Doctoral student in Sustainability Science Abrari Ladan

Sodan ympäristöjalanjäljen arviointi / The assessment of the environmental footprint of war

Tieteellinen tutkimus / siihen pohjautuva työ | Nelivuotinen

Wars cause widespread and severe environmental damages and inflict both immediate and longer-term consequences on human health, ecosystems, economy and beyond. Military activities have significant environmental impacts, including significant greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change; air, land and water pollution; and resource depletion. Militaries consume enormous amounts of fossil fuels, which emit a lot of carbon dioxide and directly contribute to global warming. Aside from destructive environmental impacts, wars play an important role in socio-technical transitions, and technological evolutions. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war; e.g. demonstrates that disruption in the natural gas supply to the EU region has motivated policymakers to facilitate transitioning to renewable energy supply. In this research, we have a multi-disciplinary approach to environmental history, chemical engineering, sustainability assessment and socio-technical transitions in collaboration with an international team from Finland, and the USA. We aim to propose a methodology to assess the carbon footprint of long-term military conflicts by which we will estimate the share of the Second World War (WWII) in increased net CO2 emissions and accelerating global warming as a case study. WWII is recognized as the most destructive conflict in history with a heavy impact on the environment. The vast scale of destruction during WWII would requirement for a large portion of the post-WWII global CO2 budget for adaptation and resiliency of the communities, industry, and infrastructure, compensating for the damage. We will also investigate the environmental and socio-technical transition of WWII, particularly in the post-war Great Acceleration. Because our methodology discriminates among the origins of the carbon emissions, our results will help to understand the transition dynamics in resource depletion, manufacturing, and energy consumption as different impacts of war.