As the effects of climate change grow more intense each year, attention is shifting to the inevitable geopolitical impacts of a warming planet. In 2020, Russia experienced its warmest winter on record, while the summer saw forest fires rip through Siberia like never before. At the same time, a warming Arctic has opened up previously inaccessible shipping lanes, providing Russia with new economic opportunities. Research by experts like Marshall Burke, deputy director of the Center for Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University, and Russian climate ecologist Nadezhda Tchebakova suggests that Russia is uniquely well-positioned to capitalize on climate change. Not only will warming temperatures help Russia increase its already robust agricultural production, according to Tchebakova, but forced migration north due to climate change will also boost Russia’s population. This will allow the country to take advantage of its new position in what Burke has found to be the climate sweet spot for optimum human productivity. Others, like Prof. Alexander Kislov of Moscow State University and Roman Pukalov, director of environmental programs at the Moscow-based NGO Green Patrol, argue that Russia, warming faster than almost any other country on the planet, is facing an accelerating emergency that Russian climate activists feel Moscow has little will to confront. Far from the capital, melting permafrost releases methane gas, uncovers deadly buried pathogens and costs billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure, while catastrophic forest fires have become an annual event. Whether climate change spells a bleak or a prosperous future for Russia, its impacts will force a change in U.S.-Russian relations, necessitating “fresh thinking” from the Biden administration, notes Fiona Hill, former senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council and co-author of a book about the industrialization of Siberia.
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