Russia Is an Eco-Disaster, and It Just Got WorseA couple of months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin abolished his country's environmental protection agency--a decision that bodes ill not only for the people and ecosystems of one of the world's most polluted nations, but also for the security and environmental health of the entire world. Yet Putin's action has attracted virtually no attention from Western politicians or news organizations.
Acting by decree and without explanation, Putin shut down the State Committee for Environmental Protection on May 17 and transferred its responsibilities to the Natural Resources Agency, the government body that licenses the development of Russia's vast stores of petroleum and minerals. After eliminating the State Committee on Forestry, Putin completed his governmental reorganization by naming Alexander Gavrin, who has close ties to the country's biggest oil producer, Lukoil, as energy minister. In short, Putin has put industrial foxes in charge of the environmental henhouse.
The State Committee for Environmental Protection had neither the power nor the status of its American counterpart, the Environmental Protection Agency. Created as a cabinet-level body under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, the Ministry of the Environment was downgraded to a mere State Committee in 1996 by the newly reelected Boris Yeltsin. But many Russian environmentalists point out that the committee played a positive role in some cases--it helped the Russian environmental law firm Ecojuris stop Exxon from dumping toxic waste from oil drilling into the seas off the Sakhalin peninsula, for example. Despite their frequent criticisms of the committee's inadequacies, alarmed activists are now gathering signatures to force a national referendum on Putin's decree. "Even a shabby State Committee for the Environment is better than no environmental monitoring body whatsoever," argues Greenpeace Russia spokesman Alexander Shuvalov.
Victor Danilov-Danilyan, who headed the committee when it was abolished, notes that 61 million Russians already live under environmentally dangerous conditions. In 120 Russian cities, air pollution levels are five times higher than acceptable, according to Russia's own standards. One million tons of oil--the equivalent of 25 Exxon Valdez spills--leak out of pipelines and into Russia's soil and water every month. The Russian news agency Tass reports that 30 percent of Chechnya is an ecological disaster zone, thanks in part to the 26 oil wells that have been on fire nonstop for months.
Nevertheless, one day after Putin's announcement, the Natural Resources Agency declared it planned to "simplify" rules governing environmental behavior in Russia. Logging policy in particular is slated for overhaul. Russia contains 22 percent of the world's forests--more than any other nation. With help from a $60 million loan from the World Bank, the Putin government plans to improve the investment climate for logging in Russia. Leveling Russia's vast forests will speed the extinction of countless plant and animal species; it will also remove a major source of fresh air and water and a counter to global warming.
Nowhere are Putin's actions more frightening, though, than with respect to nuclear technology. The State Committee for Environmental Protection did not directly oversee Russia's nuclear industrial complex, but Putin's business-first attitude seems certain to carry over to nuclear policy. Not one of Russia's 29 nuclear power plants has a complete safety certificate; many have been cited for hundreds of violations. Yet Putin's minister for atomic energy, Yevgeny Adamov, wants to build 23 more nuclear power plants, plus another 40 advanced, "fast breeder" reactors. Breeders rely on plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.
To have plutonium shipments crisscrossing Russia, where the rule of law is weak at best, is a recipe for catastrophe. One hijacking--or an inside job by workers vulnerable to temptation after months of unpaid wages--could give a terrorist group enough raw material to hold whole cities hostage. Adamov says fast breeder reactors will make Russia rich, which is the same reason he offers for changing Russia's laws to allow the import of tons of nuclear waste--as if Russia isn't already choking on the stuff.
Instead of abolishing the State Committee, Putin should have strengthened it to address the dangers posed by his country's nuclear pollution and security. The infamous Chernobyl accident of 1986 took place in the Ukraine, of course, not in Russia, but its radioactivity continues to increase the risk of cancer and endanger human health throughout the region. Many of Russia's nuclear plants rely on the same technology as the Chernobyl facility.
Less well-known is the still unfolding crisis near the western Siberian city of Chelyabinsk. The Mayak complex 50 miles north of Chelyabinsk was the heart of the Soviet nuclear weapons production system throughout the Cold War. Three disasters with Mayak's nuclear waste--in 1946, 1957 and 1967--have caused cumulative damages comparable to, and probably worse than, the Chernobyl meltdown. Even today, some 100 million curies of radioactivity, including six Chernobyls' worth of strontium 90 and cesium 137, remain in Mayak's Lake Karachay, which scientists from the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council have called "the most polluted spot on Earth." The groundwater is already contaminated, and the area is subject to cyclones and earthquakes that could further spread the radioactivity.
Rivaling Chelyabinsk is the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia, near the border with Norway. During the Cold War, the harbors of Kola were home to the Soviet Union's Northern Fleet, which dumped used submarine reactors, spent fuel and other nuclear debris into the sea with abandon. The waters now contain two-thirds of all the nuclear waste dumped into the world's oceans.
The problems at Kola came to light through the work of Alexander Nikitin, a former naval captain who co-authored with the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group, a report documenting the potential for trouble. Though Nikitin's report relied only on previously published information, the Federal Security Police (FSB) arrested him in 1996 and imprisoned him on charges of treason and divulging state secrets. He was acquitted last December.
Putin, who headed the FSB in 1998 and 1999, defended the FSB's aggressive stance toward Nikitin and other environmentalists, asserting last year that environmental groups provide convenient cover for foreign spies. But Putin's May 17 decree suggests that his real concern is not that environmentalists will compromise state security, but that their efforts will elevate ecological purity over the speedy resource development that the Russian leader believes his country needs.
There is still time for Putin to reverse his anti-environmental initiatives. When biologist Alexei Yablokov, a leading figure in Russia's environmental movement, gave Putin a letter from members of the Russian Academy of Sciences urging restoration of the State Committee, the Russian president responded that he would think about it. But he assigned the review of his decision to Boris Yatskevich, who, as minister of natural resources, is unlikely to reverse course without pressure.
Russian environmentalists, with their referendum drive, are doing their part. Outsiders, alas, are not. So far, the only official criticism of Putin's decree has been an "expression of concern" endorsed by the environmental ministers of the Nordic countries at a meeting last month. President Clinton declined to raise the subject in his speech to the Russian Duma in June. Surely the elimination of environmental oversight in one of the most polluted, militarily potent nations on earth deserves more attention than that.