Ukrainian governmental call to united nation general assembly to create some environmental monitoring mission for Ukraine and to have uh independent experts who will help Ukrainian people uh to monitor and collect all the uh data so we are on our way and our goal same and uh i hope with such international support uh we will have a success in this thank you very much i i i've been told that we have to finish we have a time for one really quick question and quick answer please and please mark the person you want to ask and when we finish you can talk with our guests just face to face thank you very much i am julio from spain professor in rejuán carlos university i would like to make a question to alexandra no alexandra no sorry jebina and to the gentleman who is on the on the screen the first the first one is according to the principles that they will apply uh when we have a conflict environmental principles and one of my basic question is if we are not respecting the principle of territorial integrity do you think that this principle that they are going to now as a draft in the united nations level will have any sort of impact in this conflict because despite maybe they are approved in the future and adopted uh states they do what they really want they follow their sovereignty we are in um international relations following patterns of realistic they do what they want so the principles i don't know if they are going to be useless or they are going to be useful but i i would like your impression and about the sanctions we were talking about more sanctions to russia if we don't buy the gas that we are not going to buy the gas uh russia will continue selling the gas to china so they are in a partnership who we are going to cost effectively paying more extra price for the gas it's going to be the european continent that has not made the necessary transition to uh you know have like the possibility to obtain the energy from another alternative source so that is going to cause a very discontent society in the future what do you think is going to the greens what do we need to do in that situation with that equation so difficult more sanctions and social unrest coming in very near future thank you ivgenia one one minute no more and the same and we have to finish regarding sanctions first of all we also work for example with asia and trying to explain that it's they can't work with russia it's like the russia's third state and nobody like including china india and others of course it's hard to end we don't have so much influence influence i would not say that we have a lot of influence in europe but still at least in europe somebody is listening us uh in asia we are looking on the connection with civil society and trying to to explain to actually raise this topic there too because there is not so much visible war and they still calling this conflict ukrainian conflicts and so on they even don't understand what's happening in ukraine so we're working to explain that uh china would never pay so much as europe and china also have like some resources so they would not buy so much gas as europe now buying so there still would be limited gas that russia can send plus it would be with a huge discounts it's what they're doing now with india and with everybody they are selling it but it's huge discount compared what europe is now paying so russia would definitely receive less money and like hopefully europe can also work with asia and like have some influence on asia too so there would be no any connection in communication between asian country and russia and any partnership in the future thank you and dak the queen cancer i am you know we we monitor a range of conflicts and we've been sitting there glued to the information coming out of ukraine and at the same time you know we work on this legal process and there's a real cognitive dissonance about what we see in conflicts and this legal discussion for some non-binding principles and rules um but i think if anybody who works on international humanitarian law or the protection of civilians face the exact same question when you look at ukraine it's like well is there any point in having rules when states don't follow rules but the logic of that would be well should all have no rules at all because you know there are always going to be some states and some armed groups who don't respect the rules and won't ever respect the rules but there will be a lot of states who do and increase the number of non-state armed groups who do and actually the international commission principles it's also not just about states they're addressed to a whole range of stakeholders from international organizations to non-state actors to private corporations and business enterprises so yeah i think there is a risk that without positive work to make these principles known and to build on them which we see them as a flaw of conduct not a ceiling so they are a foundation to be built on through practice and interpretation um yeah we think potentially they could in future reduce the environmental burden of conflict obviously they're never going to stop environmental damage in warfare because warfare is inherently destructive of the environment and of sustainable development but if the alternative is to have no rules whatsoever then i don't see that puts this in a better position than having some rules which are respected by some but not everybody that seems to be a better situation long term for the environment okay i really regret we have to finish it was a great discussion a lot of information thank you Evgenia thank you Nikolai thank you Doug and thank you all for coming thank you Yabaju thanks to you for this panel and i invite right now all of you to come in here in the room just for another 10 minutes because you might remember we had one and a half days ago here in this room we had the opening speeches like briefly and right now it's not the entire end but uh like a short thank you note we will be having right now so come here have a seat and then we will have like a thank you note shared with us and also a bit of an out view for what's still going to happen here because it's not over yet have a seat and come in don't run away not to miss it and i would like to invite Dagmar Tuchek co-president of the green european foundation to share some words at almost the end of this first european green conference with us i will make some more people come in and the word is yours and the floor is yours that's great thank you we'll wait just for one minute so great i know all of you have earned one more break before the next program starts but let me say thank you thank you for those great two days thank you to our partners here in walshau to the strefa silene foundation and to hennrich bolstiftung here in walshau it was really a pleasure working together with you on this great event and i'm deeply deeply impressed about that many young participants so many young people in the audience so many young speakers and this makes me really happy because maybe you are the generation to think things completely different than we did and we have such a burden with us so many of us and a young generation has the possibility to go over that and rethink their society and be part of the just transition we all talked about this in these days so as i already mentioned today it's about mental transition as well and i have a good hope that you will manage it and yeah it will be great towards you doing it and on the other hand for us as foundation it was really important the agreement we became and the feedback how important civil and politically education is for all of us because we talked about information and the need of getting the right information and fighting against this information and misinformation and what else could be more useful than civil and political education for many of us in some countries we have a tradition with it in other countries we have to fight for it so it's great that you all agreed on this topic yes we want more education and the last thing it was our role here to listen to listen to you to your stories here in poland and especially from all the participants and speakers from the ukraine and i will say a great thank you there were so many of you that gave us such a lot of information and i feel really impressed that you came here that you talk about freely what your experiences are what your yeah needs are and what we can do for you so great thank you for that and i really hope that war won't be uh yeah accompanying us so many generations like our history that we have a more positive view to the future when i was at the check summer school two days ago the young people asked me are you still positive and i say yes i am because as long as i can breathe and i can think i will have a positive attitude and i think that spirit will combine us all together and it was a great great pleasure to combine our inspirations with your inspirations and our hopes and know how with you know how so and another thing i want to introduce i have a colleague of mine she is an austrian member of the european parliament monica vana and she really wanted to send us a message standing and supporting with the polish women fighting for their abortion rights and this manage we will hear by now so have a short moment and yeah listening to her and then we will have a break and those who will stay with us will see the film that is prepared from the young participants and those who have to leave because of their travel bookings have a safe travel and be back soon with us thank you so much and those who stay for women's rights until tomorrow as member of the european parliament i want to say very there is a program for sunday after the message of monica vana it's the topic and the lgbt rights and we have a meeting at platz babichela very symbolic and mythical point in the center of war so for the happening called give us back our rainbow so if you are in war so 10 o'clock platz babichela it's on the paper see you tomorrow dear fellow fighters for women's rights as member of the european parliament i want to say very clearly the european parliament is standing behind sexual and reproductive health and rights and we are fighting for those rights that are also our rights sexual and reproductive health and rights are not only women's basic rights but also part of our health care they are fundamental human rights and we will never give up standing our ground for our bodily autonomy liberty and freedom abortion must be safe legal affordable and it must be available the world health organization guidelines are very clear access to abortion is protected under international human rights law this must be respected by anyone anywhere and anytime what is happening in poland with the violation of srh r is unacceptable for every european citizen who believes in equality we are all citizens of the same union and it must be guaranteed that every citizen has the same rights and access to health care we as european parliament stand in solidarity with women and girls health organizations and providers we must stand up all together for sexual and reproductive rights wherever we live and we do stand up in the case of the polish government the us supreme court and many many more my body my rights this must be a reality for every woman inside and outside the EU worldwide keep fighting we as members of european parliament and greens will do the same and will not let you down