By Irina Glushchenko
MOSCOW — In the final days of 1993, Professor Alexei Yablokov resigned as Russian President Boris Yeltsin's personal adviser on environmental matters. "I have resigned of my own will", the famed biologist told the paper Moscow News. "I have not seen the president in over six months ... Meanwhile, the ecological situation in Russia is close to disastrous."
Yablokov, Russia's best-known "eco-politician" and chairperson of the national Greenpeace organisation, has not entirely given up his attempts to work within the official structures to force a "greening" of state policy. He remains a member of Yeltsin's Security Council.
But his role within the system will now be that of an oppositionist and unsparing critic. This has been clear since a bitter exchange of articles in the pages of the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Yablokov's adversary in this debate was Russian environment minister Viktor Danilov-Danilyan. When appointed two years ago to head the ministry, Danilov-Danilyan was considered a surprising choice. A member of the now-defunct organisation Green Movement, he had a reputation as a freethinker with leftist sympathies and a critical attitude to the ideology of the free market.
However, the government leaders had a shrewd idea of what they were getting. In a recent article Alexander Shubin, co-chair of the Russian Party of Greens, described the environment minister as a "bearer of openly anti-ecological policies". Although Danilov-Danilyan recently acknowledged that the situation in the environment was "very grave", he has nevertheless been a reliable apologist for such government plans as a huge increase in nuclear power generation.
Meanwhile, the environment has slid steadily down the government's list of priorities. A study cited by the English-language Moscow Tribune in September put the environment at 12th or 13th on this list, compared with third or fourth a few years ago.
In Nezavisimaya Gazeta on January 13, Yablokov began his attack on government policies by citing some details. "Average life expectancy is now falling rapidly", he noted, "and the number of illnesses associated with poor environmental conditions is growing. A child born in 1993 has few chances of living to pension age ... The processes of soil degradation are gaining strength. Every year hundreds of dangerous sources of radiation are found in Moscow and other cities."
Because of the increasingly frequent slaughter of wildlife, Yablokov observed, a long series of rare animals, including the Amur tiger, were in danger of extinction. Fisheries resources were being plundered, and it was quite possible that within two years sturgeon fishing in the Caspian and the Volga would come to a complete halt. The area of forests was diminishing, and serious pollution of Lake Baikal was continuing.
In Yablokov's view, the environment ministry during the two years of its existence had not solved any of the main problems of state administration in this field. The system of nature reserves, for many years a model to other countries, was collapsing. The ministry had lent its support to government decisions that imperilled the environment.
The government had decided to go ahead with the development of nuclear energy even though the conclusions of an environmental study were unfavourable. Developing nuclear energy in Russia along the lines proposed would carry enormous environmental risks.
"The environment ministry", Yablokov pointed out, "has done little to draw attention in Russia to new, progressive sources of energy ... Meanwhile, studies have indicated that replacing all the nuclear power reactors with environmentally acceptable sources of energy would be several times cheaper for Russia than bringing the existing nuclear power plants up to safety standards analogous to those in the West."
On January 27, Danilov-Danilyan replied with a long letter consisting largely of a summary of the work carried out by his ministry. Many of these supposed achievements, however, were described in such vague bureaucratic terms that readers were left to wonder if there was any substance beneath the self-advertisement.
The minister repeatedly compared the situation in his own department with that in other areas of government. In the environment ministry, he contended, things were no worse than elsewhere.
This may well be true. The problem is that today's Russian bureaucracy has broken all records for inefficiency, and in terms of corruption and incompetence is worse even than its Soviet predecessor.
In a reading of history that would be thought odd in the West, but which is common among Russian liberals, Danilov-Danilyan went on to argue that 30y years ago the economic situation in Western Europe, the US and Japan was also difficult, but that "they solved this problem". With the help of new policies, he suggested, Russia too would eventually overcome its economic difficulties. This would allow environmental problems to be dealt with.
Logically for someone with so sanguine a view of Western economic performance, Danilov-Danilyan is now a firm adherent of the monetarist "Russia's Choice" bloc. He was elected to parliament in December on its ticket.
Obviously, Danilov-Danilyan does not see any link between Yeltsin's "reform" policies and the country's worsening environmental disaster. But it is a fair bet that, so long as Russia's Choice retains any say in economic policy, the environmental situation will only get worse.