—and rightly so. But if there’s one thing COP27 has adequately highlighted, it’s the solid-as-concrete link between war and climate change.
The climate-conflict connection has been discussed mainly through the prism of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its ensuing fallout. On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed world leaders remotely and stressed that “there can be no effective climate policy” without world peace.
“Who will care, for example, about the amount of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere if part of Europe or the Middle East and possibly northern Africa, God forbid, are covered by a radiation cloud after an accident in Zaporizhzhya?” he said, referring to theUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appears on a screen as he delivers a speech at the COP27 climate conference at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Convention Centre on Nov. 8.
One way war’s devastation can be measured on the ground is in terms of the ecological destruction wrought as collateral damage.