We are happy to announce the next talk in our joint lecture series “Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Baltic Sea Region - Spotlight on Marine Governance & Environmental Change” on 6 July, when Professor Daniel Müller from the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) in Halle/Saale will speak about:
The Harvest of War: Consequences of the Russian Invasion on Ukraine’s Agriculture
Land use is at the core of many sustainability challenges, like sustainable agriculture, ensuring food security, and mitigating climate change. In this talk, I briefly synthesize the state-of-the-art of land system science and how it contributes towards addressing sustainability challenges associated with land use. I exemplify this by assessing how the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has led to disruptions in land use and reduced crop output, and caused widespread environmental damages. The war impacted agricultural land use directly through destruction of agricultural infrastructure or explosive devices and indirectly by inducing shortages and price spikes of major production inputs, such as fuel, fertilizers, and labor. I summarize how available data and methods, including farm-level statistics, satellite remote sensing, crop yield simulations, and statistical analysis can shed light on how the war has impacted Ukrainian land use, and highlight salient research gaps in quantifying the war-related damages for agriculture. I then sketch future scenarios for Ukrainian agriculture considering warfare legacies and ongoing climate change, exploring how land-system science at large can contribute to fill these research gaps.
To participate online via Zoom click here.