Anna-Lena Laurén: Climate change, hungry polar bears haunt Novaya Zemlya

Novaya Zemlya is one of the most hard-to-reach areas. It is located on Russia's roof – north-east of the yamal peninsula, between the Barents sea and the kara sea.

To Novaya Zemlya go, you are sent there. A Russian citizen that want to visit Novaya Zemlya makes it the easiest by being a soldier or a construction worker. Foreigners need a special permit that is extremely difficult to get.

But for the polar bear is the Novaya Zemlya at home. That is to say, one of the homes – the polar bear thrives on the pack ice further to the north, where it has a table in the form of ringed and harp seals.

because of climate change pulls the pack further and further and further away. It has led to more and more polar bears stay on land and looking for food in piles of rubbish.

harried about fifty bears around the village of Belusjaja Guba. The bears moved inside the city, reacted neither in dogs or noise and literally forced their way into buildings. Last Saturday, decided Archangelskdistriktet that the bears should be sedated down and moved.

Exactly where the animals are to be moved is. There is no more food at other places on the island and the polar bears can move quickly over long distances back to the places where they know they will find food.

It is difficult to imagine a more effective alarm clock when it comes to climate change than a flock of hungry and ill-tempered polar bears literally on the doorstep. But on Novaya Zemlya is just less than three thousand people, and they will not be able to bring any debate in the matter.

in the world that will be affected most by climate change. Over half of Russia's surface is covered by permafrost. Now it melts, slowly but surely, and leaving behind bottomless mire. It goes all the worse for rendriften, which is absolutely central to several siberian indigenous people, because they warmer temperatures will lead to a armour of ice over the tundra. The reindeer can't dig up the lichen; reindeer moss and starving to death.

While I report on how climate change is affecting Russia, I have several times thought back on my visit in Chernobyl. The wild nature surrounding the wrecked reactor, the trees, the bushes and the grass that is slowly but surely invading the abandoned town of Pripjat. The open fields where all of the villages have been emptied. Golden Przewalskihästar that galloping around where people once had their gardens.

On my surveillance area, it is very clear how the man always is the losing party in the natural disasters caused by her self.