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In this paper, we draw on three ethnographic studies of surrogacy we carried out separately in different contexts: the western US state of California, the south Indian state of Karnataka, and the western Russian metropolis of St Petersburg. In our interviews with surrogate mothers, intended parents, and surrogacy professionals, we traced the meanings and ideologies through which they understood the clinical labour of surrogacy. We found that in the US, interviewed surrogates, intended parents and professionals understood surrogacy as an exchange of both gifts and commodities, where gift-giving, reciprocity, and relatedness between surrogates and intended parents were the major tropes. In India, differing narratives of surrogacy were offered by its different parties: whilst professionals and intended parents framed it as a win-win exchange with an emphasis on the economic side, the interviewed surrogate mothers talked about surrogacy as creative labour of giving life. In Russia, approaches to surrogacy among the interviewed surrogate mothers, professionals and intended parents overlapped in framing it as work and a businesslike commodity exchange. We suggest these three different ways of ethical reasoning about the clinical labour of surrogacy, including justifications of women's incorporation into this labour, were situated in local moral frameworks. We name them "repro-regional moral frameworks", inspired by earlier work on moral frameworks as well as on reproductive nationalisms and transnational reproduction. Building on these findings, we argue that any international or global regulation of surrogacy, or indeed any moral stance on it, needs to take these local differences into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the forecasts made by IEA, BP, and Total in early 2021, the demand for hydrocarbons will continue for decades, and their share in the global energy balance will remain significant. Russia, as a key player in the energy market, is interested in maintaining and increasing hydrocarbon production, so further exploitation of the Arctic energy resources is an urgent issue. A large number of onshore oil and gas projects have been successfully implemented in the Arctic since the 1930s, while recently, special attention has been paid to the offshore energy resources and implementation of natural gas liquefaction projects. However, the implementation of oil and gas projects in the Arctic is characterized by a negative impact on the environment, which leads to a violation of the ecological balance in the Arctic, and affects the stability of its ecosystem, which is one of the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. The main goal of the present study is to understand how the implementation of oil and gas projects in the Arctic affects the ecosystem, to assess the significance of this process, and to find out what the state and business could do to minimize it. In the article, the authors analyze energy trends, provide brief information about important oil and gas projects being implemented in the Arctic region of Russia, and investigate the challenges of the oil and gas projects' development and its negative impacts on the Arctic environment. The main contributions of this paper are the identification of all possible environmental risks and processes accompanying oil and gas production, and its qualitative analysis and recommendations for the state and business to reduce the negative impact of oil and gas projects on the Arctic ecosystem. The research methodology includes desk studies, risk management tools (such as risk analysis, registers, and maps), brainstorming, the expert method, systematization, comparative analysis, generalization, and grouping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]