Project Office for Arctic Development poll: more than half of residents believe that the environmental situation in the Arctic is improving

52% of people who took part in the opinion poll conducted by the Project Office for Arctic Development (POAD) believe that the environmental situation in the Arctic is improving. Alexander Stotsky, General Director of the Project Office for Arctic Development announced this on September 12, 2022 presenting the results of the survey at the round table "Implementation of the municipal solid waste reform in the Far North" in the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation.
POAD employees conducted a survey of residents of several settlements in Taimyr and the Murmansk Province as part of the Plastic in Business environmental project. This project, supported by the Presidential Grants Fund, includes the collection and recycling of used plastic and environmental education activities in cities and towns beyond the Arctic Circle.
“About a quarter of the respondents (24%) consider the environmental situation in their locality to be good, approximately the same proportion of respondents assess it as bad (26%), the remaining 50% give moderate ratings. At the same time, 52% say that the environmental situation has improved, and only 11% believe that it has worsened over the past two or three years,” said Alexander Stotsky.
Among Russians from the settlements whose residents participated in the survey, residents of Dudinka (Taimyr) assess the environmental situation significantly worse (43% gave bad marks) than respondents from Nikel (16%) and Zapolyarny (12%) in the Murmansk Province. The same pattern applies to assessing the dynamics of the environmental situation - residents of Dudinka more often than others say that the environment has deteriorated over the past two or three years.
The survey also showed that 61% of Arctic residents agree with the statement that household waste disposal is the most important environmental task. 24% believe that there are more important activities.
At the same time, respondents most often place responsibility for solving environmental problems on the residents themselves (74%), and for solving problems with waste disposal - on local authorities (79%), Alexander Stotsky said.