Reproduced with
the kind permission of Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen,
Center for Security Studies, Zurich, and Research Centre for
East European Studies, http://www.res.ethz.ch/analysis/rad/
Tables
and Figures
are available at the Russian and Eurasian Network website.
Abstract
Russia faces serious ecological challenges,
which are having adverse effects on both the natural environment
and the health of the population, demonstrated by its lower
than average life expectancy for a developed
country. The problems are exacerbated by the state authorities’
policy of “de-environmentalism” or “de-ecologization”, whereby
environmental costs are deemed acceptable in the quest for
economic gains. A significant change in mindset towards the
environment is required in both the power-structure and wider
society in order to arrest the trend of environmental neglect
in Russia.
The Consequences of Environmental Neglect
Every year in Russia, approximately 35,000 people die as
a result of car accidents, 40,000 from alcohol poisoning and
490,000 from environmental-related diseases (data taken from
WTO in 2004). Furthermore, experts
claim that about half of Russia’s 180,000 miscarriages per
annum are due to environmental causes.
Russia is the only developed country where life expectancy
has declined over the past 20 years. The life expectancy for
men in 1986 was 64.0 and by 2006 life expectancy had declined
to 59.3. It is significant that the average life expectancy
is 3–5 years shorter in the most environmentally-unfavorable
areas of the Russian Federation (approximately 14% of the
territory, on
which 40% (60 million people) of the country’s population
live) compared with less polluted areas.
Contrary to the assumption that increased economic development
has a positive impact on the health of a country’s population,
life expectancy in Russia declined between 1998 and 2004,
a period which saw substantial economic growth. This trend
illustrates the huge impact that ecological contamination
has on life expectancy.
Air Quality
According to official figures approximately 60 million Russians
live in areas of “high” or “very high” levels of air pollution.
Industrial emissions have significantly increased since 2000.
Traffic pollution accounts for around 50% of the increase
in levels of anthropogenic emissions. In major cities and
some regions, traffic accounts for 80–90% of air pollution.
One in every two Russians is negatively affected by the high
concentrations of solid particulate matter (dust) in the air,
with more than 2.4 million people
exposed to concentrations of over 300.g/m.. By comparison,
in the US, which has a population twice that of Russia and
a significantly larger industrial-complex, only about 2 million
people are exposed to equivalent levels. In 49 of the Russian
Federation’s 83 administrative units, more than half of the
urban population lives in areas with “high” or “very high”
levels of air pollution. However, the official data on air
pollution does not provide a comprehensive picture, because
air quality is not monitored in large areas, in which around
40% of Russia’s urban populations live.
Water Quality
The use of environmentally unfriendly technology in industry
and agriculture, the dumping of inadequately treated industrial,
agricultural and municipal waste and the uncontrolled flow
of such polluted waters has
led to widespread water pollution. As a result, in many regions
of Russia surface water is polluted to levels many tens of
times above the permissible level, and thus it is not rare
to find areas affected by “high” or “extremely
high” pollution. Of all water-waste that enters Russia’s reservoirs,
36.1% is contaminated, 7.4% of which remains entirely untreated.
Water quality in the majority of Russia’s water-bodies does
not meet normal regulatory
requirements. Only 12–14% of Russia’s lakes and rivers are
ecologically clean (see Figure 1 on p. 5.). The quality of
groundwater in Russia is also deteriorating, with some 30%
already polluted. According to some views, inland and marginal
seas contain pollutants 3–5 times over the permissible levels.
As a consequence, every other Russian drinks water that does
not
meet hygienic standards. Almost 30% of Russia’s surface water,
which is used as drinking water, does not meet quality standards.
In a number of administrative units of the Russian Federation,
this percentage is even
higher (see Table 1 on p. 5).
Contamination of Land and Soil
The dumping of waste and contamination of soil and vegetation
is a universal phenomenon in Russia. The majority of Russia’s
industrial and agricultural land was initially environmentally
damaged between 1950 and 1970. Since then, the process of
environmental degradation has further accelerated. The decline
in the fertility of land has accelerated as a result of soil
erosion, disruption in land-use, reduction in the amount of
natural/organic fertilizers and increasing chemical and radioactive
contamination. At the present time, approximately 40% of the
country’s agricultural land is subject to wind erosion and
18% to water erosion.
Federal monitoring of land quality is carried out in only
a small part of the Russian Federation. Yet, even this limited
data shows that contamination of land is occurring in some
areas on a massive-scale. On average, 11% of Russia’s residential
areas are contaminated by dangerous metals. In some administrative
units, such contaminated land comprises half of the inhabited
areas (see Figure 2 on p.6).
This amount of sanitarily and hygienically (microbiological,
parasites) contaminated land is unacceptable for a developed
country. The level of contamination is a consequence of the
state authorities’ neglect of the need for sanitary removal
of industrial and commercial waste from inhabited areas (including
the appearance of illegal dumps), the absence of centralized
sewage systems in some areas and the poor conditions of sewage
systems in others.
In all territories that produce oil, the extraction, refining
and transportation process has led to significant contamination
of soil by petroleum products. According to expert estimates,
1.5% of Russia’s soil is contaminated by oil products, and
about 0.3% is contaminated by heavy metals.
The bottom of the Volga reservoirs and other such reservoirs
have accumulated tens of millions of salts from heavy metals
and other dangerous chemicals, which have turned these bodies
of water into disorganized
and uncontrolled depositories of toxic waste.
A major ecological problem remains the storage and reuse
of solid industrial and home waste, the amount of which is
growing. Presently, there exists hundreds of thousands of
unsanctioned dumping sites, which have a negative impact both
on air quality and the quality of groundwater.
Radiation and Chemical Contamination
Many areas in the Altai Krai, Altai Republic, the oblasts
Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Orenburg, Sverdlovsk and
Irkutsk, and the Autonomous Okrugs of Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansiysk
remain (and will be for the long term) contaminated by radioactive
fallout from the production and testing of nuclear weapons.
The real time-bombs are 85 underground nuclear explosions
carried out “in the interest of the national economy” in Sakha
(Yakutia) Republic, Astrakhan, Perm, Orenburg, Arkhangelsk
oblasts and some other areas of Russia between 1964 –1988.
The nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 has created dangerous
levels of radioactively contamination in Bryansk, Tula, Kaluga
and Orel oblasts. Dozens of radioisotope thermoelectric generators,
which were used in the 1990’s at meteorological stations and
lighthouses, have been abandoned or lost and are now the source
of dangerous radioactive contamination along the coasts of
the Baltic, Barents, Arctic and Far Eastern seas. In addition,
in medical procedures, too high a level of radiation is used.
Public Health and the Environment
The poor condition of the atmosphere, water and soil in Russia
impacts on public health. Environmental pollution, past and
present, is an important factor in the high mortality rate
in Russia. It would not be an exaggeration to say that illnesses
related to poor environmental conditions touch the majority
of the Russian population. Half the number of people dying
from environmental causes is preventable. As a result, 2.5–3
million lives could have been saved between 1995 and 2009
had it not been for dire environmental conditions.
Policy of “De-environmentalism”
Russia’s environmental problems are the result of the state
policy of “de-environmentalism”. The logic of “deenvironmentalism”,
which is often seen in official documents, is that Russia
will start dealing with environmental problems once it is
rich, and that economic growth requires the use of all of
Russia’s available natural resources, which necessitates lower
standards of environmental practice (laws, norms, practices,
ecological controls and monitoring). The outcome of this approach,
which was established under Yeltsin and developed under Putin
and Medvedev, has been to turn Russia into a reservoir of
natural resources for other countries, and the place where
outdated technologies can be used. The “de-environmentalism”
policy has developed through the following stages:
• The dissolution of The Environmental Protection Agency
in 2000
• A weakening of environmental protection legislation (since
1998), including in the Forestry sector (2004–2006), in Water
(2006) and Urban Planning (2006)
• A weakening of state environmental controls (since 2000)
• A reduction in the sphere of activity of official environmental-impact
assessments (2004)
• A slowing down in the creation of environmentally-protected
territories (2000–2008)
• The pursuit of environmental activists and the obstruction
of environmental NGOs (since 1997)
• The destruction of the system of environmental education
(since 2000)
• A reduction of funding for environmental programs (since
1995).
In 2001, federal expenditure on environmental protection
amounted to 0.4% of the total federal budget. In 2008 and
2009, it amounted to less than 0.1% of the total budget. Taking
into account the significant increase in the state budget
during this period, this reduction seems even more dismissive.
A major source of the increase in Russian income is from
energy exports. The Russian Federation’s resource-economy
is linked with the development of consumer-driven ethics.
Figure 3 on p.7 illustrates the increase in Russian income
from energy exports. Greed and the pursuit of money have intoxicated
both elites and society, with petro-dollars corrupting the
Russian power-structure. As a result, the overarching principle
of Russian society, in the last decade and a half, is to get
rich at any price.
The huge profits from the resource-economy in combination
with an autocratic regime have led to a split in Russian society.
This is demonstrated by the disproportionate gap between the
average salary and the number
of billionaires in Russia, which is significantly greater
than the gap found in other European societies.
Against the background of this split society, environmental
issues play a significant role for the health of some in Russia,
but not for others. Some are able to drink clean water, consume
environmentally clean products and use the health of others,
who live and work in environmentally dirty conditions. As
a result, the life expectancy of the former is 80, and the
latter is 60.
Conclusion
The resolution of Russia’s environmental problems is connected
with the need to renew the electoral process, restore the
independence of courts and to reestablish weakened environmental
legislation. It is necessary to restore federal agencies for
the protection of the environment, reestablish environmental
safe-guards, sharply increase state environmental controls
and monitoring and strengthen nature-conservation prosecutors.
In addition, it is necessary to dramatically increase expenditure
on protecting the environment, dispense information about
the state of the environment, highlight the connection between
pollution and health and develop
environmental education, instruction and scientific research.
About the Author
Alexey Yablokov is the Chairman of the Green Party faction
of the Joint Democratic “YABLOKO” political party,
Deputy Chairman of the Ecological council and a Councilor
of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a former special
adviser to President Boris Yeltsin on environmental and public
health affairs.
Recommended Reading
• Zubarevich, N.V., “Sotsialnye problemy Rossii” [Russia’s
Social Problems], Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 5, 2008.
• Kotovets, V.A., “Ekologicheskaia bezopasnost poka ne garantiruetsia”
[Ecological safety is so far not guaranteed], Ekologicheski
navigator (Volgograd), no. 6, 2009.
• Revich, B.A., “Goryachie tochki” khimicheskogo zagriazneniya
okruzhaiushchei sredy i zdorove naseleniia Rossii [The “hot
spots” of chemical pollution of the environment and the health
of the Russian population]. Moscow 2007.
• Yablokov, A.V., “Rossiya: zdorove prirody i liudei” [Russia:
the health of nature and people], Seriia “Ekologicheskaia
politika” RODP “YABLOKO”, Moscow 2007.
• Yablokov, A.V., “Okruzhaiushchaia sreda i zdorove moskvichei”
[The environment and the health of Muscovites], Seriia “Ekologicheskaia
politika” RODP “YABLOKO”, Moscow 2009.
See also:
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