Author: earthfirst

July 17, 2010
Envi­ron­men­tal­ists opposed to plans to raze a Khim­ki for­est to make way for an $8 bil­lion high­way raised a bar­ri­cade to keep out log­gers Mon­day, Inter­fax report­ed.

On the side of the road to Moscow’s Shereme­tye­vo Air­port, which runs along a pris­tine expanse of old-growth trees, a ban­ner urges dri­vers to help “Stop the felling of the for­est.”

Behind the sign, the for­est is marred by a gap­ing hole the size of three foot­ball fields.

This is where activists from the Ecode­fense envi­ron­men­tal group have camped out in a des­per­ate bid to save the Khim­ki for­est from destruc­tion.

Russ­ian author­i­ties want to clear large swathes of for­est to make way for an $8 bil­lion high­way con­nect­ing Moscow and St. Peters­burg. They say the pro­posed route through Khim­ki, a small town on Moscow’s north­ern out­skirts, will help ease traf­fic con­ges­tion by offer­ing an alter­na­tive road to the air­port.

But envi­ron­men­tal­ists say build­ing the high­way in Khim­ki would deprive Moscow of yet anoth­er chunk of its fast-dwin­dling green belt, designed in the 1930s to con­tain pol­lu­tion and pre­serve wildlife.

Ecode­fense suc­ceed­ed in halt­ing the first felling works on July 15, because the work­ers showed up with­out defor­esta­tion per­mits, accord­ing to activist Sergei Ageyev.

“There were about six work­ers cut­ting down trees and two secu­ri­ty guards. There were more at the oth­er loca­tion, which had the bulk of the equip­ment, includ­ing an exca­va­tor. We demand­ed that they stop work,” Ageyev says. “We asked to see doc­u­ments. They did­n’t know any­thing; there were no doc­u­ments at the site. It is a bla­tant vio­la­tion; there must be doc­u­ments.”

Ecode­fense leader Yevgenya Chiriko­va says a small fight erupt­ed between activists and secu­ri­ty guards of the French com­pa­ny in charge of the felling, Vin­ci Con­ces­sions.

“We won,” she adds with a smile.

The com­pa­ny could not imme­di­ate­ly be reached for com­ment.

Short­ly after speak­ing to RFE/RL, Chiriko­va was attacked by an uniden­ti­fied man, who struck her before ram­ming his car into her. She escaped unhurt.

She said the police were slow to respond when she report­ed the inci­dent. “I don’t under­stand why it took them so long to find me,” she told RFE/RL’s Russ­ian Ser­vice. “The day before a detach­ment of police was ordered to our camp and they had found us quite eas­i­ly.”

Chiriko­va said the the attack was a form of “psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure” and just one in a series of inci­dents meant to intim­i­date her.

Pol­lu­tion And Ill­ness

At the activists’ makeshift camp, fresh­ly cut birch trees are piled up close to an aban­doned bull­doz­er. Oth­er piles of felled trees near­by sug­gest clear­ing has been going on for some time.

Despite the swel­ter­ing heat, the activists are deter­mined to stay here round-the-clock until all felling equip­ment has left the for­est.

Ecol­o­gists and Khim­ki res­i­dents have been fight­ing plans to build the high­way for years, say­ing it will have a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the local envi­ron­ment.

Andrei Mar­gulev, the coor­di­na­tor of the union of eco­log­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions, was the one who raised the alarm about this week’s felling at Khim­ki for­est.

“The eco­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tion here in the north of Moscow is very dire due to the huge num­ber of vehi­cles and enter­pris­es, includ­ing garbage incin­er­a­tion plants and a famous garbage dump that con­stant­ly sends out smoke on that side of the canal,” Mar­gulev says. “The for­est fil­ters the air and the dust that can car­ry pol­lu­tion all the way to our lungs. All this dust remains here. If there were no for­est, hun­dreds more peo­ple would die of can­cer­ous dis­eases.”

Chiriko­va, a busi­ness­woman, moved to Khim­ki with her fam­i­ly to live clos­er to the for­est. She began cam­paign­ing to save the for­est after she noticed red paint on trees near her home in Khim­ki mark­ing the high­way’s pro­posed route.

“The for­est is impor­tant to us not only as a source of oxy­gen, but also for its bio­di­ver­si­ty, which is unique for the Moscow region,” she says. “There are few­er and few­er such places, and we under­stand that if we don’t pre­serve this for­est, we won’t sur­vive next sum­mer when tem­per­a­tures reach 36 degrees Cel­sius.”

Charges Of Cor­rup­tion

Crit­ics of the high­way accuse the gov­ern­ment of ignor­ing protests, manip­u­lat­ing laws, and mod­i­fy­ing the forest’s sta­tus to allow its defor­esta­tion.

The group filed a com­plaint to the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights after Rus­si­a’s Supreme Court reject­ed its appeal in April.

Ecode­fense also accus­es author­i­ties of delib­er­ate­ly engi­neer­ing a recent four-day traf­fic jam on the road lead­ing to the air­port to gain sup­port for the high­way.

Activists say the project is mired in cor­rup­tion, stress­ing that one of the dri­ving forces behind the pro­posed route is Trans­port Min­is­ter Igor Lev­itin, who also sits on the air­port’s board of direc­tors.

Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al has report­ed there was a “poten­tial cor­rup­tion risk” in the project.

Ecode­fense activists say they recent­ly met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Euro­pean Bank for Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment to per­suade them not to invest in the road.

Experts say the planned route through the for­est will actu­al­ly slow down a road that is sup­posed to be about speed­ing up traf­fic.

The cam­paign has become a cause célèbre in Rus­sia, par­tic­u­lar­ly after Mikhail Beke­tov, the edi­tor of the local news­pa­per “Khimkin­skaya Prav­da,” was vicious­ly beat­en two years ago in what many see as retal­i­a­tion for his bat­tle to save the Khim­ki for­est.

One of Beke­tov’s legs had to be ampu­tat­ed fol­low­ing the attack, and he suf­fered severe brain dam­age.

Ecode­fense has col­lect­ed 20,000 sig­na­tures against the destruc­tion of the for­est. In anoth­er sign of the group’s mount­ing clout, Chiriko­va won 16 per­cent of the vote in last year’s elec­tion for may­or of Khim­ki — a high result for a first-time, inde­pen­dent can­di­date.

Despite the start of tree felling this week, Chiriko­va is not los­ing hope. But she says more peo­ple need to join the cause.

“We see a real chance to stop the felling,” she says. “The only thing we lack is help from active peo­ple who could come here…to bring water, food, and tents to our won­der­ful camp. That’s the only way we can stop any­thing.”

“We have no hope in the police, who sim­ply sit in the bush­es shrug­ging their shoul­ders and say­ing they don’t know what to do,” she says.

—

Defor­esta­tion Starts, and Stops, in Khim­ki

16.7.10
A French com­pa­ny start­ed clear­ing a Khim­ki for­est for an $8 bil­lion high­way con­nect­ing Moscow and St. Peters­burg, but its work was halt­ed Thurs­day by envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

France’s Vin­ci Con­ces­sions cut down trees in an area equal to two foot­ball fields near the Novo­tel Shereme­tye­vo Moscow hotel on Wednes­day before the envi­ron­men­tal­ists showed up Thurs­day morn­ing and demand­ed to see defor­esta­tion per­mits, which the work­ers were unable to pro­vide, the pub­lic group In Defense of the Khim­ki For­est said.

The activists put up tents near the defor­esta­tion site in Khim­ki, a town on Moscow’s north­ern out­skirts, for 10 peo­ple to mon­i­tor the area around the clock to make sure work did not resume with­out the per­mits.

The work­ers promised to show the per­mits Mon­day, said Yev­ge­nia Chiriko­va, head of In Defense of the Khim­ki For­est. “They promised to pro­vide every­thing, but on Mon­day at 2 p.m.,” she said, Inter­fax report­ed.

Green­peace Rus­sia asked the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office to check “with­out delay” whether the work­ers had per­mits for the defor­esta­tion, the envi­ron­men­tal watch­dog said in a state­ment.

Offi­cials with Vin­ci Con­ces­sions, which leads the North-West Con­ces­sion Com­pa­ny, a con­sor­tium build­ing the road, could not imme­di­ate­ly be reached for com­ment.

Ecode­fense, an envi­ron­men­tal group, linked a four-day traf­fic jam on Leningrad­skoye Shosse in late June and ear­ly July to the defor­esta­tion in Khim­ki, say­ing it was “engi­neered delib­er­ate­ly to get a green light for the con­struc­tion” of the Khim­ki road.

In Defense of the Khim­ki For­est togeth­er with the Fed­er­a­tion of Car Own­ers of Rus­sia appealed to the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office this week to inves­ti­gate the rea­sons for the snarled traf­fic, which city author­i­ties have blamed on con­struc­tion work on a small bridge in Khim­ki.

In late April, the Supreme Court brushed aside envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns over the defor­esta­tion of the old oak for­est, allow­ing work on the high­way to pro­ceed.

The for­est has become a sym­bol of grass­roots activism in Rus­sia over the past two years. In Novem­ber 2008, Mikhail Beke­tov, one of the forest’s staunchest defend­ers and the edi­tor of the local news­pa­per Khimkin­skaya Prav­da, was bad­ly beat­en after he crit­i­cized the Khim­ki admin­is­tra­tion for sup­port­ing the defor­esta­tion. The attack, which remains unsolved, left Beke­tov brain dam­aged, and one of his legs had to be ampu­tat­ed.
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