Environmental Monitoring of Industrial Single-Industry Towns in the Arctic: Analyses and Recommendations

Abstract

This research analyses Arctic single-industry towns’ pollution levels in order to identify the most problematic areas and develop recommendations to reduce negative impact on Arctic environment. For this purpose, extensive data processing was carried out, which is resulted in ranking of 18 Arctic single-industry towns in terms of pollution indicators of both air and water. The top 5 most polluted singleindustry towns include such cities as Norilsk, Severodvinsk, Vorkuta, Kostomuksha and Segezha. However, recently various actors have been actively working on environmental rehabilitation in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation. Thus, in 2023, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, Arkhangelskaya Oblast and Republic of Karelia increased their positions among other Arctic regions. These regions hosted large-scale environmental actions, environmental lectures, research and launch of energy infrastructure facilities. Data on major federal projects dealing with environmental rehabilitation in single-industry towns (the Clean Arctic project, the Ecology national project) are also provided in this article.