Calgary Herald, May 23, 2000
Putin Abolishes Chief Agency: Critics Say He's Turned His Back on Environment
President Vladimir Putin has abolished Russia's chief agency for environmental
protection and transferred its functions to a ministry that hands out oil and gas licences,
triggering protests that he has turned his back on post-Soviet Russia's huge inventory
of pollution disasters.
It was the latest in a series of signals that Putin has an ambivalent, or even hostile,
view of those who have called attention to Russia's ecological plight. Earlier,
Putin said environmentalists were working as foreign spies.
In a decree made public Saturday, Putin eliminated the State Committee on the
Environment and the State Committee on Forestry. There was no explanation.
Their functions were transferred to the Ministry on Natural Resources, which
licenses development of Russia's oil, gas and other deposits.
''It's an absolutely primitive point of view that we need to solve the economic
problems and later the environment, that ecology is only for a rich country, ''
said Alexei Yablokov, a biologist who was once environmental adviser to
President Boris Yeltsin and is now a leading activist. Yablokov said the
decision reflects the view that Russia cannot afford to worry about environmental protection.
Yablokov and several other members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
presented Putin a protest letter Monday at the academy's annual meeting.
Yablokov said they handed the letter to Putin during the coffee break.
Later, government officials told Yablokov they perhaps went too far and
might rename the ministry to ''natural resources and ecology.'' He called
the response superficial.
The abolished agency was once a ministry, but was downgraded several
years ago. Yablokov said its mission was environmental regulation, control,
monitoring and expertise, but the state committee had grown ''extremely weak''
in recent years. ''It was important, but not so effective,'' he said.
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