The SEU-Times, June, 2000
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
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.
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.
Back to the Publications page
Back to the first page on Abolishing of Russian Environmental Agencies
Back to the If Everything OK With Forests In Russia page
| 
