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Environmental Harm, Human Rights, and Post-War Legal Reconstruction in Ukraine: Reconfiguring European Conflict Governance

This paper examines how large-scale environmental harm caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine reshapes the foundations of human rights protection, post-war reconstruction, and European legal governance. While ecological degradation in wartime is often treated as peripheral, this study argues that environmental harm functions as a structural determinant of human security, democratic resilience, and the legitimacy of post-conflict institutions.

The paper advances an original analytical framework—environmentalised post-war legal resilience—which integrates international human rights law, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and emerging environmental norms in international humanitarian law (IHL). This framework enables a systematic assessment of how environmental damage interacts with rights to life, health, private and family life, housing, property, and effective remedy, extending beyond conventional interpretations of conflict-related harm.

Empirically, the research synthesises open-source environmental monitoring, Ukrainian governmental datasets, UN and EU assessments, and testimonies from affected communities. These sources reveal patterns of toxic industrial contamination, water pollution, agricultural degradation, and the destruction of energy infrastructure. The findings show how environmental harm produces immediate and intergenerational violations of fundamental rights, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations and complicating long-term recovery.

The paper argues that Ukraine’s experience exposes conceptual and procedural gaps in existing ECHR and IHL mechanisms, particularly in addressing cumulative, diffuse, and transboundary ecological harm. It contends that environmental accountability must be reconceptualised through ecological restoration, intergenerational justice, and EU accession conditionality, which increasingly embeds environmental governance into rule-of-law benchmarks.

By demonstrating how environmental remediation, human rights protection, and European integration operate as mutually reinforcing processes, the paper proposes a model of post-conflict governance with relevance beyond Ukraine. The contribution opens a new line of inquiry into how environmental harm reshapes legal and political orders during and after armed conflict and provides a foundation for a full-length article suitable for publication in a peer-reviewed volume.