Ecological Costs of War

Elaine Donderer is a professional consultant and project manager in the disaster risk reduction and nature-based solution space. Committed to creating transboundary environmental collaboration amidst political fragility, she envisions hazards as gateways to innovation, conceptualizing ecological challenges as transformative opportunities for more integrated natural system dynamics. Her experience spans research, consulting and project management across sustainable design, hydrology and humanitarian action. Having recently completed her Master’s in Disaster Management at Tel Aviv University, the Columbia exchange and Maastricht University alumna has held numerous scholarships in earth sciences.

Karenna Gore is the founder and executive director of the Center for Earth Ethics and visiting professor of practice of earth ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Karenna formed CEE in 2015 to address the moral and spiritual dimensions of the climate crisis. Working at the intersection of faith, ethics, and ecology, she guides the Center’s public programs, educational initiatives, and movement-building. She also is an ex officio faculty member of Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

Dr. Olena Melnyk is an associate researcher at Bern University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland), honorary professor at the Royal Agricultural University (UK), and associate professor at Sumy National Agrarian University (Ukraine). Her research focuses on environmental impact assessments of wartime activities in Ukraine, soil remediation following mine clearance, climate policy, renewable energy sources, environmental safety criteria, sustainable resource management and post-war sustainable development. Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, her projects addressing environmental and conflict-related issues have garnered about 700,000 euros in support from governments in the UK and Switzerland, as well as from philanthropic organizations and industry partners.

Samira Siddique is the director of strategic initiatives at the Center for Earth Ethics. She has extensive research and advocacy experience on global climate change justice, including the humanitarian politics of climate adaptation in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. Previously, Samira was a Mellon Foundation Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum. She has also been a visiting scholar at the New School’s Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh. For her research and advocacy work, she was awarded a Public Voices Fellowship with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the Op-Ed Project, and a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship. 

Dr. Christina Slentz joined the Diocese of San Diego in July 2022 as the first full-time employee dedicated to directing the ministry of creation care. She brings with her leadership experience from her service in the United States Navy, as well as an academic background on the social impact of environmental degradation. In the spirit of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ encyclical, Christina seeks to bring the issues of environmental degradation and the dire need for good stewardship to light, unpacking dynamics of injustice and systemic forces that drive our estrangement from God, nature and one another, degrading our communal gift of creation.

Doug Weir has undertaken research and advocacy on the polluting legacy of armed conflicts and military activities since 2005. After working on conflict pollution and the toxic remnants of war for many years, in 2018, he established the non-profit Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) to monitor and raise awareness of the environmental and derived humanitarian consequences of conflicts. He has contributed to a wide range of domestic, regional, and international initiatives on conflict and the environment, and CEOBS’ current research focus is on Sudan and Ukraine