The Economist, U.S. Edition, June 03, 2000
No Place To Be an Ecologist
Even in the democratic heyday of post-communism, Russia was a tough
place for greens. Where the right laws existed, they were hard to enforce.
A combination of abundant natural wealth, plenty of space and careless
habits meant that few Russians took environmental housekeeping seriously.
Now, a mix of business interests, criminal activity and government paranoia
threatens to make matters even worse. Last month President Vladimir Putin
abolished the main agency for environmental protection, handing over its
central functions to its chief bureaucratic rival, the Ministry for Natural
Resources. Environmentalists say that this amounts to putting an alcoholic
in charge of the vodka store. Though it is true that, like many of its
other laws, Russia's environmental rules (and the bureaucrats who enforce
them) can be maddeningly pedantic, contradictory and susceptible to corruption,
abolishing the agency that monitors them seems an unhelpful solution.
Environmentalists believe that the agency was axed under pressure from
powerful business interests, which argue that green regulation is blocking
development. "The people now in power think that ecology is for rich countries,"
says Alexei Yablokov, president of the Centre for Environmental Policy,
a pressure-group. Gangsters who profit hugely from illegal logging and
fishing are another powerful force. Their activity contributes to a
largely invisible environmental catastrophe in the remoter parts of Russia.
Natural resources are plundered on a stupendous, unsustainable scale.
The ministry now in charge at once announced that it would "simplify"
the environmental rules governing industry, suggesting a further relaxation
of controls that have already proved ineffective. The government has made
a few rhetorical nods to the environmental cause, for example by promising
to protect the embattled sturgeon, the fish that produces caviar. It has
also allowed Russia's best-known environmental campaigner, Alexander
Nikitin, to leave the country after his acquittal on charges of treason. But there
is little sign that Mr Putin cares about the environment. Last year, when
he was still head of the security service, he accused ecological groups
of providing a "convenient cover" for foreign spies.
Russia's greens have been squawking. They hope their American friends
can help them put the issue on the agenda for Bill Clinton's visit to Moscow
this weekend. And the main green groups have called an emergency joint
congress for June 13th.
Since last year, the government has been increasingly treating environmental
campaigners as a subversive menace. Some have been arrested, and then released,
on drug and terrorism charges. Some groups have been subject to threatening
financial audits, allegedly ordered by the federal prosecutor's office.
A spokeswoman for that office has said that a number of green groups are
indeed being checked for "confidential" reasons. Greenpeace's Moscow office
briefly faced closure this year on flimsy-sounding bureaucratic grounds.
"It looks as though they have organised an attack on the environmental
movement as the avant-garde for civil society," says a worried Mr.Yablokov.
Some environmentalists fear that later this year they will face new legal
obstacles, especially if they receive grants from abroad.
On top of all this, the new government announced ambitious plans on
May 25th to build 40 new fast-breeder nuclear-power stations in Russia
over the next 30 years. And it is considering another alarming project:
the export of floating nuclear-power plants to Asia. Just the sort of thing
for environmentalists to shout about -- if the government will let them.
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