This week, the Eurasian Climate Brief team heads to the Balkans, Bulgaria, to look into the cracks of the European Union's carbon market (a.k.a., EU ETS). In July 2021, an investigation by Eleonora Vio and Daniela Sala for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found that two Bulgarian power plants appeared to have under-declared their carbon emissions. If true, this would mean the EU ETS would have lost around 30 million euros in emissions tax. Months later in...

Climate change affects almost all sectors of human societies and life. One underrated and underreported consequence of the climate crisis is taking so-called climate migration - displacement due to climate change. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) predicts the number of "environmental migrants" in 2050 to be between 25 million and 1 billion. To find out more about this topic and, in particular, about one of the most affected regions - Central Asia - Angelina and Boris spoke...

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian civil society has faced increasing repression at home. The environmental movement is no exception. While they kept communication channels open before the war, feeding the outside world precious data on the state of Russia's forests, permafrost and Arctic, large mainstream NGOs such as WWF, Greenpeace and Bellona have all been declared undesirable organisations in recent months. This makes their nation-level work near to impossible.  Angelina...

Air pollution has blighted Serbia for years. This is due to the country’s heavy reliance on coal, which in 2021 powered around 70% of its electricity.  Old diesel-powered vehicles and authorities move to tamper with air pollution criteria have also been part of the problem. In turn, activists have taken to the streets and courts. Our correspondents Lizi Auskery and Milivoje Pantović discuss the situation with activists, whistle-blowers and health workers in order to assess the scale of the...

It’s been a year since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war has killed hundreds of thousands both sides included and displaced millions of Ukrainians, while plunging the rest of Europe into an energy crisis.  Its environmental impacts have also been devastating, ranging from military chemical contamination and emissions to nuclear threats. In Russia, the government's swing towards totalitarianism has taken a severe toll on the climate and environmental movements. One...

The Eurasian Climate Brief team gets together to look back on the top climate stories that have taken place during 2022 across Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. From to the consequences of Russia's war in Ukraine for the global energy market and climate movement, to the hopeful rise of Ukrainian climate activism and low-carbon strategies in Central Asia, join us for unique analysis of the region's trends and what they might hold in store for the year ahead. The Eurasian...

A little more than two weeks after the end of COP27, the Eurasian Climate Brief team takes stock on what the summit in Sharm El-Cheikh has achieved, and where it fell short: How significant is the deal on the ‘loss and damage’ fund, aimed at compensating developing countries for irreversible climate impacts? And what progress has made, if any, in the fight to phase out fossil fuels? Needless to say that all of this is to be read against the background of the Russian attack on Ukraine, the...

As COP27 draws to a close, we take another deep dive into the impacts of Russia’s war against Ukraine on the climate negotiations and climate action at large. What were Moscow's priorities this year? How has the Russian delegation been treated by the rest of the climate community throughout the summit? Maria Pastukhova, a senior policy analyst at the climate think tank E3G, and Anna Korppoo, a research professor from the Fridtjof Nansens Institute in Norway, discuss these questions, and much...

Just a year ago, in the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow, we published the first Eurasian Climate Brief episode. With this year's COP on the doorstep - this time in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt - we are now bringing you the first installment in our special COP27 series. Angelina and Boris speak to Baktygul Chynybaeva, a journalist and communicator with CAN EECCA, the Climate Action Network in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. What are the delegations coming...

The six Western Balkan countries are struggling to embrace the EU’s plan on green energy. Albania produces almost all its electricity from hydropower plants, but at what cost to the environment? The construction of hydroelectric plants in the Librazhd area is destroying the ecosystem of the Shebenik-Jabllanice National Park. Some of the country’s hydroelectric power plants have been established without thought for the environment and in protected areas. Arlis Alikaj investigated the story in...

In late September, four leaks were detected in the gas pipelines linking Russia to Europe, Nord Stream 2 and Nord Stream 1.  The incidents, were, in all likelihood, an act of sabotage. In a joint letter to the UN Security Council, Denmark and Sweden declared that they were caused by "at least two detonations" with "several hundred kilos" of explosives, causing major leaks of natural gas into the Baltic Sea.  In this episode, we discuss the leaks’ environmental and geopolitical impacts with...

Energy prices were rocked by the Russian invasion, with Aluminium and Nickel prices increasing sharply in the first two weeks after the conflict began with the latter up by more than 100 percent.  Fears around the disruption to supply and concerns about soaring energy prices that could halt production in Europe are being blamed for the hikes. Other metals of interest in this war include titanium, scandium, and palladium. In this episode we discuss the issues around the production and supply...

In September 2019, Russia formally joined the Paris Agreement,  raising hopes the world's fourth emitter would finally throw its weight behind global decarbonisation efforts. The move followed years of lobbying from European governments, including Germany, France and Scandinavian countries.  Nearly 3 years later, the Kremlin's war on Ukraine appears to have severely undermined climate action and international collaboration over climate science.  In an interview with Boris Schneider, Maria...

The Eurasian Climate Brief is a podcast dedicated to climate issues in the region stretching from Eastern Europe to Russia down to the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this episode, we're speaking with Bill Hare, a physicist and climate scientist with 30 years’ experience in science, impacts and policy responses to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. He is a founder and CEO of Climate Analytics, which was established to synthesise and advance scientific knowledge on climate change...

The Eurasian Climate Brief is a podcast dedicated to climate issues in the region stretching from Eastern Europe to Russia down to the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this episode, we're speaking with one of the world’s top Russian energy experts, Thane Gustafson. How has the war in Ukraine has reshaped the global energy trade? And, could it help accelerate the energy transition? Thane is a professor in Russian politics and the politics of Government in the Soviet Union at Georgetown University...

One and a half months have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine from the South, the East and Belarus. This is the second episode in our special series on the environmental impacts of the war. On this episode we discuss the nuclear risks and hazards surrounding the war in Ukraine. With us today is Andriy Martynyuk, Executive Director of the NGO Ecoclub in Rivne, Western Ukraine. An environmental engineer by background, Martynyuk been working at Ecoclub since 2003 and is intimately acquainted...

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has changed everything.  At the time of writing, there have been more than 900 Ukrainian civilians and 1300 soldiers killed since the start of the invasion on 24 February. At least 7,000 Russian have died - a greater death toll than that of American troops over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The conflict carries risks for the environment, too. On 4 March, Europe held its breath after Russian forces shelled the continent’s largest nuclear power...

In this episode the Eurasian Climate Brief team are looking into the impact of China’s oil and gas ventures in Central Asia.  “What?” I hear you ask? “I thought China was going green and aiming to reach net-zero before 2060.” Take a listen to find out more about this huge story and hear the latest on the impact that China National Petroleum Corporation’s is having on Kazakhstan. We’ll also be bringing you the latest climate headlines from our region at the end of the episode. This episode...

On 25 January, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan suffered from a mysterious series of electricity power outages, plunging the region into chaos. For several hours, skiers lay perched on lifts and planes grounded while traffic lights, heating district and tap water pumps ran idle.  The incident comes after Kazakhstan, the world’s second largest bitcoin producer, faced a similar outage in November 2021. The culprit according to the government? Unregistered cryptocurrency miners. While the...

The Eurasian Climate Brief is a new podcast dedicated to climate news in the region stretching from Eastern Europe and Russia down to the Caucasus and Central Asia.  This episode is dedicated to the crackdown on environmental activism, almost one month after Russia’s oldest human rights group, Memorial, was liquidated. Our correspondents Anastasia and Ivan Shteynert report on the impact of the so-called foreign agents' law on ecological activism in St-Petersburg and beyond.  Vitaly Servetnik,...

It is one of the fiercest environmental disputes on European soil in decades: Warsaw and the Prague have spent the last year sparring over the future of a lignite coal mine located in Turów, southwest Poland, at the frontier with the Czech Republic and Germany. The Czech government argues the recently expanded mine is affecting local groundwater levels and polluting its environment, while the PiS-led cabinet claims the coal mine is essential to its energy security. Our Polish correspondent, ...

In this special New Year episode, we take you behind the scenes of the production of the Eurasian Climate Brief and brief you on the biggest climate stories of the year for our region. Natalie Sauer unpacks Eastern European climate politics, discussing how Poland and other Visegrad countries have locked horns with the EU over climate legislation and forest conservation measures. The spat between the Czech Republic and Poland over an open-pit lignite mine on the border also gets a mention. On...

Rio Tinto, the world's second biggest mining company, has spent the last years coveting a lithium mining project in Serbia. Exploratory drills have already produced leaks, soiling crops and underground water in their wake. Meanwhile, president Aleksander Vučić has been one of the mine's most fervent cheerleaders, attempting to force through a law facilitating expropriations and weakening referenda standards. But Serbian citizens are increasingly mobilising against it. Last week, mass...

On this edition of the podcast we are joined by Mariam Devidze from the Green Alternative to talk about climate finance in Georgia. We discuss projects by the Adaptation Fund in particular and we’ll hear about one carried out between 2012 and 2017 to prevent flash floods in the country’s second largest river basin, located on the river Rioni - the main river in Western Georgia.  The project equipped locals with a whole set of tools against flooding, including a new flooding warning system and...