Civic Sector Initiatives For a Green Future The Russian government declared 2013 to be the year of environmental protection. But who in Russia is interested in this topic? Despite state interferences in the NGO sector, the Russian civic sector is steadily growing, raising people’s awareness of sustainability issues. Giving a preview of her thematic session at the World Young Leaders Forum, Angelina Davydova writes about the hampered development of civil society. “Sustainability” is a word rarely understood correctly in Russia. Within the socio-economic paradigm of the 1990s and 2000s the adjective “sustainable” was mainly applied to the idea of economic growth – meaning a steady increase in GDP. This discourse of “pure” economic success has thus discarded a consideration of any externalities caused upon nature, population, communities which may have equally affected welfare, prosperity as well as the deterioration of social and natural capital. So how come the largest country in the world pays so little attention to environmental issues? Is the Russian population even concerned about sustainability issues? Is Russia’s civil society doing anything about it? Firstly, there is the “big country” factor. Being the largest country in the world, Russia is very sparsely populated. The availability of vast natural resources undermines environmental awareness in Russia, since the idea that resources (of land, water, forests, oil, gas, etc.) are unlimited is deeply rooted in public conscience. This attitude can be found in many vast and resource-rich countries of the world, such as Brazil, Canada or the United States. Another aspect of this issue is the visibility of environmental damage. Quite often, many environmental accidents happen unnoticed in the low-populated areas where most oil and natural gas fields are found, and unless organizations like Greenpeace send a helicopter to produce video footage of an oil leakage the chances of someone learning about it remain relatively low. Whether or not environmental problems receive public attention and support is therefore directly connected with their visibility, putting the focus on more attention-grabbing things like urban development, cutting down green areas in cities, etc. Finally, there is the Soviet heritage of the conception of “conquering nature” for the sake of the people. The idea of straightening rivers, changing landscapes or transforming eco-systems for the sake of large-scale industrial production was one of the drivers of the Soviet economy. In many respects, this attitude still persists. The new economic realities of the 1990s and early 2000s brought along the idea of making quick profits at the cost of exhausting nature. As a consequence, in addition to environmental problems “inherited” from Soviet times (mainly connected with industrial pollution), new ones appeared: air pollution from cars, the waste problem, excessive consumption, etc. How Civil Society Movements Started to Spread Around Sustainability Issues While most NGOs appeared in the 1990s, public support and knowledge about their work has been limited. Only over the last few years numerous bottom-up initiatives have started to appear, many of them short-lived and never accomplishing to be registered officially as NGOs. The problems they were dealing with were mostly urban and environmental issues – for example, a protest group against the destruction of a park for the sake of a new shopping center/high-class residential building/new road. Such topics gained popularity because environmental issues often concerned everyday worries and the problems of “common people.” In contrast, more abstract campaigns like the promotion of democratic values or free media did not seem to have any direct impact on the lives of “ordinary” citizens. The growing importance of sustainability issues worldwide has also played a major role in the development of civil society initiatives. The increasing attention paid to these topics in political agendas, business and other everyday life practices of various groups of Russian society, together with an increasing number of international travels and (Russian and international) media coverage on green economy and other sustainability issues, have strengthened NGOs and think-tanks working in the area both worldwide and in Russia. The first flagship initiative of the kind was the so-called Khimki movement, where a small forest was to be demolished for the sake of the construction of a new highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Construction plans triggered a Russia-wide campaign for protecting Khimki Forest, bringing thousands of protesters to the streets of Moscow and other cities of Russia. Even though the Khimki movement could not fully reach its goals, it has achieved something maybe even more substantial – that is, a very practical case and widely-known example of a local community getting organized into a movement, working professionally with both Russian and international media, attracting celebrities for their campaign and thus making the issue known and achieving support for it all over Russia. The Khimki movement not only provided Russian environmental activists with useful tools and methods for tackling their own local protests, but it also provoked a whole number of civil society groups to appear all over the country. The Growing Prominence of “Do-It-Yourself” Initiatives In addition to protest groups forming around a specific problem, another type of civil society involvement has appeared. This second type of public initiatives deals with a specific environmental problem on a “do-it-yourself” basis. A good example of this is the “Musora.bolshe.net” movement (literally meaning “no more rubbish”), a civil society initiative created in St. Petersburg by a group of individuals worried about the waste problem in Russia. The initiative first started their activities with hundreds of volunteers going to lakeshores, parks, and forests to gather waste and submit it for selection and possible recycling. Over time, the idea has been taken up by other groups and individuals in many regions and cities of Russia who expanded their activities beyond rubbish gathering; it now includes seminars and training on waste management for businesses, local communities and municipalities as well as public awareness campaigns on sustainability issues. Indeed, many similar initiatives have appeared all over Russia organizing environmental awareness campaigns and public “green events,” promoting cycling, car-free lifestyles or urban gardening. As in the case of rubbish selection, these groups are trying to replace non-existent state infrastructure with do-it-yourself practices and volunteer actions. For example, one group of NGOs is active in the anti-nuclear or low-carbon (climate) arena, and another one brings together climate experts of a number of NGOs from all over Russia to observe the UN Climate negotiation process. Its members publish a daily bulletin of negotiations during the sessions in Russian and English, critically assessing official positions of Russia and other CIS countries and lobbying for low-carbon and anti-nuclear solutions. Are High-Level Initiatives Necessarily More Effective than Local Ones? When we talk about lobbying at a high political level, the major players are Greenpeace Russia and WWF Russia as well as the “umbrella” organization for many regional and local environmental NGOs and civic initiatives, the Russian Socio-Ecological Union. These are often called upon on the part of ministries, local governments, think-tanks, and research centers to contribute their experience and expertise on various environmental issues, including draft laws. This rather limited number of “powerful” civil society players in the political field demonstrates the still weak and underdeveloped state of civil society in Russia at the moment. Even taking into consideration the growing number of civil society initiatives in Russia over the last few years, it has to be noted that only a few of them outlive their problem and reach a higher level of work such as political lobbying or become institutionalized. However, the growing number of state consultations with NGOs alone does not necessarily mean that any suggestions and actions from the civil sector are actually translated into political practice. For example, two years ago WWF Russia calculated that only 10 percent of all “orders,” “requests” and “recommendations” from the president, prime minister and other high-ranking officials in Russia in the area of environmental policy had actually been implemented. This limited efficiency of NGO work can not only be observed on the political level; in the economic sector many companies find it cheaper to pay a fine or to bribe officials than take measures and introduce sustainable practices. The development of a civil society in Russia over the last years has been significantly hampered by state reaction and attempts to over-regulate or even suppress its activities. Last summer, the Russian state parliament approved new legislation, obliging all NGOs receiving foreign financing and engaging in political actions to be registered as “foreign agents.” Many NGOs all over Russia have been raided by the police, the prosecutor’s office, tax inspectors, etc. These controls do not necessarily target environmental NGOs, but they certainly upset and destabilize the everyday activities of NGOs. This state interference may even threaten their existence as it keeps many civil society initiatives from registering officially, thereby hampering the development of civil society as a whole. Civil Society: a Source of Hope for a More Sustainable Russia? The continuous political pressure, lack of financing for NGO sector, and other everyday problems of the sector notwithstanding, one can no doubt observe a growing role of civil society in promoting sustainability issues in Russia over the last few years. While their activities and campaigns, in combination with many other political and economic processes, may have contributed to a growing environmental awareness among the people, their effects on political and economic decision-making processes have been slow and limited. Indeed, it is only with time that civil society’s critical assessment and growing expertise will be able to change environmental legislation, state policy in the area of sustainability, and private business strategies concerning environmental and social responsibilities.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 08:40:50 +0000
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