Choice 18. Thinking about people and nature in times of war - case of Ukraine (1)

Our Ukrainian guest Alla Ljungman talks about how Ukrainians were increasingly empowered and engaged in environmental issues

Did you know Ukraine supplies grain to the world - 12% of the wheat for example?

War stalls progress and process but people continue to collaborate and will return to land

For what Europeans can do, see Jill Duggan's post for Environment Defense Fund Europe

Welcome to the first of our episodes on war and the environment and Ukraine.

We debated a lot whether to do an episode on Ukraine. After all there have been wars going on all over the world all the time with grave consequences for the lives and livelihoods of people and the environment. Would talking about Ukraine now mean we didn’t care about the others?

Definitely not.

But at a time when environment was gaining such mainstream attention, we felt it important we continue to talk about nature. And talk about what was, is and will be good. 

We also felt it important to talk about war and how its impacts can be minimised and cleaned up - especially as others want to push nature into “not now” “important but not a priority” category... or even try to convince us that as our grain supply from Ukraine is at risk, food security should become more important than bees and butterflies. Bu we want to remind them bees and butterflies = food security.

We have a couple of episodes lined up on biodiversity and climate change. And we are trying to bring other guests to talk about war and the environment. 

On this episode, we are joined by Alla Ljungman who is originally from Dnipro, now based in Washington DC and is an expert on energy policy working in particular on renewable energy projects.

Here is a list of campaigns and charities you can support. As we learn about more we will add them here - 

British Red Cross Ukraine Appeal 

Disaster Emergency Committee - which also has a campaign for Afghanistan

https://caritas.ua/helpukraine/

https://m.facebook.com/UnitedHelpUkraine.org/posts/4966430460090710

https://mirco.com.ua/en/index.html

https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/?fbclid=IwAR0wfDiWVPuz2qEvvnQT9wc6gEaqxOX9HAxbmKpoe1ac0Od9NLSRb54tv3M