Russian Arctic One of the Most Polluted Places on Earth

Norilsk is part of an Arctic that is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, but the permafrost and structural problems can’t be attributed to climate change alone. Norilsk’s pollution can be seen in the 5.9 million acres of dead or dying forest downwind from the Norilsk Nickel compound – a large scar slashed into Earth’s largest forested region. The intensity of Norilsk’s pollution is detectable from space. Satellite instrument readings show that no other human enterprise generates as much sulphur dioxide pollution. Originally built as a resource colony by prisoners in the Soviet Gulag, Norilsk has been a metal making center for 80 years. Norilsk Nickel outlasted communism, embraced capitalism, and now aims to ramp up production to sell the high-purity metals needed for batteries and other technologies of the 21st century clean energy economy. The company’s ambitions coincide with those of Russian President Vladimir Putin for greater development in the Far North, which he maintains can be accomplished sustainably. But Norilsk Nickel’s, abetted by a lax government, has spoiled a priceless environment, with implications for the entire planet. The company’s pollution has carved a barren landscape of dead and dying trees out of the taiga, or boreal forest, one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. Its wastewater has turned glacial rivers red. The acrid smoke that pours from its stacks is the worst sulphur dioxide pollution in the world. Norilsk is an example of the kind of systematic and long-term devastation that has animated a global movement to make destruction of nature an international crime. Norilsk is grappling with such damage from both without and within, as part of a region that is especially vulnerable to climate change, and as a city reliant on an industry that has poisoned its land and water. Norilsk Nickel maintains that it can rehabilitate its environment.