Month: August 2020

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Russian wildfires

Helsingin sanomat new article “Venäjän suhde metsiinsä poikkeaa paljon Suomesta: Miljoonia hehtaareita on tänäkin vuonna palanut, ja vain murto-osaa paloista on edes yritetty sammuttaa” (Russia’s relationship with its forests differs a lot from Finland: Millions of hectares have been burned this year as well, and only a fraction of the fires have even been tried to be extinguished) discusses Russian forest policy and the massive forest fires going on in the country every summer; this year the burnt area is equal to the size of Czech Republic. Professor Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen was interviewed about this catastrophic situation.

 in Russian federal policy and from the point of view of state revenue, forests are a secondary resource and not as important as oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power.

“Of course, the forest sector is regionally important in Northwest Russia, Central Siberia and the Russian Far East,” says Tynkkynen.

Professor Tynkkynen also drew parallels with last year’s Amazon rainforest wildfires and finds problematic the difference in the attitude of the international community towards Russia and Brazil and their dealing with the fires:

The European Union considered boycotting Brazilian cattle, partly because of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s forest policy.
Bolsonaro encouraged farmers and ranchers to clear the land by lighting forest fires.
With regard to Russian forest fires, the EU did not challenge the forest policy of the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration at all and the way how forests are treated as part of other natural resource policies.
“The oil and gas industry are equal risk factors for forest fires, but no one discussed that it should be discussed. No one asked if we would buy gas and oil from Russia or not, ”says Tynkkynen.
Russia has expressed that it will not tolerate interference by foreign powers in its internal affairs. According to Tynkkynen, a comparison between Brazil and Russia shows that in Europe, including Finland, Russia is treated with silk gloves because its reaction is feared.
Read the rest of the article on Helsingin Sanomat website.
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Urban Sustainability in the Arctic. Measuring Progress in Circumpolar Cities

A new book “Urban Sustainability in the Arctic. Measuring Progress in Circumpolar Cities” was published this summer by Berghahn Books. The book is edited by Robert W. Orttung and is a result of the Arctic PIRE project.

Urban Sustainability in the Arctic advances our understanding of cities in the far north by applying elements of the international standard for urban sustainability (ISO 37120) to numerous Arctic cities. In delivering rich material about northern cities in Alaska, Canada, and Russia, the book examines how well the ISO 37120 measures sustainability and how well it applies in northern conditions. In doing so, it links the Arctic cities into a broader conversation about urban sustainability more generally.

 

Stephanie Hitztaler and Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen wrote a chapter for the book titled “What Do ISO Indicators Tell Us about Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in Cities of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia?”

This chapter uses several ISO 37120 indicators to measure the contribution of corporate social responsibility to the cities of the natural-gas-producing Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Some of the indicators show the benefits of such programs, especially in the area
of building new sports facilities. But despite this improvement in the sustainability ranking as measured by this indicator, the ongoing fossil fuel extraction and Gazprom’s overall impact on the area reduce the city’s sustainability. In this sense, ISO indicators can be cherry
picked in ways that are deceptive in terms of a corporation’s overall impact on urban sustainability.

You can learn more about the book and order it online from the publisher’s website.

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Grant from Nordenskiöld-Samfundet

Our Doctoral Candidate Sohvi Kangasluoma got a grant for her dissertation from Nordenskiöld-Samfundet. Nordenskiöld-Samfundet is a society aimed at promoting geographical, scientific, and cultural-historical research on the archipelago. With the help of the grant, Sohvi Kangasluoma will continue to study the effect of the Arctic oil and gas industry on human security. Congratulations, Sohvi!

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Astravets nuclear power plant

Today Helsingin Sanomat published an article “Venäläisen voimalan varjossa” (In the shadow of the Russian power plant), telling a story of the Astravets nuclear power plant. The power plant is the first one to be built in Belarus after the Chernobyl disaster – in the country that took the harshest consequences of the nuclear accident.

Commenting on the issue, Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen encourages not to look at the nuclear sector separately –

Different sectors are interconnected. Nuclear diplomacy is an extension of hydrocarbon culture. Russia finances the nuclear power plant trade with oil and gas money

Read the full article online at Helsingin Sanomat.