Economic assessment of the impact of permafrost degradation induced by climate change the road infrastructure resilience in the Russian Arctic

This paper evaluates three model scenarios of road infrastructure resilience variation resulting from the climate change-induced degradation and thawing of permafrost in nine regions of the Russian Arctic. To provide economic assessment of climate change implications for development of the regions above by mid-21st century model estimates of the permafrost a physic-geographic basis for conditions have been used. These estimates are obtained using the IPCC six key scenarios of climate change including the most negative RCP 8.5 scenario considered as the most similar to Russian Arctic environments. The upgraded data from the Transportation Strategy of the Russian Federation served a basis for forecasting the road infrastructure development by 2035. It is argued that the “business as usual” (conservative) scenario of the road infrastructure development in the explored nine regions of the Russian Arctic from 2020 to 2050 implies annual investments of 14 billion rubles to maintain resilience and reduce the risks of destruction of the infrastructure following permafrost thawing and degradation. The investments for the moderate and modernization scenarios will exceed 21 billion and 28 billion rubles, respectively, with the maximal numbers expected in the Yakutia, Magadan, and Chukotka regions. Implementation of the modernization scenario assumes reconsideration of the existing standards, technologies, and the road infrastructure and capital construction economics as a whole. Priority areas include innovation standards and construction technologies development as well as improvement of the methodology and procedures of respective investments assessments considered in this paper.