Russia to spend 1.8 bln rubles to create system to monitor climate-active substances

MOSCOW. Sept 5 (Interfax) - The Russian government will allocate 1.8 billion rubles to conduct research in 2022 on the creation of a national system to monitor climate-active substances, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

"The funds will be received by dozens of research institutions across the whole country, which will conduct about 50 research and development studies. They include improvement of forecasting, creation of models of the ocean with its ice cover, our planet's climate in the past 200 years, a system to monitor the thawing of permafrost and scenarios for the decarbonisation of Russia and the world. Thanks to this, national action plans will be developed to combat desertification for 13 regions," Mishustin said.

The funding will go to the Science and Higher Education Ministry for subsequent distribution to its institutions; hydrometeorology and environmental monitoring service Rogidromet; and Moscow State University, according to the draft government order seen by Interfax.

They are supposed to develop a global model of the terrestrial system for scenario forecasting of climate change, a system for climate and environmental monitoring of key areas of Russia's seas and a system for terrestrial and remote monitoring of carbon pools and flows of greenhouse gases, as well as create a method for working out scenarios and models for assessing the socioeconomic impact of implementing the climate agenda, low-carbon development policy and measures to decarbonize the economy. There are also plans to expand the system of climate monitoring and forecasting in Russia by sector and region.

The government plans to spend a total of more than 11 billion rubles on financing the low-carbon agenda in 2022-2024.