ITAR-TASS News Agency, December 29, 2000
Federal, Local Bodies To Share Nature Protection Functions
By Alexei Rubtsov
The nature protection functions should be fairly shared in Russia between
the federal and local authorities. This view was expressed to journalists on
Friday by Russian Minister for Natural Resources Boris Yatskevich after the
meeting of the cabinet, which had discussed a set of measures to improve
nature protection work in Russia.
The minister said that it was the duty of local and municipal authorities
all over the world to protect nature. However, ninety per cent of all the
means, allocated for this purpose in Russia, are in the local budgets, while
95 per cent of all the nature protection work is done by the federal
authorities. Hence, Yatskevich believes, it is necessary to work out a
clear-cut scheme to share these functions.
Yatskevich believes that market mechanisms should be used to enhance the
effectiveness of nature protection efforts. In his opinion, the presently
existing system is "more fiscal than protective". The minister explained
that enterprises were simply made to pay fines today, but continued to
pollute the environment. In his opinion, "it is necessary to resort to
ecological insurance and to ecological auditing" in order to do away with
this practice.
Yatskevich said that it was necessary to shape abroad "an objective image of
Russia as a protector of natural resources". He is sure that Russia has many
things to be proud of in this field. The minister adduced the following
figures: Russia gets from Western Europe 2-2.5 times more pollutions than
vice-versa.
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
| 
