Creating a state system for monitoring permafrost thawing in the Arctic is the most important task, which should be implemented in the next few years, said Oleg Kosolapov, director of the Eastern State Planning Center (FANU Vostokgosplan), a federal research institution.
“Creating a state system for monitoring permafrost in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation is a necessary, extremely important task. It needs to be solved in the next few years,” he said in an interview with tvoidv.ru.
At the same time, according to Kosolapov, when developing the image of state monitoring of permafrost in the Arctic zone, it is important to create an approach that would allow streams of monitoring data to be sent to unified information processing and decision-making centers.
“To develop such a mechanism, interdepartmental interaction at the highest level is necessary,” he said.
The director explained that “in the initial period of organization of the system of state monitoring of the permafrost zone in the Arctic, the functions of such regional centers can be performed by specialized scientific organizations with separate target financing and core staff.
“This will enable the highest quality analysis of the information obtained during the period of formation and development of the monitoring system”, – concluded Kosolapov.
Speaking about forecasts of socio-economic development of the Far East and the Arctic for 2021, Kosolapov noted the decrease in business activity in the region due to the pandemic coronavirus infection.
“Vostokgosplan FANU’s assessment of the expected social and economic development outcomes of the constituent entities of the Far Eastern Federal District shows that the macro-region’s economy will decline by 1, 5% in 2020,” he noted.
“The further growth trajectory of the economy of the Far East is characterized by considerable uncertainty. As the most likely scenario in 2021, seven of the 11 regions in the Far East forecast the recovery of positive dynamics of gross regional product (GRP) at a rate ahead of the national average,” the director said.
According to Vostokgosplan experts’ forecasts, the main drivers of growth will be the basic economic sectors of the macro-region – mineral extraction and the transport and logistics complex.
The full text of the interview with O. Kosolapov, director of FANU Vostokgosplan, is available here.