THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHERNOBYL CATASTROPHE ON THE ECO-SOCIAL SITUATION IN THE UKRAINE

I.V. Gulakova -- IN ABSENTIA

Ukrainian Institute of Geography,
Ukrainian Center for Women's Studies
Kiev 71 ul. Konstantinovskaya, 19 kv. 15
UKRAINE

Tel: (044) 417-56-43

Recognized as the world's most severe technogenic catastrophe, the Chernobyl accident led to the pollution of significant territory in several states. The contamination of soil, food products, and water with radionuclides is its essential feature. Many regions of the Ukraine, Belorus, and Russia still have elevated radioactive background levels. In the Ukraine, the ecological situation is complicated by significant chemical pollution not only of urban areas, but also of agricultural regions by multiple violations of the norms for introducing mineral fertilizer and chemical substances for cultivating soil, plants, etc.

The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe introduced notable correctives into agricultural land-use processes in the Ukraine, having identified a new, supplemental and extraordinarily serious spectrum of her eco-social problems, i.e. those social problems and processes which call forth almost exclusively the deterioration of ecological conditions. Changes in the eco-social situation embrace all spheres of society. It is possible to distinguish the following basic components of such changes:

  1. The ecological-economic situation (changes in the functional structure of industry, agriculture, called forth by the exacerbation of the ecological situation).
  2. Changes in the demographic situation.
  3. The influence of ecologically unfavorable surroundings on the health of the population and, in particular, women and children.
  4. Changes in the labor market.
  5. The influence of environmental status on the degree of satisfaction of social demands.
  6. The cultural-ecological situation.
  7. The information-ecological situation.
  8. The political-ecological situation.

Namely ecological factors often serve to push many processes arising in society in one or another region. The intensification of these processes in the Ukraine after the Chernobyl catastrophe has turned out to be very high and revealing. Research may be valuable from the perspective of preventing negative consequences

Translated by Barbara Welling Hall

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