The participating students will have to complete four serious research tasks based on real data.
The tasks for them in various thematic tracks were offered by the industrial partners of the competition: Gazpromneft, Norilsk Nickel, Arktikugol and the Arctic Development Project Office.
The participants of each track will have to develop a project in one of the proposed thematic areas and present it to representatives of the partner organization.
Arktikugol proposes to assess the feasibility of the BRICS countries joining the Treaty of Svalbard (Treaty of Paris) of 1920 for conducting commercial, scientific and educational activities in the region.
Gazpromneft's assignment provides for the development of a concept and mechanisms for the development of an oil production company in the Arctic region of the land, taking into account the high capital intensity of projects and the uncertainty of their implementation conditions.
Norilsk Nickel aims to assess the prospects for the development of Arctic tourism in Russia.
The track of the Arctic Development Project Office focuses on the question of how municipalities can attract financing in conditions of limited budget opportunities. The team will study the international experience of various countries from Europe and North America to Asia and evaluate which financial instruments are used and demonstrate effectiveness at the municipal level.
"The proposed tasks underline the country's goal of transforming the Arctic from an extraction zone into an integrated development space. The tasks are focused on key "pain points": from the actual geostrategy in the Arctic Google track to the local level of municipal finances in the TIME task. It is especially valuable that students are offered not an abstract analysis, but work with fundamental contradictions – between capital intensity and uncertainty in the Gazpromneft case, between the fragility of ecosystems and the development of the potential of polar tourism at Norilsk Nickel. This approach models real–world project activities, where the solution always lies at the intersection of economics, law, ecology and geopolitics, requiring non-standard, Arctic solutions," says Maxim Dankin, General Director of the Arctic Development Project Office.
The participants of the competition will present the research results at the face-to-face defense on February 27. And those who wish to participate in the project laboratory are already invited by the organizers, MGIMO of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia and the PORA Expert Center, to register and be interviewed.
The BRICS Project Lab is an international project based at MGIMO of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, created to strengthen youth cooperation through BRICS and the development of applied and research projects in this field, said Alexander Khanarov, head of the laboratory, a graduate of the MGIMO Master's degree in 2025.
