Will Europe hear a landmark Russian climate change case? 

Until relatively recently, the Yukaghir people lived on the bleak, frozen tundra of northeast Siberia in the same way they had done for centuries, surviving on fishing, hunting, gathering and reindeer herding.

Today, there are only 1,813 of them remaining, according to the latest census, after conquest, disease outbreaks and assimilation by Russian settlers as well as industrialisation during the Soviet era. Now, what is left of their traditional lifestyle is threatened by the changing climate.

“Any fisherman knows when the best fishing is in his area, what time, where the fish are and when they bite best. This is knowledge of the natural rhythms associated with a particular spot,” Yukaghir elder Vyacheslav Shadrin told Al Jazeera.

“Indigenous peoples also possess such knowledge, … and based on this, we developed our survival strategy. … ‘Tomorrow, we’ll be here. Then we’ll move on to some other place’ and so on. And this allowed us to exploit these natural resources effectively and in the most environmentally friendly and ecological manner.”

But these weather cycles are no longer predictable, Shadrin said.

“Most elders say that nature is playing tricks or deceiving us. They try to explain why this is happening – because we’ve committed too many violations.”

Temperatures in Russia – the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, the United States and India – are rising at more than twice the global average.

This has led to mounting environmental consequences not only on the Siberian tundra but also for the entire planet.

As a result, a group of activists filed a lawsuit against the Russian government four years ago, first through the Russian Supreme Court, then the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Known as the Russian Climate Case, it argued that the Russian government has been irresponsible and failed to meet its international climate obligations.

But in June, an ECHR judge ruled the case inadmissible.

“No reasoning was provided,” said Arshak Makichyan, one of the plaintiffs. “Our legal team obviously disagrees, especially since there were similar cases that the court considered and ruled on, so this outcome was quite unexpected for us.”

Makichyan noted the consequences risked by many of the plaintiffs.

Along with other members of his family, Makichyan was stripped of his Russian citizenship in 2022, which he believes was retaliation for his activism.

“We can only speculate about the reasons. Personally, I think it was a political decision. … I believe the court was reluctant to deal with Russia on such a serious issue.”

An everyday reality

In Siberia and Russia’s Far North and Far East, the climate crisis is an everyday reality.

“Floods occurred once every three to four years, catastrophic floods once every 10 years,” Shadrin said. “And now, a year without floods is becoming something of an anomaly, [and] forest fires happen every year.”

Wildfires burn millions of hectares of Russian forests each year. Russia’s worst wildfire season since records began was in 2021 when nearly 190,000sq km (73,400sq miles) – larger than the area of Syria or Uruguay – were incinerated.

Although the situation has improved recently thanks to weather conditions and enhanced fire protections – only 10,000sq km (8,860sq miles) have burned so far this year – fires can occur nearly year-round, including within the Arctic Circle and during the winter, which had normally been spared.

Another issue is melting permafrost, which lies beneath more than half of Russia’s surface. Permafrost, short for permanent frost, stores vast amounts of greenhouse gases and organic matter over millennia. When it thaws, this all gets released as the ground opens up.

This accelerates climate change and causes more immediate complications.

“Most of the transport links in the north are what’s known as winter roads,” Shadrin said, referring to paths cleared through the ice and snow.

“In my village 30 years ago, the road was operational from the anniversary of the October Revolution [on November 7], and even on May 9 [Victory Day, another major Russian holiday], people were still celebrating in the district centre and returning. What we’re seeing now is the melting of permafrost, which means the ground surface we drive on is being destroyed.

“Now, at best, the winter road opens just before or after the New Year, … and around mid-April, these winter roads are closed because of intense melting. In just 30 years, the lifespan of winter roads has been cut in half, and we don’t have any permanent alternatives in the tundra. There are no other roads there.”

Helicopters are used to fly in supplies and deal with emergencies in these isolated villages, but they are expensive.

The thawing soil is a menace to other infrastructure, such as buildings, and the reappearance of organic material from centuries past can unleash dormant or ancient diseases.

In 2016, an anthrax outbreak in Siberia was believed to have originated from an animal carcass that emerged on the surface.

Climate commitments

Officially, Russia remains committed to the Paris Agreement, which it formally joined in 2019, pledging to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of carbon neutrality by 2060.

But as things stand, to meet the Paris goals, Russia would have to scale back emissions enormously. Modern Russia prioritises sovereignty and development over environmental causes, and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called for funding “alternative” research into global warming while environmental regulations have been watered down to support sanctions-hit industries.

“The state says that since 1990, Russia’s emissions, primarily CO2, have decreased more than any other country,” said Oleg Pluzhnikov, a former official from the Ministry of Economic Development who now works on international climate projects.

“But if you look at this matter more or less objectively without the government’s rose-tinted glasses, then in reality, Russia is among the countries that are doing practically nothing about this.”

According to Pluzhnikov, although Russia has many climate change and energy efficiency programmes on paper, in practice, little government funding has been allocated to them.

“For the most part, all policy is now being shaped and implemented precisely with the interests of the fossil fuel industry in mind,” he said.

Meanwhile, some observers fear that the departure of foreign firms after Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine has slowed down private investment in renewable energy. Meanwhile, the sanctions imposed on Russia and the exodus of foreign researchers have halted much-needed scientific cooperation across borders as well as the import of Western technology.

However, Pluzhnikov said the question of whether sanctions have affected Russia’s climate efforts misses the point because the authorities have been making few genuine efforts anyway.

“You can sanction someone who’s making progress, who’s developing something, right?” he continued. “But if there’s practically [no progress], what’s the point of sanctions? … Russia is now speculating on these sanctions to some extent. It says, ‘We can’t invest into low-carbon development because we don’t have access to technology.’ … Well, we understand that this is complete nonsense and cannot be an excuse for inaction.”

Nevertheless, decarbonisation continues slowly. Anastasia Pukhalskaya, rector of the Kaliningrad Institute for Advanced Training in Agribusiness and member of the Digoria Expert Club think tank, defended the government’s efforts.

“On the one hand, the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 remains intact, and projects to modernise industry, improve energy efficiency and develop low-carbon technologies are being implemented. On the other hand, for such a large country with a powerful industry and vast natural resource reserves, the issue of sovereignty remains no less important,” she told Al Jazeera.

Pukhalskaya said that while sanctions have “had an impact” on Russia’s move towards clean energy, they have also forced the country to explore “domestic solutions”.

“Today, the climate agenda in Russia is becoming more sovereign. More attention is being paid to the development of domestic technologies, scientific research and the localisation of production,” she said.

The Russian Climate Case

Nevertheless, whatever Russia is doing is not enough for the plaintiffs of the Russian Climate Case. Although Russia left the ECHR in September 2022, the violations allegedly occurred before that date, so the case should still fall within the court’s jurisdiction, those behind the case argued.

According to a complaint filed by the group’s lawyer Grigory Vaypan and seen by Al Jazeera, the case paperwork was lost, delaying proceedings, before a judge ruled the lawsuit inadmissible without providing any explanation.

“I have over a decade of experience litigating cases at the ECHR, and I have never encountered such arbitrariness and chaos from the court as in this case,” Vaypan told Al Jazeera.

The plaintiffs are planning to continue their efforts via other avenues, including appealing to the ECHR’s president and the United Nations human rights framework.

“We do not know what the situation with Russia will be in the future as a lot depends on political developments,” Makichyan said.

“But hopefully, at least on the international stage, people will continue paying attention to Russia’s environmental and climate policies since there are many diplomatic and economic ways to put pressure on the country.”