Executive Summary 

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that started in 2014. The conflict in Ukraine also involves tensions between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, fueled by geopolitical influences, leading to a complex and ongoing war with significant humanitarian and geopolitical implications. The war has been characterized by physical and cyber-attacks on major urban and national infrastructure systems on which people rely. The war also brought into focus the severe impacts to Ukraine of war and climate change that the country would have to contend with after the war. 

This report profiles disaster risks and hazards in Ukraine, and current management systems, which will be defined subsequently in the paper. Additionally, international best practices applicable to Ukraine’s disaster risk profile are outlined, and recommendations for a disaster and hazard management framework are outlined.  

The UN Habitat’s 2015 International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning is a set of universal principles that provide cities, civil societies, national governments, and local authorities with a global reference framework to foster sustainable development. The recommendations for post-war Ukraine as outlined by this report are referenced against selected UN Habitat guidelines for climate change and disaster management, to provide targeted, contextual, and relevant planning guidance to Ukraine for the development of its framework for local and regional recovery in the near future for the environmental consequences of the war.  

In this broad mandate and field, this paper addresses Ukraine‘s hazard mitigation and disaster management policies, combined challenges of war and climate change in Ukraine, the governance context, and some of the international practices of both disaster management and urban and regional planning that could offer potential practices to Ukraine for meeting UN principles in this context.