Title From Protection to Dependency: Hydrological Lock-In, War, and the North Crimean Canal
Author(s) Anna Tymoshenko
Affiliation Pollution and Diseases
Country Ukraine
Contribution type case study; empirical study; conceptual paper
Thematic area • Theory, Methodology, and Evidence• War and Soil Systems• War and Freshwater Systems• War and Land-Use Systems• War and Health
Conference framework connection • Analytical Track AT-01 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-02 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-03 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-04 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-05 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-06 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-07 — provisional title to be defined
Abstract Water infrastructure is commonly understood as a means of protection, development, and resource stabilization. Dams reduce flood risk, canals transfer water, reservoirs regulate supply, and irrigation systems make agriculture possible in dry regions. This paper examines the less visible reverse effect: infrastructure does not merely serve an existing territory; over time, it produces a particular territorial order and makes settlement, agriculture, industry, public health, and administration dependent on an artificially stabilized water regime. The paper defines this condition as hydrological lock-in: the long-term dependence of a territory on a water configuration that was created under specific natural, technological, and political assumptions.
The analysis develops a conceptual systems approach and applies it to the North Crimean Canal as a historically layered case. The canal was constructed within a unified Soviet economic, administrative, and hydraulic space. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and especially after 2014, the physical infrastructure remained, but the political world that had made its operation coherent no longer existed. The canal consequently shifted from an instrument of regional development to a source of dependency, scarcity, geopolitical dispute, and military vulnerability. The case demonstrates that hydraulic systems may outlive the state that built them while losing the institutional and territorial order in which they were meaningful.
The central argument is that war-related damage to water infrastructure should not be assessed only as physical destruction of an object. A strike on a dam, canal, reservoir, pumping station, or supply network may disrupt an entire regime of life by changing hydrological, agricultural, sanitary, ecological, economic, and settlement conditions simultaneously. The consequences may extend beyond the directly affected population and may also generate feedback effects for the party initiating the disruption. The study therefore proposes a shift from object-centred damage assessment to regime-centred analysis. Its limitation is that it offers a conceptual and historical interpretation rather than a complete hydrological model or archival reconstruction. Its purpose is to formulate a research framework for comparing long-term infrastructure dependence and war-related freshwater vulnerability across regions.
Key points • Water infrastructure reduces natural variability in the short term but may create long-term dependence on an artificially stabilized hydrological regime.
• Infrastructure does not only serve territory; it helps produce settlement patterns, land use, agricultural specialization, population density, and institutional routines.
• War-related damage to water infrastructure is a systemic disruption of a regional way of life, not merely the destruction of a technical object.
• The North Crimean Canal illustrates how hydraulic infrastructure can outlive the state and political order for which it was designed.
• Assessment should move from object-centred damage analysis toward regime-centred analysis of hydrological, ecological, sanitary, economic, and settlement consequences.
Keywords hydrological lock-in; water infrastructure; war; freshwater systems; North Crimean Canal; territorial dependence; land-use transformation; infrastructure vulnerability
Main discussion question How should research and policy assess water infrastructure whose failure does not merely damage a technical facility, but dismantles the hydrological, economic, sanitary, ecological, and settlement regime that has formed around it over decades?
OJS publication link https://pollution-diseases-ojs.org/index.php/pd/article/view/55
Note. Analytical TracksIn addition to the main thematic areas, the conference programme will include several cross-cutting analytical tracks. These tracks will be defined during the preparation of the programme, based on the submitted abstracts and the emerging links between presentations.At the preliminary stage, abstracts may be assigned to provisional analytical tracks marked as AT-01 to AT-07. Final track titles will be announced after the Scientific Committee has reviewed the submitted materials.