HASVec the establishment of war economies to face Moscow, environmentalists see the hope of an effective fight against climate change. Yet the two causes – defend democratic Ukraine and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) – are not contradictory. The history of Russia since 1991 suggests that, without stopping at the aims of its president, Vladimir Putin, the climate challenge risks being even more sacrificed, and the world will be even more delivered to extractivism.
In March 2022, a few days after the start of the massive military invasion of Ukraine, the philosopher and sociologist of science Bruno Latour (1947-2022) affirmed it in one of his last texts [publié dans la revue AOC] :: “The only thing I am sure, absolutely sure, is that we should in no case choose between these two tragedies” – Contain the assault against kyiv and alleviate the climate disaster to come.
An overview of Russia’s environmental history shows that the Putinian regime for twenty-five years has been more an enemy than an ally on the climate front. According to European Union (EU) figures, GHG Russian emissions increased by 23 % between 2000 and 2023, when they dropped by around 30 % in the EU over the same period.
Soviet scientists had however been pioneers in the discovery of warming and its anthropogenic cause. This did not prevent the climatoscepticism from prospering in the USSR, due to the east-west cut and active productivist lobbies within the State. However, Soviet and then Russian experts participated in the work of the Intergovernmental Group of Climate (IPCC), created in 1988, and contributed to the drafting of the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of GHGs in 1997. It was ratified by Russia at the end of 2004, in exchange for support from the European Union to its membership in the World Organization of Trade.
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Source: Lemonde