In Ukraine, the estimated amount of environmental damage caused by the war has already exceeded 2.4 trillion hryvnias.
This was announced by the Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, Ruslan Strelets, in an interview with Ukrinform.
"As of today, the environmental damage caused by the war has already exceeded 2.4 trillion hryvnias. We understand that environmental losses even exceed the losses from destroyed infrastructure objects," said Strelets.
He also added that if the assessment of losses from unrealized ecosystem services is taken into account, this amount will increase further.
"Currently, we are working with experts from the United States to include ecosystem services in the actual losses to our environment. This means what a person could have received if this nature had been preserved. So, if we also calculate the value of ecosystem services, the price of a polluted square centimeter of land or air, where tons of pollutants have entered, will increase by hundreds of times," the minister noted.
According to him, seven methodologies are used to calculate losses, which are updated almost every month. In particular, inspectors of the State Environmental Inspectorate record all environmental crimes around the clock. Data is also collected from users of the "EcoThreat" application. Currently, more than 80,000 people use it. Information on more than 4,200 cases of environmental crimes is already available in the application.
"In the future, after a certain upgrade and changes to the legislation, we aim to make 'EcoThreat' an everyday tool for every environmental inspector's work. This will allow us to eliminate paper documents and record everything in a digital format," Strelets said.
