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English Language Page In order to understand what actually transpired at the Moscow House of Scientists, it would be in good order to recall the history of the uneasy relations between the current authorities and the environmental safety movement. As is known, when an effort got under way last May to reshape the federal government, the State Committee for Environmental Security (Goskomekologia) and the Federal Service for Management of Russian Forests (Rosleskhoz) were eliminated. One day before the All-Russian environmental security conference was launched, several high-profile Russian Environmental Security Organizations — Social and Environmental Security Union and Russian branches of the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace organizations — held a joint press conference. The participants indicated that an effort to write a national environmental security doctrine (long overdue for Russia) could be built on something that has already been drafted a month and a half before by the non-governmental Center for Russian Environmental Security Policy (TsEPR) who had released a draft concept for the environmental security policy of the Russian Federation. The document contained a program for real and economically cost-effective and balanced steps, rather than some pieces of wishful thinking. Developing a wholly new draft strategy appears to be a Herculean task. To work out its document, TsEPR had to tap the resources of nearly all available Russian talents involved in the environmental security effort (1). While proceeding from the analysis of the previously described environmental safety situations across the Russian Federation, one can safely conclude that one of the most common and pressing problems in this area is the persisting radioactive contaminations in many Russian regions. There are few regions in this country where no hazardous radiation sources (however small) could be found. Speaking from the radiation security perspective, one can see that the law on allowing spent nuclear fuels to be imported into Russia is at least rather odd. The entire year of 2000 was spent debating the draft law on importation of the spent nuclear fuels into Russia. The debate extended into 2001, when eventually the spent nuclear fuels law was passed by the State Duma. It would be in order to recall the sequence of those events. April 18, 2001, the State Duma passed in second reading the package of legislation designed to authorize the importation of spent foreign-origin nuclear fuels for processing within the Russian Federation. Notably, Ministry for Atomic Energy (Minatom), which was interested in assuring passage of the given legislation, managed to have two amendments, which the Ministry found unfavorable, voted down when the relevant proposals had been debated. The first proposal had to do with the State Duma having to approve each delivery of the spent nuclear fuels. The amendment was rejected. As a result, 20 thousand spent nuclear fuels are expected to be brought into Russia on the basis of commercial agreements between the relevant companies, with the State Duma providing no supervision or oversight. The second proposal had to do with the commitment for repatriation of the spent nuclear fuels products. That amendment did not pass either. The initial idea was to have the spent nuclear fuels products returned to their country of origin should Russia be unable to recycle them in due time. The State Duma majority insisted that the spent nuclear fuels from foreign countries should be kept in Russia for good (2). On June 6, 2001, the State Duma passed in third and final reading the law authorizing the importation of the spent nuclear fuels into Russia in order to have those fuels recycled and put in storage. Comments or arguments are now superfluous (3). On June 25, 2001, in keeping with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the law was already submitted to the Council of Federation — the Upper House of the Federal Assembly. (The Council of Federation is supposed to rule on the bills submitted by the State Duma within a two-week period. If the bill is not related to the federal budget, war and peace issues, taxation policies, or some other top-priority problems that does not necessitate a debate by the Upper House, the document is directly forwarded to the President of the Russian Federation for signing into law.) Notably, the spent nuclear fuels legislation documents were delivered to the Council of Federation’s office on June 13, with the next meeting of the Upper House scheduled for July 4. Clearly, the two weeks were not enough for the Council of Federation members to get appropriately familiarized with the legislation. Given the fact that the State Duma’s spring-summer session was extended, it was decided that the work schedule for the Council of Federation would be updated accordingly. Eventually, the legislation reached the office of the President of the Russian Federation (4). On July 11, 2001, the President of the Russian Federation signed the spent nuclear fuels package of approved legislation into law. Concurrently, the President ruled that a special public commission should be set up to oversee and make an expert statement on each spent nuclear fuels delivery contract (5). So, starting from July 12, 2001, Russia can generate revenue at the cost of increased environmental risk to its own population. To elaborate on the matter briefly, before the legislation was confirmed, not enough attention had been paid to the question why foreign countries refrained from keeping the used nuclear fuels within their lands. Why, indeed, do they want to have those wastes out rather than in? Why should they be not interested either in recycling or storing them at home? In addition, last year saw another major environmental security-related event transpiring. The FY-2001 Law actually eliminated the Federal Ecological Fund (FEF). Established around the “polluter pays” principle, the system of environmental security funds provided one of just a few unchallenged success stories across the Russian Federation. While being methodologically and administratively backed up by Goskomekologia (closed last year), the system would use its economic leverage to make industrial enterprises stick to the established environmental security requirements and not only limit their hazardous emissions but also engage in useful nature protection activities, some of those being: upgrading the relevant waste water management facilities, checking on the functionality of the deployed filtering assemblies, introduce advanced safe-handling technologies, etc. The system provided for collecting appropriately graded fines and penalties designed to match specific violations in environmental safety regulations, with generated revenues used to either rectify the destructive effects of pollutants or prevent the risk of damage to the environment (primarily to humans). Importantly, about 90% of that revenue would be left in the regions, with much of the penalty-related money never leaving the relevant industrial facilities, as long as those organizations ran their own balanced programs to either upgrade existing industrial infrastructure or otherwise assure an improvement in environmental safety. The remaining 10% of that revenue had been placed in a federal account to be used at the discretion of FEF, as “targeted” ecology money. It was precisely with that money that such large-scale federal environmental safety programs such as Volga Revival Program and Providing Russia with Drinking Water Program were implemented. Some federal nature preservation areas had been saved using the resources of this fund. Notably, in the mid-1990s those programs had been so inadequately financed that the environmentalists (responsible for saving the country’s biosphere and landscapes) appeared to be totally abandoned. Clearly, they would not have survived unless supported by FEF. In addition, the fund had been used to support pioneering developments in the areas of: eco-monitoring and tracking, development of modern waste management facilities to handle the more hazardous pollutants, improvement of river banks, and arrangement of assorted (from school-level affairs through All-Russian gatherings) environmental security conferences. Following the elimination of the State Committee for Environmental Security (Goskomekologia), FEF of the Russian Federation had for some time remained the only federal-level structure mandated to coordinate the activities of regional environmental security funds and to control all fines related to violations of environmental legislation. Reports on legal actions, penalties and arrears for non-complying enterprises created a huge database that came to be of little relevance in the long run. Both federal and local budgets, as a matter of fact, fail to generate millions of roubles because the Ministry of Finance, obviously, is not prepared to assume rather specific FEF functions and responsibilities. In addition, with FEF being phased out, the law on the federal budget, a priori, has reduced the financing (the arguments never being made available) for environmental programs by a factor of ten. Now, in the absence of the Federal Ecology Fund capable of operating as financial “911” or first-aid vehicle to prevent various environmental disasters, things in the country are almost certain to go speedily from bad to worse in the area of environmental protection (6). (1) B. Zhukov, “Dummy for the Public.” Segodnya (January 31, 2001). (2) A. Sadchikov, “Wastes Get the Green Light.” Izvestia (April 19, 2001). (3) S. Leskov, “Breakthrough Into the Divided Marketplace.” Izvestia (June 7, 2001). (4) N. Popova, “Senators Dodge Responsibility.” Vremya-MN (June 25, 2001). (5) N. Gorelov, “Bring in Barrels.” Vremya Novostey (July 12, 2001). (6) V. Rudenko, “System of Ecology Funds are Gone. Does Russia Need to Carry On?” Nezavisimaya Gazeta (January 24, 2001). Back |
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