Russian Regions Rated on Ecology
The Russian public organization Green Patrol has issued the first-ever ecological rating of the subjects of the federation. Moscow ranked 52nd out of 84 places. Moscow region ranked 59th, and Leningrad Region ranked 68th. Regional authorities accused the rating of being subjective, but the Ministry of Natural Resources called it “indicative, even considering the margin of error.” The top five most ecologically healthy regions are Belgorod, Kaluga, Ryazan and Kirov Regions and the Republic of Mordovia. Bottom-ranked are Tula, Chelyabinsk, Kemerovo and Sverdlovsk Regions.
Green Patrol lead specialist Vyacheslav Fedorov said that the rating was based on indicators gathered from over 4000 sources in the course of a year. “Belgorod Region is known for the many ecological organizations there, and the condition of nature there is respectable,” commented Green Patrol director of nature programs Roman Pikulov, who continued, “But in Chelyabinsk there are no ecological organizations at all, the authorities are moribund and there are major sources of pollution on the region's territory, such as the Mayak chemical works.” Mayak has been repeatedly accused of water pollution.
Experts have assessed the value of the rating variously. “The idea itself is not bad,” opined Greenpeace Russia program director Ivan Blokov, “but the methodology of the rating is completely incomprehensible. Authoritative foreign ecological ratings, such as that of Yale University, are based on absolute numbers on he condition of the environment, but there is nothing like that here.” Ministry of Natural Resources press secretary Nikolay Gudkov commented that “Many of the ecologically troubled regions mentioned in the rating coincide with those that are resent in the Ministry of Natural Resources monthly reports on nature in Russia.”
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All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 22, 2008
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