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Table of content:
The New Federal Law on Envronment Protection Is Adopted in Russia
The new law on environment protection was signed by the President of
Russian Federation and officially published. How should it affect
the environment protection activity? A long time is required for the
detailed analysis of the new legislation consequences, but the first
impression is that it includes the world of good declarations that
are so hard to realize in practice.
If in 1991 there were two parallel processes - development of the
environmental legislation and building of the state environment
protecton service - now the situation is countrary: an independent
environmental control is in ruins. So as many articles of the previous
law worked only because of labour of former environment protection
services officials, now it seems the new legislations remains a good
intention only. Besides that, more environment control powers will be
droven to the regional level, because the new law allows to restore
regional environment services and give the local administrations right
to carry out a state environmental examination (it requires changes in
the law on the state environmental examination which are in
preparation according to our sources), and the green organizations
concern that such services will be under pressure of regional
authorities.
State inspectors now can only suspend environmentally harmful activity
but have no power to cease it without executive body or court
desicion. Despite mentioning the public environment control, there are
no procedures of such a control in the new law and way of realization
of this right is unclear. A detailed description of these procedures
require an active work of the grassroots organizations.
The new law on environment protection (in Russian):
http://www.forest.ru/rus/legislation/laws/nature2002.html
The MNR Assessed the Cost of Forest Fires
The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) summed up the fire protection
measures in 2001 and estimated the damage caused by fires in Russian
forests. As the MNR press-service states, regional forest service
units and air forest protection divisions managed to decrease square
damaged by fires by 538 thousand hectares. The total amount of the
fire sites is 20,900 and square of anti-fire measures was 868 thousand
hectares.
The estimated damage caused by fires is more than 2.8 billion roubles.
The most damaged are Komi, Buryatia, Altay, Tuva, Yakutia, Chukotka,
Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Kirov, Rostov,
Volgograd, Chita, Irkutsk and Amur regions. 41.2% of the total amount
of the fire sites an 93.3% of square damaged by fire is in these
regions.
The main causes of fires, besides hot and dry weather, are violation
of fire safety rules and insufficent financing and technical equipment
of anti-fire divisions. The Minister of Natural Resources Vitaly
Artyukhov stressed that organization of dispatch points is needed to
discover fire sites at an early stage and fight them successfully with
land and air anti-fire divisions. Also the Ministry should develop a
system of financial incentives for preventive anti-fire measures and
fire fighting and introduce stricter punishments for forest service
officials for misconducting of their anti-fire duties, Artyukhov
stated.
Destruction of the Protected Areas Is a Tendency in the Newly Independent States
The Ukrainian environmental ministry gave a permission to build a
freestyle-jump at the Hoverla mountain - the highest and the oldest
protected (since 1910) place in the Ukraine. The environment
examination of the project based on the estimation made by
Ivano-Frankivsk Oil and Gas University, though it's hard to explain
what the sacred mountain of Hoverla to do with oil and gas. Besides
that, Hoverla is situated in the Karpaty National Park, so the
legality of the freestyle-jump project is dubious.
"I think the anti-environmental activity of the Ministry create a
dangerous precedence of changing the borders of the protected areas in
the Ukraine according to business interests. The value of the Hoverla
mountain is in its virgin wilderness and beauty and not in ski-jumps,
sport bases and heaps of garbage," says Vladimir Boreiko, director of
Kiev environmental and culture centre.
In Russia such a dangerous precedence has already created. Last August
the Moscow Arbitrary Court denounced the protected status of the
landscape park Krylatskie Kholmy in Western Moscow for the same reason
- the park prevented building of a ski complex. Near 100 endangered
species both in Moscow and Karpaty are posed under threat by such kind
of decisions.
The Forest Business Turns Green?
A workshop "Aims and Methods of Living Nature Protection in Forestry"
was organized by the Kola Biodiversity Conservation Centre with
support of the Murmansk regional Committee of Natural Resourses.
Forestries officals, forest protection specialists, business and NGO
representatives took part in the discussion on environment demands to
the timber purveyance in the region.
"Our main aim was to explain timber industry the scientific base of
NGOs work. We hope it helps to keep on the dialogue with industry and
forest service authorities on environmnent protection in Murmansk
region," said Victor Petrov, one of the organizers of the workshop.
"The greens are like a public fire-squad. It's an indispensable harm
for us. They want to have and influence to our activity and they're
able to do it," stated Alexander Dvoryankin, director of one of the
oldest regional timber companies Priroda Ltd. "We are a part of
society and should take demands of NGOs into accound not depending on
our wishes," added Alexander Glebov, head of Ogni Kairal timber
company.
At the round table that followed the workshop the representatives of
the biggest timber companies of Murmansk region (Priroda,
Sevmurmanles, Ogni Kairal, Alakurtti timber processing mill) announced
a moratorium on cutting in the old-growth forests of the region. They
also expressed their support to creation of 5 new protected areas
which is now halted by regional authorities because of fear of losses
for timber industry and related unemployment growth. "This decision
could help the timber industry to decrease squares where timber
purveyance is impossible because of the problems at the
environmentally sensible markets," said Alexey Yaroshenko of
Greenpeace Russia.
The Third FSC Certificate Was Given in Russia
In December, 2001, the international audience company SGS gave the
Forest Stewardship Council certificate on the forest management
process of the Madok timber processing mill (Malaya Vishera, Novgorod
region). Square of the certified area is 31,200 hectares. The project
was initiated by Novgorod Certification Centre and WWF in 2000.
One and a half year of the hard work resulted in the successful comp
letion of the project. Madok became the third Russian and the first
Novgorod region company obtained the FSC certificate. The company
demonstrated its commitment to the highest standards of sustainable
forest management.
The Results of "The New Year Tree-2001" Campaign Are Summed up
The results of the regular campaign aimed to prevent illegal cutting
of fir-trees before the New Year are summed up by the Druzhina
(People's patrol) Movement. The Druzhina work could be divided in
three direction. The first one is organization of environmental
competitions among the schoolchildren aimed to attract their attention
to the nature protection activity such as the new year bouqet
competition in Novgorod or the youth naturalists action in
Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsk region.
The second one is a propaganda of artifical fir-trees or fir bouquets
instead of living trees among the people. The good examples of such a
work are a poll devoted to people's attitude to a replacement of the
living trees with their equivalents in Kazan or the installation of
the 12 meter high artifical fir-tree in the central square of Anadyr,
Chukotka, supported by the local administration.
The third one is the direct protecton of forests from the illegal
cutting. Besides the traditional measures such as raids organized by
Druzhinas in Vladivostok, Magadan and Vologda, in Primorye region
branches of conifer were treated with the chemicals that are not
harmful for trees but has a steady disodour at the room temperature.
Georgian Parliament against the Illegal Cutting in Protected Areas
The illegal cutting of the unique sorts of trees at the protected
mounain of Tsnelisi near a village of Tskneti, Znauri district,
Georgia, attract attention of members of the Georgian parliament. The
Chairman of the Georgian Control Chamber Sulkhan Melashvili states at
the parliament Economic committee session that this case demonstrated
the gap between people and the bureaucratic machine. He stressed that
all the plots there illegal cutting was permitted by the district
authorities should be confiscated but it should not affect the rights
of the honest buyers. The first result of the scandal was dismissal of
Shota Meparidze, head of Tbilisi Department of Forestry.
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