NIERSC was officially founded in 1992 in St. Petersburg, Russia after the initiation by Prof. Ola M. Johannessen and Academician Kirill Ya. Kondratyev (1920-2006). The joint-venture had four co-founders: Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Bergen, Norway; Research Centre for Ecological Safety of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia; Max Planck Society, Munich, Germany; and Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, Ann-Arbor, MI, USA with a support of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission by Prof.Jean-Pierre Contzen (12.02.35 – 27.10.2015). In 2001 NIERSC was re-registred into a non-profit Scientific Foundation. At present it has six founders.
Legal Matters and Major events at the Nansen Centre:
- Establishment (registered as a noncommercial company at the office of Vice Governer of St. Petersburg, signed by Vladimir Putin) – 19 October 1992
- Registration as a Scientific Foundation – 2 July 2001
- Scientific accreditation at the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology of RF – 26 December 2002
- Organization and holding of the 31st International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment, St. Petersburg, 20 – 24 June 2005
- Descartes Award of the European Union in 2005 for the project “Changes in the environment and climate in the Arctic» (CECA) – 2 December 2005
- Official opening of the «Nansen’s House» – the new premises of the Nansen Center, in St. Petersburg, 9 December 2005
- Roshydromet Licensing – 3 July 2006
- Re-registration as a Scientific Foundation according to new RF law on non-commercial organizations – 22 December 2006
- Roscosmos Licensing – 5 November 2008