Asia Times: Environment protection agency to be axed


	May 31, 2000	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Environment protection agency to be axed
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - The Kremlin explains its recent move to abolish Russia's environmental protection agency as an effort to cut costs and combat bureaucracy.

But Russian ecological non governmental organizations, officials and members of parliament are protesting vocally, arguing that Russia is drifting away from the civilized world in terms of environment protection.

Earlier this month the government announced that the State Committee for Environmental Protection, which is responsible for monitoring the environment, and the Federal Forestry Service, will become departments of the Natural Resources Ministry.

However environmentalists have criticized the move, saying it is detrimental to the environment. ''Russia, with its immense pollution woes needs to prioritize environmental issues but the current government (obviously) thinks otherwise,'' says Viktor Danilov-Danilian, chairperson of Russia's State Committee for the Environmental Protection. The government has opted to place economic growth ahead of environmental problems, though some 14 percent of Russia's territory where 50 million people - one third of the total population live - is viewed as ecologically unsafe, he says.

On May 23 more than 50 Russian environmental groups and NGOs signed a letter to President Vladamir Putin, protesting the abolition of the environmental agency and arguing that it is against Russia's legislation to empower the very same government body to exploit and protect the natural resources. Despite the growing protests, the Kremlin has not yet responded, Yevgeny Usov, a spokesperson for Russia's Greenpeace said.

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. He said there was no point in cutting costs by closing down the environmental watchdog as Russia already spends very little on its environmental protection.

Moscow has promised the international community that it will allocate at least 3 percent of its gross domestic product towards protecting the environment, but actual disbursement was about 0.01 percent, according to Danilov-Danilian.

Of all the changes in the governmental agencies ordered by President Vladimir Putin, the abolishment of the State Committee for the Environmental Protection and its transfer to the Natural Resources Ministry could provoke the most international controversy. Russia is going to find itself under increasing international pressure, as other countries do not want to have a huge ticking ecological bomb as a neighbor, Usov said.

NGOs argue that Russia's environmental watchdog was sunk by powerful lobbying groups. The decision to disband ecological agency was lobbied for by interested parties - notably oil companies - though the consequences could be disastrous, Usov claims.

For instance, Russian law forbids the importing of radioactive waste or nuclear materials from other countries for long-term storage or burial. Only the countries with Russian-built nuclear power plants can send nuclear waste to Russia. Nonetheless, Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry, or 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 the purpose, Minatom has drafted a bill ''On reprocessing and storage of nuclear fuel''. On November 18, 1999, Danilov-Danilian sent an official 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 the them to dump their spent nuclear fuel in Russia - to the personal enrichment of the few.

The critics of the demise of Russia's environmental protection agency also lash out at the transfer of its function to the Natural Resources Ministry, which is supposed to help businesses to make the most of natural resources. The ministry's main function is to exploit natural resources thus it does not have any stimuli whatsoever to protect the environment, Danilov-Danilian argues. Even the Minister of Natural Resources, Boris Yatskevich, has conceded to IPS that his ministry's staff is underpaid, thus hardly able to provide an adequate natural resources management.

Axing Russia's 202-year-old Forestry Service also drew criticism. The protection of Russian forests should be an ecological priority - domestically and world-wide, Danilov-Danilian told IPS. Russia has more forests 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 USA. Most of these forests - christened ''taiga'' in Russian - 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 against the abolition of the environment agency.

However, the Kremlin's long record of ignoring public protests makes the chances that the decree will be reversed far from certain - if not minimal. ''The outcome is difficult to foresee, though we do hope that reason will prevail,'' Greenpeace's Usov said.

(Inter Press Service)