A Russian region cleans up its act
Khanty-Mansiysk is an industrial town in Russia with a booming oil industry, located by the busy Irtysh River and surrounded by marshland. The EU-funded project 'Environmental risk management for contaminated marsh land in Khanty-Mansiysk' (Enrima CONMA) aimed to address the pollution created by the oil sector. It established a research network involving partners from Russia and Europe to increase knowledge transfer, assess risks and conceive a strategy for contaminated marshes. The project mapped available knowledge and encouraged research, networking and innovation to address the challenge. It investigated existing solutions, indentified weaknesses in monitoring, studied relevant laws and looked at regional issues in order to start formulating remediation strategies. After analysing all the data, Enrima CONMA proposed a multidisciplinary strategy to closely identify environmental damage and encourage sustainable development. It developed a platform to exchange knowledge and suggested topics for 40 research projects that would further this aim. Subjects included the surveillance, identification and prevention of unknown impacts, as well as risk assessment, drafting of guidelines, permit process and sustainable long-term exploration for oil. The platform is expected to improve collaboration among regulators, experts, authorities and oil producers. In short, the project outlined two distinct approaches for Khanty-Mansiysk to assess remediation techniques and offer viable waste management solutions. This has the power to go beyond the target area and could prove beneficial for several countries that are into oil exploration, promoting environmental sustainability beyond the said region's borders.
