Russia Risks Losing More than 100 Billion US Dollars in Infrastructure as Result of Melting of Permafrost

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 15 – Global warming is rapidly melting the permafrost layer which underlies much of the Russian North and that in turn is leading to the collapse of infrastructure including housing, factories, pipelines and railways across that region. Such losses are expected to rise to 10 trillion rubles (100 billion US dollars) by mid-century.

            The size of this risk is so great that there is a premium on the collection and sharing of information gathered both by the Russian government and by Russian companies operating in the permafrost zone (eastrussia.ru/material/merzlota-pod-ugrozoy-a-dannye-pod-zamkom-kak-spasat-severnuyu-infrastrukturu/).

            But unfortunately, there are problems with this very imperfect system: it doesn’t cover all the region, there is no agreed-upon standard and thus comparing the data from one place to that from another is problematic, and both the government and the companies are often reluctant to share information, often treating it as a corporate secret.

            Officials in both Moscow and the federal subjects involved are pressing for new legislation that will address these problems; but up to now, progress toward that end has been slow. And many fear that nothing will be done until the melting gets still worse, something that will only increase the costs of addressing this problem.