Scramble for the Arctic to Dominate Environmental Agenda

Map of Barents Sea and Polar Environs

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Roland Oliphant – December 20, 2012)

2012 saw the climate-change-fueled dash for the Arctic’s riches dominate the environmental agenda.

The debate over the high north, the annual nightmare of forest fires and continuing battles between activists and developers over roads, mines and the Sochi Olympics are only likely to intensify next year.

Greenpeace activists stormed Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya oil rig in the Pechora Sea in the first of what will likely be many confrontations over the development of oil and gas on the Arctic shelf.

In less remote locales, the long battle over the Khimki forest dragged into a sixth year, with activists persuading the European Parliament to hold hearings on Vinci’s involvement and President Vladimir Putin revealing at his end-of-the-year news conference that the French construction company at one point had threatened to quit the project altogether.

New fights broke out across the country over construction projects. Plans to mine nickel deposits in the Voronezh region brought together an unlikely alliance of environmentalists, local residents and Cossacks.

Meanwhile, a vocal campaign by environmentalists and ecotourism entrepreneurs forced the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to call an emergency summit over a road across a planned national park in the Khibiny Mountains in the Murmansk region.

Campaigners continued to face harassment. Suren Gazaryan, of the North Caucasus Environmental Watch, will  battle charges of threatening to kill a security guard at the gargantuan neoclassical construction on the Black Sea

coast that whistle-blower Sergei Kolesnikov called “Putin’s palace.”

Meanwhile, several anti-nickel campaigners in Voronezh have faced charges under draconian new laws regulating public protests.

Putin himself flew a bit too close to the sun in a stunt helping endangered cranes to migrate. The birds got lost, and the president was rumored to have hurt his back.

We cannot predict which animal Putin will endorse next year, though it is probably a safe bet it won’t be the Russian desman, the strange half-shrew, half-mole aquatic mammal  the anti-nickel campaigners made their mascot.

Nor can we forecast the weather, industrial accidents or natural disasters that could spell environmental catastrophe in the coming year. But below is our best forecast for environmental issues in the coming year.

WHAT TO EXPECT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES NEXT YEAR

Area
2012 Highlights
What’s Ahead in 2013
Key Players

Arctic

2012 saw the biggest retreat in Arctic ice cover since records began. The Northern Sea Route saw a growth in traffic, and BP penned a deal with Rosneft that will see the British oil company enter the region. Environmentalists launched a coordinated global campaign to keep the Arctic pristine. Greenpeace stormed and briefly occupied Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya oil-platform in the Pechora sea in August, while experts at the WWF pushed for a law in the State Duma to force oil firms to take out adequate catastrophe insurance for offshore work. Activists were indirectly helped by the global economic climate. The Shtokman gas project was shelved indefinitely because of cost overruns, and Prirazlomnaya’s start date was postponed yet again.

President Vladimir Putin’s annual international Arctic Conference, which was canceled this year, will presumably take place in September and focus on environmental affairs in the region. In April, Naryan Mar, in the Nenets autonomous district, will host a conference on arctic oil and gas development. A decision is expected on requests by oil companies for tax breaks on offshore work because of high extraction costs. A final investment decision on Yamal LNG is also due next year. If there are no further postponements, Prirazlomnaya is scheduled to finally start pumping oil in September or October. Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic campaign for a globally recognized Arctic sanctuary has been gathering steam worldwide in 2012, including garnering endorsement from British lawmakers. Expect to hear more from the group.

China and South Korea  emerged as new players in the dash to leverage the Northern Sea route and Arctic resources.

Baikal

The Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill was finally declared bankrupt in December, raising the prospect of a final closure of the controversial plant.

A decision about the mill’s fate should be made by June 5, when the bankruptcy regime expires.

Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich is overseeing the slow euthanasia of the mill.

Forests

Fires were relatively limited in the Moscow region and European Russia this year, but eastern parts of the country saw forest fires on a similar scale to 2010. Several airborne firefighters died while battling blazes in East Siberia.

The Federal Forestry Agency is getting 22.5 billion rubles ($700 million) in 2013, up 800 million rubles over last year. At least part of that is to be spent on raising wages for firefighters and forest rangers.

Forestry agency chief Viktor Maslyakov’s job will be on the line if next summer’s fires turn bad enough for the Kremlin to need a scapegoat. His predecessor was fired over the disastrous 2010 wildfires.

Charismatic Mega Fauna

Vladimir Putin pulled one of his signature wildlife stunts by flying with endangered Siberian cranes, though he failed in the aim of teaching them to migrate. Several birds got lost and were  returned by the Kazakh government. Several European bison were released in the Caucasus. A new preserve for Amur tigers opened in the Far East in October.

A law criminalizing trafficking in endangered species is expected to be introduced by summer, a long-overdue measure against the trade of Russian animal parts to China and birds of prey to the Middle East.

Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov is emerging as the chief government patron of biodiversity projects, pushing for the anti-trafficking law and backing efforts to save the Amur leopard.

Climate Change

The Russian government steadfastly refused to rethink its refusal to take on new commitments in the second implementation period of the Kyoto Protocol at the Doha summit in December.

Russia will not be able to transfer its unused carbon quotas from the first implementation period in 2013, much to the chagrin of domestic entrepreneurs involved in carbon trading. But Russia can be expected to show up at the next climate conference, in Warsaw at the end of next year, to help hammer out a new agreement.

Kazakhstan, South Korea and China  announced plans for their own carbon-control schemes, a new model that environmentalists hope Russia will follow.

Activism

Suren Gazaryan, of North Caucasus Environmental Watch, received a three-year suspended sentence for writing on the fence of an illegally built dacha in the Krasnodar region. In August, he was also accused of threatening to kill a security guard at the palatial residence built in a protected area of the Black Sea coast that whistle-blower Sergei Kolesnikov called “Putin’s Palace.”
Local residents and Cossacks united to oppose plans to mine nickel in the Voronezh region.

Gazaryan said in November he had been put on a federal wanted list, suggesting that he will be fighting the charges well into 2013. Contractors will have to rush to finish work on the controversial Krasnaya Polyana ski resort in time for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Work has been held up by locals refusing to leave their homes to make way for a road.

Krasnodar governor Alexander  Tkachyov allegedly owns the dacha Gazaryan is accused of defacing, and he oversees the region where the Olympics will take place.

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