The State Corporation and the Ministry of Natural Resources propose to conduct separate state environmental monitoring on the Northern Sea Route
Shipping on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) does not have a negative impact on the environment in the Arctic a Rosatom official said.
Vladimir Panov, special representative for Arctic development of State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) who was speaking at the 12th Arctic: Present and Future International Forum said the conclusion is based on the results of work carried out in conjunction with the Lomonosov Moscow State University Marine Research Center (MSU MRC).
Environmental monitoring of the Northern Sea Route water basin was conduced during three years with collection of data based on the results of analysis of air, water, seabed sediments, microplastics, and satellite images, the Rosatom official said. The results obtained are open and accessible to the international scientific community.
“There are no analogues to this work in the world today. No one has a standard methodology for assessing the environmental impact of shipping. Our colleagues proposed an advanced methodology, and even international standards can be based on it. We can make an unambiguous conclusion based on the results of observations over three years that the development of Arctic shipping does not have a negative impact on the environment,” the IAA PortNews correspondent quoted Vladimir Panov as saying.
Based on the results, Rosatom, together the Ministry of Natural Resources, turned to the Russian government with a joint proposal to formulate special legislation, a new subsystem for environmental monitoring. This is about separate state monitoring, which will allow researchers to collect even more data on the impact of shipping on the Arctic environment.