In Russia, Home-Grown Environmental Activism on the Rise

8th May 2014 Nina Popravko, one of the few pro­fes­sion­al envi­ron­men­tal lawyers in Rus­sia, is defend­ing in court a group of a dozen activists in the small town of Koz­modemi­an­sk, in the Mari El Repub­lic on the Vol­ga Riv­er. They have been fight­ing for years against plans to build a domes­tic waste land­fill, which they say is too close to a res­i­den­tial block.

Straight after court hear­ings in the case, Popravko jumps on a train to Ufa, a city with more than a mil­lion inhab­i­tants in the south Urals, where sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple are try­ing to organ­ise an inde­pen­dent pub­lic hear­ing about the con­struc­tion of a wood-pro­cess­ing fac­to­ry.

Back at home near St. Peters­burg, where Popravko lives and works for the envi­ron­men­tal non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion Bel­lona, anoth­er fight is under way.

A group of activists are mobil­is­ing after the felling of almost 200 large pine trees to make way for a new lux­u­ry res­i­den­tial hous­ing devel­op­ment. The activists are fil­ing a law­suit against the devel­op­ment com­pa­ny, which they believe acquired the plot of land ille­gal­ly, as part of their dri­ve to stop fur­ther log­ging in a larg­er for­est area.

“I real­ly notice the grow­ing involve­ment of many ordi­nary peo­ple in the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment,” Popravko says.

City dwellers across Rus­sia are get­ting organ­ised and fight­ing for their envi­ron­men­tal rights at a more pro­fes­sion­al lev­el than before, the lawyer says. They are learn­ing to file law­suits, organ­ise pub­lic hear­ings, and work with jour­nal­ists and social net­works, as well as build­ing protest camps and obstruct­ing con­struc­tion sites.

Many such local ini­tia­tives get sup­port from larg­er and longer-estab­lished envi­ron­men­tal non-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions such as Green­peace and WWF Rus­sia, but many also are fight­ing on their own – some­times suc­cess­ful­ly, some­times not.

WHAT WORKS

There is no clear recipe for vic­to­ry, says Alexan­der Kar­pov, an expert with the ECOM cen­tre, who has spent more than 10 years sup­port­ing local envi­ron­men­tal and urban ini­tia­tives all over Rus­sia and help­ing them grow.

He recent­ly began work­ing as a con­sul­tant with the St. Peters­burg Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly, draft­ing laws and oth­er legal acts, and bring­ing need­ed  insight and exper­tise to the work of the region­al par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

Kar­pov argues that the suc­cess of any envi­ron­men­tal cause depends on the amount of time and ener­gy activists are pre­pared to spend pro­tect­ing their rights. He also main­tains that exper­tise is cru­cial, and that the more ‘pro­fes­sion­al­ly’ activists inter­act with local admin­is­tra­tors, draft legal doc­u­ments and engage in high-qual­i­ty lob­by­ing for their cause, the bet­ter the chance of suc­cess.

Pub­lic inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal issues has been ris­ing in Rus­sia over the last few years. Some experts link this with the grow­ing finan­cial well­be­ing of the country’s pop­u­la­tion, which is giv­ing more cit­i­zens the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el abroad, and to plan their future and that of their chil­dren.

CORRUPTION AND GOVERNANCE LINK

Oth­er experts say it is a reac­tion to mount­ing cor­rup­tion and “bad” gov­er­nance, often at a local lev­el, involv­ing local author­i­ties build­ing cor­rupt ties with a local or nation­al com­pa­ny while neglect­ing local res­i­dents.

The push toward greater envi­ron­men­tal activism has been met with a mixed response by Russia’s lead­ers.

Niko­lay Gud­kov, a spokesper­son for the Russ­ian Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Resources and Envi­ron­ment, said his min­istry was “active­ly work­ing with cit­i­zens, envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives and activists – both through our com­mu­ni­ty liai­son office and through fur­ther online resources” such as the web­site Nasha Priro­da (“Our Nature”), which was launched in late 2013 and allows peo­ple from all regions of Rus­sia to report envi­ron­men­tal vio­la­tions in their neigh­bour­hoods, using geo-loca­tion tech­nol­o­gy.

He said min­istry rep­re­sen­ta­tives also have organ­ised a few meet­ings with envi­ron­men­tal activists work­ing on noto­ri­ous local con­flicts – such as the fight over the wood-pro­cess­ing facil­i­ty in Ufa, and a sit­u­a­tion in cen­tral Rus­sia where res­i­dents are fight­ing plans for nick­el and cop­per min­ing.

But the Russ­ian par­lia­ment, the State Duma, has also recent­ly ini­ti­at­ed a num­ber of legal acts poten­tial­ly hin­der­ing the rights of local activists and oppor­tu­ni­ties for wider pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in city plan­ning and region­al devel­op­ment.

In late Decem­ber, mem­bers of par­lia­ment tried to pass a draft law can­celling pub­lic hear­ing pro­ce­dures for a num­ber of infra­struc­ture con­struc­tion projects. How­ev­er, after a civ­il cam­paign ini­ti­at­ed by activists and envi­ron­men­tal lawyers, the draft “got hung up,” Popravko said.In mid-March, how­ev­er, anoth­er bill sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing the num­ber of sit­u­a­tions in which pub­lic hear­ings must be held passed in its first read­ing. Envi­ron­men­tal lawyers argue the bill con­tra­dicts Russ­ian and inter­na­tion­al rules of law.

“The Russ­ian Par­lia­ment is mov­ing for­ward draft laws which seri­ous­ly lim­it pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion” a group of envi­ron­men­tal lawyers said in their pub­lic appeal. A cam­paign against the bill is ongo­ing.

URBAN FOCUS

One of the most pop­u­lar envi­ron­men­tal issues in Rus­sia at the moment is urban ecol­o­gy – the envi­ron­men­tal aspects of cities’ devel­op­ment. That includes clean trans­port, a focus on air and water qual­i­ty, the pro­tec­tion of green zones and parks, and sus­tain­able con­sump­tion and lifestyles.

Such inter­est is cen­tred main­ly in large cities with pop­u­la­tions of over half a mil­lion peo­ple, but it has begin spring­ing up in small towns as well.

Rough­ly speak­ing, most of these civ­il ini­tia­tives fall into two groups, experts say.

The first com­prise protest actions – against new build­ing of infra­struc­ture or hous­ing, or against the destruc­tion of a park, for instance. Such groups form quick­ly, and their suc­cess often depends on the sol­i­dar­i­ty and ener­gy of their par­tic­i­pants, as well as on the resources they can invest, experts say.

Groups of this kind ini­ti­ate legal cas­es or pub­lic hear­ings, work with media and social net­works, and organ­ise protests – and quite often the groups fall apart after the case is won or lost.

The most com­pli­cat­ed efforts are long-run­ning ones that last sev­er­al years, and can result in activists becom­ing worn out, los­ing ener­gy and los­ing inter­est in the case.

Activists face a vari­ety of threats, includ­ing phys­i­cal vio­lence or legal pros­e­cu­tion. Recent­ly, envi­ron­men­tal activist Evge­ny Vitishko, from Tuapse in south­ern Rus­sia, was jailed for three years for writ­ing protest slo­gans and attach­ing posters to a fence around the vil­la of the Krasnodar gov­er­nor.

Vitishko alleged the vil­la had been built ille­gal­ly in a for­est reserve and its own­er had fenced off a stretch of the coast­line.

A Vitishko sup­port cam­paign has been launched, and “it is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant that we also get inter­na­tion­al sup­port for the case – both for Evge­ny Vitishko him­self and for the grow­ing envi­ron­men­tal move­ment in Rus­sia”, says Dmit­ry Shevchenko, a Krasnodar-based activist with the NGO “Envi­ron­men­tal Watch of the North Cau­ca­sus.”

FILLING THE VACUUM

Anoth­er part of of Russia’s grow­ing envi­ron­men­tal move­ment con­sists of com­mu­ni­ty and civ­il soci­ety activists try­ing to put bot­tom-up ini­tia­tives in place to “sub­sti­tute” for fail­ing state reg­u­la­tion, giv­en the absence of an envi­ron­men­tal agen­da and pol­i­cy mech­a­nism at both fed­er­al and region­al lev­els, experts say.

These groups build up envi­ron­men­tal and vol­un­teer net­works in areas such as sep­a­rat­ing garbage col­lec­tion, recy­cling, plant­i­ng trees, tak­ing care of parks and shores, and pro­mot­ing  eco-friend­ly agri­cul­ture and a green lifestyle.

One of the best-known organ­i­sa­tions is the move­ment Muso­ra bol­she net (mean­ing “no more rub­bish”) cre­at­ed first as a vol­un­teer ini­tia­tive to  remove trash from forests and lake shores and devel­oped lat­er into a full-scale net­work organ­i­sa­tion, active in many projects from com­mu­ni­ty recy­cling to envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion.

Many such groups gath­er annu­al­ly at a Delai Sam (Do it your­self) Sum­mit, first only held in Moscow but now in oth­er cities as well, to exchange prac­tices, tech­nolo­gies and skills.

It is not only the young and trendy who take part in such ini­tia­tives. In some cities, groups are led by female pen­sion­ers using their free time to build up com­mu­ni­ty do-it-your­self groups to improve the urban envi­ron­ment.

Still, quite often activists float from one envi­ron­men­tal focus area to anoth­er. Tatyana Kargina, orig­i­nal­ly from Irkut­stk and now liv­ing in Moscow, is one of Russia’s best-known envi­ron­men­tal activists.

She set up a first eco-hous­ing project in Moscow, one of the first Russ­ian net­works for envi­ron­men­tal-friend­ly liv­ing and con­sump­tion, as well as oth­er ini­tia­tives. Dur­ing the last cou­ple of years she’s also been active in a civ­il soci­ety protest action against plans to begin nick­el min­ing in Voronezh region, Cen­tral Rus­sia, an agri­cul­tur­al region rich with black soils, nature reserves and bio­di­ver­si­ty.

SUSTAINABLE CITIES

Grow­ing envi­ron­men­tal activism in Rus­sia also is focused on the need for more sus­tain­able and inclu­sive city and region devel­op­ment. An Open Urban Lab unit­ing around 30 young pro­fes­sion­als involved in urban plan­ning, archi­tec­ture, pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, has been try­ing to intro­duce par­tic­i­pa­tion prin­ci­ples into city and neigh­bour­hood plan­ning in Russ­ian cities recent­ly.

The organ­i­sa­tion, while work­ing with region­al admin­is­tra­tions and busi­ness, sees “par­tic­i­pa­tion as a tech­nol­o­gy to trans­form social groups ear­li­er not includ­ed in deci­sion mak­ing into includ­ed ones, in order to cre­ate and sus­tain pub­lic good,” said Oleg Pachenkov from the Open Urban Lab.

The process of civ­il soci­ety devel­op­ment is hard­ly smooth or quick – but the trend is there, experts say.

“Quite often ordi­nary cit­i­zens don’t real­ly want to become activists, don’t want to spend all their free time cam­paign­ing, protest­ing, talk­ing to media, pro­mot­ing the case in social net­works 24 hours a day,” said Popravko, the lawyer. “But after real­is­ing that they can’t real­ly appeal to any­one, not to city author­i­ties, not to con­trol bod­ies, they just have to become activists them­selves and try to influ­ence the sit­u­a­tion, which they reck­on affects their lives and liv­ing envi­ron­ments.”