The ManicaPost
Kay Kaseke
Post Correspondent
A sniper surrounded with heavy artillery stood firmly behind a rocket missile, pointing at the direction of Kyiv.
He then took a short breath before pulling the trigger aiming at the pinnacle of the city. Within 30 seconds, a dark cloud rose from the entwined buildings as he waited for the next order from his commander.
The wave of explosions has gone on beyond any point of human imagination.
Amid all this, sound blasts coupled with a heavy precipitation of fire drops are seen during dusk hours as they continuously land on tree leaves and branches of the mighty Kyiv Park situated in the heart of the Central Business District.
The ongoing catastrophic scenes in Ukraine will inevitably invite climate change activists and environmentalists to raise concern over the effects of the war as the world works towards reducing global emissions.
The demolitions present a major regression on all the low carbon pathways enacted in Ukraine and the entire region.
When the climate change negotiators converged at the Paris Agreement in 2015 and Conference of Parties in 2021 Glasgow, they failed to put into picture the possibility of a war outbreak that would deter progress on the fight against climate change.
It is by no doubt that they were predetermined to focus much of their attention on Climate Finance in achieving Climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Now the events in Europe, Middle East and Asia call for great considerations by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in applying robust and sounding technical approaches on the latest emissions profile.
Basically, Climate Change Experts were guided by four sectors of the IPCC guidelines which include Energy, Waste, Industrial Processes and Product Use and AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use).
Despite having major linkages, all the four sectors might fail to accommodate emissions coming out as a result of the ongoing war and it will be difficult to measure in the midst of a rampant scenario where none will have a better understanding as to when the war will surely end.
The worst scenario will see the extension of a crisis into a world war situation, thereby risking a efforts made to maintain global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.
While the Forest Inventory is the most ideal data gathering technique on the amount of emissions being absorbed through carbon sequestration, it will be difficult to measure the differences encountered during the war period.
However, even if the IPCC had considered possible ways of gathering data from emissions attributed to a war crisis, the main challenge would be centred on implementation during a rampant crisis.
A more advanced innovative way would be viable, such as through space satellite means where data can be remotely gathered in a localised area of a given country. Otherwise the aftermath of such a crisis would instil new forms of emissions profiling.
