The public environmental initiative Clean Arctic has just concluded its first expedition to the Svalbard archipelago. Recently, 15 volunteers from Russia and Belarus returned to Murmansk aboard the research vessel Professor Molchanov.

Following the expedition, the participants have put forward a proposal to establish an International Volunteer Camp. The main aim is to bring together volunteers from all Arctic nations to carry out joint clean-up operations – removing scrap metal, discarded fuel drums, abandoned machinery and dilapidated structures. The idea is to create a permanent hub, under the Clean Arctic umbrella, to coordinate these efforts and share best practices in recycling and waste processing.

Industrial contamination in the Arctic is not a Russian problem alone. According to publicly available scientific assessments, including reports from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), considerable quantities of scrap metal and obsolete infrastructure still remain in parts of Canada, the United States of America and Norway, left over from the Cold War.

The project’s director, Andrei Nagibin, commented: “The Arctic is a shared heritage of mankind– a fragile ecosystem and the planet’s ‘weather engine’. Its future does not depend on political ambitions, but on our collective will to come together and put things right. The environment should be above politics. An International Volunteer Camp would allow us to move from rhetoric to real, tangible action.”

The project’s first-ever environmental mission to Svalbard set off on 2 June. Clean Arctic volunteers, together with corporate volunteers from Trust Arcticugol worked on clearing up Russian settlements. In Barentsburg, they dismantled an old heating pipeline that had been abandoned for nearly 20 years. Meanwhile, in Pyramiden they prepared the first 30 tonnes of scrap metal for shipment back to the mainland.

Source and photos: State Trust Arcticugol