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Environmental Spending in Russia
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development issued a special report yesterday on environmental management in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, in which it analyzed expenditure per capita for environmental protection in the CIS. Contrary to possible expectations, Russia ranked second on that list with $40, following only Belarus, which spent $50 per person on the environment in 2003. With 3-4-percent growth, Russia's expenditure in nominal dollars in 2006-2007 is $50-55 per capita. In OECD member states, expenditures are around $100 per capita.
The OECD noted that Russia's gross expenditure among CIS states on environmental protection is comparable to the gross share of the richer countries. That concerns Russia less than Ukraine and Belarus, however. There those per-capita gross expenditures have been growing since 2002. Those country's orientation toward the European ecological strategy and attention to Chernobyl make the environment a political issue and account for their policies to a great extent.
Ecology would be a much larger question in political life in Russia if it were not for problems with Russian political life itself. Russia's ecological policy is more akin to that of Central Asia (where expenditures range from $5-10 per capita) than to Eastern Europe, only on a larger scale.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 12, 2007
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