The agenda: a single method of calculating the regions’ performance indicators in achieving the key goals of socioeconomic development; the Federal Environmental Development Scientific and Technical Programme until 2030.
Meeting with deputy prime ministers
Mikhail Mishustin: Good afternoon, colleagues,
Let us begin with regional issues.
At the President’s initiative, since last year each one of you has been curating a federal district of Russia. This is a large and responsible job. The main task is to improve people’s quality of the life by ensuring the development of the territories, their economy and social sphere, taking into consideration the national goals set by the President. And, of course, it is necessary to find growth points depending on the specifics and advantages of our regions in order to help them fully discover their potential.
Today, 362 projects have been chosen across all the federal districts. According to preliminary estimations, their implementation will make it possible to attract over 11.5 trillion roubles worth of private investment and create over 250,000 jobs.
And, of course, it is important to see clearly the real effect of these projects and the general dynamics of the socioeconomic development of the Russian regions and federal districts. In order to do this, the Government has developed and approved a special single method. It will be used to calculate the four main indicators, their real and planned value. They will reflect how people’s real incomes change, as well as the number of jobs, the production of goods and services, and the volume of investments in fixed assets, excluding budgetary funds. At the same time, we will monitor how the regional projects are influencing the situation on the ground.
Colleagues, these indicators should serve as a guideline in your work; a signal for action, if you like. On the basis of these indicators, you will be able to determine those areas that need to be given more attention.
Your priority must be providing for people’s wellbeing and creating comfortable living conditions in the areas you supervise. Our citizens are waiting for specific results.
Now for another important issue, the environment, an issue which attracts special attention in many countries. Russia makes significant efforts to address this matter.
As per the Presidential Executive Order, the Government has developed a federal programme on environmental development and climate change action for the period to 2030. We discussed it recently at a meeting of the Council on Science and Education chaired by the President.
The purpose of the programme is to direct our research and technical potential towards building a base of verified data on climate and the environment, as well as to develop knowledge-intensive technology and the tools required for conceptually new environmental research.
Another important measure is building a greenhouse gas emission and uptake tracking system. The President specifically stressed how important this was.
Overall, the programme will help to produce research results and develop breakthrough technology to manage and minimise climate risks.
Ms Abramchenko, the federal research and technology programme includes a wide range of tasks to be addressed step by step. Please tell us what you plan to do first and what your timeline is.
Viktoria Abramchenko: Mr Mishustin, colleagues, our country is consistently fulfilling all its international obligations concerning the climate agenda.
Since 1990, Russia has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions to a greater extent than many other countries. Specifically, the emissions have been reduced by half. We continue to upgrade our industrial facilities in line with environmental requirements. As a result, low-emission sources currently account for 45 percent of our energy mix.
In addition, we adopted a development strategy focusing on low emissions until 2050 and a framework law on curbing emissions. We created conditions for an experiment to achieve carbon neutrality on Sakhalin.
At the same time, the lack of reliable data on emissions and uptake presents a very serious challenge to the climate agenda. Verified data is necessary to make sure that our measures to reverse climate change actually work.
This week's meeting of the Presidential Council for Science and Education focused on a very important innovative project which provides for creating a national system for high-precision monitoring of climate-active gases. Such a system will allow Russia to build up the necessary competencies and obtain data recognised by the international community.
In addressing climate and environmental issues, science plays the key role, because access to technologies for obtaining reliable data on the current state of the climate and environment, as well as forecasts of such changes from several months to hundreds of years, can only be obtained through ambitious research.
Following the President’s instruction, the Government approved the federal research and technology programme for environmental development and climate change through 2030, which involves a number of such large-scale events. The Government allocated 5.9 billion roubles for its implementation over the next three years.
Let me outline the four priority areas under the programme.
The first one is developing a system to monitor and record data on greenhouse gas flows and the carbon cycle in terrestrial ecosystems of Russia. Let me remind you that Russia makes a huge contribution to the absorption of global emissions – both its own and those of others – due to the absorbing capacity of all our ecosystems, and mainly forests.
Data accounting will cover a wide geographical area –the European part, Siberia and the Russian Far East. Moreover, it will include all natural zones: tundra, taiga, mixed broadleaved woodland, forest steppes, steppes and semi-deserts. We will take into account various landscape environmental conditions, including mountainous areas, swamps, large forests and agricultural development areas.
The best scientific institutes and laboratories will take part in researches to develop the monitoring system in terrestrial ecosystems. In total, there will be 18 organisations subordinate to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and Rosgidromet agency.
The second sphere of activity is related to the monitoring system for key areas of the world ocean, coastal zones and seas of Russia. It is the world ocean that is a major neutraliser of greenhouse gases. According to experts, the world ocean absorbs about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. However, the state of the marine environment and the processes occurring in it are monitored only as part of marine expeditions. Such observations are episodic and do not provide full data for building mathematical models and predicting expected changes. Therefore, it is necessary to create an ocean monitoring system based on autonomous observational complexes as well as satellite and shipborne observations. Under the programme, the system will unite the work of 11 research centres.
The third major area of the Federal Science and Technology project is climate modelling. There is no unified climate forecasting system in the world. Due to the lack of modelling technologies, countries have to adopt scenarios calculated based on closed-ended algorithms.
Many countries, including the United States, Great Britain and China, have their own climate prediction and expert assessment models. Russia should certainly develop a similar model based on global and regional climate systems. Modelling will allow us to predict local climate changes and their consequences. We are currently consolidating the resources of eight climate modelling research organisations for this purpose and also plan to introduce additional computational capacity for the research that is required.
Finally, the fourth area is economic modelling, where we develop models to evaluate the efficiency of climate change related actions not only for the national economy in general but for specific sectors and regions.
Mr Mishustin, in cooperation with our colleagues from the Presidential Executive Office, the Russian Academy of Sciences, leading research centres and competent agencies, we have developed a detailed roadmap for this project. It will be launched as soon as this year. We will shortly hold a meeting of the ad-hoc council to approve the list of consortiums involved, the action plan and targets.
I would like to conclude by saying that fighting climate change and adapting economic sectors to changes is impossible without innovative technology, continuous scientific support and investment in climate projects. The approved federal programme creates conditions for this breakthrough not only in terms of realistically assessing risks and making most effective decisions but also in terms of predicting changes for years ahead.
Mikhail Mishustin: Thank you, Ms Abramchenko. This project is one of the major tools to achieve the goals set by the President concerning environmental security and efforts to prevent adverse climate change.
It is important to address the tasks on the agenda step by step. And I expect that the base of reliable data, effective technology and mechanisms to improve the environment will be created within the set terms.
