Monthly Highlights from the Russian Arctic, August 2024
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.
News
Publish date: February 7, 2007
News
Ingjerd Kroken, co-chair of the Norwegian AMEC, was a part of official Norwegian delegation on its way to Moscow to discuss the progress in a nuclear submarine decommissioning project sponsored by Norway. But she did not make it through the airport boarder control. She was declared unwanted in the Russian Federation and turned back home. Neither the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, nor the Norwegian Defence Ministry wanted to comment on the case at the time of writing.
Establised in 1996, AMEC was—until the 2003 joining of the United Kingdom (UK)—a three country consortium created by the respective defense agencies of the United States, Russia and Norway in order to address military-related environmental problems, primarily submarine dismantlement, in the fragile Arctic ecosystem.
AMEC has long been seen as the environmental wing of the US Cooprative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme and was formed to address clean up issues of waste that was being left behind by the United States’ and other nations’ nuclear remediation projects.
AMECs underlying philosophy was that it should be easier to discuss military environmental problems through a military co-operative effort than through civilian channels. The programme also emphasised the need to leave behind an infrastructure for Russia to use after US-led Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) and Norwegian programmes have come to an end.
Norway officially dropped out of the Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC) project in 2006 to hold only the title of “observer” to the programme that had aided dozens of nuclear remediation projects in Northwest Russia.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.
Introduction Competitiveness has been the dominating topic in EU political discussions in recent months and is set to be a key focus of the upcomi...
Russia is a world leader in the construction of nuclear power plants abroad. Despite the sanctions pressure on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its nuclear industry has remained virtually untouched.
Today, the Bellona Foundation is launching the establishment of the Center for Marine Restoration in Kabelvåg, Lofoten. At the same time, collaboration agreements related to the center were signed with Norrøna, the University of Tromsø, the Lofoten Council and Blue Harvest Technologies