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NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL REFERENDUM IN RUSSIA IS HOPEFULLY ON ITS WAY
On the June 29 Moscow Municipal Commission started the
registration-process of the initiative group for the national nature protection referendum.
Questions of the referendum will be the following:
1. Do you agree that import of radioactive waste for storage, disposal and processing should be banned?
2. Do you agree that Russia should have an institution responsible for
environmental protection separate from institutions responsible for nature
use and management?
3. Do you agree that Russia should have a legally independent Forest
Service?
In order for the initiative group to be registered, two million signatures
should be collected during three months, which according to the Russian
legislation is needed for referendum to take place.
All these activities are undertaken as new Russian President Vladimir
Putin has eliminated the existing environment protection system of the
country.
The Decree he issued on the 17th of May
(http://www.forest.ru/eng/problems/control/decree867.html) eliminated the Environmental Protection Committee and Federal Forest Service, passing their functions to the different ministries, mainly to the Ministry of Natural
Resources. Joining the functions of environmental resource use and control
over this use will lead to no good. It is almost the same as letting the fox
guard the hen house.
No one denies that the environment protection system that existed in
Russia needed improvement. But the very fact of the Decree shows the
tendencies of the new Government. And these tendencies are not inspiring. The developments
show that the Government's course is based on increased resource and
environmental exploitation, mega-industry and project oriented. All this,
together with attacks on independent media (on May 11, around 500 masked
Federal Security Service people attacked and searched the building of the
Media-Most group. Its NTV channel is critical of the regime and attempts to
restrict information flow, promises hard times for the environmental
movement and civil society in general in Russia.
Russian ecologists do not support the restoration the former of the State
Environment Committee. It didn't work really well all the time. They suggest
a new federal body to be introduced in Russia, which will be responsible for
the control of nature use, providing of ecological assessments, monitoring
the environment situation and for work at national nature protection areas
(nature reserves, national parks and refuges).
According to greens, a new institution should have the control and
protection functions of the ormer Forest Service, Fishery Service,
Department for Protection and Rational Use of Hunting Resources of The
Ministry of Agriculture and some others.
The referendum is initiated by the Russian branch of WWF, Greenpeace
Russia, Biodiversity Conservation Center of SEU, Baikal Ecowave, Save
Pechora Committee, Khabarovsk Fund for Wild Life Protection, EcoCenter "Dront"
(Nizhniy Novgorod), Altai XXI, Altai NGO "Katun", Sakhalin Ecological Watch
and other Russian NGOs.
Contacts: referendum_ru@hotmail.com
On June 13 Russian NGOs called a National Emergency Nature Protection
Conference dedicated to the abolishing of the State Environmental Committee
and the Forest Service.
At the conference, Russian NGOs expressed their protest against the
anti-ecological policy of President Putin and adopted The Appeal to
President Putin on him to revise his decisions. The Conference also
addressed domestic and international business structures, and called for
Russian people to support the efforts of the ecologists.
Some representatives of the official institutions were invited to speak at the conference to make the positions clear from both sides of the conflict.
The Head of the Ministry of Nature Use, Boris Yatskevich (who at the same
time, is the former supervisor of President Putin's dissertation dedicated
to resource use problems) talked to the participants and said that his
Ministry had good environmental specialists and there was no need to have a
special committee for it. According to Yatskevich, his Ministry will soon be
renamed the Ministry of Nature Use and Environment Protection. He also said
that state environment assessment should be a responsibility of an
independent body and not of the ecological committee as it used to be, he
suggested to give this responsibility to the government itself:
After the conference, President Putin gave the assignment to
Prime-Minister Michael Kasyanov to review the question of the abolishment of the
Environment Committee. The final decision is to be made by the end of July.
In this message to Kasyanov, Putin said nothing about the Forest Service.
Recent events of the campaign to restore Russian independent environmental agency: http://www.forest.ru/eng/problems/control/
MORATORIUM ON LOGGING IN OLDGROWTH FORESTS IN RUSSIAN NORTH-WEST IS PROLONGED
At the end of May, Russian NGOs had a meeting with Finnish logging
companies
Stora ENSO Oyj and UPM-Kummene Forest in Saint-Petersburg. The meeting
resulted in the decision to prolong the moratorium on logging in the
oldgrowth forests in Karelia and Kola Peninsula till the end of 2000.
Such a decision is considered by both sides as a good compromise in the
argument around oldgrowth forests of the region.
Stora ENSO claims that it will not log in the areas marked on the map by the
Russian Forest Club as oldgrowth.
Karelia's forests survived due to the cold war - the most significant old
growth areas are on the Karelia-Finnish border. But since The Iron Curtain
fell and economic changes occured in Russia, the forests at the boundaries
became endangered. It was especially easy for Finnish partners to log trees
providing jobs for their own workers and to save money on transportation.
The price for standing trees is extremely low. All this is besides the
fact
that old-growth timber is not as good as younger. Sometimes it is only good
for pulp. So logging oldgrowth from industry's persepctive is like the
making toilet paper from forest whose beauty one can compare to a gothic
cathedral in its noble beauty.
BRIGANDAGE IN RUSSIAN FORESTS
Greenpeace Russia launched a survey on illegal fellings in Russia at a
press-conference at the end of June.
In 1999, Russia exported about 29 million m3 of raw timber, and in round
wood Russia exports more than a half of timber logged both legally and with
violations of the existing legislation. Considerable income from forestry
export stimulates forest felling both legal and illegal. The majority of
companies buying wood from Russia either don't take interest in, or prefer
not to think about the origin of timber they buy, because they think that it
really matters only in Russia Abroad all timber, even stolen, becomes
legally clean. That's why it doesn't seem possible to solve the problem of
illegal forestry operations until both buyers and sellers of forest products
close the illegally-logged timber from entering the market.
The experience of the last years reveals that, unfortunately, it has
become
a usual practice of forest felling to ignore existing legislation. For
example, in June 2000, at one of the logging sites of the Dalnegorsk
district in the Primorye region GP detected a tree felling operation that
was carried out outside of the borders of the permitted logging site. This
was conducted in a remote part of an allotment where a few Korean Pines were
cut down (although, as the loggers said, they were forbidden to cut Korean
Pines). In the same area log-ways ran along a stream. There were other
violations, but none of the workers saw anything wrong, saying, "We've cut
down a couple of Korean Pines. So what?!" Cutting a few Korean Pines won't
do any harm. This phrase says everything about what loggers think about
breaches of the law. A few is nothing and we may cut down a few trees. This
amount depends on a particular person and his or her conscience, if there is
any at all.
The attitude of the supervising agencies toward this issue is the same,
not taking into account the cases when fidelity to one's principles becomes
something that can be easily bought and sold.
Illegal cuttings are often carried out by residents or mobile teams for
subsequent sale. This variant is most typical for logging of large-sized
especially valuable wood. Accordingly, the scale of such logging is largest
in the southern part of the Khabarovsk Kray (region) and the Primorye
(ash-tree, oak, korean pine, nut tree, cork tree) and in the Northern
Caucasus (oak, beech, chestnut tree). Only the officially registered volumes
of such cuttings in Primorye exceed 10,000 m3 every year.
According to our information, only in the Roshchino forest enterprise
(leskhoz) in Primorye the annual volume of unsanctioned cuttings of this
type and of valuable tree species is 16 - 22 thousands cubic meters. The
deviation from the official figures can apparently be explained by the fact
that the Roshchino leskhoz did not register unsanctioned cuttings when they
failed to impound illegally logged wood. There are no reasons to say that
other leskhozes act in another manner. That is why the actual amount of
illegally logged wood is much larger than official figures.
For further information please look:
http://www.forest.ru/eng/publications/illegal
KARELIAN GOVERNMENT KEEPS CAMPAIGNING AGAINST THE GREENS
Members of Russian Forest Club sent a letter to Sergey Katanandov the Head
of the Karelian Government. They had to do this because Forest Club and its
supporters in the region are likely to face a new round of black PR campaign
against them after their efforts to protect valuable forests around The
Pyaozerskiy loggers' settlement which is near Paanayarvi National Park.
It is clear for greens that logging activities is the only way for local
people to survive and at the same time, the part of Paanayarvi surrounding
forests they want to cut are the valuable ones with Russian Red Book
listings.
The problem of forest use in the Pyaozerskiy enterprise has been
discussed for several years by NGOs, logging companies and authorities. At
the end of
May, representatives of forest enterprises, republican and regional
authorities, NGOs and Finnish partners met at a workshop on the problems of
forest use in the Pyaozerskiy Region. Most of the participants agreed that
forests suggested by the greens for conservation are really valuable. In
word, but not in fact. It was decided at the workshop that a special task
force would be created in June to work out new guidelines for forest use in
the region.
Until now, no activities were undertaken. Instead of this, Karelian
authorities started a new campaign against greens.
On the pages of Lesnaya Gazeta (main newspaper about Russian forests,
official tribune of the former Forest Service) The Forest Club is accused of
degradation of regional economy and unemployment. The article is written by
the journalist who used to work for forest industry lobbyists promoting
their ideas through mass-media.
In the letter to Katanandov Forest Club has stressed the fact that the
main losers of such a non-ecological approach to the regional forest economy
development are local people whose income and well-being totally depends on
the condition of forests.
They urge a stoppage of the campaign as it works for decreasing of the
demand for Karelian timber at both domestic and international markets. They
also offer their cooperation to improve the economic situation in the region
by introducing sustainable forest use models, strong state control over
forest resources, etc.
CONIFEROUS FORESTS ARE DYING IN MOSCOW REGION
After the Moscow hurricane of 1998, and drought of 1999 thousands of
hectares of trees in the Moscow region were broken, and over 330 hectares
were burnt down. Forest holdings are not capable to clean up all the forests
which cover 1547.6 of thousands hectares. All this helped a very dangerous
parasite the ambrosia beetle to invade Moscow forests in the summer of 2000.
The consequences of its spreading are remarkable. By the end of June, more
than 6000 of hectares of spruce were destroyed by the beetle. It eats the
bark completely then the needles of a conifer become red and a
tree dies.
The only way to save the forests now is to find newly seek one (which can
be done only by specialists) and move them from forest. This should be done
constantly during warm times.
In the beginning if July the beetle developed a new generation, it
reproduces very quickly - one female is able to lay tens of eggs.
NORTH-WEST CAUCASUS CELEBRATES A GREEN VICTORY
The illegal construction of a road through the protected areas of Caucasus Has been stopped.
The highway project that could have become the major obstacle for the area to be included into the World Heritage will not go through. One more road
connecting two Caucasus regions of Russia (Krasnodarskiy kray and Adygeya)
will be built but not in a nature reserve.
The Lagonaky - Dagomys Road which was planned by the Adugeya Republic
authorities was supposed to go through the territory of The Caucasian
Biosphere Nature Reserve and irreparably damage unique nature system
protected in the Caucasian Reserve.
The road was planned over the Lagonaki plateau and Caucasian Biosphere
Reserve highland area - this meant a heavy use of explosives to make the
road across the mountains, not to mention "regular" construction related
works and traffic of the construction machinery.
SEU of North - West Caucasus strongly supported by the local population,
have been campaigning against the project for almost two years. Thousands of
local signatures were gathered protesting the project, numerous actions were
held, dozens of publications appeared in the media.
The people's outrage with the project, together with thedesire to protect
their natural heritage, also had a legal basis - the road construction in
nature reserve is illegal according to different Russian laws. Local
government insisted on highway construction hoping to attract traffic flow
through the republic. In officials' opinion, benefits from the traffic
outweigh the benefits of having an internationally protected nature area.
Untill now the major attraction for people has been the unique nature of
the region. It is highly questionable if any tourist would be happy to see
gas stations and fast-food services instead of wildlife. After two years of
debates, local government realized that it would benefit from wild nature
more than from one more road.
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Forest Club model projects and sites
