Arkhangelsk and Murmansk Oblasts are the part of the Barents region with sharpest drop in population, while both Northern Sweden and Norway get more people.
Russian Ecological Chamber, an NGO created by former State Duma Deputies, invites to Barents EcoWeek, a gathering other environmental groups call «a highly questionable event.»
Electric car enthusiasts from Bergen, Oslo, Hammerfest, Minsk and St. Petersburg drive towards Murmansk showing that even Europe's remotest corner is within range.
Norway aims at being in the forefront in Europe of providing shore electricity to cut emission, but that might be a challenge at ports in the high north where power line capacity is limited.
Civilian vessels with daily rates of up to $10,000 are lining up in the Norwegian-Russian maritime border area waiting for the Northern Fleet to stop shooting.
A significant green step is taken outside Luleå for an industry that accounts for about a quarter of direct CO2 emissions in global industry production.
Thomas Nilsen is editor of the Independent Barents Observer with its news desk located in Kirkenes, northern Norway. He has a long experience in media cooperation across the borders in the high north of Europe, both as radio- and newspaper reporter all the way back to the days before the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Nilsen has been editor of Barents Observer since 2009.
He was Deputy Head of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat from 2004-2009. Until 2003, he worked 12 years for the Bellona Foundation’s Russian study group, focusing on nuclear safety issues and general environmental challenges in northern areas and the Arctic.
Thomas has been traveling extensively across northern Scandinavia and Arctic Russia since the late 80’s working for different media and organizations. He is also a guide at sea and in remote locations in the Russian north for various groups and regularly lectures on security issues, environmental and socio-economic development.
Thomas Nilsen studied at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.