Russian Regions Face Different Levels of Climate Vulnerability: Forbes Article on Russia’s Climate Adaptation Plans

Igor Makarov, Director of the HSE Institute for Economics of Natural Resources and Climate Change, and Elizaveta Smolovik, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Laboratory for Climate Change Economics, together with Alexander Chernokulskyand Tatiana Aniskina from the HSE Faculty of Geography and Geoinformation Technologies, have published an article in Forbes Russia examining climate risks across Russian regions. The authors presented the findings of a study that ranks Russian federal subjects according to their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

In their Forbes column, the authors explain that climate risks across Russia’s regions differ significantly both in terms of the nature of the threats and their economic consequences. For their analysis, the researchers applied a comprehensive methodology based on three groups of indicators: the degree of population exposure to climate-related phenomena, the probability of extreme weather events, and the socio-economic vulnerability of individual territories.

The study examines five major climate threats characteristic of Russia: heatwaves and their impact on public health, water stress and associated agricultural risks, forest fires, infrastructure damage caused by thawing permafrost, and the growing frequency of extreme precipitation events. For each region, the researchers calculated an index measuring the severity of the potential consequences of these phenomena, which was then used to compile a ranking of territories most in need of climate adaptation measures.

The Forbes article reflects the main findings of the flagship report jointly prepared by the HSE Institute of Environmental Economics and Natural Resources and Climate Change and the HSE Faculty of Geography and Geoinformation Technologies entitled Russia’s Ranking by Need for Climate Change Adaptation. The report is available online (in Russian).