Geographies of Toxic Persistence: Environmental Degradation in Russia's Industrial Regions

Abstract Despite growing global concern about the environment; growing numbers of international agreements designed to mitigate the effects of pollution; and numerous governmental regulations adopted to improve environmental conditions in the Russian industrial regions of the North (Norilsk), and the large-scale industrial region of the Urals, environmental damage has continued to increase. The long-standing issue of environmental damage in Russia’s industrial regions is the focus of this research question: what are the geographic factors that have allowed environmental degradation to persist in these areas? Utilizing an extensive mixed-methodology study of both geospatial analysis and historical reviews of industrialization under the Soviet Union, along with in-depth qualitative case studies of Norilsk and the Urals, this study identifies and analyzes the key drivers that allow environmental degradation to continue to be a problem in Russia’s industrial regions. These results show how the specific geographic characteristics of each of these places have synergized historically with the legacy of the Soviet Union's industrialization policies, which emphasized the importance of production over the environment, and economically today, with the imperative to extract resources for the financial benefit of Russia. This study has significant implications for the development of environmental policies in other areas of the world where natural resources are being extracted at high volumes, such as Canada's oil sands and Australia's mining frontier, promoting the need for geographically-tailored strategies, i.e., increased use of remote sensing technologies and decentralized governance structures. Additionally, this study builds upon current scholarship in the field of environmental geography, specifically in post-industrial and post-Soviet contexts, to better understand the role of physical and human geographies in sustaining ecological crises, while also addressing a gap in the literature in terms of understanding the relationship between time and space in analyzing the persistence of ecological crises.