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 Interbasin water transfers
(river diversions)
Kara
Kum
Canal
Amu Darya Size of
Aral Sea
Environmental damage estimated at $1.25 -$2.5 billion a year.

Caspian Sea
Western,
Russian oil and gas
Companies in Caspian
Basin

Caspian Sea
Caspian
Seal in
Kazakstan
Caspian sturgeon and its caviar
Oil spill off
Baku, Azerbaijan

Dnieper R.
Dniester R.
Moldova
Ukraine
Sea of
Crimea
Azov
Danube R.
Romania
BLACK SEA
Bulg.
Bosporus
Turkey
Don R.
Russia
Georgia

Metals plant on
Dnieper River
Sea of Azov
Eutrophication (Algae growth)

Lake
Baikal
Environmental objections to paper mills as early as 1960s

80% of fish in Tisza River / wetlands died, spill to Danube
Cyanide disaster
Australian-owned gold mine in Romania, 2000

Gabcikovo Dams,
Slovakia
Conflict, protests between
Slovakia and Hungary over diversion of
Danube River

AIR & LAND
Kola Peninsula, NW Russia

Black
Triangle
Devastation from acid rain, SO2, toxics
GDR POLAND
CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Donbass coal fields, E. Ukraine
Donbass & Kuzbass
Kuzbass coal fields, W. Siberia

Kalmykia
European
Buddhist
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 to protect Amur Tiger along Chinese border

Noril’sk nickel smelter

Arctic Haze and Acid Rain

WAR
Kola Peninsula
Acid rain,
Mining,
Nuclear subs scuttled

Toxic military bases
Abandoned Soviet military bases in Eastern
Europe have toxic wastes (like U.S.
bases elsewhere.)

Sverdlovsk anthrax, 1979
Bioweapons disaster,
79 cases (66 dead) in Yeltsin’s district

Toxic cloud after NATO bombing of
Pancevo plant in Yugoslavia, 1999
Bombing civilian chemical plants

Uranium mining
Roma (Gypsy) kids playing on radioactive mill tailings from
Soviet uranium mine in Pécs, Hungary

Soviet nuclear tests in Kazakstan
Genetic defects near Semey
(Semipalatinsk)
Kazaks protest

Kyshtym waste disaster, 1957
Orphans
– 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

Novaya
Zemlya

NUCLEAR
POWER
Chernobyl disaster,
April 1986

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

8,000 deaths in 14 years
3.5 million sick, one/third of them children

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