Environmental Governance in Frozen Conflicts

Dec 15, 2021 | Clayton Payne
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When wars end without an internationally recognised agreement to resolve them, conflicts can become frozen. In this post, Clayton Payne examines how the frozen conflicts affecting Georgia’s breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have influenced their environment, and how it is managed.

In 2008, the war between Georgia, Russia and the breakaway republics led to a shift in international recognition, with Russia recognising both Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. This annulled the previous agreements with Georgia through the OSCE. Allegations of environmental damage in the de facto states have been weaponised from time to time.

The political void that Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been left in has seen them isolated from international environmental protection systems and cooperation structures. This lack of cooperation has affected the region’s ability to effectively mitigate the risks from natural disasters, and ensure the proper management and protection of biodiversity. Isolation and lack of recognition are also problematic for coastal governance