Opening the seminar, Olga Bakhmet, KarRC RAS Director General reminded that relatively recently a significant part of our region was classified as belonging to the Arctic. As of now, six districts of Karelia - almost 40% of the republic's territory - are part of the Russian Arctic zone. Three of them, Kostomuksha urban district, Kalevalsky and Segezhsky Districts, were included in 2020. Their inclusion was substantiated by scientists from KarRC RAS.

– Our studies are not confined to northern parts of the Republic of Karelia. We make expeditions to the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk regions, participate in research teams for large-scale studies in Siberia and the Far East. Quite a few projects, including international ones, are connected with studies of other Arctic territories, - Olga Bakhmet informed.

Projects on topics related to the Arctic are implemented in various fields, including environmental, biomedical, and socio-economic. The new seminar will provide an opportunity to learn about and discuss the results of these projects both for staff of the scientific subdivisions of KarRC RAS and for third-party stakeholders - representatives of authorities, the business community, and educational institutions. This, in turn, can stimulate the search for new project ideas for integrated and specialized research.

The coordinator of the seminar is Dmitry Bazegsky, Leading Researcher at KarRC RAS. Speaking about the agenda of the first meeting, he remarked that the studies presented at it deal with social and socio-economic development issues and are related to the problems of human life in the High North.

Leading Researcher at the Regional Economic Policy Department of the Institute of Economics KarRC RAS Maria Pitukhina told about the results of the large-scale project "Institutional Engineering of Single-industry Towns in the Arctic Zone - Modernization and Sustainable Development", supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation. The study has shown that over the past five years, an average of 72 thousand people left Arctic monotowns every year. The most numerous groups of departees are people aged 20-29 and older than 50. The annual migration into single-industry towns was about 33 thousand people.

Leading Researcher at the Institute of Biology KarRC RAS, Research Area Leader at the Center for Biomedical Research KarRC RAS Lyudmila Lysenko familiarized the participants with a study of the consequences of the coronavirus infection among citizens of the Republic of Karelia. Scientists discovered, in particular, that 30-40% of patients do not regain their health completely after the disease, and 30% of cases develop a post-Covid syndrome lasting up to nine months.

The final talk focused on economic issues. Alexander Volkov, Researcher at the Department for Institutional Development of Regions at the Institute of Economics KarRC RAS, presented an overview of studies of the human capital and economic space of the Karelian Arctic. Scientists have identified key problems affecting the migration sentiments in Arctic communities. The reasons for people to leave the North are a shortage of high-paying jobs, lack of institutions for continuing education, and inaccessibility of adequate medical services.

More information about the results of the projects will be available soon on KarRC RAS website. The next seminar is expected to be devoted to environmental issues.