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Experts: Regions in low-carbon development must mind own specifics

In February, 2021, Russia’s Ministry of Education and Science launched a pilot project to organize in Russia carbon testing ranges to design and test technologies to control the carbon balance

YAKUTSK, September 29. /TASS/. The trend for the low-carbon development of the Russian Arctic regions will be different in every region, and will depend on every region’s specific features, experts said during a session Strategies of Low-Carbon Development for Russian Arctic Regions in the Context of Paris Climate Agreement at the 3rd Northern Forum in Yakutsk.

The COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference will take place in Glasgow, the UK, in November. The Paris Climate Agreement was adopted in 2015. Its objective is to cut greenhouse gases emissions and to hold by 2100 the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

"About 80% of energy in the world is produced by burning hydrocarbons, which leads to the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Annual CO2 emissions reach 33.1 billion tons. Noteworthy, the recent UN studies in 2021 [have shown] irreversible processes of the climate changes on the planet, that is, heating is already considered irreversible. Emissions - whether they affect [the climate] or not - these disputes still continue, and nevertheless the planet is getting warmer," said Alexander Krivichev, deputy director of the Center for Research of Arctic Development’s Economic Problems at the Lomonosov Moscow State University’s Economics Department.

In February, 2021, Russia’s Ministry of Education and Science launched a pilot project to organize in Russia carbon testing ranges to design and test technologies to control the carbon balance. Such testing ranges will appear in Chechnya, the Krasnodar, Kaliningrad, Novosibirsk, Sakhalin, Sverdlovsk and Tyumen regions.

Regional strategies

At the Northern Forum, scientists stressed that strategies must be based on regional specifics.

"Since now we speak about a strategy for carbon development with low carbon emissions, then the regions must also have respective documents on the progress in that direction. <…> We must know what will happen in the Arctic regions from the perspective of the climate’s impact, and its changes," said Anatoly Shevchuk, deputy chairman of the Council on Productive Forces Studies under the Ministry of Economic Development.

Professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University Alexander Pilyasov stressed regional plans towards low-carbon economies must comply in terms of timing with the national development strategies - 10-15 years. "As this direction is rather creative, those are not mere copies from other region. This trend respects regional specifics, and thus such directions must be reflected in the social and economic strategies for the future," he added.

Ilya Stepanov of the Higher School of Economics highlighted special roles the regions may play in solving the problems of the global climate changes. "Apparently, at the global level cooperation is normally at the national level, between governments, but at the same time we see examples of cooperation between regions or cities. <…> Experts say, due to such inter-regional partnership in addition to the state-level cooperation, by 2030 the greenhouse gases’ emissions will be cut by additional 4-6% against the levels, reached by efforts from the inter-governmental cooperation," he said.

Testing ranges in Yakutia

Alexander Krivichev of the Lomonosov Moscow State University suggested having carbon testing ranges in the Arctic zone, including in Yakutia. Two unique sites could be the areas for carbon balance studies, he said.

"Our idea is to organize such a testing range on the Batagai crater in Yakutia. <…> The second option is the Pleistocene Park. <…> [It] has been used for quite a time, humus is used from the area, where various plans are grown," the expert said.

The Batagai basin in Yakutia’s Verkhoyansky district began to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s, and over 50 years has grown in width by 800 meters, in length - by more than 1 kilometer. Its depth is 100 meters. The depression’s edges are extremely unstable, causing regular landslides due to the melting permafrost. The crater is currently increasing in size by 15 meters every year, which can be seen and analyzed, for example, with the help of unmanned aircraft to create 3D models of this dynamics. As more and more material on the bottom of the sinkhole melts and becomes more friable, an increasing part of the surface opens up to environmental influences, which, in its turn, increases the permafrost melting rate.

The Pleistocene Park, founded in 1996 by Russian ecologist Sergey Zimov, is located in Yakutia’s Nizhnekolymsky district. For a quarter of a century, the nature reserve continues an experiment to recreate the ecosystem of the "mammoth steppes," that existed in the Northern Hemisphere during the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene Park Nature Reserve has received the status of the Russian Arctic Zone’s resident.

About forum

The 3rd Northern Sustainable Development Forum is underway in Yakutsk. The organizers are the Northern Forum, Yakutia’s government and the North-Eastern Federal University. The first Northern Sustainable Development Forum was organized in Yakutsk in 2019. TASS is the event’s general information partner.