Editor: last update July 4, 1996; europe; index
Green Parties in Russia
Russia is a federal republic with dozens of relatively autonomous regions.
At December 17, 1995 there were national elections. The Green Party of the Russian Federation didn't collect enough signatures to take part. The ecological party Kedr got 962.195 the votes (1,39%; 1991 0,7%). The treshold is 5%.
18 Russian environmental groups have decided to create Green Russia, a joint bloc for the upcoming parliamentary elections, according to Russian Environment Minister Viktor Danilov-Danilyan. Green Russia's main priority will be ecological revival, he said (Moscow SEGODNYA, 7/27).
Among the alliance's members: the "Kedr" (Cedar) movement, the Russian Green Party, the Public Ecological Foundations Union ("Echo" Program, Russian radio, 7/25), the All-Russian Environment Protection Society, the Ecological Academy, the Ecological Assembly of Women and the Federation of Independent Trade Unions ("Vesti," Russian TV, 7/27).
Boris Jelstin won the presidential elections against the communist Zjoeganov at June 16 and July 3, 1996.
In Russia are several environmental political organisations. None of them managed to gain a seat in the Federal Parliament or the Doema. Only the Green Party of St.Petersburg is a member of the European Federation of Green Parties.
SPB PRESS writes in edition 131: Boy beaten in Green Party faction fight.
Ekho Moskvy News Agency wrote on August 10th 1995:
St.Petersburg's Green Party has won Russia's first ever appeal against planning permission granted by a regional authority.
The Russian Supreme Court created an important legal precedent on the 9th of August, when it judged in favour of the Greens in the case against the Leningrad regional authority. The authority had given permission for dachas, Russian country houses, to be built in a tract of virgin forest which was to be designated a nature reserve.
The Greens took their case to the highest court, the Russian Supreme Court, after losing in the regional court.
The email address of the Green Party of St.Petersburg is info@greens.spb.su
The Los Angeles Times writes at August 23rd 1995:
Alexander M. Sheleknov, a forestry expert with the ecology-oriented political movement known as the Association of Karelian Greens, accuses the local leadership of collusion with federal authorities in planning to log old-growth timber along the Finnish border.
But Sheleknov concedes that the people of Karelia have far more clout now in controlling their environment, and he advocates further strengthening of the region's powers.
Karelia's governor, Viktor N. Stepanov, says his was the first of Russia's autonomous republics to enact laws requiring environmental impact studies of all proposed building projects. That has helped the region stave off federal schemes to bury wastes or build new sources of pollution here.
Ecology activists agree that their influence is expanding.
"With the growth of democracy in the republic, we've been able to speak on the radio, give interviews to newspapers and generally to get our message directly to the public," says Dmitri Rybakov, a leader of the Karelian Green Party.
The Los Angeles Times writes at August 23rd 1995:
Far away in remote Yakutia an activist says that the final word on development must rest with the regions.
"For 40 years they've been mining diamonds, gold and whatever else they could get at with no heed whatsoever of the damage to nature," says Valentina I. Dmitrieva, chairwoman of the Public Ecological Center in Yakutsk.
Cities, towns and settlements were built on pilings drilled into the fragile permafrost, and the population's wastes were pumped to storage vessels and then dumped into rivers once winter ice thawed.
Yakutia and other areas of Siberia face the most disastrous consequences of thoughtless federal planning, because the permafrost communities will literally collapse as global warming melts the frozen surface.
"The melting of the permafrost is fraught with dire consequences for all of the Earth, as oceans will rise and eat away coastlines," Dmitrieva says. "But it is a particularly harrowing issue for us, because whole cities will simply sink and disappear."
While the industrial recklessness filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases could be curtailed and the impending doomsday delayed, ecologists are finding it tough going to galvanize any government to take action against a disaster still decades or even centuries away.