2026-10-13T23:51:49Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33916900 2026-09-18T00:29:00Z category_25762 category_26017 category_26986 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

<b>The Russia−Ukraine war exposed a hidden food−climate vulnerability</b> Zhaoxin Li (20381379) Greenhouse gas inventories and fluxes Econometric and statistical methods Soil chemistry and soil carbon sequestration (excl. carbon sequestration science) Russia Ukraine Conflict Food security -- Cross-cultural studies climate vulnerability assessments <p dir="ltr"><a href="" target="_blank">Synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer is essential for crop production but is also a major source of agricultural greenhouse-gas emissions</a>^1,2,3. Whether abrupt fertilizer scarcity delivers climate benefit, however, remains unclear. Here we exploit cross-country differences in pre-war dependence on fertilizer supplies from Russia and Belarus to quantify the food and climate consequences of the 2022 Russia−Ukraine war. Combining international fertilizer trade, country-level agricultural data, event-study analysis and process-based soil-carbon model, we identify that supplier concentration, rather than overall import dependence, best predicted post-war declines in N use. A one-standard-deviation increase in pre-war Russia−Belarus import share reduced N application by 5.5% on average during 2023−2024, corresponding to an estimated annual reduction of 4.36 Tg N. Lower N use reduced crop production and plant-derived carbon (C) inputs, causing global cropland soil organic carbon losses of 22.5−30.8 Tg C yr⁻¹ during 2022−2024. Although nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions declined, these savings were insufficient to offset the climate cost of soil-carbon loss, producing a net warming penalty of 69.8−98.5 Tg CO₂-eq yr⁻¹. Overall, 65.6% of the assessed cropland area experienced net warming. These results show that scarcity-driven nitrogen reductions differ fundamentally from efficiency-driven mitigation and expose concentrated fertilizer supply chains as an overlooked food−climate vulnerability.</p> 2026-09-18T00:29:00Z Dataset Dataset 10.6084/m9.figshare.33916900.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/_b_The_Russia_Ukraine_war_exposed_a_hidden_food_climate_vulnerability_b_/33916900 CC BY 4.0