Is Russia finally waking up to climate change?
Artwork by Jennifer Oguguo
Lizzy Nidz questions the Russian response to the climate crisis.
The belated ratification of the Paris climate accord might signal a welcome shift in Russia’s environmental policy. With warming happening 2.5 times faster in Russia than elsewhere, wildfires ravaging Siberia this summer and melting Arctic ice releasing carbon locked in the permafrost even faster than predicted, the world’s fourth most polluting nation is aching for change. Better late than never, right?
The decision to ratify has been met with scepticism, and some fear that this is simply a new, greener, façade for business to keep going as usual. The countries that endorse the Paris Climate Accord are permitted to set their own targets, and so Russia has pledged to reduce emissions to 25-30% below 1990 levels by 2030. However, in 2017, Russia’s emissions were 32% lower than in 1990, meaning that Russia can actually continue polluting on a grand scale whilst still meeting its targets. Government regulation of emissions, carbon quotas, and carbon taxes initially proposed by the Ministry of Economic Development as potential ways of implementing the Paris agreement have all been rejected by officials, who instead propose relying on “voluntary measures”.
“Tragic predictions are becoming a reality,” says Michael Yulkin, director of the Environmental Investment Centre. “They do not plan and never did plan to really do anything about it, and do not understand why they should.”
“Project Ecology”, which launched last year with the professed goal of improving environmental protection by 2024 on ten fronts, is the most comprehensive document to date outlining environmental strategy. Not unlike Russia’s ratification of the Paris climate accord, Project Ecology sets non-binding goals that contain loopholes, allowing practices to remain the same. For instance, as Alexei Yaroshenko of Greenpeace Russia suspects, the lack of a universal measure for wildfire damage means that targets outlined in the document can appear to be met if the measuring system is tweaked. The project has been branded “pointless” by experts, and even the Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment admitted that it was “prepared in a hurry”.
Consistent malpractice is perpetuated by the lack of transparency or industry accountability that plagues attempts to tackle environmental problems in Russia. No open access environmental database exists since the trade secret protection law allows companies not to disclose information about emissions. Furthermore, as Sofia Villo’s analysis of Russia’s major oil producer reveals, environmental illiteracy is systemic among senior management and the lack of fiscal incentives to abide by environmental regulations provides no impetus for this to change. Putin himself has previously denied that global warming is caused by humans, and according to Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin Press Secretary, his position remains unchanged, despite Russia’s ratification of the Paris climate accord.
It is, admittedly, inconvenient to believe in anthropogenic climate change when Russia’s economy and geopolitical capital rely heavily on polluting industries, which are set to profit from the very warming they have engendered. In 2018, a container ship crossed the Arctic sea for the first time in history due to a record low in sea ice levels. Seeing not a warning, but an opportunity, Putin subsequently announced a 6-year plan to boost shipping traffic by 80 million tons on what has been dubbed the “Northern Sea Route”. The route shortens the distance between Europe and East Asia by 10-15 days compared to traditional shipping routes via the Suez Canal. As China’s natural gas consumption is projected to triple between 2018-2050, Russia is looking at a lucrative opportunity to consolidate her place among its competitors in the Arctic.
This summer, Vostok Coal, which aims to supply 19 million tons of coal to transport along the route by 2024, built the Chaika and Severny coal terminals in Maduza Bay. The bay was a protected territory until the boundary of the Arctic National Park was redrawn by the federal government to facilitate the project. This came after Vostok Coal was fined 600 million rubles (£7.3 million) as a result of an environmental audit uncovering its illegal mining practices that endanger the vulnerable Arctic tundra.
Nevertheless, there are some tell-tale signs that Russia is feeling somewhat challenged by international climate efforts, which helps to explain why the Paris agreement has finally been agreed to. Some of Russia’s largest companies lost up to one third of their international investors last year, driven by “greener” demand. Enel Russia, the biggest foreign-owned utilities company operating in the country, is responding to the challenge with divestment, recently selling its biggest coal-burning power station, Reftinskaya. The sale reduces its revenues and installed generation capacity in the short term, but its improved ESG score increases the company’s valuation. Enel is also rapidly investing in Russian renewable energy, which is projected to constitute 45% of the company’s earnings within 5 years.
The extremely negative portrayal of Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg by state media may betray a fear of Russians’ growing eco-consciousness. Commentator Mikhail Leontiev has called Greta “a sick girl who is as stupid as she is naïve…the prophet of a new totalitarian wave, which is something like radical Islam for the post-Christian West”. After Vasily Vlasov, deputy of the State Duma invited the young eco-activist to come and speak, TASS, the state news agency, swiftly revoked the invitation, noting that he did not have the authority to extend it in the first place.
Encouragingly, Vlasov is one of many rebellious voices both in and out of the Russian government, as Russian universities and independent news agencies are almost unanimously critical of the current state of environmental policy. It seems that the “new totalitarian wave” is lapping at Putin’s heels.
This article was originally published in Issue 724 of Pi Magazine.