Moscow Finally to Restore System of Permafrost Monitoring of Permafrost that Ended with USSR

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 1 – Because permafrost underlies such a large portion of Russia’s territory, the Soviet government developed one of the most comprehensive systems of monitoring changes in it. That system was disbanded more than 25 years ago, and only now is Moscow planning to restore it.

            Both global warming and the collapse of infrastructure build in permafrost regions, including the May 2020 Norilsk oil spill, have given new impetus to this plan, one called for by scholars for some years but only taken up by senior Russian officials this past summer (regnum.ru/news/society/3078269.html).

            Aleksandr Kozlov, minister for the development of the Far East and the Arctic, said in June that his agency had concluded that it would be far less expensive to restore the monitoring system that had existed in Soviet times than continue to pay to rebuilt after disasters caused by the melting of the permafrost (ttelegraf.ru/news/v-arktike-vosstanovyat-sistemu-monitoringa-vechnoy-merzlotyi/ and minvr.gov.ru/press-center/news/25433/).

            In reporting this development today – and Kozlov now says that he hopes to have the monitoring system up and running by the end of this year – Regnum journalist Vladimir Stanulevich says that this is clearly a step in the right direction but it is only part of the solution to the problem of infrastructure that is increasingly at risk and expensive to repair.

            He adds that despite the work of environmentalists Russian and international, Russian officials, including those in the Arctic, have generally ignored it. “The heads of [Russia’s] Arctic regions, except for Sakha, still have not designated it as a problem in the public media –not one word and not at the federal level.” 

            Aysen Nikolayev, the Sakha head, says that dealing with the melting of the permafrost is “a very complicated question” because global warming has proceeded so far. But he warns that the task is so enormous that it will require the combined efforts of all countries and not just Russia (interfax-russia.ru/far-east/exclusives/glava-respubliki-saha-yakutiya-aysen-nikolaev-investicii-kotorye-pridut-v-arktiku-budut-zashchishcheny-i-budut-podderzhivatsya).

            Some Sakha-based experts says that over the next 30 years, dealing with rebuilding infrastructure in the Russian North will cost the country some 250 billion US dollars (1sn.ru/250932.html). That must be added to any calculations about the amount of money needed to develop the North and the Northern Sea Route in the ways Vladimir Putin has called for.