Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 17 – Climate change exacerbated by the indifference of Russian officials is rapidly transforming Astrakhan Oblast and its neighbors from a garden spot into a desert, according to Russian experts surveyed by Kedr, an internet portal that tracks threats to the environment and how officials and the Russian population are responding to them.
In the last few years, the portal reports, one quarter of the oblast has become a desert; and dust storms over the rest of it have become the norm. The desert is spreading and not just to areas within Astrakhan oblast but to its neighbors (kedr.media/stories/peskom-zarastaem/ reposted at meduza.io/feature/2025/08/17/pylnye-buri-stenoy-stoyat).
Instead of taking action to counter this development, the Russian authorities are continuing with policies that not only are doing nothing to slow the desertification of the southern portion of the Russian Federation but unwittingly helping to accelerate that process in many places.
As a result, agricultural production is collapsing, people are fleeing the area, and the absence of runoff water means that even major rivers like the Volga are silting up and becoming impassable for shipping. (On this increasingly serious problem and its implications, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/falling-water-levels-forcing-moscow-to.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/08/russians-outraged-kazakhstan-wants.html.
In its review of the situation, Kedr stresses that desertification of South Russia is not some distant prospect but an immediate threat and urges Moscow and the regional authorities to acknowledge the problem and take immediate steps to counter it, moves that neither shows much interest in doing.
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