On 21 November, a group of international environmental protection experts will leave Vladivostok on a journey to Moscow, and will travel from there to Copenhagen, to attend the COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

The international environmentalists’ journey across Russia’s railway is part of the global project Train from Kyoto to Copenhagen, organized by the International Union of Railways (UIC), Russian Railways (RZD), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The campaign, organized with the aim of marking a transition to a new generation of agreements on future global climate cooperation, began on 5 November in Kyoto (Japan) with the UIC seminar on the role of rail transport in protecting the planet’s climate system.

From 21 November to 1 December, those who took part in the seminar will travel on a symbolic journey along the Trans-Siberian route in a special RZD carriage. As part of the environmentalists’ journey across Russia’s railway, stops are planned at five large cities – Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Moscow.

Each stop will give journey participants the opportunity to meet with representatives of local authorities, representatives of environmental protection organizations, and journalists, and also to see innovative railway technology and personally witness the signs of climate change on Russia’s territory.

On 1 December, a greeting ceremony will be held for participants in the environmental journey, on their arrival in Moscow.

From Moscow, the team will travel on to Brussels, where they will join the Brussels-Copenhagen Climate Express, in order to deliver a climate message drawn up in Kyoto at the UN conference, and to recount the problems caused by climate change in Russia.