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Russia
Radioactive Contamination
Beginning with glasnost in the mid-1980s and continuing
with the establishment of an independent Russia in 1991, much disturbing
information has become available about Soviet and Russian nuclear
practices and mishaps. These disclosures have included deadly accidents
on land and aboard naval vessels, a network of secret cities designed
specifically for nuclear weapons production and material processing,
detonation of nuclear blasts for "peaceful" purposes, and the dumping
of nuclear waste at sea and its injection into subterranean cavities.
More than any other event, the Chernobyl' disaster prompted greater
scrutiny and candor about Soviet nuclear programs. Although much
of the contamination from Chernobyl' occurred in the now-independent
countries of Ukraine and Belarus, the present-day Russian Federation
also received significant fallout from the accident. Approximately
50,000 square kilometers of the then Russian Republic, particularly
the oblasts of Bryansk, Orel, Kaluga, and Tula, were contaminated
with cesium-137 . The total population of the nineteen oblasts and
republics receiving fallout from Chernobyl' was 37 million in 1993.
The Soviet, now Russian, navy's disposal and accidental venting
of radioactive materials pose particular problems. Beginning in
1965, twenty nuclear reactors, most with their fuel rods still inside,
were dumped from nuclear submarines and an icebreaker into the Arctic
Ocean north of Russia. In 1994 the Oslo-based Bellona Foundation
estimated that radioactive dumping in the Kara Sea north of western
Siberia and adjacent waters constituted two-thirds of all the radioactive
materials that ever have entered the world's oceans. In 1996 Bellona
identified fifty-two decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines that
were scheduled for scrapping but were still afloat near Murmansk
with nuclear fuel on board; a timetable for dismantling them has
fallen far behind.
Japan has been engaged in a long struggle to stop Russia's Pacific
Fleet from dumping radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan . In
1994 Russia complied with Japan's demand to cease dumping entirely;
after a long series of negotiations, in January 1996 Russia and
Japan agreed on construction of a floating nuclear waste recycling
plant and expansion of an existing facility to process nuclear waste
generated by the Pacific Fleet. The United States and Japan are
to fund the first project, and the United States and Norway the
second. In the mid-1990s, Russia still was seeking methods of storing
and disposing of first-generation radioactive waste in many regions,
including the European Arctic. Under these conditions, experts predict
that the country will be hard-pressed to comply with the requirements
of the arms reduction agreements for disposal of waste from thousands
of nuclear weapons scheduled for destruction later in the 1990s
. On the eve of the Group of Seven (G-7; ) nuclear safety summit
meeting in Moscow in April 1996, Aleksey Yablokov and the Bellona
Foundation complained that continued operation of Chernobyl'-type
reactors presented an unacceptable risk to the Russian public. The
Western leaders at the G-7 meeting generally muted their criticism
on the issue to avoid embarrassing President Boris N. Yeltsin during
his presidential campaign. Yablokov announced the formation of a
new lobby of Russian nongovernmental organizations for greater government
disclosure on the issue.
The Response to Environmental Problems
In the half-decade that began with the Chernobyl' disaster and
culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, substantial changes
took place in the public's attitudes toward environmental crises.
The public engaged in unprecedented discussion about the dangers
the state's environmental policies posed to public health. According
to surveys, the public's main concerns were local problems having
immediate impact, such as polluted water supplies, violation of
public health regulations, and air pollution. Russians were much
less interested in more general and fundamental issues such as loss
of biodiversity, deforestation, and acid rain. In 1989 a national
poll placed environmental pollution fifth among citizens' major
concerns, but only one-third of respondents expressed their willingness
to sacrifice economically to improve the situation. Nevertheless,
a substantial green movement arose in the late 1980s. Fragmented
by disagreement over politicization and national versus local agendas,
parts of the movement branched into other areas of activism such
as human rights and regional autonomy, and no single green party
emerged.
Public enthusiasm for environmental improvement followed the same
curve as enthusiasm for democratic and economic reform; by 1992
economic hardship began to wilt the zeal for reform, and the vast
majority of Russians remained skeptical of political change throughout
the early 1990s. As worsening economic conditions heightened short-term
insecurity, issues such as environmental protection paled, especially
in cases where the shutting of a polluting plant threatened the
livelihood of a town or city.
Politicians and government policy generally followed the same pattern
as citizen concern in the early and mid-1990s. In 1988 the initial
groundswell of environmental concern stimulated the Gorbachev government
to form the State Committee for the Protection of Nature (Gosudarstvennyy
komitet po okhrane prirody--Goskompriroda), an agency given broad
responsibilities similar to those of the United States Environmental
Protection Agency. In 1992 the Russian Federation used Goskompriroda
as the model for a new Ministry of Environmental Protection and
Natural Resources, which received a similar mandate.
In the 1990 elections for Russia's local legislative bodies (soviets)
and the republic-level Congress of People's Deputies, virtually
every candidate, whether democrat or communist, made the environment
a major campaign issue, thus promoting the electorate's awareness
that severe problems exist. In 1990 Yablokov was appointed to an
influential position as environmental adviser to the president of
Russia (a position he continued to hold in the Russian Federation
after 1991), and powerful environmental commissions were formed
in the local soviets of Moscow and other cities. In the early 1990s,
such soviets blocked many large, environmentally dubious projects
of the central government, such as the activation of the Northern
Thermoelectric Center near Moscow, and of various local jurisdictions
tied to national monopolies, such as the State Construction Committee
(Goskomstroy) and the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom).
By the time of the parliamentary elections of 1993, however, the
political atmosphere had changed. Most environmental activists either
abstained from political activity or merged their single-issue efforts
with coalitions that might exceed the 5 percent threshold needed
for a party to gain representation in the State Duma. Neither strategy
had political impact because environmental views were lost in the
coalitions' agendas. Among the major parties, only the Yabloko coalition
had a separate department for environmental issues. Another major
reform-minded party, Russia's Choice, which gained seventy-six seats
in 1993, advocated environmental protection through market reform;
Russia's minister of environmental protection and natural resources,
former communist functionary Viktor Danilov-Danil'yan, was a member
of Russia's Choice. However, neither in the campaign nor after assuming
office did Danilov-Danil'yan press the party's nominal program of
tax stimulation for energy conservation and pollution control. In
the 1995 legislative elections, Russia's Democratic Choice (the
new name of Russia's Choice) declined dramatically, gaining only
nine seats in the new State Duma, although Danilov-Danil'yan remained
head of his ministry.
A crucial event was the 1992 appointment of Viktor Chernomyrdin
as prime minister to replace Yegor Gaydar, head of Russia's Choice.
Chernomyrdin, former head of the State Natural Gas Company (Gazprom),
has made the reinvigoration of Russian industry, and especially
the fuel industries, a top priority. A second important event was
President Yeltsin's dismissal of the local soviets in his 1993 struggle
to consolidate presidential power and curb the growth of regional
autonomy. The local dumas that replaced the soviets have been much
more solicitous of local economic ambitions.
In the parliamentary elections of 1995, the Kedr (Cedar) coalition
(which also had presented a slate in the 1993 election) was the
only group among forty-three parties calling itself environmental;
however, the party was dominated by businesspeople rather than environmental
activists. Kedr candidates received less than 1 percent of the vote
and no seats in the new State Duma. Some nongovernmental groups
have continued to have political impact, and in 1995 Yablokov hailed
a new wave of the green movement. The annual Days of Defense Against
Environmental Hazards, which began modestly in 1993, became a national
phenomenon the next year and included a speech by President Yeltsin.
Public organizations played a major role in establishing the All-Russian
Congress for the Protection of Nature under the Ministry of Environmental
Protection and Natural Resources. The national congress is preceded
each year by eighty-nine regional congresses, one in each of Russia's
political subdivisions. In late 1993, the new Commission on Ecological
Security went into operation under the Security Council, with the
assignment of assessing the most serious environmental problems
as they endanger national security . Although it was formed with
great fanfare, the commission received little funding in its first
three years.
In 1994 the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources
employed about 21,000 people. In addition, the official Russian
environmental protection system included environmental agencies
in each of the eighty-nine subnational jurisdictions and also several
state committees responsible for the use of mineral, water, and
forest resources. In 1993 some 65 percent of the ministry's expenditures
went for protection of water quality and 26 percent for protection
of air quality. However, the ministry's actions against major polluters
remained infrequent despite the 1993 constitution's guarantee of
the people's right to a clean environment, to receive information
about environmental conditions, and to get compensation for damage
to health and property that results from negative ecological conditions.
In 1995 Danilov-Danil'yan reported that only twenty-two cases had
been brought against alleged polluters in the previous year.
In 1993 Russia's total investment in environmental preservation
was about US$2.3 billion, less than 4 percent of the national budget
category entitled "industrial construction," in which environmental
expenditures are included. That figure was 20 percent less than
the 1990 investment. The structure of environmental spending remained
substantially the same as it was in 1980: some 58 percent went for
protection of water resources, 24 percent for prevention of air
pollution, 7 percent for forest management, and only 0.04 percent
for nature preserves and species protection . In most subnational
jurisdictions, water pollution receives the most investment because
of uniformly serious water conditions.
In 1993 state enterprises and organizations paid 39 percent of
environmental costs. As state budget deficits occurred in subsequent
years, the amounts from those sources decreased, but the percentage
did not because the only other funding sources were local budgets
and private environmental foundations. Budgets of subnational jurisdictions
often suffered the same deficits as the federal government, and
private organizations contributed only 1.4 percent of total investments
in 1993. Meanwhile, local economic conditions have combined with
weak enforcement funding to promote corruption among local authorities
and to encourage poaching, especially in the fishing industry.
In 1991 Yeltsin signed Russia's first comprehensive environmental
law, On Environmental Protection. Modeled after a similar Soviet
law, it made many general statements about the environmental rights
of citizens without setting any specific goals. The law also defined
numerous environmental functions for every level of government as
well as for citizens and nongovernmental organizations, and it specified
environmental regulation of every aspect of society, from health
resorts to electromagnetic radiation. The sheer inclusiveness of
such provisions made practical enforcement impossible. The other
major obstacle to enforcement has been the slow development of Russia's
judiciary, which was only a rubber-stamp branch of government in
the Soviet system and which totally lacked experience in the area
of environmental law (as well as the general theory of Western-style
jurisprudence) . Before any enforcement could begin, the 1991 law
stipulated that numerous other laws had to be passed. The same complex
situation has existed at the regional and local government levels.
In early 1995, the State Duma passed a law requiring environmental
impact assessments for a variety of construction and development
projects, including large-scale industrial development, large-scale
use of natural resources, city planning, creation of new technology
and materials, and modification of existing commercial facilities.
Russia is a signatory of most major international environmental
treaties. Among them are the International Tropical Timber Agreement
(1983), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES, 1973), the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
(1982), and the Montreal Protocol controlling substances harmful
to the ozone layer.
Data as of July 1996
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