RESOLUTION OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN EMERGENCY ENVIRONMENTAL
CONFERENCE
Moscow, June 13 2000
The All-Russian Emergency Environmental Conference (368 delegates and guests representing 51 bodies of the Russian Federation, including federal and local officials, representatives of higher education, science, and non-governmental organizations) discussed Russia’s current environmental problems due to the abolition of the State Nature Conservation Committee of the Russian Federal Forest Service and the State Committee on Agrarian Policy by Presidential Decree #867 of May 17, 2000. The conference noted that the increasing deterioration of the environment, the drain of natural resources, the nuclear and chemical pollution of Russia, attempts to import hazardous nuclear and toxic waste and implement environmentally hazardous projects, the non-observance of environmental legislation, the spread of environment-related diseases and the consequent decrease of the average lifespan in Russia pose a serious threat to current and future generations, as well as to national security and the development of Russia as a constitutional state and a civic society.
The Second All-Russian Environmental Forum (Saratov, June 3–5 1999) stressed the “alarming de-environmentalization of the management of state affairs and the reduction of federal support for environmental projects. The constant reorganizations, the loss of status, and the staff and budget cuts have reduced the federal nature conservation system to a critical state, and the continuation of this process threaten to destroy the environmental structures altogether”. This is what we are currently witnessing.
The idea of solving environmental problems after economic ones is erroneous and hazardous. It is impossible to create a healthy society without a healthy environment. Attempts to solve Russia’s social and economic problems while ignoring its natural wealth and people’s health are impermissible. The federal management strategy seems to be based on a dangerous philosophy of de-environmentalizationas well as on the unrealistic concept of increasing the investment by reducing environmental bans. Its solution to the economic crisis is based upon the creation of an environmental one!
The Conference considers it necessary:
to make nature preservation and Russia’s environmental security a priority when resolving domestic and foreign policy issues; this will require the establishment of an independent body authorized to monitor nature conservation and report to the federal government;
to make the federal system of managing environmental protection and exploitation share control and resource management and exploitation with regional and local authorities;
to establish a constructive public dialogue on Russia’s ecological security and the protection of citizens’ environmental rights; to include all sectors of society in the solution of environmental issues; to base any dialogue between non-governmental environmental organizations and federal structures on partnership and not on confrontation;
to make businesses environmentally aware; to introduce resource- and power-saving technologies as an economic priority;
to consolidate the forces of all the organizations interested in creating a constitutional state and a civic society in Russia.
The Conference suggests:
elaborating a long-term federal environmental policy and adopting it at the top federal level;
increasing the budget for environmental protection by 3% of the gross expenditure;
holding those who damage the environment and people’s health legally and financially responsible;
increasing federal ecological monitoring and environmental pollution monitoring systems; making the findings public;
making federal environmental watchdog agencies more effective by guaranteeing their independence; outlawing the practice of adopting decisions and programs without a positive expert report;
strengthening the legal machinery meant to prevent environmental offences in all the federal districts;
monitoring the state and its exploitation of nature (fishery inspections,
federal hunting inspections etc.);
improving the protection of civic environmental rights in the courts;
preventing any weakening of the current system of Russian environmental legislation;
creating more nature reserves; substantially increasing the budget for existing nature reserves and devoting a separate federal budget item to them;
stopping all groundless persecutions of environmental organizations and activists;
re-establishing public control over decision-making and law enforcement in environmental protection;
creating an effective system of ecological education, propagating ecological culture and attitudes, reinstating ecology in the secondary school program.
We must ask the President of the Russian Federation:
to establish an independent regulatory body responsible for environmental protection and separate from the exploitation and management of the natural resources;
to preserve the legally independent forest service and its local branches;
to establish a Presidential Council on Sustainable Development and Russia’s Nature Conservation with representatives from all governmental departments and all sectors of the society.
On behalf of the Conference we must address:
Russia’s citizens,
Russia’s President,
the Federal Council,
the State Duma of the Russian Federation,
non-governmental environmental organizations,
the international community.
The Conference asks the co-chairmen of the Round Table of Russian Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations to make the documents adopted known to the President, the Federal Assembly, the mass media and the international environmental community.
