Can the West and Russia Co-operate to Save a Melting Arctic? – Byline Times

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In late June, Russian scientists in Yakutia performed an autopsy on a wolf that was frozen in permafrost for approximately 44,000 years.

Located in the north of Eastern Siberia, Yakutia accounts for approximately one-third of Russia’s Arctic zone. 95% of Yakutia, a vast region of swamps and forests, is covered in permafrost— a rock sediment or ice that remains at or below zero degrees Celsius for two or more years and which locks up carbon from dead vegetation.

It’s estimated there is four times more carbon trapped in permafrost than all combined CO2 emissions in modern human history. The release of this carbon into the atmosphere is irreversible and will lead to rising sea levels, changing temperatures and more extreme weather patterns. Presently, the Arctic region is warming at three to four times faster than the rest of the planet.

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“The hot spots of Arctic warming found in Siberia are unique,” said German permafrost scientist, Dr Anne Morgenstern, who has spent more than fifteen years doing fieldwork in Siberia, where she was previously responsible for coordinating Russian-German collaboration for the Alfred Wegener Institute. “But the data is no longer flowing to the west from the Arctic region of Russia.”

The exchange of data stopped in March 2022. Just days after Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine, the seven other states of the Arctic Council suspended cooperation with Russia.

The Arctic Council

Established in 1996, the Arctic Council is made up of eight nations that have territories within the Arctic: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the United States and Russia.

The consensus-based organisation does not address matters related to the military or to hard security. It focuses instead on soft power issues, like sustainable development and scientific research, all of which need to be approved by the eight member states.

“At the senior official level, we still do not have any meetings between the eight member states,” said Morten Høglund, who is the current Chair of the Senior Arctic Officials. “Taking one country— especially a big one like Russia— out of the Arctic Council doesn’t actually make much sense, because then we are not a full Arctic body.”

The ongoing suspension of the Arctic Council means Western scientists no longer have access to field sites in Russia, to assess permafrost data and other climate change-related problems. They now rely on what they can see from space, satellite images, and scientific models.

Troy Bouffard, Director at the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience (CASR) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said scientific models attempting to predict phenomena related to climate change, including permafrost, are hard to trust in the absence of Russian data. “When the global scientific community does not share data, we don’t produce reliable scientific models,” said Bouffard.

“[With] ground-based observations now [coming] mainly from the non-Russian parts of the Arctic, the ability to monitor the status and trajectory of the Arctic biome may be severely limited over the foreseeable future,” wrote authors of a paper co-published this past January in the scientific journal, Nature.

“Half the Arctic is now a black box of empty data,” said Jennifer Spence, Project Director of the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs: “Sweden and Finland becoming members of NATO has created new dynamics within the Arctic Council,” Spence added “which now consists of seven NATO nations and Russia.”

Anne Morgenstern said most Western permafrost scientists understand that this current situation, which prohibits them from travelling to Russia, will last for many years. “At least as long as the war in Ukraine continues and as long as there is no regime change in Russia,” she said, also pointing out that Western scientists who previously worked in the Russian Arctic cannot simply pick up where they left off in February 2022: “The situation has changed so dramatically that everything will have to be developed from scratch.”

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In April 2023, Russia held joint coast guard training exercises with China, signing a memorandum on extensive long-term cooperation in Arctic waters. Over the last year, Russia has also publicly expressed that it is seeking cooperation in the Arctic with several allies, including Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, who previously did not have a major role there.

The Loss to Climate Science

Nikolai Shabalin, director of the Marine Research Center at Lomonosov Moscow State University, said “If [western] neighbours do not want to talk to us, and research work needs to be carried out, then of course it makes sense to collaborate with countries interested in Arctic research.”

For Russian scientists working in the Arctic region, nothing has fundamentally changed. “Marine expeditionary work in the Russian sector of the Arctic does not depend on contributions to the Arctic Council and was not funded by it,” said Shabalin, who was Special Representative for Maritime Activity in the Arctic Region, when Russia held the chairmanship of the Arctic Council between 2021 and 2023.

The Byline Times contacted two other Russian researchers, and one political figure associated with the Arctic Council, but none responded. One Russian environmental journalist, currently living in exile in Germany, who wished to remain anonymous, said they “knew some Russian Arctic researchers, but they are very cautious speaking to international journalists these days, unfortunately.”

Jennifer Spence said it was getting increasingly difficult for Western scientists to maintain any kind of relationships with Russian researchers. “There are more restrictions and more concerns about the personal safety of researchers in Russia,” she said. “The Russian government does not want Russian scientists to participate in researcher-to-researcher collaboration with their Western counterparts and so Russian researchers are starting to feel that pressure.”

“There have been some cases of Russian scientists accused of handing over data to foreign partners,” said Anna Morgenstern, “which was previously just considered normal scientific practice.”

This past February, Russia suspended its annual payments to the Arctic Council and threatened to leave the consensus-based organisation entirely.

Nikolai Shabalin said if the West and Russia cannot find ways to cooperate in the Arctic region it would create “potential dangers”. Not least because the Russian Arctic constitutes approximately half of the entire Arctic region. “It is impossible to ignore half of the Arctic region and then provide an adequate assessment of global processes related to climate change and permafrost degradation,” he said.

“Science, especially when it comes to the study of nature, should be outside politics,” Shabalin concluded. “The losing side here will be all the Arctic countries, and, unfortunately, all of humanity.”