AFP UK

Dorothea, which has a population of about 500 people, has an annual leek production of some 1,600 tonnes from smallholders

Beneath a cluster of plane trees, the crystal clear waters of a stream are mustered by Greek farmers to rinse their leek crop, a time-honoured tradition that saves money and reduces its carbon footprint.

“(The water) keeps the leeks live and fresh…and it saves us using tap water to rinse them at home,” explains 48-year-old grower Costas Antoniou.

The source of the stream is just 500 metres from his village of Dorothea in the region of Pella, northern Greece.

“We learned this method from our grandparents and it is what the next generation will continue to do,” he said.

Tied together in clumps with string and plastic tape, the freshly picked leeks will spend six to 12 hours in the slow-moving stream. 

After that, their brushy roots — known locally as ‘moustaches’ — are mud-free and the crop is ready to market.

Dorothea, which has a population of about 500 people, has an annual leek production of some 1,600 tonnes from smallholders.

Entire families are involved in the crop from the ages of 20 to 75, says Antoniou, who is also the village chairman.

Each plant must be uprooted and cleaned by hand and tied before it can be driven to the river by truck, he said. 

“It’s an arduous task that requires many people. Here, the job is easier and the results are even better than from the vegetable washing machines used by large producers,” says Evangelia Papadopoulou, whose family has grown leeks for the past three decades.

“The entire village gathers here,” adds the 49-year-old. “This is where we work, gossip and bicker.” 

Using the river also avoids the stiff expense to run machines to wash the leeks.

Care is also taken to ensure the leeks don’t pollute the stream, with organic pesticides and manure as fertiliser.

“We drink this water without fear,” says local villager and fellow leek grower Ilias Kampadakis, 62.

The water quality is regularly tested at a trout farm downstream.

'Major industry lobbyists are working behind the scenes to try to water down policy ambition' of COP15, said the report

Lobbyists for pesticide and fertiliser producers are pushing “behind the scenes” against stronger protection for species and ecosystems at the COP15 biodiversity conference, research showed Thursday.

Delegates in Montreal for the meeting, which started this week and runs until December 19, aim to finalise a new framework for “living in harmony with nature”, with key goals to preserve Earth’s forests, oceans and species.

InfluenceMap, a think tank that monitors communications by companies and industry associations, said it “tracked lobbying between 2020 and 2022 that has sought to weaken both the targets themselves and steps toward their implementation in the EU and the US.

“As COP15 gets underway to finalise new biodiversity goals, major industry lobbyists are working behind the scenes to try to water down policy ambition,” said the author of the research, InfluenceMap program manager Rebecca Vaughan.

“We’ve tracked efforts from industry associations representing some of the world’s biggest pesticide and fertiliser producers… strongly resisting global and EU targets for reducing the use of biodiversity-harming agrichemicals.”

It tracked submissions they made to the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and communications obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

Examples included the International Fertilizer Industry Association (IFA), which the report said opposed targets for reducing losses of nutrients linked to crop production.

– ‘Constructive dialogues’ –

The director general of the IFA, Alzbeta Klein, said: “This report misrepresents the activities of the fertiliser industry in the area of biodiversity and in particular, the adoption of global targets.

“The industry recognizes the critical importance of biodiversity protection for the well-being of people and the future of the planet, and is mindful of its role and responsibility in helping to avoid and reverse global biodiversity losses,” she told AFP.

The IFA said in a separate statement that it was “actively involved” in the CBD negotiations by providing expertise and information on agricultural practices to set a “realistic, achievable” target on sustainable resource management.

One of the companies named in the report, German chemicals giant BASF, said it took part in “constructive dialogues” at the request of policymakers, advising on ways to limit environmental impact and aid biodiversity.

“BASF supports the preservation of ecosystems and promotes the sustainable use of natural resources,” a BASF communications executive, Christian Zeintl, told AFP.

“We believe that crop protection can go hand in hand with biodiversity in agriculture.”

– ‘Corporate capture’ –

The InfluenceMap report also pointed to fishery lobby groups that oppose one of COP15’s headline initiatives: to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.

A previous InfluenceMap study in October documented cases of oil associations lobbying against protection for threatened species such as some bees, seals and polar bears.

The head of the CBD Elizabeth Mrema said at a briefing in November that the majority of people registering for COP15 were non-government “stakeholders, including the business and financial institutions.

“This clearly indicates the awareness of the private sector of their role of also contributing to actions to reduce the loss of biodiversity,” she said.

Friends of the Earth issued a report on “corporate capture” at COP15, arguing that “the participation of big business in the CBD reveals a fundamental conflict of interest.

“The impact of corporate influence on the CBD COP15 can already be seen in the draft Global Biodiversity Framework,” it said.

“Far from being transformative, it fails to address unsustainable production methods and allows for ‘business as usual'”.

Researchers worry that Russia's war on Ukraine is also wiping out dolphins and Black Sea marine life

One of Turkey’s most influential marine biologists is pleading for the creation of an “ecological corridor” to save dolphins and other sea creatures from destruction during Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Bayram Ozturk spoke to AFP one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of waging an “ecocide” that was devastating marine life across the Black Sea — shared by Turkey on its southern end.

The war in Ukraine is currently casting a shadow over a United Nations biodiversity conference that kicked off this week in Montreal.

Russia has pushed back hard against allegations levelled in Montreal by a group of Western nations that its nearly 10-month invasion was creating an environmental disaster across the region.

Ozturk wholeheartedly agrees.

The head of the Turkish Marine Research Foundation wants the world to take a closer look at just how much damage has already been done.

“We need international surveillance. We need to know what is happening exactly,” he said in a telephone interview.

“This is a big crime against nature,” Ozturk said of the war’s impact on the Black Sea.

His biggest immediate worry is that fighting this winter will interrupt the natural migration period of dolphins across the Black Sea.

“There should be an ecological corridor starting from the Danube River to the Odessa area, where there’s a highly concentrated dolphins population,” he said of a region near Ukraine’s southwestern border with Romania.

“War should be stopped there for at least two or three months between January and April, during the dolphins migration period.”

– ‘They feel useless’ –

The fate of dolphins is one of the most emotive issues on the conflict’s environmental front.

Zelensky presented a Ukrainian report suggesting that at least 50,000 dolphins — or a fifth of their estimated Black Sea population — had died as a direct consequence of the war.

Ozturk said a lack of real research and the war’s raging impact made it impossible to estimate the true number of dead dolphins in the sea.

He put the number in “at least the hundreds” — many of them victims of the low-frequency sonars emitted by Russian warships and submarines.

“Dolphins suffer acoustic trauma because of the low-frequency sonars. It damages their orientation system and they get stranded,” he said.

But “other species deserve protection as well, not only dolphins,” Ozturk stressed.

“The ecosystem is a whole. You cannot protect one species and not another one.”

Ozturk’s foundation will organise a Black Sea conference in Istanbul on Friday at which he will continue exchanging ideas with colleagues from the sea’s other lateral states.

But some of his most intriguing exchanges have come with scientists from Russia — a nation increasingly cut off from the Western world.

“They are very cooperative and they feel ashamed about what is going on but they all say they cannot do anything,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday that his invasion — initially planned to be completed in just days — might turn into a “lengthy process”.

Ozturk worries that an even more protracted conflict might leave little for the international community to save the day the war finally ends.

“If you kill everything, not only dolphins but also fish and all the coastal habitat for fish, invertebrates, birds — who will be held to account?” he asked.

“How can the Ukrainians and others be compensated for the ecological damage? Someone should be called to account.”

The Southern Ring Nebula, which is around 2,000 light years from Earth, had previously been thought to contain two stars

It was one of the first famous images revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope earlier this year: a stunning shroud of gas and dust illuminated by a dying star at its heart.

Now researchers analysing the data from history’s most powerful telescope have found evidence of at least two previously unknown stars hiding in the stellar graveyard.

The Southern Ring Nebula, which is in the Milky Way around 2,000 light years from Earth, had previously been thought to contain two stars.

One, nestled in the nebula’s centre, is a white dwarf star which in its death throes has been casting off torrents of gas and dust for thousands of years that in turn formed the surrounding cloud.

Sapped of its brightness, the extremely hot white dwarf is the less visible of the two stars seen in Webb images released in July.

The white dwarf has offered astronomers a view of how our own Sun may die one day — billions of years from now. 

Unlike our lonely Sun, it has a companion, the brighter of the two stars in Webb’s images.

However this binary system, which is common across the Milky Way, does not explain the nebula’s “atypical” structure, Philippe Amram, an astrophysicist at France’s Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory, told AFP.

Amram is one of the co-authors of a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Thursday that has used Webb’s observations to uncover more of the nebula’s secrets.

Since the nebula was discovered by English astronomer John Herschel in 1835, astronomers have wondered why it has “such a bizarre shape, not really spherical,” Amram said.

By analysing the data from Webb’s infrared cameras, the researchers said they found evidence of at least two other stars inside the nebula, which has a diameter equivalent 1,500 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto.

While the new pair are slightly farther away from the white dwarf and its companion, all four stars — or possibly even five — are located in the centre of the nebula.

They are close enough to interact with each other, and their “exchanges of energy” create the nebula’s strange shape, Amram said.

The Webb telescope, which has been operational since July, has already unleashed a raft of unprecedented data and scientists are hopeful it will herald a new era of discovery.

Sweden's Arctic space center is preparing its first satellite launch for 2023 or 2024

As the mercury drops to minus 20 Celsius, a research rocket lifts off from one of the world’s northernmost space centres, its burner aglow in the twilight of Sweden’s snowy Arctic forests.

Hopes are high that rockets like this could carry satellites as early as next year, in what could be the first satellite launch from a spaceport in continental Europe. 

At the launch pad, about an hour from the mining town of Kiruna, there’s not a person in sight, only the occasional reindeer herd. 

The vast deserted forests are the reason the Swedish space centre is located here, at the foot of “Radar Hill”, some 200 kilometres (124 miles) above the Arctic Circle.

“In this area we have 5,200 square kilometres (2,007 square miles) where no one lives, so we can easily launch a rocket that flies into this area and falls down without anyone getting harmed,” Mattias Abrahamsson, head of business development at the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), tells AFP.

Founded by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1966 to study the atmosphere and Northern Lights phenomenon, the Esrange space centre has invested heavily in its facilities in recent years to be able to send satellites into space.

At a huge new hangar big enough to house two 30-meter rockets currently under assembly elsewhere, Philip Pahlsson, head of the “New Esrange” project, pulls up a heavy blue door.

Under the rosy twilight of this early afternoon, construction machines nearby can be seen busily completing work on three new launch pads.

“Satellite launches will start to take place from here next year,” Pahlsson says.

“This has been a major development, the biggest step we have taken since the inception of Esrange.”

More than 600 suborbital rockets have already been launched from this remote corner of Sweden’s far north, including the Suborbital Express 3 whose late November launch AFP witnessed as the temperature stood at -20 degrees Celsius, or minus four degrees Fahrenheit. 

While these rockets are capable of reaching space at altitudes of 260 kilometres, they’re not able to orbit Earth.

– Booming business –

But with Europe gearing up to send its first satellite into space soon, Esrange is looking forward to joining a select club of space centres that include Baikonur in Kazakhstan, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Europe’s space hub in South America, Kourou in French Guiana.

Various projects in Europe — in Portugal’s Azores, Norway’s Andoya island, Spain’s Andalusia and the UK’s Shetland Islands among others — are all vying to launch the first satellite from the European continent.

“We think we are clearly the most advanced,” says the SSC, which is aiming to launch at the end of 2023 or early 2024.

The satellite industry is booming, and the Swedish state-owned company is in discussions with several rocket makers and clients who want to put their satellites in orbit.

With a reusable rocket project called Themis, Esrange will also host ESA’s trials of rockets able to land back on Earth, like those of SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk.

While the Plesetsk base in northwestern Russia carried out several satellite launches in the post-Cold War period, no other country in Europe has done so.

– Small satellites driving demand –

So why is the continent — so far from the Equator, which is more suited for satellite launches — suddenly seeing such a space industry boom?

“Satellites are becoming smaller and cheaper, and instead of launching one big satellite you spread it out over multiple small satellites and that drives the demand,” explains Pahlsson.

More objects were launched into space in 2021 than ever before. And more records are set to be broken in the coming years.

Orbiting the North and South Poles is enough for many satellites, making sites like Esrange more attractive.

In addition, having a launch site close to European clients spares them and their satellites long boat journeys to Kourou.

In Sweden, like in the rest of Europe, the rockets being developed are “micro-rockets”.

These are around 30 metres long, capable of carrying a payload of several hundred kilos. In the future, SSC is aiming for payloads of more than a tonne.

But working in the harsh Arctic climate “comes with challenges”, SSC says.

With temperatures regularly dropping to -20 or -30 degrees Celsius, special attention needs to be paid to the metals used, which become more fragile in the cold.

The war in Ukraine — where the engines for the European Vega rocket are manufactured — and the abrupt end to the West’s space cooperation with Russia have meanwhile increased interest in having spaceports on the continent.

“Europe needs independent access to space. The horrible situation in Ukraine has changed the space business,” notes Pahlsson.

A cafeteria employee hands food to a student at Polytechnique Montreal university on December 1, 2022

Trays in hand, Polytechnique Montreal students line up at the cafeteria and through a fogged up buffet counter glass, check out dishes that now come with information about their carbon footprint.

“I’m surprised to see that a dish with meat is better than a vegetarian dish,” comments Elizabeth Labonte, a chemical engineering student, referring to their environmental impact.

Every Thursday, three hot meal options receive a grade from A to F which corresponds “to a range of equivalent CO2 emissions in kilograms,” explains Patrick Cigana of the school’s Office of Sustainable Development.

Supported by the student body, the project aims to educate and raise awareness, says Cigana.

“It can help students know what is best for the environment,” confirms Marie Lourioux, a 22-year-old student who also suggests reducing the price of the least-polluting dishes.

“For there to be a real change in our viewpoints, we really have to become aware of this parameter,” adds Daniel Fernandez. He is a master’s student who is about to dig into his lunch of meat and potatoes, rated B compared to the D+ given to the vegetable focaccia because of its au gratin cheese.

– From farm to plate –

In order to calculate the carbon footprint of each dish, the engineering school had each recipe analysed by the on-campus International Reference Center for Life Cycle Analysis and Sustainable Transition (CIRAIG).

A small team of researchers and students were able to calculate the carbon footprint of each ingredient based on previously compiled data bases.

“It really starts from the field, from the moment we cultivate the plant, until the dish is served in the cafeteria”, explains Francois Saunier, deputy general manager of the research center.

Pointing to diagrams on his computer, he specifies that these calculations include all transport but also food waste as well as cooking in the cafeteria.

“There are certain results that lead the consumer to ask questions, and that breaks down preconceived ideas,” adds the researcher, noting the unexpectedly high carbon footprint of cheese or rice, for example. Both are a major source of methane emissions, he says.

– Top CO2 emissions source –

Often misunderstood, the food system — including production, packaging and distribution — represents the “primary source of greenhouse gas emissions at the global level,” according to Carole-Anne Lapierre, an agriculture and food systems analyst at Equiterre.

Polytechnique’s initiative “gives us immense power as consumers, because we can make different choices,” adds the expert, who nevertheless recognizes the difficulty of completely changing one’s diet and so recommends doing it “in the form of challenges,” step by step.

Although the Quebec university’s pilot project is unique in Canada, similar concepts were developed for menus of certain British restaurants and at a French university in 2019.

But for some, their choices are dictated primarily “by price above all else,” especially during the current period of soaring inflation, says Chelbali Ryad, 24, after a stop at the checkout counter to pay for his meal.

For the university’s Cigana, the most important thing is to raise awareness, saying “all that people learn through this program, they can apply it at home too”.

Protesters gathered inside the halls of the COP15 summit on its first day to demand strong action on protecting global biodiversity

Protests, public debates and film screenings: this is the other side of the COP15 summit, where NGOs are mobilizing to raise awareness of the need to protect biodiversity and lobbying for a major deal to do just that.

To coordinate and amplify their voices, over a hundred organizations recently banded together to create the “COP15 Collective” ahead of the December 7-19 conference in Montreal.

“It’s no longer just a question of environmentalists. Everyone is around the table, everyone wants to do something and it’s super encouraging,” the group’s spokeswoman Anne-Celine Guyon told AFP, calling it a “historic” moment for Canada’s Quebec province.

And they’ve vowed to be heard: inside the convention center where delegates are meeting, participating in the negotiation process, and marching in the streets.

Meetings that are open to all, humorous and artistic workshops, an immersive wall projection on the impacts of oil drilling on whales — some sixty events are planned around the conference in Montreal.

The top event will arguably be a “great march for the living” planned in the city’s downtown on December 10. Organizers expect thousands of participants, but acknowledge that it’s far fewer than the half a million who came out to march with climate activist Greta Thunberg in September 2019.

– ‘Political momentum’ –

After the pandemic disrupted student gatherings over the past two years, COP15 will be “an important meeting to reconnect, to renew relationships”, says 20-year-old Albert Lalonde, a project manager with the David Suzuki Foundation.

Due to exams though, students — usually on the frontlines of climate protests — may not be as present at COP15, Lalonde adds.

Despite the fact that no government leaders are planning to attend except Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, all are hoping the COP15 summit achieves “a political momentum similar to the Paris agreement” with the adoption of an “ambitious global framework,” says Eddy Perez, another spokesperson for the collective.

A recent Greenpeace poll showed that, in Canada, eight out of ten people believe the government should lead by example by making strong commitments to protect nature.

“People are getting the message that this is important, that we are going through a crisis, that there are thousands of species that are in danger on our planet,” believes Marie-Josee Beliveau of Greenpeace’s Canadian branch.

Full of hope for this “crucial meeting,” she said negotiators should know “a very mobilized civil society” is closely following the talks.

There is “a lot of interest, all of a sudden, for the issues of protecting biodiversity, probably as we have never felt,” suggests Anne-Sophie Dore, an environmental lawyer and lecturer.

She adds that real educational work remains to be done, as “most people didn’t even know that biodiversity COPs existed compared to climate COPs.”

Canada’s Indigenous population, as elsewhere, has claimed for a long time that more attention should be given to the living environment. According to UN climate experts, their traditional lands are home to 80 percent of the remaining biodiversity on Earth.

“During time immemorial, the caribou saved us,” explains Jerome Bacon St-Onge, member of the Innu people in Canada’s far north, evoking a “sacred species” for the Indigenous way of life, precious for its meat and its fur in particular.

“The fact that it is wasting away, it causes us very, very heavy damage in terms of cultural identity,” he said, warning that “time is running out” to act.

Activists and members of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Civil Society protest for nature positivity inside the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal

High-stakes biodiversity talks opened in Montreal Wednesday, amid calls for a “peace pact with nature” to save the planet’s species and ecosystems from irreversible human destruction.

Delegates from across the world gathered for the December 7-19 meeting to try to hammer out a new deal for nature: a 10-year framework aimed at saving Earth’s forests, oceans and species before it’s too late. 

“It’s time for the world to adopt an ambitious biodiversity framework — a true peace pact with nature — to deliver a green, healthy future for all,” UN chief Antonio Guterres told reporters. 

Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), urged negotiators to land a strong framework for nature. “Nature and biodiversity are dying the death of a billion cuts and humanity is paying the price for betraying our closest friend,” she said.

The Ukraine conflict cast a shadow over early exchanges. 

Representatives from the European Union and New Zealand, also speaking on behalf of other countries including the United States, slammed Russia for the environmental destruction brought about by its invasion.

Ukraine has said tens of thousands of dead dolphins have washed up on the Black Sea, blaming military sonar used by Russian warships for the disaster.

Russia’s representative fired back that the meeting was an inappropriate forum and accused its critics of hypocrisy for not raising previous conflicts — such as Iraq and Afghanistan — in the context of talks on nature.

Outside the downtown convention center where the talks were hosted, some 150 activists dressed in black demonstrated against what they called the hypocrisy of the summit, as riot police watched on.

– ‘Significant resistance’ –

Draft targets for the 10-year framework include a cornerstone pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and seas by 2030, eliminating harmful fishing and agriculture subsidies and tackling invasive species and reducing pesticides.

Finance is among the most divisive issues, as developing nations are demanding increased funding for conservation.

Earlier this year, a coalition of nations called for wealthy countries to provide at least $100 billion annually –- rising to $700 billion a year by 2030 — for biodiversity. 

Guterres told AFP: “It must be recognized that without a significant mobilization of funding, of various origins but with a substantial volume, developing countries will not be able to meet the requirements of biodiversity conservation. 

“It should not be forgotten that most of the world’s biodiversity wealth exists in developing countries.”

The sticky issue of biopiracy is also causing roadblocks, as many mainly African countries demand that wealthy nations share the benefits of ingredients and formulas used in cosmetics and medicines derived from the Global South.

Implementation has emerged as another sticking point in recent days, with disagreements over how to ensure any final deal is put into practice — unlike its predecessor agreed in 2010. 

– ‘Flexibility, compromise, consensus’ – 

The meeting, delayed two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic, follows crucial climate change talks in Egypt last month that ended with little headway on reducing emissions and scaling down the use of planet-warming fossil fuels. 

China is chair, though it is being hosted in Canada because of Beijing’s long-standing zero-Covid policy. 

NGOs say the lack of world leaders at COP15 risks dampening momentum at the talks and could scupper an ambitious settlement. 

Some 30 NGO observers marched in the corridors of the convention center, waving placards that read “Stop the collapse” and ” Act now for a positive world.”

Patricia Zurita, CEO of BirdLife International, told AFP “the conversation is not addressing the urgency, not pushing for the ambition that we really need to have to make sure that our planet is going to be a place where we can survive.”

The talks come amid dire warnings from scientists that the world is facing its biggest mass extinction event since the dinosaur age, with more than one million species at risk. 

Human activity has decimated forests, wetlands, waterways and the millions of plants, animals and insects that live in them, with half of global GDP in some way dependent on nature. 

A scientist heaves a dead dolphin through Ukraine's Limans Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park on August 28, 2022

The Ukraine conflict cast a shadow over a high-stakes UN summit on biodiversity in Montreal on Wednesday, as Western nations slammed the environmental destruction brought about by Russia’s invasion.

The broadsides by the European Union and New Zealand — which spoke on behalf of other countries, including the United States — came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of “ecocide” and of devastating his country’s dolphin population.

Russia fired back that the meeting was an inappropriate forum and accused its critics of attempting to sabotage a new global deal for nature.

“The war brings about pollution and long-term environmental degradation, destroying protected areas and natural habitats,” Ladislav Miko, an EU representative at the meeting, known as COP15, said.

“While the war rages on, it blocks much needed action on nature conservation and restoration,” he added.

New Zealand’s Rosemary Paterson, speaking for the JUSCANZ group that includes Japan, Australia and the United States, added: “The widespread environmental destruction and transboundary harm caused by Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine cannot go unnoticed in this forum.”

Invoking a right-of-reply, Russian delegate Denis Rebrikov said: “We resolutely refute allegations against us as being outside the scope of this COP on biodiversity.”

He added that conflicts of the recent past — such as those in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria — were not brought up at environmental summits, despite the harms done to ecosystems.

“It’s hard to avoid the impression that these countries are deliberately trying to sabotage the adoption of a global framework” on biodiversity, added Rebrikov.

Earlier in the day, President Zelensky of Ukraine said tens of thousands of dead dolphins had washed up on the Black Sea and accused Russia of “ecocide.” Ukrainian scientists have blamed military sonar used by Russian warships for the disaster.

Delegates from across the world have gathered from December 7 to 19 in Canada to try to hammer out a new deal for nature: a 10-year framework aimed at saving the planet’s forests, oceans and species before it’s too late. 

Draft targets include a cornerstone pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and seas by 2030, eliminating harmful fishing and agriculture subsidies and tackling invasive species and reducing pesticides.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story quoted the wrong person in paragraph four, after the UN provided the wrong name. The quote is from Ladislav Miko, not Hugo Schally. 

A scientist heaves a dead dolphin through Ukraine's Limans Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park on August 28, 2022

The Ukraine conflict cast a shadow over a high-stakes UN summit on biodiversity in Montreal on Wednesday, as Western nations slammed the environmental destruction brought about by Russia’s invasion.

The broadsides by the European Union and New Zealand — which spoke on behalf of other countries, including the United States — came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of “ecocide” and of devastating his country’s dolphin population.

Russia fired back that the meeting was an inappropriate forum and accused its critics of attempting to sabotage a new global deal for nature.

“The war brings about pollution and long-term environmental degradation, destroying protected areas and natural habitats,” Ladislav Miko, an EU representative at the meeting, known as COP15, said.

“While the war rages on, it blocks much needed action on nature conservation and restoration,” he added.

New Zealand’s Rosemary Paterson, speaking for the JUSCANZ group that includes Japan, Australia and the United States, added: “The widespread environmental destruction and transboundary harm caused by Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine cannot go unnoticed in this forum.”

Invoking a right-of-reply, Russian delegate Denis Rebrikov said: “We resolutely refute allegations against us as being outside the scope of this COP on biodiversity.”

He added that conflicts of the recent past — such as those in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria — were not brought up at environmental summits, despite the harms done to ecosystems.

“It’s hard to avoid the impression that these countries are deliberately trying to sabotage the adoption of a global framework” on biodiversity, added Rebrikov.

Earlier in the day, President Zelensky of Ukraine said tens of thousands of dead dolphins had washed up on the Black Sea and accused Russia of “ecocide.” Ukrainian scientists have blamed military sonar used by Russian warships for the disaster.

Delegates from across the world have gathered from December 7 to 19 in Canada to try to hammer out a new deal for nature: a 10-year framework aimed at saving the planet’s forests, oceans and species before it’s too late. 

Draft targets include a cornerstone pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and seas by 2030, eliminating harmful fishing and agriculture subsidies and tackling invasive species and reducing pesticides.