Inter Press Service, May 29, 2000
Environmental Protection Agency Gets Axe
The Kremlin says it is dissolving Russia's environmental protection
agency in an effort to cut costs and combat bureaucracy, but Russian
ecologists and some legislators say it is a sign that the nation is drifting further
away from the civilized world.
Earlier this month, the government announced that the duties of the
State Committee for Environmental Protection, which was responsible for
monitoring the environment, and the Federal Forestry Service, will be
transferred to the Natural Resources Ministry.
Critics of the move say that transferring the agencies' jurisdiction
to the Natural Resources Ministry, which helps businesses exploit the
environment, is ludicrous.
On May 23, more than 50 Russian environmental groups and non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) signed a letter to Pres. Vladamir Putin protesting
the dissolution of the environmental agency and arguing that it violates
Russian law to empower the very same government body to exploit and
protect natural resources.
Minister of Natural Resources Boris Yatskevich told IPS that his
ministry's staff is underpaid and in no position to provide adequate natural
resources management.
"Russia, with its immense pollution woes, needs to prioritize
environmental issues, but the current government thinks otherwise," says Viktor
Danilov-Danilian, chairperson of the soon-to-be-defunct environmental protection agency.
Danilov-Danilian dismissed claims that his agency is being abolished
in an attempt to improve efficiency or cut costs. He argues that the agency,
which oversaw 250,000 enterprises, was swamped with work, discovering
300,000 violations in 1999 alone.
Shutting down the environmental watchdog would not save much money
anyway, he added, since Russia already spends very little on environmental
protection.
The government has chosen to put economic growth ahead of the environment
even though some 14 percent of Russia's territory -- home to 50 million
people, one-third of the total population -- is viewed as ecologically
at risk, he says.
The Kremlin has not yet responded to the growing chorus of protests,
said Yevgeny Usov, a spokesperson for Greenpeace Russia.
Although Moscow promised the international community that it would
allocate at least three percent of its gross domestic product to environmental
protection, actual spending was about 0.01 percent, according to Danilov-Danilian.
Of all the changes to governmental agencies ordered by Pres. Putin,
the abolition of the State Committee for the Environmental Protection and
its transfer to the Natural Resources Ministry could prove to be the most
controversial.
Usov predicted that Russia would find itself under increasing
international pressure, as other countries do not want a ticking ecological time bomb
as a neighbor.
NGOs charge that Russia's environmental watchdog was sunk by powerful
lobbying groups, including big oil companies, and that the consequences
could be disastrous.
For instance, although Russian law forbids the importing of radioactive
waste or nuclear materials from other countries for long-term storage or
burial, Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry, Minatom, has offered to reprocess
$ 10-$ 12 billion worth of nuclear waste from around the world at its
Chelyabinsk plant.
Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov has offered to take nuclear waste
from Switzerland, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, according
to Greenpeace. Storing other countries' nuclear waste in Russia is illegal,
but Minatom has been trying to push through an amendment that will allow
it.
For that purpose, Minatom has drafted a bill titled "On reprocessing
and storage of nuclear fuel."
On November 18, 1999, Danilov-Danilian sent a letter to the government
in which he referred to the bill as detrimental to "Russia's ecological
security."
Minatom has been accused of conspiring with overseas nuclear power
operators to earn billions of dollars by allowing them to dump their spent nuclear
fuel in Russia, to the personal enrichment of a few.
Abolishing Russia's 202-year-old Forestry Service also drew criticism.
The protection of Russian forests should be an ecological priority both
at home and abroad, Danilov-Danilian told IPS.
Russia has more forested area than any other country on earth. In
total, Russia's forests cover about 10 million square kilometers, or more than
one-fifth of the world's forest cover, an area larger than the continental
United States. Most of these forests, known as "taiga," are in Siberia
and consist of pine and spruce.
Danilov-Danilian says the only hope lies in the slowness of Russia's
bureaucratic machine, which needs at least three months to disband a state
committee, giving some time to those fighting the abolition of the
environmental agency.
However, the Kremlin's long record of ignoring public protests makes
the reversal of the decree far from certain, if not impossible.
"The outcome is difficult to foresee, though we do hope that reason
will prevail," Greenpeace's Usov said.
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