Between March 22 and 24, 2023, an international conference on global warming and melting permafrost was held in Yakutsk, northeast Siberia. It is one of the fastest warming regions in the world and where melting frozen ground could have a global impact. But this climate issue is also a victim of international sanctions against Russia. Back from reporting, Anissa El Jabri, RFI’s permanent correspondent in Moscow, tells us.
” It is customary to say that the Amazonian forest represents the lungs of the planet, but what is less known is that the forests of Siberia are just as much “, explain Anissa El Jabri in this episode of News cookies. It describes the capital, Yakutsk, and the temperatures with large differences between winter and summer. ” As soon as you leave the capital, you have a feeling of immensity where the white snow, the pines and the birches merge and you drive on this ice called permafrost. “. In Yakutia, this thick layer of ice which covers 70% of the territory is more than ever threatened by global warming, it is melting much more than elsewhere and the study of this phenomenon makes it possible to learn more about the climate and the melting of the arctic.
During our conversation, Anissa El Jabri says that the international sanctions affecting Russia because of the Ukrainian conflict have undermined global scientific cooperation. ” Current projects continue, but there are no new ones, and this is a first, last summer no joint scientific expedition took place in northern Siberia, neither in Yakutia, nor in Arctic “. Our correspondent also tells about the dwellings, which must be rebuilt elsewhere because of the thaw and the fear of the inhabitants, but beyond the dwellings, global warming also destroys spiritualities: ” For the inhabitants, it is not just about the landscapes, the resources, it is also their whole spirituality which is affected because it is the shamans who, for them, live in these places. “.
►Also listen: Fires in Siberia, the endless struggle
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