Nuclear icebreaker Vaigach at work. Source: Rosatom, Gelio, Slava Stepanov

An international team of scientists from Russia and China has begun work on a three-year study Development of the Russian-Chinese Trans-Arctic/Pacific Transport Corridor Based on Blue Economy Principles. The project is funded by grants from the Russian Science Foundation and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The team is comprised primarily of the Northwest Institute of Management of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) and the Shanghai Maritime University.

The main goal of this project is to identify prospects for the creation and development of a maritime transport corridor between the Russian Arctic and China’s Pacific coast based on high environmental standards and the concept of sustainable development in the Arctic and Pacific regions. The development of such a corridor requires addressing at least two issues:

• Developing the port complex of this macroregion in accordance with the blue economy concept;
• Ensuring the safety of maritime navigation and reducing environmental damage from the operation.

The project addresses the pressing practical objective set by Russia’s political leadership to create a multimodal Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor (TTC) and connect it with international maritime routes. Implementing this objective will also facilitate the expansion of Russian-Chinese scientific cooperation.

The core of the Trans-Arctic/Pacific international transport corridor under consideration will be the emerging NSR-based Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor in Russia.

According to current Russian legislation, the Northern Sea Route waters are defined as a 200-mile maritime zone along the Russian coast of the Arctic Ocean from the Kara Strait in the west to the Bering Strait in the east. The NSR is subject to a permit-based regime, and all vessels (both Russian and foreign) must obtain permission to navigate this route in advance from Rosatom’s subsidiary Glavsevmorput, and provide certain required information (primarily, whether they have an ice class). If necessary, icebreaker and pilotage assistance are provided to vessels without an ice class for a fee.

In practice, however, the sea route along the Russian coast of the Arctic Ocean also encompasses the White and Barents Seas, and the part of NSR’s cargo base is formed in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and Russia’s Baltic ports of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. The cargo’s destinations include ports in the Russian Far East, as well as East and Southeast Asia. In the opposite direction, cargo traffic via the NSR is also growing. This fact lead Rosatom to propose the concept of the Big Northern Sea Route, which would encompass a wider geographic area. In 2024, Rosatom secured the approval of the federal project Development of the Northern Sea Route as part of the national project Efficient Transport System: from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.

In his speech on March 27, 2025, at the International Arctic Forum The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue in Murmansk, Russian President Vladimir Putin reframed the idea of the Northern Sea Route, and proposed the creation of a Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor. The TTC is a strategic project designed not only to expand the Northern Sea Route but also to integrate it with rail and river routes, creating a multimodal transport corridor from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean. Thus, the Northern Sea Route project was rebranded.

The research project Development of the Russian-Chinese Trans-Arctic/Pacific Transport Corridor Based on Blue Economy Principles plans to explore how the TTC can be connected to other international maritime routes, particularly ports on China’s Pacific coast. Partners from Shanghai Maritime University will play a key role in answering this question.

It’s important to clarify the term blue economy. For example, the concept of a green economy is already familiar to many; it refers to economic activity based on high environmental standards. Extending this approach to the maritime economy would create said blue economy. It typically includes such industries as shipping, shipbuilding, ship repair, port infrastructure, fisheries, aquaculture, seafood processing, marine tourism, seabed mining, underwater communications, and others.

Within the framework of the project, scientists plan to focus on two aspects of the TTMTC’s development: modernizing port infrastructure and reducing pollution from ships operating on Arctic and Pacific routes. The latter, incidentally, is also stipulated by the International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code (which entered into force in 2017), with the requirements of which Russia, like other countries using polar shipping routes, must comply. These include the requirement that vessels using the NSR switch to “light” fuels (liquefied natural gas, distillates, and marine gas oil) by 2029, as well as the need to establish shipping routes that bypass marine protected areas.