A polluting war: Risk, experts, and the politics of monitoring wartime environmental harm in Eastern Ukraine

Freek van der Vet
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Abstract

War always harms the environment. As the fog of war produces unreliable data, it also obstructs our capacity to monitor those harms. While some call for more data collection to advance a clear narrative of the origins of environmental harm, sociologists of risk and professional risk assessors find that the urgency of environmental hazards depends not on data alone but on who has the authority to define those risks. Without a clear understanding of how environmental experts engage in the socio-political struggles over the interpretations of risk during armed conflict, we may undervalue, first, how assessments and adequate action remain practically and politically difficult, and second, how data may be misused. Drawing on interviews with environmental experts and reports, I examine the politics of environmental expert knowledge on conflict pollution in the war in Donbas (2014–2022), a region hosting over 4500 hazardous industrial enterprises. By going beyond technological evidence collection, the article broadens our understanding of the obstacles of knowledge production and the attribution of environmental harm in highly politicized and violent contexts. Based on insights from environmental politics, the article finds that experts manage three issues undermining the reliability of environmental risks in an active warzone: pre-existing industrial pollution, environmental damage spread across government and non-government-controlled territories, and disinformation.
一场污染的战争:乌克兰东部的风险、专家和战时环境危害监测政治
战争总是对环境造成危害。由于战争迷雾产生了不可靠的数据,它也阻碍了我们监测这些危害的能力。虽然有人呼吁收集更多数据,以推动对环境危害起源的清晰描述,但风险社会学家和专业风险评估人员发现,环境危害的紧迫性不仅取决于数据,还取决于谁有权定义这些风险。如果不清楚地了解环境专家如何参与武装冲突期间对风险解释的社会政治斗争,我们可能会低估以下两点:第一,评估和采取适当行动在实际和政治上是如何困难重重的;第二,数据是如何被滥用的。通过与环境专家的访谈和报告,我研究了环境专家对顿巴斯战争(2014-2022 年)中冲突污染的政治认识,该地区拥有 4500 多家危险工业企业。文章超越了技术证据收集的范畴,拓宽了我们对高度政治化和暴力背景下知识生产和环境损害归因的障碍的理解。基于对环境政治的洞察,文章发现专家们管理着三个有损于活跃战区环境风险可靠性的问题:预先存在的工业污染、在政府和非政府控制区蔓延的环境损害以及虚假信息。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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