Resolution of the 2nd All-Russian Congress on Environmental Protection (Saratov, 3-5 June, 1999)

The 2nd All Russian Congress on Environmental Protection --

having taken place in Saratov 3-5 June 1999;

comprising 1117 delegates and guests, representing 87 Subjects of the Russian Federation, federal and regional government bodies, higher education, science, public non-governmental organizations, and business;

having considered the situation and current problems in the realm of environmental protection and the organization of rational nature utilization, environmental aspects of the country's socio-economic development, Russia's present and long-term environmental policy;

Notes that, despite the fall in production and the execution of a number of nature protection measures at both the federal and regional levels, the environmental situation in the most populated and industrially developed regions of the country remains unfavorable, and pollution of the natural environment remains high. The environmental problems which have accumulated over decades are frequently exacerbated by problems which have arisen in recent years (including those resulting from weakening government administration and privatization of property). Efforts undertaken at the federal and regional levels have proven to be inadequate to the requisite improvement of environmental protection in Russia and the maintenance of the environmental security of the country's population.

Average concentrations of air pollution in many cities and settlements exceed health standards. Water quality in the majority of water bodies does not meet required standards. Erosion and loss of soil fertility are increasing, as is degradation of soil-protective forest belts. Reductions in biodiversity are threatening the future of Russia: over much of the country, rare species are shrinking and disappearing, while natural landscapes are becoming impoverished.

The government is not properly regulating the utilization of both renewable and non-renewable natural resources, while the predatory exploitation of natural resources is leading to the degradation of entire natural complexes, including the degradation and disappearance of territories of traditional resource utilization.

The environmental problems of cities, home to the majority of Russia's population, are deepening. Construction in water protection and forested park zones is causing degradation of water quality and of health conditions in suburban areas and reducing opportunities for public recreation.

Substantial territories of Russia have been contaminated by the Chernobyl catastrophe and other radiation incidents. Pollution-related morbidity is growing or remains unacceptably high, resistance to infectious diseases is falling, and the number of birth defects in regions of intensive industrial development or chemicalization of agriculture is rising.

As a result of untimely executed (and constantly fewer) fire prevention measures, forest fires remain the basic factor threatening the ecological and natural resource potential of Russia's forests. Forest tracts dying from industrial emissions are increasing. Government agencies are not carrying out sufficient forest regeneration efforts. Inappropriate and unfounded decisions of government agencies to shift class 1 forest tracts to non-forestry purposes is reducing the acreage of the most valuable forests.

In undertaking the elimination of stockpiles of dangerous armaments (chemical and nuclear), issues of environmental security are not attracting sufficient attention at the government level. Retired nuclear powered submarines, ballistic missile systems and rocket fuel, facilities for the storage, elimination, or production of chemical weapons are all posing in some cases unacceptable risk to the population and to ecosystems.

The problem of processing municipal and industrial waste is unresolved and extremely acute. Efforts are being made to bring into Russia hazardous wastes, food products and goods of risk to the consumer, and environmentally dangerous technologies from other countries.

The number of technogenic accidents with unfavorable environmental consequences is growing in industry, transport, and construction. Many hydro-technical facilities are improperly maintained, obsolete, or operated without adequate safety measures; the number of environmentally harmful pipeline ruptures is increasing.

A substantial portion of existing industrial infrastructure does not meet environmental security requirements. The proportion of environmentally unsound technologies in industry, agriculture, energy and transport exceeds 90%.

One still encounters instances of projects and programs approved and launched without the legally required state environmental assessment, and of project documents lacking a section on environmental impact assessment (OVOS).

Economic measures to ensure rational and sustainable resource development, protection of the environment and associated public health, are inadequate. Depressed baseline pricing of natural resources does not stimulate their careful use. Privatization and state disinvestment have left in their wake unresolved issues of compensation for damage arising from past economic activity.

The de-ecologization of government administration is proceeding; government support for environmental activity is being reduced; perpetual reorganizations (accompanied by lower status and reductions in staff and budget) have placed the government's environmental protection system in a critical position. Continuation of this process actually threatens the collapse of environmental structures.

Already adopted federal targeted programs of an environmental nature are financed only to a small extent; the government's systems for environmental, public health, and radiation oversight and monitoring are deteriorating and inadequate; the process of adopting a government strategy for sustainable development is unjustifiably delayed.

Citizens' legal rights to a favorable environment, compensation for environmental damage, and objective, timely information on environmental conditions are being violated, as is the right to participate directly in decision-making which affects the state of the environment.

Opportunities to address environmental problems at the level of Subjects of the Federation are not fully realized. Local government agencies are often prevented from participating in the solution of regional environmental problems.

Law enforcement agencies are not sufficiently diligent in strengthening the observance of environmental statutes, protecting citizens' rights, and addressing environmental issues; the review of environmental cases is often delayed or improperly terminated; adopted judicial findings are not implemented or implemented only in part.

Federal and regional legislative bodies are not sufficiently active in eliminating contradictions and gaps in environmental and natural resource legislation.

The mass media pay insufficient attention to environmental issues, and fail to provide complete and objective information on environmental problems.

The system of environmental education and training does not receive suitable government support.

At the same time, in recent years the improvement of environmental legislation has continued, the system of specially protected natural territories has developed (national parks and zapovedniki have been created, and a number of unique natural sites in Russia have been included in UNESCO's World Heritage list), the efficiency of the state environmental assessment has improved and the range of sites subject to assessment has expanded. Annual Environmental Protection Days have become a tradition. In a number of Subjects of the Federation, substantial, positive environmental accomplishments have occurred.

The Congress notes that, despite the difficult conditions of the transitional period, thousands of environmental state employees, experts, scientists, teachers, and activists are zealously doing everything possible to protect Russia's natural wealth.

Having considered plenary reports and working documents from the thematic sections, the Congress:

Notes the necessity of the soonest possible formulation and approval of a Russian Federation Government Strategy for Sustainable Development, and the urgent preparation of a Concept for a Long-Term Environmental Policy for Russia together with the definition of priority mechanisms for implementing it.

Considers that the most important directions for Russia's environmental policy and for the National Environmental Action Plan of the Russian Federation for 1999-2001 should be:

Ensuring the non-exhaustive use of nature and a higher value of natural resources;

Ensuring priority attention to protecting the health of present and future generations of Russians from negative environmental effects, and maintaining environmental well-being as a condition of protecting the health of present and future generations;

Ensuring priority attention to issues of environmental protection and Russia's environmental security in the course of decision-making in domestic and foreign policy;

Preventing increased loadings on the environment from economic or other activity during the transition to economic growth;

Improving federal and regional environmental legislation and creating a system of environmental standards;

Establishing and legislatively supporting a regime of responsibility on the part of competent federal and regional government agencies for the state of the environment and components thereof utilized as natural resources;

Making more effective the blending of government administration and economic regulation of environmental quality;

Enlisting all sectors of society in addressing environmental problems, through inter alia more broadly capitalizing on the potential of non-governmental organizations and direct participation of citizens in addressing environmental problems;

Developing the basin principle for managing environmental activity;

Developing international cooperation in the environmental area with attention to Russia's national interests.

Finds that, in order to reduce anthropogenic impacts and ensure protection of the environment and regeneration of natural resources, it is essential to address the following challenges:

Forming a more effective structure of government administration in the area of environmental protection and nature use, to include further delineation of corresponding authorities and interactions among federal executive agencies, government bodies of the Subjects of the Federation, and local government organs;

Developing and introducing a set of measures to improve the legal and social [i.e.. financial] support of personnel employed in authorized environmental protection agencies;

Improving the system of accounting and methods of economic, ecological, and social appraisal of natural resources (with the aim of ensuring their continually increasing value), [improving] economic mechanisms of resource utilization (including a rent-like system of charges), [improving] the system of charges for harmful emissions, discharges, waste disposal, and other forms of harmful impact on the environment (adequate to the loss inflicted on the environment), and introduction of a special tax levy on environmentally harmful production processes and technologies;

Developing a market of environmental products and services and organizing environmentally safe economic activity, [to include] introduction of the concept of "life cycle" in the manufacture of any product;

Developing and upgrading systems of government monitoring of the natural environment and its components (including natural resources) within the framework of a Unified State Environmental Monitoring System;

Developing and upgrading the system of government environmental oversight while improving the specificity and observance of laws in this area (including stronger oversight of the use of environmental components as natural resources), together with financial support for the operations of authorized environmental agencies;

Improving interaction among federal agencies, regional government bodies, and timber developers to ensure the sustainable use, regeneration, and protection of forest resources;

Ensuring the licensing of all environmentally hazardous forms of activity;

Enhancing the quality and effectiveness of the state environmental assessment;

Improving systems for assessing the impact of economic and other activity on the environment and actively enlisting the public in this effort;

Developing a system of environmental certification and environmental auditing and insurance; a phased transition to a system of international standards for technological processes and product lines, leading to reduced impact of production activity on the environment;

Identifying and rehabilitating territories characterized by a hazardous change in environmental quality and compensating for damage to citizens' health and property arising from environmental violations;

Assessing the condition of public health as a defining criterion in estimating the environmental well-being of a territory; developing methods for assessing the health of the environment as an indicator of the effectiveness of environmental policy and developing the concept of a healthy environment as preconditions for creating a healthy society;

Ensuring the carrying out of scientific research on priority environmental issues, developing new technologies, stimulating the introduction of resource- and energy-saving technologies, increasing the share of secondary resource utilization;

Increasing activity to preserve biological and landscape diversity, developing and supporting the operation of specially protected natural territories-zapovedniki, national parks, refuges, territories of traditional nature use, green belts and forest park zones;

Forming an effective system of continuous environmental education and training while propagating an environmental culture and world view;

Distributing reliable, timely, and complete information about the state of the environment, through inter alia government support for publication of educational and popular environmental literature and presentation of environmental topics in the mass media.

Improving mechanisms for ensuring and defending the constitutional environmental rights of citizens, including access to the courts, and improvement in the application of laws regarding environmental citizens' rights by courts at all levels;

Supporting public organizations and initiatives in the environmental area, more broadly partnering with NGOs in implementing oversight, assessment, and monitoring in the environmental arena, and engaging the legal defense movement in realizing environmental citizens' rights;

Carrying out a foreign policy that considers Russia's environmental security while improving the environmental rationale and effectiveness of international environmental cooperation.

Considers inadmissible:

The practice of adoption by state agencies, officials, and executors of economic and other activity of decisions and programs which have not passed the state environmental assessment in the established procedure, and demands that law enforcement bodies not allow a single such case without review;

The reduction in numbers and level of financing of government environmental agencies, the elimination of district agencies and other levels of state environmental service, and the removal of eco-funds from the purview of territorial units of the R.F. State Committee for Environmental Protection.

Demands the restoration of the territorial environmental agency in the Republic of Bashkortostan abolished in violation of the Constitution and a number of laws of the Russian Federation.

Categorically objects to changes in the provisions of Article 50 of the RSFSR Law on Environmental Protection which prohibits the import into Russia of radioactive materials and wastes from other countries for storage and disposal.

Approves the draft "Social Accord on Protection of the Living Environment" and notes the need to work out mechanisms for its realization in practice.

Considers it expedient:

To legislatively enhance the responsibility of economic actors for negative impacts on the environment and public health, through both the realization of citizens' rights to compensation for damage done to their health and property from environmental violations (to include legal defense), as well as fully funding environmental and rehabilitative measures in case of accidents or incidents;

To establish under the President of the Russian Federation a Council on Russia's Sustainable Development broadly representative of all branches of government and sectors of society;

To create a Government Commission on protection of the environment and components thereof developed as natural resources (Environmental Coordination Council);

To develop the system of non-budgetary environmental funds while strengthening oversight over their formation and over the proper, effective use of their resources (including for the material-technical support and stimulation of the authorized agencies);

In preparing the draft federal budget and budgets of all levels for the year 2000, to preclude under-funding the environmental system and to increase federal environmental expenditures to 3% of total outlays;

To accelerate the formulation and adoption of the following federal laws: "Amendments and Supplements to the RSFSR Law on Environmental Protection" (revised version); "Status of Zones of Environmental Stress," "Soils," "Vegetation," "Government Regulation of the Use and Protection of Green Belts in Urban Areas," "Environmental Funds," "Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," "Government Support for Environmental Education," "Managing Radioactive Wastes," and "Environmental Security."

To ensure that all territorial environmental agencies are represented in the collegia of the Presidential Representatives in the Subjects of the Federation;

To develop the system of environmental prosecutors in all territories of the Russian Federation;

To achieve realization of the rights of the Subjects of the Federation with respect to environmental protection within the Closed Administrative-Territorial Formations (ZATOs).

The 2nd All-Russian Congress on Environmental Protection resolves:

1. To publish and broadly disseminate this resolution, plenary reports and decisions of the thematic sections of the Congress.

2. To hold the 3rd All-Russian Congress on Environmental Protection in 2002.

3. To create a continuously functioning body to implement decisions of the 2nd All-Russian Congress on Environmental Protection (Executive Committee of the Congress). To request that interested committees of the State Duma, the R.F. State Committee for Environmental Protection, and the Center for Russian Environmental Policy work together as partners to provide organizational support for the work of the Executive Committee; to urge that representatives of other state agencies and non-governmental organizations represented at the Congress also take part in the work of the Executive Committee of the Congress.

4. To instruct the Executive Committee of the Congress to deal with corresponding inquiries on issues that have reached the secretariat but have not been reflected in this resolution or the decisions of the thematic sections.

The Congress expresses its gratitude to the Governor, Administration, and organizations of Saratov oblast for creating conditions conducive to the work of the Congress, and to organizations and individuals who facilitated the successful preparation and execution of the Congress.

Adopted at the concluding session of the Congress, 5 June 1999.

Presiding
V.I. Danilov-Danilyan

Chair of the Editorial Commission of the Congress
A.V. Yablokov

[Trans. G. Waxmonsky 7/7/99]

Resolution of the 2nd All-Russian Congress on Environmental Protection (Saratov, 3-5 June, 1999)

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