Press Release, 27.01.2023

Photo: Deforestation near Savin Navolok Park, Petrozavodsk / Photo by the Karelian Yabloko

The Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia at its meeting on 26 January rejected Yabloko’s bill on the return of the mandatory environmental impact assessment of natural reserves in the region. Earlier, a similar bill by Yabloko, supported by five academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Moscow Department of Natural Resources, was blocked by the pro-government majority in the Moscow City Duma.

The Institute of Regional Environmental Expertise functioned in the Russian legislation until 2018. Over the past four years, a number of changes have been made to Federal Law No. 33 “On Specially Protected Natural Territories” and the Urban Planning Code, which have created a legal gap due to the lack of environmental expertise. As a result, natural reserves have been shrinking, and buildings emerge on the site of natural parks.

The adoption of the draft federal law would make it possible to avoid both unreasonable expansion of the territory of natural reserves, leading to a restriction of economic activities of nearby entities, and  prevent the reduction of specially protected natural areas, causing environmental damage to them as a result of economic activity and development of cities, thereby strengthening the guarantees of citizens’ rights to a favorable environment.

Five academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences spoke about the need for the urgent adoption of the Yabloko bill. They turned to the Chairman of the Moscow City Duma, Alexei Shaposhnikov, with a request to do everything possible to promote the urgent adoption of the law, which was submitted to the Moscow City Duma by Sergei Mitrokhin, MP from Yabloko. In addition, at a meeting of the Moscow Parliament Commission on Environmental Policy, Mitrokhin’s proposals were supported by a representative of the Moscow Department of Environmental Management.

On 26 January, the Committee on Agro-Industrial Policy, Nature Management and Environment of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia recommended to the Karelian parliament to reject the bill of the Yabloko faction, referring to the fact that the law “On Specially Protected Natural Territories” needs complex changes, which are being prepared by the federal government.

A comprehensive change in the law on natural reserves is an ideal to strive for, but it will take a long time to wait for this ideal, Emilia Slabunova, head of the Yabloko faction in the Parliament of Karelia, said during the discussion of the bill.

“And all this time a threat will be created to specially protected natural areas. All the time, those who conduct economic activities near these territories will be in the risk zone. There will always be a threat for valuable species of living organisms, because, for example, when expertise was withdrawn [from the law] in Moscow in 2018, where parks were regional specially protected natural areas, entire plots were sent for development. If we want to preserve nature, we need to return [to the law] what was then and without which it is now difficult to carry out this activities,” MP Slabunova stressed.

The MPs of the Karelian parliament did not even discuss the Yabloko bill. Immediately after the speech of Emilia Slabunova, a vote was held. The initiative to conduct an environmental expertise of regional natural reserves did not receive the required number of votes.