This too has global implications: Russia is a core part of global food chains, accounting for 20 percent of global wheat exports, so climate disruption to Russian agricultural output will have strong effects well beyond Russia’s borders and budget coffers. In June of this year, regional officials in Stravopol, one of Russia’s major wheat regions, projected a remarkable 40 percent decline in wheat crop in 2020 as a result of droughts. In fact, arable land shrank by more than half to just 120,000 acres in 2017. Though climate change will expand arable land in Russia in its northern latitudes, the northern topsoil tends to be thinner and more acidic than in Russia’s most productive southern regions and would not make up for its losses. This could pose food security risks and threaten a primary Russian export: wheat. Its per capita emissions are among the highest in the world-53 percent higher than China, and 79 percent higher than the European Union.ĭramatic shifts in global weather patterns, accelerated by warming Arctic waters and a diminishing ice cap, are expected to increase droughts in Russia’s rich southern agricultural “bread basket” regions encompassing Stavropol and Rostov. Russia is already the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 4.6 percent of all global emissions. According to one study, a 30 to 99 percent reduction in near-surface permafrost would release an additional 10 to 240 billion tons of carbon and methane into the atmosphere and potentially put the globe “over the brink” by 2100. This could result in a potentially catastrophic, one-off release of carbon into the atmosphere which will no longer be Russia’s problem alone. At its current rate of thaw-about 1 degree Celsius per decade-Russia’s permafrost layer will stop freezing completely in three decades. It has been linked to outbreaks of anthrax and the discovery of vast methane craters.
Permafrost thaw recently toppled a diesel storage tank near the Arctic city of Norilsk, spilling 21,000 tons of diesel into the Ambarnaya river and surrounding subsoil. More dramatic freeze-thaw cycles in the subsoil are eroding urban infrastructure in Russia’s Arctic cities, home to over 2 million people, and pose a mounting risk to Russia’s 200,000 kilometers of oil and gas pipelines, not to mention thousands of miles of roads and rail lines bridging some of Russia’s widest rivers. Permafrost, which covers nearly two-thirds of Russian territory, is rapidly thawing.
Snow coverage was at a record low in 2020, and Arctic sea ice coverage shrank to its second-lowest extent in over 40 years. Flash floods in Siberia destroyed entire villages and displaced thousands of residents.
In 2020, regions across Russia have experienced the hottest temperatures on record, contributing to forest fires that burned through acreage the size of Greece and emitted one-third more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in 2019 (Russian forests account for one-fifth of the world’s total). Russia is warming 2.5 times faster than the rest of the world. Yet it is climate change, as much as any one politician or set of policies, that will exert the strongest force on Russia’s strategic future, reshaping its politics, economy, and society for decades to come.
Rarely does climate change make the shortlist. policymakers ponder Russia’s trajectory, they tend to focus on the leadership and longevity of President Vladimir Putin and the nature of his regime, on the Kremlin’s growing authoritarian tendencies at home and the poisoning of opposition figures, on Russia’s nuclear arsenal and cyber capabilities, or on Russia’s projection of power abroad, from election interference to military interventions in Ukraine and Syria.
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