By Galina Korol | 2024-08-19

WARSAW -- As Poland looks east to its aggressive neighbor Russia, nature could help protect it.

Russian intentions have aroused fresh alarm in Warsaw since the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Environmentalists suggest enlisting nature in the swampy, forested border region to help ward off Russia if the need comes.

The Eastern Shield

On July 18, scientists on the Committee of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences published a policy document stating that "proper environmental management in border regions carries great potential for significantly securing the state border and reducing the threat of military aggression while preserving and even enhancing the environmental and natural value of these areas," in mid-July, Dzikie Życie, a Polish news outlet covering nature, reported on July 25.

The Eastern Shield border security initiative, which Warsaw announced in May, is what prompted environmentalists to pursue this research.

The plan's completion is expected in 2028.

"Eastern Shield is a long-term, multifaceted plan, and it's not just about building fortifications on the borders with Belarus and Russia," Pavlo Lakiychuk of Kyiv, a military analyst at the Strategy XXI Center for Global Studies, told Kontur.

"As the Polish defense minister has said, the plan has three components: the Polish army's might, strengthening of the transatlantic partnership and reinforcement of the borders," added Lakiychuk.

Of these three components, the one that most concerns environmentalists is the construction of fortifications on the Polish border.

"The Eastern Shield plan must factor in the specific features of the area in order to minimize the social and environmental costs of the planned action while maintaining the shield's defensive properties," the authors of the July 18 study wrote.

"Eastern Shield could ... either benefit or harm the environment," Rafał Kowalczyk, a professor at the Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Białowieża, said in an interview with the Polish outlet BiznesAlert.

Kowalczyk noted the existence of many areas along the Polish-Belarusian border that would impede invading forces. One is the Białowieża forest, almost half of which is wetlands, swamps and river valleys.

Formidable natural barriers

As another example, Kowalczyk cited the valleys of the Bug and Svislach rivers, along which the Polish-Belarusian border runs.

Similar conditions are characteristic in the Knyszynska and Augustów forest, and in the Romincka forest on the Polish-Russian border.

The government need not build fortifications in "such large forest masses, which are a barrier on their own," said Kowalczyk.

"Antitank ditches and ferro-concrete tank barriers can be quickly destroyed," he added. "Natural obstacles like wetlands are ... harder to breach."

"Natural obstacles can play a role, and this has been proven in practice. The only issue is how to intelligently supplement them with the fortifications that are truly necessary," said Bohdan Kuchenko, a Ukrainian environmental scientist and an ecosystem conservation specialist at the civil society organization Ecoaction.

Reliance on nature saves taxpayer money too, he said.

Leaving an impassable forest alone "doesn't cost any money," he observed.

The PROP-KOE study had several suggestions on forest and wetland policy.

They leaned toward "green" conservationist ideas, including halting the removal of dried-out trees. Dead trees will eventually fall down and create a natural obstacle, in this thinking.

The scholars advised halting the clear cutting of forests. Logging creates easier terrain for vehicles and troops to traverse, they said.

As for wetlands, the scholars urged their restoration. A swampy or flooded woodland is almost impassable, they said.

Thus, restoring wetlands along the border would be advisable, they said.

In areas with large beaver populations, no human help is needed to "restore the hydrological pattern," said Kuchenko.

'We need to be realistic'

The military, though, will have its own priorities and will not embrace the entire environmental agenda, said Lakiychuk.

"We need to be realistic," Lakiychuk said.

The military certainly will use natural elements, but "creating a wetland area on territory that people might exploit or inhabit might not be the right thing to do," he said.

Sometimes, desperate gambits are needed, even if they impose environmental cost, he noted.

"In defending Kyiv, to stop the enemy, the Ukrainians had to blow up a dam," he recalled.

Sappers know how to work with nature, Oleksiy Hetman, a Ukrainian military analyst, veteran of the Russia-Ukraine war and reservist major, told Kontur.

If they know a marsh is impassable, they will just "install certain equipment to defeat the enemy on the other side of the marsh," he said.

Builders of fortifications already take topography into account, Hetman added, citing their determination to build on the high ground wherever it exists, even if it means ceding small amounts of territory to the enemy.

In addition, Hetman said, all armed forces have specialized maps.

Troops know full well to use nature, and those maps give "details like the distance between trees, soil density, how much it rained in a year and what animals live there," he said.

They study those maps before planning anything, he said.