Demining and revitalising war-affected landscapes in Ukraine: multi-actor governance responses

Abstract

Ukraine faces one of the world’s largest and most complex explosive-ordnance contamination problems, affecting agricultural land, settlements, forests, and other natural ecosystems. This paper examines how global demining strategies are adapted within Ukraine’s multi-actor governance system and what this means for linking clearance with land recovery, soil restoration, and long-term environmental resilience. It addresses a gap in understanding how mine-action governance supports integrated landscape recovery in war-affected settings. We developed a seven-strategy analytical typology of mine-action and land-recovery approaches, comprising manual clearance, mechanical demining, remote sensing and mapping, community-based approaches, ecological remediation, legal and institutional frameworks, and post-conflict land-use zoning. Applying this typology to Ukraine and drawing on stakeholder analysis, policy review, and expert interviews, we found that manual clearance and mechanical land-release methods remain central, yet supported by new legal, institutional, and governance arrangements. Digital innovation in Ukraine’s mine-action sector is advancing rapidly, with UAV mapping, AI-supported detection, and integrated prioritization platforms increasingly incorporated into survey and planning processes. Uptake remains uneven, however, and interoperability and data-sharing gaps continue to limit implementation. Ukraine’s mine-action governance system is multi-actor and polycentric, but coordination remains challenging because of overlapping mandates, fragmented information flows, and differing donor priorities. These conditions reveal both opportunities and coordination challenges in linking mine action to environmental recovery and long-term land-use planning. Environmental concerns, including soil contamination in and around explosion craters, damage to forest areas, and degradation of shelterbelts, are receiving increasing attention, yet implementation remains limited and often confined to small or time-bound pilot projects. Community participation in prioritization of mine-action activities remains uneven, and interviewees reported that smallholders risk being sidelined by larger agricultural actors with greater influence over clearance demands. Scale remains a major challenge, requiring coordination across national, regional, and local levels while reconciling different humanitarian, economic, environmental, and recovery priorities. Our findings highlight that sustainable recovery depends on integrating mine action governance, environmental assessment and remediation, land-use planning, and long-term soil and ecosystem monitoring into a coherent recovery process. Ukraine’s evolving multi-actor approach offers lessons for other conflict-affected regions seeking to address explosive-ordnance contamination, environmental degradation, and landscape and livelihood recovery during and after armed conflict.