Environment in Russia

Environment in Central Asia

USSR was worse than West

• 2.5 X air pollution of U.S. (per GNP)

• 20% water unsafe

• 1/3 of arable land affected by acid rain

• Etc., etc.

Why USSR was worse

• Heavy industry

• Expand agriculture

• “Inexhaustible” resources

• Legitimacy, self-sufficiency through technology

• Sacrifice for defense

Why USSR was worse

• Leadership technicians; questioning prevented

• Little free opposition

• Secrecy; lack of enforcement

• Central planning insensitive

• Only capitalism harms nature

WATER

Aral Sea• Once the 4th largest inland body

of water in the world. A series of dams was built to irrigate cotton.

• Aral Sea reduced to about 25% of its 1960 volume, 4x salinity wiped out the fishery.

• Pollutants became airborne as dust, causing significant local health problems.

Aral Sea

Amu Darya Size ofAral Sea

KaraKumCanal

Environmental damage estimatedat $1.25 -$2.5 billion a year.

Interbasin water transfers(river diversions)

Caspian Sea

Western,Russian

oil and gasCompaniesin Caspian

Basin

Oil spill offBaku, Azerbaijan

Caspian Sea

Caspian sturgeonand its caviar

CaspianSeal inKazakstan

BLACK SEA

Sea ofAzov

Don R.

Crimea

Ukraine

Georgia

Turkey

Dnieper R.

Danube R.

Bosporus

Russia

Romania

MoldovaDniester R.

Bulg.

Sea of Azov

Metals plant onDnieper River

Eutrophication (Algae growth)

LakeBaikal

Environmentalobjections topaper mills

as earlyas 1960s

Cyanide disasterAustralian-owned goldmine in Romania, 2000

80% of fish in Tisza River / wetlands died, spill to Danube

Gabcikovo Dams,Slovakia

Conflict, protests betweenSlovakia and Hungary

over diversion of Danube River

AIR & LAND

Kola Peninsula, NW Russia

BlackTriangle

GDR

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

POLAND

Devastation fromacid rain, SO2, toxics

Donbass & Kuzbass

Donbass coalfields, E. Ukraine

Kuzbass coalfields, W. Siberia

Kalmykia

EuropeanBuddhist Mongols

Desertification

Chemicals/Salinization

Oil development

Sakha(Yakutia)

• Siberian indigenous

• Coal, metals mining

• Logging

Clear-cutting in Siberia

Japanese and South Korean companies take

advantage of “fire sale”

International campaign toprotect Amur Tiger

along Chinese border

Noril’sk nickel smelter

Arctic Haze and Acid Rain

Kola Peninsula

Acid rain,Mining,

Nuclear subsscuttled

WAR

Toxic military bases

Abandoned Sovietmilitary bases in Eastern

Europe have toxicwastes (like U.S.bases elsewhere.)

Sverdlovsk anthrax, 1979

Bioweapons disaster,79 cases (66 dead)in Yeltsin’s district

Bombing civilianchemical plants

Toxic cloud after NATO bombing of Pancevo plant in Yugoslavia, 1999

Uranium mining

Roma (Gypsy) kidsplaying on radioactivemill tailings fromSoviet uranium mine in Pécs, Hungary

Soviet nuclear testsin Kazakstan

Kazaks protest

Genetic defectsnear Semey(Semipalatinsk)

Kyshtym waste disaster, 1957

– Explosion at Soviet weapons factory forces evacuation of over 10,000 people in Ural Mts.

– Area size of Rhode Island still uninhabited; thousands of cancers reported

Orphans

NovayaZemlya

Chernobyl

disaster,

April 1986

NUCLEARPOWER

400 million people exposed in 20 countries

“It Can’t Happen Here”

• U.S. reaction to Chernobyl, 1986– Blamed on Communism, graphite reactor

• Also Soviet reaction to Three-Mile Island, 1979– Blamed on Capitalism, pressurized-water reactor

• No technology 100% safe– Three-Mile Island bubble almost burst

3.5 million sick,

one/third of them children

8,000 deaths in 14 years

My grandmother, by Luda

Death of my life, by Marina

Chernobyl is war, by Irena

Beauty and the beast, by Helena

Nothing escapes radiation, by Irena

Chernobyl, our hell, by Eugenia

Self-portrait, by Natasha

Chernobyl’s political fallout

• Secrecy stimulated glasnost, environmental opposition

• Stimulated nationalism in Ukraine, Belarus, other republics that lost clean-up workers.

• Questioning of the heart of technocratic power

• USSR collapsed within 5 years.

Positives since end of USSR• Democratization: NGOs, data

• Decentralization: local sensitivity

• Deindustrialization of old areas

• Expanded national parks

• Protection laws stronger by 1993

Negatives since end of USSR• Financial difficulties; jobs stressed

• Reduced monitoring, enforcement

• Increased affluence, cars, waste

• Profit motive; foreign firms

• Putin dismantled agency, 2002

Other positives in Eastern Europe• Ecological dissidents in transition

• Increased spending

• Pollution control technology

• Loss of markets

• Entry into E.U. standards