The Eurasian Climate Brief

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 M...

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 brin...

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 Novemb...

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-...

It is one of the fiercest environmental disputes on European soil in decades: Warsaw and the Prague have spent the last year sparring over the future of a lignite coal mine located in Turów, southwest Poland, at the frontier with the Czech Republic and Germany. The Czech government argues the recently expanded mine is affecting local groundwater levels and polluting its environment, while the PiS-...

In this special New Year episode, we take you behind the scenes of the production of the Eurasian Climate Brief and brief you on the biggest climate stories of the year for our region. Natalie Sauer unpacks Eastern European climate politics, discussing how Poland and other Visegrad countries have locked horns with the EU over climate legislation and forest conservation measures. The spat between t...

Rio Tinto, the world's second biggest mining company, has spent the last years coveting a lithium mining project in Serbia. Exploratory drills have already produced leaks, soiling crops and underground water in their wake. Meanwhile, president Aleksander Vučić has been one of the mine's most fervent cheerleaders, attempting to force through a law facilitating expropriations and weakening...

On this edition of the podcast we are joined by Mariam Devidze from the Green Alternative to talk about climate finance in Georgia. We discuss projects by the Adaptation Fund in particular and we’ll hear about one carried out between 2012 and 2017 to prevent flash floods in the country’s second largest river basin, located on the river Rioni - the main river in Western Georgia.  The project equipp...

We're reviewing COP26 and asking whether the 1.5 degree target has been kept alive, which would avert catastrophic climate change. What are the conclusions of this COP for Eurasia? And were activists and NGOs from the region capable of being represented at this historic climate summit?  Our guest to discuss this is Olha Boiko, coordinator of CAN EECCA (Climate Action Network focusing on Easte...

This time we are discussing another important COP26 topic; climate finance. Our guest is the head of the climate and energy programme at WWF Russia, Alexey Kokorin. Developing countries have hit out at the OECD definition of climate finance, which includes grants, loans, and export finance credits from both private and public sources. We asked Alexey, amongst other things, what exactly counts as c...

This time we are joined by a top carbon offset expert to guide us through this complex topic. Gilles Dufrasne is a policy officer at Carbon Market Watch. Joining us from a busy COP26 conference centre, Gilles explains what carbon offsetting is and looks at some of the pitfalls with the carbon market system. The Eurasian Climate Brief is a new podcast dedicated to climate news in the region stretch...

Today we’ve been in the heart of the city, meeting activists who are taking part in protests across Glasgow. We met up with 25 year old student violinist, Arshak Makychian from Fridays for Future Russia. It’s an organisation which urges governments to listen to scientists and meet the commitments they made in the Paris agreement. Arshak has been described as the most lonely protestor after he stag...

This time we’re discussing deforestation. We’re in Glasgow again continuing our special COP26 series, recording this episode a day after more than one hundred countries committed to end and reverse deforestation. Among the signatories were many of the states of our region: some of the big guns - Russia, Poland, Ukraine. Joining them are also Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Latvi...

The Eurasian Climate Brief is a new podcast dedicated to climate news in the region stretching from Eastern Europe and Russia down to Caucasia and Central Asia.  Join us in Glasgow for our special COP26 series. The talks have been billed as the last-chance summit to prevent catastrophic climate change. In this episode we’re focussing on Russia's current reliance on coal, less than a day after...

The Eurasian Climate Brief is a new podcast dedicated to climate news in the region stretching from Eastern Europe and Russia down to Caucasia and Central Asia.  Over the next two weeks, we’ll be taking you to Glasgow for a special series during COP26. This international conference has been billed as the last-chance summit to prevent catastrophic climate change. We’re kickstarting our special COP2...

The Eurasian Climate Brief is a new podcast focussing on climate news in the region stretching from Eastern Europe, Russia down to the Caucasus and Central Asia. It aims to give a voice to the best experts and journalists, enabling them to make sense of a part of the world where environmental news is seriously underreported. The podcast is set to launch in late October when we'll be releasing...