MURMANSK –The Arctic nations that make up the Arctic Council partially approved an expansion of their organization by granting China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore permanent observer status in a powerful signal of the polar region's growing international importance.

SOSNOVY BOR, Russia – Katsutaka Idogawa, mayor of Futaba – a town closest to the destroyed nuclear power plant (NPP) Fukushima Daiichi and which was permanently evacuated following the nuclear disaster there in March 2011 – appealed to his counterpart in Sosnovy Bor, the town which is home to Leningrad nuclear station, near Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg, urging him to say no to nuclear energy and not let the nuclear industry compromise the future of his town, the future of his country, and the lives and health of his citizens.

MURMANSK – While Russian gas and oil companies jockey for position to produce on the Arctic Shelf, specialists from emergency services are attempting to address the issue of accidents, which are an inevitable component of such operations, and the problems are many – starting with satellite monitoring of oil slicks to spill cleanup and identifying culprits in pollution.

MURMANSK – A public hearing last week over controversial drilling of oil exploration wells slated for this year in the Barents Sea was sparsely attended by the by the public, with only two representatives of local ecological organizations showing up, despite high attendance by project developers.

MOSCOW –The upcoming fifth climate change report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is believed to reveal new, and gruesome, scientific data: Natural and anthropogenic factors contributing to global climate change will escalate in the 2040s, causing ever more devastating effects on the planet. The “climate time bomb” is set to go off – unless humankind does something about it.

MOSCOW – Fifteen years ago, Russian NGOs were still urging against Russia joining the Aarhus Convention because the environmental legislation of the 90s according them wide berth to receive ecological information and the right to take part in decision-making processes.

Alexander Nikitin, Chairman of the Environmental Rights Center (ERC) Bellona will attend a summons by prosecutors in St. Petersburg who have leveled various charges against the organization for alleged violations of health and fire codes as part of the intensified efforts by the Kremlin to hobble Russian NGOs receiving foreign funding.

Bellona is calling for a debate on the role of Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) amid suggestions that only pressure from supervisory bodies compel the government agency to pursue critical legal investigations of environmental crimes.

From the 22nd to the 25th of April, members of the Bellona Carbon Capture and Storage were in Canada to visit the soon-to-be-operational Boundary Dam and Quest CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) projects in Saskatchewan.