Ukraine is a country of ecological greatness: 35% of Europe’s biodiversity is concentrated here
Terroristic attacks brought on by Putinists deliberately causing irreversible damage to the environment are a statement of open disregard for international humanitarian law and a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Ukrainian law (among other legislation) defines activities that cause ecological disasters equal to ecocide.
Explosive ordnances are scattered all over: it will take decades for agricultural production and other soil-related domains to recover. The war itself has a terrible effect on the climate, and it also inhibits the implementation of the global climate plan.
Ukraine is a country of ecological greatness: 35% of Europe’s biodiversity is concentrated here among the nutrient-rich soils, a vast network of national parks, biosphere reserves, and other precious ecosystems.
The environment has also fallen victim to this war with devastating consequences. The results of this damage to the environment — for people’s mental and physical health, for the economy and means of livelihood — are deep and far-reaching and extend far beyond the borders of Ukraine. Environmental sustainability and the protection of its multifaceted manifestations are directly related to safety and well-being, the resilience of the state, and humanitarian safety.
What strategy can best determine and ensure responsibility for these mass crimes that make the right to happiness and well-being (as it was defined in the 20th century) unobtainable for Ukrainian teenagers and young people?
Decree of the President of Ukraine dated March 12, 2021 No. 94/2021 “On the National Youth Strategy until 2030” states: “Youth have the right to respect for their choice in shaping and determining their future, and the state must enable the development of youth potential, including the formation of their competencies. This requires a change of parties involved: the state youth policy must become reoriented from directness to service and youth must be ready and able to act independently and bear responsibility for their actions.”
That is why we, Cultural Platform Zakarpattya NGO, are starting a new series of publications about the material manifestations of communication that define the dynamic shifts in the meaning of social change brought on by ecocide.
Speculative Evolution. Posthuman Vision Of the Ecological Disaster Zone and War
Space For Evolutionary Experimentation
Speculative biology, or speculative evolution, is a term belonging to a hypothetical branch of science that makes predictions and hypotheses about the evolution of life under various scenarios. It uses scientific principles and laws and applies them to the question “What if…?” an example being “What if Homo Sapiens had never evolved?”. Taking into account certain trends that followed the evolution of the past, it is possible to assume how it will unravel in the future. Since it is impossible to make an exact prediction about this movement, a certain amount of imagination and creativity is used in the creation of a speculative world. Examples of literature on this topic are the books “After Man: A Zoology of the Future” (1981) by Dougal Dixon and “All Tomorrows” (2006) by Cevdet Kesemen.
After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981)
As a rule, such assumptions unfold in the setting of an absolute scenario—the complete extinction of humanity or a catastrophe of planetary scale, the so-called apocalypse. Of course, this makes the subsequent fantasizing more radical, and therefore more interesting, which is a defining feature of science fiction as a genre.
After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981)
However, if we refer to reality, we are aware that the processes on planet Earth (both natural and social) are non-linear. For example, even in the 21st century, hunter-gatherer tribes still exist in remote corners of the planet. We could state that everything happens in a quantum manner. The dynamics of the modern world cause multidirectional changes, innovations, and development, whatever they may be. Cures against cancer and intercontinental ballistic missiles with separate blocks of individual guidance are being developed almost simultaneously. The worst and best scenarios unfold at the same time, in parallel, and often even intertwine in the time-space continuum, forming a controversial lump of reality.
According to the sociocultural trend of glocalization, it is relevant to work with measurable phenomena that resonate personally with each individual. It is a reflection of reality that affects you directly.
One of humanity’s plans is to fly to Mars and terraform it. Given the logic of the quantum approach, it is worth solving the cosmic dream while delving into the problems of the native planet experiencing a global ecological crisis. It is rational to deal with the challenges that concern earthlings: every ethnicity and each individual. By applying such a scale, we can argue that throughout mankind’s long history, apocalypses have periodically occurred in various places.
In 2024, the area where the apocalypse is most active is the Donets basin in the east of Ukraine. The ecological disaster here is multiplied by active military actions, the scale of which can be compared with the events of the Second World War.
Donbas is a region with a destroyed ecosystem, which will most likely turn into an industrial hell over time: constant landslides, more than two hundred coal mines, mercury mines, and one mine where the USSR conducted nuclear tests in the 1960s, are now gradually being flooded and are saturating groundwater with heavy metals. Drinking water is slowly disappearing. The situation in the region is catastrophic, not taking into account the hundreds of thousands of mines and unexploded shells. This material is an attempt to look at the catastrophe through the prism of the evolution of life on Earth. Its goal is to convey the problems of this region through a global context and artistic understanding of the topic, as well as its visualization through design objects.
The role of a designer in this communication can be to create a structured section of the landscape, a section that delineates the situation and points to its causes by looking at the problem from a broader perspective and creating a “monument” of the existing ecosystem. This section could become the basis for hope, albeit rather timid, for the continuation of life in the region. At the same time, it is important not to plunge into an illusory utopia, unlike the visionaries of dead worlds who planned to use materials of the space age—rational only for solutions in singular cases. It is crucial to adequately understand the seriousness and horror of the situation to turn it into a challenge, to ask questions and open discussions based on the materials that reality threw at us. This can be the first step in dealing with this overwhelming burden.
Donbas Is an “Exclusion Zone”
The defined topic is developed using the methods of speculative design, the main principles of which are:
- Provocation, i.e. design that aims to provoke and disrupt established norms, beliefs, and systems.
- Acceptance of uncertainty. Speculative design embraces uncertainty as fertile ground for exploration. It encourages engagement with complex and uncertain problems and the creation of propositions that open up possibilities rather than give definitive solutions.
- Critical speculations that involve critical thinking and reflecting the social, cultural, political, and technological issues. That means questioning assumptions and suggesting alternative perspectives and futures.
A good example related to the topic of this work, that is, speculative development in a post-apocalyptic world, could be Anthony Dunn and Fiona Raby’s “Designs for an overpopulated planet: foragers” (2009), the purpose of which was to explore alternative ways of living in a world with limited resources and an overpopulated planet. The project was not intended to be a practical solution, but rather a mental exercise that challenged traditional thinking about the future of human existence.
Dunne & Raby, Designs for an Overpopulated Planet: Foragers (2009)
The designers envisioned a world where traditional methods of food production were no longer viable, and instead imagined a society that lives off the “food of the future,” consisting of insects, algae, and synthetic nutrients. The main design principles of the project were centered around the idea of sustainability and adaptability. One of the key propositions was a series of “food units” designed as self-contained objects that could be deployed in different environments. Overall, the project highlighted the need for resilience, adaptability, and sustainability in the face of a rapidly changing world and demonstrated the potential of design to offer creative solutions to complex social and environmental problems.
Foragers photo by Jason Evans
The starting point for thinking about possible scenarios for the development of life on the ruins of the modern ecosystem is the landscape of the Donets basin, or Donbas, a coal basin and, at the same time, an industrial zone in the east of Ukraine. It covers a large part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The geographical area of this region is about 50,000 km².
Donbas is the center of the coal industry, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, and the chemical industry. Factories, mines, landfills, sludge lagoons, and other infrastructure of heavy industry led to this region being ecologically burdened for a long time, with a high amount of atmospheric and biosphere pollution.
After the start of Russian aggression in the east of Ukraine in April 2014, the environmental situation in Donbas deteriorated catastrophically. Donbas is the largest industrial region in the world with an active military conflict. Destructive processes caused mass closure and flooding of mines. This situation has been going on for nine years. The last time anything similar happened was during the Second World War. It is important to say that even in mines that are already closed the drainage system must work. In the conditions of war, access to most mines is simply impossible: two-thirds of Ukrainian coal enterprises are located in the territory temporarily occupied by Russia. Natural resources destroyed as a result of the military conflict are water resources, atmosphere, soils, and objects of the nature reserve fund.
Military actions in the east of Ukraine led to the destruction of the entire natural landscape. The lack of opportunities to control the entire territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the real absence of governing bodies, and constant shelling do not allow for an objective assessment of the damage caused to the environment during armed attacks. Before the beginning of the military aggression in the eastern regions of Ukraine, there was a significant anthropogenic burden on the environment due to the extraction of coal, ores, and other mineral resources, the metallurgical production, the generation of a significant amount of waste, and the omnipresence of dangerous chemicals used in the industry. Considering all that, the damage being caused to the environment today is growing many times over. It is huge and unlikely to be compensated in the near future.
Coming up next: a list of unique ecological disasters of the region and notes on the emergence of the first posthuman ecosystem of Eastern Europe.
1. WIKI FANDOM. Speculative biology.
2. Encyclopedia Britannica: “Glocalisation”.
3. DUNNE A., RABY F. Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013.
Volodymyr Serhachov, The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (AFAD), External Teacher of 3D modeling
Yevhen Zabarylo
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