Year 2026 will mark the 30th anniversary Lake Baikal’s inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The UNESCO Chair on Water Resources of Irkutsk State University, in collaboration with the Laboratory for Legal Research on High-Tech Industries of the Federal Research Center of the Irkutsk Institute of Chemistry of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, has developed a project for a large-scale scientific congress dedicated to this anniversary. The proposal to hold the event was supported by the Secretariat of the UN programme “International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development”, proclaimed by the UN for the period from 2024 to 2033. The interdisciplinary congress is planned to be held in Irkutsk and on Lake Baikal next year.
The author and developer of the application, Deputy Head of the UNESCO Chair on Water Resources, Associate Professor of the Department of International Law and Comparative Law Studies of ISU Law Institute, Candidate of Sciences in Jurisprudence, Roman Kolobov:
The support for the initiative shows a high assessment of the research conducted by the scientific divisions on issues of legal protection of Lake Baikal and the regime of World Natural Heritage sites in general. The event will attract specialists in physical sciences and humanities, and will allow for a scientific understanding and the development of practical proposals to solve many problems in the field of protecting the unique Baikal ecosystem.
The management of World Natural Heritage sites in Russia and the improvement of legislation in this area will be a special topic of the conference. The result will be a report on optimal ways to fulfill Russia’s international obligations, as well as recommendations sent to state and local authorities.
