Janine Natalya Clark, Professor of Transitional Justice and International Criminal Law in the Birmingham Law School, has developed a new online exhibition of soundscapes recorded in Ukraine exploring the environmental impact of the invasion.
35% of Europe's biodiversity is concentrated in Ukraine. Since the full-scale invasion of the country began in February 2022, large areas of Ukrainian forest have been burned, grasslands have been destroyed and many rivers have become polluted. Many national parks and nature reserves have been affected, and countless animals have been killed or harmed.
As part of her Leverhulme-funded research project, Professor Clark has interviewed more than 30 Ukrainians to understand better some of the ways that the war has affected their local ecosystems. Her work demonstrates that the field of transitional justice – which addresses the legacies of large-scale conflict and human rights violations – cannot continue to marginalise environmental harms.
Alongside the interviews, Professor Clark asked research participants to record some of the sounds around them. The recordings are a novel exploration of the environmental impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war, providing a rare insight into the sounds of a country at war. These 43 recordings and the stories attached to them form the online soundscape exhibition.
Speaking on the exhibition, Professor Clark said: “I want to demonstrate that there is a significant yet completely unexplored role for soundscape recordings and soundscape ecology in transitional justice. More specifically, I want to show that we need to develop more inclusive ways of doing transitional justice that do not neglect or overlook the environmental impacts of war and armed conflict. What the soundscape exhibition offers is a unique acoustic testimony of human and other-than-human experiences of the Russia-Ukraine war”.
