Climate Change At Its Worst: Wild Fires Plague Russia
Hearing news every day about forest fires in central Russia and the casts of smog choking Russian cities, villages, even more so– the city of Moscow, I could not ignore this subject. I wanted to look at the reasons behind this natural disaster and discuss ways such disasters could be prevented, and if not, at least made more manageable. Recent reports say that the mortality rate in Moscow has risen to 700 per day, which is double the normal rate. It has been reported that 22 out of the country’s 83 regions are now affected by the wildfires, and that there is no end in sight to the extreme heat wave that hit Russia this summer.
Over the past two years my family and friends in Russia all complained about unusually cold winters and hot summers. When I traveled to Altai in January I experienced the abnormally cold winter myself – temperatures there dropped down as low as -57 degrees Celsius, which is -70.6 degrees Fahrenheit. On my recent trip in June, when I stopped for a day in Moscow, temperatures were up to +41 C, the equivalent to + 105.8 F. My conversations with Russian scientists and environmentalists have all pointed to the scientific phenomenon called extreme temperature oscillations, which are believed to be caused by climate change. The notion of climate change has always been scorned by the Russian government and thought of as a hoax invented by the West. But recently, it seems to be that Russia is finally changing its stance. On July 30, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said the following: “What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning [including] all heads of state, all heads of social organizations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.”
This could be a wake up call for Russia, and one in dire need, in this case specifically in relation to forest fires. Statistics reveal that in Russia approximately 90% of forest fires are human caused and that the majority of these fires in recent years have been the result of agricultural burning. Although normally prohibited by law in Russia, the intentional burning of agricultural land is widely carried out and mistakenly considered to be beneficial. Agricultural fires can spread beyond their intended area, and as such are often the cause of much larger forest fires. Starting in 1996, the Center for Space-Based Monitoring, Forest Institute, and Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Krasnoyarsk has been measuring the area of land in Russia that is burned each year. The total area burned from 1988-2002 averaged 9.9 million hectares per year. But this is not the whole story. Agriculture burning and forest fires are a huge source of black carbon, short-lived climate forcers believed to be responsible for at least 30 percent of Arctic warming observed to date. It is estimated that Russia contributed 78-84% of the world’s springtime black carbon from agricultural and forest fires between 2004 and 2007 [CATF: Agricultural Fires and Arctic Climate Change, May 2009]. Black carbon has an immediate direct effect of increasing ice melt and an indirect effect on the top atmospheric layer. The situation with fires in Russia is a vicious cycle – agricultural and forest fires contribute to climate change, and in its turn climate change causes more devastating fires. For Russia, reducing agricultural burning and associated forest fires definitely holds the greatest potential pay-off.
Back in June, I traveled to Altai with a group of energy experts from California. One of the exchange participants was Steve Eubanks, a U.S. Forest Service veteran and a biomass expert who has since 1995 been working with an International Forestry Team in Central Siberia to develop sustainable forestry concepts and practices. Russia is home to the most abundant natural resources including water, minerals, and of course, forests. Russia’s forests are known as the “lungs” of Europe, and they are second only to the Amazon Rainforest in the amount of carbon dioxide it absorbs. Unfortunately, over the last 10 to 15 years the area of protected forest land in Russia has significantly decreased, and the quality of fire protection has suffered. With the adoption of the new forestry legislation in 2006, the situation worsened and has since allowed for extensive logging, poaching of rare and endangered species, the exporting of these illegal goods to neighboring China, and corruption associated with this trade. As we drove across vast plains of Altai Krai, I could not help but notice how Steve disapprovingly shook his head looking at the forests. I asked Steve why and he replied that “the forest here is like a tinder box – one spark and the whole thing is gone. I am just very upset”. Now that there are wild fires raging all over Central Russia, we decided to interview Steve to get his perspective on the situation in Russia.
Click here to read the full interview with Steve Eubanks.
Tags: black carbon, climate change, forest fires, Russian Far East, wild fires
