The Eurasian Climate Brief

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 Sascha Müller-Kraenner, the CEO of Deutsche Umwelthilfe (Environmental Action Germany), a leading environmental, nature conservation, and consumer advocacy organisation.  In 2020, his NGO filed a lawsuit with Germany's Higher Administrative Court against the construction of Nord Stream 2  over its potential methane leaks, including as a result of acts of terrorism. Although Müller-Kraenner lost that legal battle, he has now won the argument.

We check in with him whether the leaks are the methane bomb we might fear, and what can we do to fix them. Moreover, could these events prompt governments to take climate security - as well as energy security - more seriously?

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.

This episode is supported by n-ost, The Moscow Times and the European Climate Foundation, and made by:

• Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and English-language editor for The Conversation.  A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
• Boris Schneider, European Journalism Project Manager at Clean Energy Wire (CLEW). Prior he has worked as a specialist on Eastern European climate and energy topics, amongst others for navos Public Dialogue Consultants and the German Economic Team. He graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a M. Sc. in Economics and is interested in the intersection of political economy and ecology in Eurasia.
• Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting. Angelina left Russia in March 2022 and is now a fellow of the journalistic programme Media in Cooperation and Transition (MICT) in Berlin.

Production by the www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk

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 of rare earth minerals with Robert Muggah, a political scientist, urbanist and security expert and the co-founder of the Igarape Institute, a think tank dedicated to climate security based in Brazil.

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.

This episode is supported by n-ost, The Moscow Times and The European Climate Foundation, and made by:

• Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and English-language editor for The Conversation. She is also a MA student in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College London. A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

•Boris Schneider, European Journalism Project Manager at Clean Energy Wire CLEW. Prior he has worked as a specialist on Eastern European climate and energy topics, amongst others for navos Public Dialogue Consultants and the German Economic Team. He graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a M. Sc. in Economics and is interested in the intersection of political economy and ecology in Eurasia.

•Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting. Angelina left Russia in March 2022 and is now a fellow of the journalistic programme Media in Cooperation and Transition (MICT) in Berlin.

Support our work on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/EurasianClimate.

This podcast is produced by https://www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk/

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 Pastukhova, a senior policy advisor at E3G climate think tank, assesses the  state of the ecological transition and advises on how the West can limit the damage.

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.

This episode is supported by n-ost, The Moscow Times and The European Climate Foundation, and made by:

• Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and English-language editor for The Conversation. She is also a MA student in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College London. A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

•Boris Schneider, European Journalism Project Manager at Clean Energy Wire CLEW. Prior he has worked as a specialist on Eastern European climate and energy topics, amongst others for navos Public Dialogue Consultants and the German Economic Team. He graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a M. Sc. in Economics and is interested in the intersection of political economy and ecology in Eurasia.

•Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting. Angelina left Russia in March 2022 and is now a fellow of the journalistic programme Media in Cooperation and Transition (MICT) in Berlin.

Support our work on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/EurasianClimate.

This podcast is produced by https://www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk/

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 and provide state-of-the-art solutions to global and national climate change policy challenges.

This episode is made by:

•Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and English-language editor for The Conversation. She is also a MA student in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College London. A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

•Boris Schneider, European Journalism Project Manager at Clean Energy Wire CLEW. Prior he has worked as a specialist on Eastern European climate and energy topics, amongst others for navos Public Dialogue Consultants and the German Economic Team. He graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a M. Sc. in Economics and is interested in the intersection of political economy and ecology in Eurasia.

•Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting. Angelina left Russia in March 2022 and is now a fellow of the journalistic programme Media in Cooperation and Transition (MICT) in Berlin.

Support our work on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/EurasianClimate.

This podcast is produced by https://www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk/

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 in Washington. A former professor at Harvard University, he is the author of many books, amongst them, The Bridge: Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe and Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia, as well as most recently Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change.

This episode is made by:

•Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and English-language editor for The Conversation. She is also a MA student in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College London. A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

•Boris Schneider, European Journalism Project Manager at Clean Energy Wire CLEW. Prior he has worked as a specialist on Eastern European climate and energy topics, amongst others for navos Public Dialogue Consultants and the German Economic Team. He graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a M. Sc. in Economics and is interested in the intersection of political economy and ecology in Eurasia.

•Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting. Angelina left Russia in March 2022 and is now a fellow of the journalistic programme Media in Cooperation and Transition (MICT) in Berlin.

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 with the country’s nuclear situation.  Following an overview of the nuclear power plants in the country, he and Boris Schneider discuss the most pressing nuclear risks tied to the war, from radioactive dust from Chernobyl to how attacks on spent nuclear fuel storage facilities could unleash a "dirty nuclear bomb". Also on the table is the question of the international community's response, as the two men delve into the effectiveness of bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the face of the conflict.

This episode is produced by:

•Boris Schneider, a climate and environment lead at n-ost, a Berlin-based network for cross-border reporting. Boris heads initiatives to boost climate journalism in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.

•Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting.

Support our work on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/EurasianClimate.

This podcast is produced by https://www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk/

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 plant, Zaporizhzhia, igniting a fire at a training building. In this instance, firefighters succeeded in extinguished the flames and catastrophe was averted.

But the conflict also threatens to unleash chemical hazards. On 21 March, another shelling caused an ammonia leak at a chemical factory near Novoselytsya, in the West of the country on the border with Romania. Residents scrambled to take shelter.

Join us, as we discuss the environmental dimensions of the conflict with Wim Zwijnenburg, a project leader for the Dutch peace organisation PAX.  A long-time analyst of the nexus between conflict and the environment in the Middle East, Zwijnenburg has been monitoring the environmental impacts of the conflict in Ukraine since 2014. 

This episode is made by:

•Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and MA student in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College London. A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

•Boris Schneider, a climate and environment lead at n-ost, a Berlin-based network for cross-border reporting. Boris heads initiatives to boost climate journalism in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.

•Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting.

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 is made by:
•Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and MA student in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College London. A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

•Boris Schneider, a climate and environment lead at n-ost, a Berlin-based network for cross-border reporting. Boris heads initiatives to boost climate journalism in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. 

•Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting.

•Stephen M. Bland is a freelance journalist, award-winning author, researcher and editor specialising in post-Soviet territories. His book on Central Asia, “Does it Yurt?”, was released in 2016, and he is currently putting the finishing touches to a book about the Caucasus.

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 exact cause of the 25 January power shortage has yet to be pinpointed, it is now established crypto-mining is piling pressure on the countries’ creaking soviet energy infrastructure.

Join us as we discuss the carbon footprint of crypto in Central Asia and the rest of Eurasia. Our reporter Stephen Bland talks to residents and experts about the industry’s impact on Kazakhstan, while Boris Schneider asks economist and campaigner Alex de Vries whether there can ever be such a thing as green crypto-mining.

We’ll also be bringing you the latest climate headlines from our region at the end of the episode.

This episode is made by:

•Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and MA student in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College London. A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

•Boris Schneider, a climate and environment lead at n-ost, a Berlin-based network for cross-border reporting. Boris heads initiatives to boost climate journalism in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. 

•Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting.

•Stephen M. Bland is a freelance journalist, award-winning author, researcher and editor specialising in post-Soviet territories. His book on Central Asia, “Does it Yurt?”, was released in 2016, and he is currently putting the finishing touches to a book about the Caucasus.

•Production by the www.thepodcastcoach.co.uk

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, a campaigner at Russia Friends of the Earth and the Russian socioecological union, takes us through the nuts and bolts of the legislation and explains why environmentalists are set to be the next targets of the Putin regime after human rights activists. 

Plus we’ll be bringing you the latest climate headlines from our region at the end of the episode.

This episode is hosted by:

* Natalie Sauer, a French British environmental journalist and MA student in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University College London. A former reporter for Climate Home News, her words have also appeared in international media such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Politico Europe, Open Democracy, Euractiv and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

* Boris Schneider, a climate and environment lead at n-ost, a Berlin-based network for cross-border reporting. Boris heads initiatives to boost climate journalism in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. 

* Angelina Davydova, an environmental journalist from Russia. Angelina has been writing about climate change in the region for Russian and international media and attending UN climate summits since 2008. She also teaches environmental journalism and environmental and climate policy and communication in a number of universities and regularly organises training for journalists from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus on environmental and climate reporting.

* Anastasia and Ivan Shteynert, two radio journalists based in St-Petersburg.

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This podcast is co-hosted by Brussels’ thebattleground.eu and n-ost, a Berlin based network for cross-border reporting.