is a Ukrainian environmental journalist with 10 years of experience in traditional and online media, communications, environmental and human rights activism. In 2017, she was a winner of the United Nations Media Contest ‘Publications for Changes’ as well as the 2018 winner of the Ukrainian award ‘Honor of the Profession’ for her coverage of global warming. As a 2020 Milena Jesenská Visiting Fellow at Vienna’s Institute for Human Sciences, she continued her research on climate change communication in Europe.
Heating is no longer as simple as flicking a switch: burning fossil fuels is environmentally unsustainable; and, this year, Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, weaponized by the Kremlin, has created a rush for alternatives. In Ukraine, where power facilities are under repeated attack, existing, pre-war energy efficiency plans have become a lifeline.
Drought, floods and tropical night syndrome: the 2020 drought killed all crops in Bessarabia and the deepest Ukrainian lake is drying out rapidly, while the Black Sea could rise by 50 cm, displacing ¾ million people. Ukraine faces climate change already and Mariana Verbovska offers snapshots of the impacts and the efforts to mitigate them.