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Table of content:
RUSSIAN ECOLOGISTS CAME UP WITH SUGGESTION FOR PUTIN TO BECOME GREEN
In December Mr Putin paying respect to environmentalists surprised people
in Russia and all over the world. In his interview to the Canadian Globe and
Mail he said, "To be honest, I've always admired people who devote their
lives to environmental problems. I've watched with astonishment as a group
of people on a little boat try to oppose a huge military or industrial ship.
I must say this inspires only sympathy. I've often thought about what I
should do when my term expires. It is a noble task to support the ecological
movement. At least I wouldn't be sorry to spend time on it."
This declaration was even more surprising bearing in mind the last
initiative of Russian President. In May 2000 Putin abolished the national
system of the independent environmental control.
Russian ecologists have joint forces and at the press conference in Moscow
January 29 they called upon president Putin to initiate environment
protection measures.
The first thing environmental activists did was to send a letter to the
Russian president Putin. In the letter they asked president to corroborate
his words and deeds. They said in order to convince the ecologists that his
sympathies towards environmental protection movements are genuine, the
president should implement certain environmental policies such as:
- to create the National Agency for Environment Security and give it real
powers
- to recommend the State Duma to postpone or reject the package of draft
bills on nuclear waste and if Duma doesn't consider his opinion the
president should use his right of veto
- to bring in State Duma a draft law on public environmental control that
was prepared by the ecologists long ago, it would strengthen the environment
assessment procedure that is very inefficient now
- to put off veto and sign the law "On Environmental Security"
- to bring in Duma a draft law to reduce tax burden for environmentally
sound business
- to come up with initiative to make education in secondary schools more
focused on environmental issues
- to remove a limitation from charitable activities that would help to get
more money not only for nature protection, but for scientific, cultural and
other activities as well
- to create a Council on Ecological Issues and Sustainable Development in
Russia (it might be done in frame of Rio +10 process), but before this
ecologists suggest Putin to organize meeting with green leaders in Kremlin
Today ecologists see the first thing that President Putin could do was to
start LISTENING to environmentally concerned public.
WHAT CAN WE WAIT FROM MR.GREF?
It appears that Mr Gref - Russian Minister of Economy is going to reform
many things in domestic economy. Greens made this fact known at the press
conference in Moscow recently. The story behind this is that Russian
ecologists have been putting a lot efforts to get any information on what
The Ministry for Nature Resources is going to do with forests after it got a
mandate from President Putin to implement tasks of abolished Forest Service
and Environmental Committee. Ministry is keeping silence. In order to get
any picture members of The Russian Forest Club searched the Internet and
found Gref's program, which is originally called "Basic directions of the
social and economical policy of The Government of Russian Federation for the
long term perspective"
According to the program forest export will soon become a key source of
income for Russian economy and play a big role in economic growth. State is
supposed to reduce its influence to a forest business. Gref sets his hopes
on future privatization of land and forests which is not allowed by the law
now. Making economy management more environmentally sound is the thing that
have been never mentioned among the priorities of strategic state policy.
And it is also not covered by the whole document - no word about it in the
big kit!
While Gref was preparing his program so many things changed in Russia and
it became clear that people do not agree with Putin's environmental policy.
But public opinion has being ignored by the authorities now and according to
the Gref's program will be ignored in the future.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has abolished the environment protection
system of the country.
The Decree he issued on the 17th of May eliminated the Environmental
Protection Committee and Federal Forest Service, passing their functions
mainly to the Ministry of Natural Resources. Joining the functions of
environmental resource use and control over this use.
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.
And it was decided to hold national referendum to ask people if they agree
with abolishment of the State ecological committee and Federal Forest
Service and if they want radioactive waste from foreign countries to be
shipped and stored in Russia. Greens collected more that 2,5 million
signatures, which was 500 thousand more than it is required by the law for
national referendum to happen. By putting their signatures on the papers for
the referendum a lot of people said "no" to Putin initiatives. But
referendum was killed by the state.
Radioactive waste from all over the world will probably soon cross Russian
border. What else is cooking?
See the whole story at: http://www.forest.ru/eng/problems/control/
KALEVALA NATIONAL PARK STORY GOES ON
The last session of the local self-governance committee of Kostomuksha
decided to address the governments of The Republic of Karelia and Russian
Federation. Committee will ask them to create Kalevala National Park within
the limits that were approved before. It is hard to believe that 9 of 16
deputies voted for the park creation because most of them usually defend
forest industry interests. Now all the local bodies the park should be
approved by agree with the idea of its creation. So probably this decision
will finally push the process on.
Contact: Alexey Yaroshenko, alexey@ru.greenpeace.org
RUSSIAN ILLEGAL TIMBER CHRONICLES
During 2000 road police of Vologda region (Northern part of European
Russia) stopped and arrested vehicles with more than 40 thousand cubic
meters of illegal timber. But according to independent experts the amount
of the illegal timber is constantly growing. It is more than 2 million cubic
meters a year now.
Forest is a main source of income for local people so the problem of
illegal cutting is very big there. Special troop of militia has been
recently created there to combat poaching. It consists of 100 people now.
Salaries to these forest defenders will be paid from local budget.
ECOLOGISTS AND IKEA LOOKING FOR CLOSER COOPERATION
The meeting of environmental NGOs and IKEA Company was held on January 26,
2001. It was initiated by the Biodiversity Conservation Center and SEU
Forest campaign. IKEA representatives described the company's policy on
launching sustainable forestry methods. The attention was drawn to such
important issues as an access to the information about delivery chains,
transparency of the information on the sources of timber from Russia. The
problem of mapping of undisturbed forests that need protection was also
discussed. The maps of plots of Russian oldgrowth forests are prepared
within the project "Forestwatch in Russia" . The results of this project
will be published soon.
As IKEA representative said, the idea of this meeting appeared after Taiga
Rescue Network conferences (Tartu, Estonia in 1998 and Moscow region in
2000). Ecologists and IKEA agreed to establish closer cooperation. They
decided to conduct regular meetings to discuss the most important issues and
to enhance cooperation.
You can find the information about TRN conference at
http://www.forest.ru/eng/workshops/trn/
OAK BEAUTY CONTEST
Club "Ecologia" (Velikiy Novgorod) announced the contest aimed to define
where the most beautiful oldgrowth oak, linden, mapple, ash are left. This
competition is to be a part of NIS annual environmental action "March for
parks" (the main idea of the action is to attract public and government's
attention to the problems of national reserves and national parks in NIS
countries). Those people who want to participate the competition should fill
a special questionnaire (to describe main characteristics of trees of their
area). You can find the questionnaire on the web-site
http://oaks.forest.ru/conservation/anketa.html or it could be sent to you by
e-mail. The deadline is May, 20. SEU Forest campaign provides informational
assistance to the competition. The information about winners will be
published on the web-site "European oaks".
More information:
Club "Ecologia" efi@novgorod.net
SEU Forest Campaign forestru@online.ru
NATURE RESERVE N100 HAS BEEN CREATED IN RUSSIA!
National reserve "Arzy" was created in December according to Russian
governmental decree. This jubilee Russian reserve is rather small - it's
square is 5,970 ha. It is in Ingushetia (in the southern part of Russia,
Caucasus region) close to Chechnya Respublic. A new reserve borders upon
Georgia and Northern Osetiya.
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