Sustainable Recovery? First Sustain Interest in Ukraine’s Environment

Jul 28, 2022 | Doug Weir
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The environmental dimensions of all armed conflicts are becoming ever more visible. There are a number of reasons for this: improved access to earth observation data; new monitoring methodologies; more organisations and individuals actively collecting data; communication pathways becoming more immediate; and all amid growing societal interest in environmental protection.

Should the current level of attention be sustained, the invasion of Ukraine may well prove to be the most highly observed conflict in history. The sheer volume of data, be it from satellite imagery, social or traditional media, is overwhelming. Both within and alongside this deluge is environmental data, and data that provides clues to the environmental conditions in affected areas.

This post examines the conflict’s data collection landscape, and the potential implications of this dynamic but before doing so it is worth revisiting the what, why and how of environmental data collection in conflicts.