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Summer 2002 |
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Editors: Julia Kalinicheva (jkalinicheva@wwf.ru), Douglas Engelbrecht.
Design: Julia Kalinicheva.
Photo: Hartmut Jungius, Ivan Egorchev, Vassily Spiridonov, Mauri Rautkari, Ezequiel Becerra, Anatoly Kabanets, Alexander Andrianov, Dmitry Daushev.
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On the threshold of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, Russia's nine largest ecological and civil rights NGOs appealed to the Summit's participants to carefully consider the official information provided by the Russian delegation concerning "progress" in nature conservation in Russia. The Russian NGOs urge the delegates to insist on a change in the Russian Federation's ecological policy, which currently does not meet the principles of sustainable development.
The appeal was signed by WWF Russia, Greenpeace Russia, the Socio-Ecological Union, the Centre for Ecological Policy of Russia, the Union for Chemical Security, the Biodiversity Conservation Centre, the Ecology and Human Rights Coalition (Moscow), the Glasnost Defence Foundation, and the For Human Rights all-Russian movement.
For the last several years following the abolishment of Russia's State Committee for Environmental Protection and the Federal Forest Service, Russia's ecological policy has changed sharply for the worst. Environmental control and ecological functions were transferred to the Ministry of Natural Resources - the primary consumer of the country's natural resources. Greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution for the first time increased in the year 2000, while work on toxic waste neutralization slowed down and the system of penalties for polluting the environment was abolished. In the meantime, utopian and environmentally dangerous Soviet projects for turning Siberian rivers around to Central Asia are again being discussed. The deepest crisis struck Russian forestry, where illegal logging of valuable forests has become widespread and protection from fires inefficient. Commercial poaching threatens such endangered species as the sturgeon, saiga, Far Eastern leopard, Snow leopard and others. Russia's local officials negatively respond to people's attempts to influence the state's ecological policy and receive reliable information concerning the state of Russia's environment. Officials consider Russia's nature as simply a resource, and the right of citizens to a good environment has become mere words. Such is the ecological policy of the new Russia.
In the meantime, the state of Russia's nature is of world importance. It has an influence on all international initiatives concerning environmental conservation and sustainable development. That is why Russia's conservation NGOs have appealed to the world community to persuade the Russian government to change its ecological policy.
As part of its campaign against illegal logging, WWF held two press conferences on July 23 in Moscow and Vladivostok at which it presented a new report on the Russian-Japanese timber trade. New research reveals that more than half of the timber traded from Russia to Japan comes from forests in the Russian Far East, where approximately 50 percent of all logging operations are estimated to be illegal.
The research also points out that the Siberian tiger and Amur leopard, two of the world's most endangered species, are now threatened with extinction because of the rampant illegal logging fragmenting their Russian habitat. It further highlights that the area of ecologically and commercially valuable forest in the RFE has decreased on average by 35 percent. This is due to over-harvesting of species of value and a significant subsequent transformation of pristine forests into second-growth forests of little or no value.
"The Russian-Japanese timber trade is plagued with timber smuggling, laundering through the use of fake documents, and cut-and-run timber operations," said Anatoly Kotlobay, WWF Russia's forest expert. "We are monitoring it with the ultimate goal of halting its illegal side."
To combat illegal logging and the trade in illegal timber, WWF is working both at the policy level and on the ground. Mobile anti-poaching brigades have been created with the initiative and financial support of WWF to detect and stop the illegal cutting and transportation of timber. More than 10,000 cubic meters have been recovered through on-site and on-road inspection over the past four years.
The Russian and Japanese governments could also make a significant contribution to reducing illegal logging. WWF is calling on them to enter into a trade agreement specifying that the timber imported from Russia into Japan be derived from legal and sustainable sources. Both governments can help to implement this agreement by strengthening custom controls; by developing markets for certified, legal and sustainably harvested wood products; and by supporting wood-buying companies who implement an ecological policy for procuring timber in order to avoid buying and selling illegal timber.
As the new report points out that almost all the timber traders between Russia and the Japanese markets fail to have environmentally and socially responsible practices, WWF calls on the timber companies, both in Russia and Japan, to ensure that the timber they are exporting and importing is legal as well as from sustainably managed forests.
Find the report Analysis of Illegal Logging and Practices in the Russian-Japanese Timber Trade
on www.panda.org/forests4life and www.wwf.ru/publ/japlog.html
WWF People | |
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Welcome!
Elena Kulikova - Project Leader, "WWF and IKEA Cooperation on Forest Projects: A Partnership to Promote Responsible Forestry in Russia."
Elena Orleneva - Assistant Project Leader, "WWF and IKEA Cooperation on Forest Projects: A Partnership to Promote Responsible Forestry in Russia." Inna Nikiforova - Editor, "Panda" newspaper for WWF Russia supporters. Ekaterina Startseva - Accountant-cashier. |
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Workshops & Conferences | |
This August, President Putin visited the country's only marine sanctuary in the Russian Far East. The visit has attracted a lot of media attention to the current situation in the area of nature conservation. WWF assisted the sanctuary's management and the Institute for Marine Biology in preparing a report on the problems of marine conservation that was presented to Mr. Putin. The president promised to discuss the question of more active involvement by the frontier guards in marine biodiversity conservation within protected areas with Konstantin Totskiy, chief of the Russian Federal Frontier Service. WWF Russia has worked on this problem for a long time and is prepared to cooperate with the Federal Frontier Service and other conservation organizations.
At the end of May 2002 Vassily Spiridonov, WWR Russia Marine Programme Coordinator, visited the Kuril Islands and discussed future plans for cooperation between WWF and the Kuril Nature Reserve.
From the very beginning, WWF has helped the reserve maintain both its work in conservation, as well as the work of the Ecological Education Department, and has cooperated with Russian and Japanese researchers in finding optimal ways for exploiting the marine biodiversity in the southern Kurils.
The Small Kuril Ridge and its surrounding waters is a region of wonderful biodiversity and bio-productivity. One can find eared seal, sea otter, tuna and leatherback turtle there. Saury is caught there, and Pacific salmon are gathered in large quantities. The popular sea urchin is exported to Japan from the area. There was once a large King crab population near the southern Kurils, but unfortunately this population was undermined by excessive trade and poaching. Nevertheless, resources are still great and are not used to full capacity. In the mid 1990s, local trade concentrated on the so-called currency-capacity objects such as sea urchin, Hokkai shrimp, and crabs that could be caught using small vessels that would sneak unnoticed to Hokkaido and sell the poached catch. Once well known to the whole country, industrial complexes on Shikotan, which were oriented on the stable but more capital-intensive trade of Saury and other fish, has laid in ruins in recent years. It is then that Kuril nature reserve, together with the Special Marine Inspectorate of the State Committee for Environmental Protection, began the fight against poaching on the dependent waters.
The beginning of the Vassily's trip coincided with a terrorist act against Major-General Vitaly Gamov, an event that echoed throughout the entire country. General Gamov used to be chief of the South Kuril Border Guard, and his death confirms the fact that the game played by those who would seek to receive quotas by any means or go to sea without any quotas while others control, check and catch is no joke. The weight of political and economic problems is too heavy, the stakes of access to resources too high. These include such things as vagueness in the laws regulating access to resources, an excessively large system of administrative and controlling institutions, corruption at all levels, lack of an integrated approach to plan development, weakness of the municipality and its relative lawlessness in relation to regional and federal power.
But several years ago local enterprises began to recover. Within three years, the company Rybokombinat Ostrovnoy Ltd. upgraded the Shikotan fishing industrial complex. It builds its strategy upon the long-term use of such resources as Saury, salmon, and seaweed. Delta Ltd. arranged for processing sea products for local use over the last year, and now on Kunashir one can buy products considered delicacies in Russia: smoked halibut, shrimp, crab, scallop - and everything is less expensive than in Moscow. It is indicative that some former poachers occupied in the pirate trade at sea now prefer to contract for the Saury fishing season, earning more than those occupied with illegally harvesting sea urchin. Of course, these companies try to acquire sea urchin quotas as well and undoubtedly take them in excess as this brings fast reimbursement. They will continue doing so until the economic and political climate in the region becomes favourable for the stable development of their business, until they receive guarantees that areas for fishing salmon and gathering algae are secure for the long term; and until an effective system of control with well paid professionals is fixed.
And until then, the Kuril Nature Reserve will remain one of the primary regulators of the use of nature along the shore.
Climate Change Programme
Marine Programme
Rambler is one of the most popular Internet portals in Russia, the first large web advertising resource uniting the portal itself with such features as Rambler's Top 100 website rating list, the Lenta.ru virtual newspaper, Doctor.ru medical site, Mama.ru parents club, the NaKarte.ru geographical map site, and other services.
"We are delighted to get a chance to support the WWF SOS Planet initiative. Rambler works in a new economical environment - the information economy of the 21st century. We do not produce waste. We do not pollute. We put information in order so that people can find answers to their questions," said Ivan Zasurskiy, Deputy General Director of Rambler.
Mummy Troll was also inspired by WWF's invitation to support the SOS Planet campaign and participate in the concert at the World Summit in Johannesburg. The musicians interrupted preparatory work for presentation of their new album, "Meamures," because they are touched by the problems that will be discussed at the Summit. Born in the Russian Far East, Ilya Lagutenko, the group's front man, and his colleagues are seriously worried about the prosperity of the region's endangered species - the Amur tiger, Far Eastern leopard, and Far Eastern stork. Mummy Troll believes that they can attract people to the WWF campaign and the world's environmental problems.
This summer, ten of Russia's major cities hosted the Prodvizhenije (Headway) music festival that was organized and supported by beer producer Sun Interbrew, a member of WWF Russia Corporate Club. This festival was not your run of the mill show: Its participants vividly supported WWF and dedicated their performances to the environment. The festival commenced in the city of Voronezh, and then a wave of concerts rolled across the European part of Russia - Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd, Samara, Perm, Ekaterinburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, St. Petersburg - before splashing out in Moscow at the great gala show. Musicians performed wearing WWF t-shirts and called upon the audience to become WWF members. In the meantime, volunteers gave out flyers and stickers with an appeal to join WWF. "I know that you do right and important work, and I'm happy to support you, said Alexander F. Sklyar, front man of the group Va-Bank.
Some musicians suggested creating a movement called "Musicians for Nature" to popularise nature conservation and call on audiences to support WWF, where the panda logo would look out from the stages during the concerts. The band Exit Project took up another initiative: They are now preparing a new album entitled "Living Music," from which all proceeds will go to support WWF projects.
Publications |
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The primary conclusions of two studies related to the Russian-Japanese timber trade conducted by WWF Russia in the years 2000-2001 are contained in this report. It is an analysis of the status of, and driving forces behind, illegal logging in the southern part of the Russian Far East. This illustrated booklet is about the biology and state of Grey whale populations, primary threats to their sustainability, and what WWF is doing and what has to be done to reduce all threats to the whales. A thorough description of protected areas of the Altai-Sayan Ecoregion can be found in this book. All materials were collected by specialists from the various territories of the ecoregion. There is data on the status, date of establishment, territory and borders, geographical characteristics, and flora and fauna of 308 of the region's protected areas. Perspectives for developing the protected areas system are shown, as well as separate lists of endangered animals, fungus and plants of the Altai-Sayan Ecoregion. This bright booklet introduces readers to the POPs problem, the Stockholm Convention and its importance for Russia. There is also the list of websites on POPs. The booklet is based on reports from the ECO-Accord Centre and data from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Russian Academy of Sciences, RAIPON, UNEP Chemicals, US EPA, the International POPs Elimination Network, and other organizations. The Annual report describes the major activities of WWF Russia in the year 2001, including efforts within the Forest, Marine and Climate Programmes, the creation of specially protected areas, rare species conservation, activity in Central Asia, and the most significant public actions. Find these publications on this site: |
WWF Russia 19-3 Nikoloyamskaya St. Moscow Russia 109240 Tel.:+7 095 727 09 39 Fax:+7 095 727 09 38 E-mail russia@wwf.ru http://www.wwf.ru |