A performer at the El Oyun festival in the Altai Republic.

Heavy rain hits the car windows loudly, making it almost impossible to see down the road.  I am with Natalya Tokova, one of our partners in the Altai Republic, and we are heading to El Oyun, a three-day festival being held in Kabailuu-Mejelik Valley, near Elo village in Ongudai region.

The weather will change soon, as it always does in mountainous areas, where it can go from an icy hail with roaring thunderstorms to a clear blue sky in minutes.  Natalya fills me in on the festival – what type of traditional sport events will be held there, who was the kuresh winner, a traditional form of wrestling, and who should do well this year in the at-chabysh competition, which is a saddling of untrained young horses.  She also tells me how the location for this year (a different place is chosen every year) is causing some controversy because the valley contains numerous ancient burial sites, or kurgans.  Deep respect for ancestors, no matter how far back in history, runs in every Altayan person.  Disturbing such sites is strictly prohibited, although in Altai, kurgans, petroglyphs, and other sacred places are commonplace, and it is challenging at times to avoid being too close to them.

The Altayan people are connected to nature and history in profound and intricate ways.  Their worldview, interpretation of events and life, and code of conduct are all based on the idea of human beings and the natural environment forming one inseparable system.  In Altai, almost every mountain, every tree, and every body of water possesses a particular meaning and a purpose. Local people treat nature with care, applying knowledge that has been carried over from one generation to another for thousands of years.

When we are arrive to the festival, we first go to the food stand set up by Natalia’s family, where I am given a bowl of fresh kumys (horse milk) and some mutton, followed by a cup of strong black tea with milk.  This small make-shift ‘café’ is bustling with customers, run by Natalia’s cousins and aunt.  As in many nomadic cultures, women work on an equal footing with men, having to take care of the whole family, while men were away looking for better pastures for their herds.  In traditional Altayan culture, a woman is also revered as the core of all beginning, as Mother Nature herself.

This is my second visit to Altai, and I continue to fall in love with its people and its landscape.  It is impossible not to get mesmerized by its untouched beauty, walking through the fields of purple, red, and yellow flowers, soaking your feet in crystal clear glacier water and listening to the ancient melodies of tushpur, a two-string instrument.  As I think about what can happen to this place if local and federal governments continue to approve economically unsound and environmentally unsafe development projects, I genuinely hope that our partners and the people of Altai will have the international community’s support and they will be able to protect their land.

An Indigenous Woman on the Altai Plateau

Altai, nestled in southern Siberia to the west of Mongolia, to the east of Kazakhstan, and to the north of China, is an amazing area.  It’s known for its wildlands and beauty, as the landscape climbs from Siberian pine forests to alpine plateaus.

The Ukok Plateau – a vast plateau that is recognized as a World Heritage Site – is one area that Pacific Environment and our partners our trying to save.  The Russian government has announced plans to build a gas pipeline to China through the Altai, directly through the Ukok Plateau.  The project is led by Gazprom (note that Putin just anointed the chairman of Gazprom as his successor to become president of Russia).

Indigenous Altaians are extremely worried about the pipeline.  They point out that there are better routes for the pipeline that make more sense both economically and environmentally.  These routes, though, go through Mongolia or Kazakhstan, and Russia wants a direct pipeline to China – which means going through the Ukok Plateau.

One of the reasons indigenous Altaians are so worried is that this is a sacred area for their culture.  In addition to its environmental beauty, the Ukok Plateau is home to thousands of sacred sites.  We’re supporting Maya Erlenbaeva and the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Altai, a local organization, to map these sacred sites to that they can demonstrate the value of the Plateau.  Our friends at the Sacred Land Film Project visited Maya and the Foundation earlier this summer and produced a wonderful short video that shows Maya’s inspiring work.

Our efforts in Altai are going to ramp up in 2008, which promises to be an important year for deciding the fate of the Ukok Plateau.  We’re hopeful that we can convince the Russian government and Gazprom that there’s a better alternative than the Ukok Plateau for building a gas pipeline to China!  Click here to find out more about our campaign!

In the meantime, enjoy the video and the short journey it takes you to the sacred places of Altai in southern Siberia!

The foothills of the Altai

Greetings from somewhere over Greenland!  I’m on my way home after two weeks of “work.”  The quick overview: 4 days in Moscow meeting with journalists, environmentalists, and old friends; 4 days in Barnaul in central Siberia (pronounced “barn-owe-oool,” with the emphasis on ooool) planning for a environmentalists’ strategy conference; 4 days at said conference on the banks of the beautiful Katun River in the foothills of the Altai Mountains; 2 days on horseback exploring those same foothills with colleagues from Sakhalin Island (near Japan).

May it never be said that I like Moscow.  As a city, it’s an awful place: expensive, loud, dirty, and pretentious.  Moscow has too many McDonald’s, Ikeas, and TGI Fridays for its own good, but paint a cow blue and it’s still a cow.  You know you’re still in Russia when:

• You go to a chain store in a very modern Western-style shopping mall one morning and try to buy something for 300 rubles ($12) with a 500 ($19) ruble bill.  The sales person says with a straight face, “You cannot buy this.  I do not have change for a 500 ruble bill.”

• Next, you go to a go to a KFC/Rostics chain because dangit, you just want some good ol’ fried chicken.  The pictures of sandwiches and chicken strips are enticing, but when you order, you are told they don’t have any chicken strips, but they do have five sandwiches.  Five?  Yes, we have five.  Well, it’s a good thing I only want one.  Ice cream?  Don’t even try.

• You are ready to go home, but have one small task left: change 9000 USD into rubles to pay for a conference.  You go to a big bank because the rate is good and you prefer to whip out all those crisp greenbacks in a private room.  “We don’t have $9000 in rubles to sell you.  I can only do three thousand, maybe four.”  You’re kidding, right?  Is this a newspaper stand or a bank?!  Stink.  Three bank stops later, all the money is finally changed.

Phew, that’s out of the way!  Now I can go on to ramble about the Russia that I love … the sleepy Siberian towns, the meandering mountains and rivers, the struggling fishing communities on the Pacific, and the generous and rugged people who live in Siberia and the Far East – on the edge of true wilderness.  Yosemite and Yellowstone delight, but falter just as Edward Abbey penned and ultimately pale in comparison to Russia’s remote wilds. This is why I love the wilderness!  So complicated and, well, wild, and yet so strikingly simple.

The first thing I noticed when I landed in Barnaul (at 6am) is that the sky is loud.  Barnaul is located on the steppe, the flatlands, not far from where the Altai Mountains lift up from the land with a quick sweep of God’s creative hand.  The weather in Barnaul is dizzying, changing every five minutes and boasting clouds that taunt anyone who dares to watch.  Cumulus – stratus fratus – stratocumulous – altocumulous – cirus – cumulous again.  Amen!  Every sunrise and sunset above the city is a marvel.

Sosnovka is an annual meeting of all the top environmental activists from Siberia and the Russian Far East, with a few lawyer and policy types from Moscow thrown in for good measure.  The conference is always a blur of intense strategy conversations and jovial social time.  (To my great relief, the vodka consumption was mild this year.)  Many of the Sosnovtsy are old friends who see each other once or twice each year, which means Day One of the conference involves a lot of who got married, who had kids, and who got divorced conversations.  What a treat to now be a part of this merry band!  Our strategy conversations were simultaneously broad and narrow, covering the hottest topics, both new and old:  forestry, protected areas, mining, fisheries, oil and gas development, alternative energy sources, etc.  Not enough time, so much information, so many ideas, so many plans …

We took a half day off to go white water rafting on the might Katun.  Given the fall water level, the rafting time was more about photo ops than white water, but can’t complain – I laughed so much my stomach was sore until the next day.  Yes, our guides made all the women wear these HUGE waterproof moon pants things.  I grumbled and said I was fine without, but it was a losing battle.  Not surprisingly, I was glad later that I had them on.  Cold mountain water and frigid fall winds are a nasty combination!

After Sosnovka, I was relieved of conference wrap-up duties in Barnaul and so decided to escape to the mountains with Dima and Zhenya of Sakhalin Environmental Watch.  Dima is THE premier activist in all of Russia and I was eager for a chance to pick his brain!  How did you get involved in this work?  What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of the movement?  What motivates you?  How in the world does Natasha do this work along side of you with a 2-year-old at home as well?!  I heard you’re an Orthodox believer, can you tell me about that?

Dima, Zhenya, and I rented horses, found a guide, and rode up to a beekeeper’s hut in the mountains on the edge of a reindeer farm.  The next morning, we awoke to SNOW.  No joke.  But it turned to rain as we rode down to lower elevations.  We discussed the healing properties of reindeer antlers and rode the edge of the mountainous reindeer pasture hoping for a sighting.  Needless to say, we saw no antlers, but did see a bunch of reindeer behinds as a herd heard us and ran away.

Like every outdoor experience I’ve ever known in Russia, our horseback riding trip was, well, extreme.  Cold, wet conditions made steep, steep terrain perilous at best for the horses.  I felt sorry for them at first and tried to console my horse, but it seemed somehow that my horse was enjoying herself in spite of the conditions.

Other lessons learned and relearned:

• An “Antler bath” (a hot bath with reindeer antler extract) feels like a regular bath, but is pleasant insofar as the extract smells like cake batter.  I kid you not.  Yellow cake batter!

• I’ve (to my great surprise) developed a taste for carbonated water, salo (straight fat from an animal – think bacon without the meat), and mead (honey wine).  I might detest buckwheat cooked Russian-style, but honey from the plant makes a delightful wine, as it turns out.  The Altai region is known for its delicious and varied honey.

• The stars on the other side of the world are different from what we see in North  America now.  (I know, I know – duh!)  But what a treat to see a different chunk of the sky than I enjoyed a few weeks ago in the Sierras.  The Milky Way was particularly brilliant last week in the Altai … Oh my stars!

I marvel at this life and can scarcely believe the things I have seen…

Sasha telling the story of the raven

KATUN RIVER, Republic of Altai, Russia.

A raft of Russian environmental leaders floats down the mighty Katun River. Sasha, with the environmental organization Taiga Rangers, is standing in the middle of the raft and performing a splendid theatrical version of the “The Raven and the Geese.” I am gasping for air between bouts of intense laughter.

The story goes something like this.  A flock of geese is preparing to migrate across the Pacific Ocean.  “Let me come with you!” cries the raven.  “I’m brave! I’m strong!”  The geese scoffed, “Your wings are too short.  You won’t make it!”  Nonetheless, the geese give in and embark on the transoceanic flight with the raven.  Sasha stands tall with arms outstretched, almost soaring above the water.

After several days, the geese finally arrive and wait for the raven, and they wait, and wait.  Just as they are mourning the memory of the brave, strong raven who perished at sea, they spot a dark shape on the horizon.  The raven!  “Go! Go! Go!” shout the geese.  Sasha is wildly jumping up and down, pointing at the horizon, and almost falling out of the raft.  The exhausted raven finally limps up to the flock.  He can barely whispers, “Yes…” gasps the raven. “I’m brave, and I’m strong, and I’m a bit crazy in the head.”

Perhaps the story comes off so well because both Sasha and the other Sosnovka Coalition members present, who have dedicated their lives to Russia’s environmental movement, can personally relate to this crazy, lone raven.  It seems quite fitting that we are all sandwiched together in a small, rubber raft on a fast flowing river.

Our coalition earned the name Sosnovka about seven years ago, after the location of our first such gathering.  The name literally means “little pine tree”.  This first meeting took place almost as an experiment, bringing a group of Russian environmental groups together and see what happened.

Anyone attending this year’s meeting could tell that this little pine tree has grown.  The Sosnovka strategy session is no longer a matter of convenience, but rather an event of necessity for Russia’s environmental movement.  This year, the meeting was characterized by a greater sense of maturity and professionalism, the ability to share skills and resources, and the conviction that we are making a difference.

On maturity…

As with any diverse, passionate interest group, the Russian environmental community is capable of getting distracted by small points of disagreement.  However, this year’s meeting indicates our movement is able to see the forest through the trees.  We are now moving forward on common goals.  The Siberia-Pacific Pipeline campaign’s success moving an oil pipeline’s route away from Lake Baikal and sensitive marine environments in Primorye clearly demonstrated our movement’s strength.

Sergei Shapaev, director of the Buryat Regional Union for Baikal, led our Sosnovka discussion on this pipeline campaign.  Sergei has been a key organizer for multi-stakeholder opposition to building the oil pipeline route along Lake Baikal and has the right personality for the job.  Sergei has sharp facial features and a focused gaze that reminds me of an eagle.  His orations are just as focused, clear and reasonable.  He always stands up to make his point, but rarely raises his voice.  Along with collaborators at Baikal Environmental Wave and Phoenix Fund, Sergei has succeeded in maintaining common goals for corporate responsibility for the Siberia Pacific Pipeline campaign, despite a wide range of perspectives from supporting pipeline construction to opposing it altogether.

On sharing resources…

The growth of Russia’s environmental movement is also evident from the level of strategy and technical skills that many organizations are now able to contribute.  Groups are no longer looking solely to international experiences for new campaign ideas, but are instead working to leverage resources for region-to-region collaboration.

At this year’s meeting, Irina Fotieva and Misha Shishin of the Fund for 21st Century Altai offered a key example of collaborating with other environmental leaders in the movement.  Misha and Irina are looking to apply Sergei Shaphaev’s work developing economic evaluations of natural resource extraction projects to their campaign to protect the Ukok Plateau.  A new gas pipeline from Russia to China is planned to cross the Altai’s Ukok Plateau, recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its high biodiversity and status as a sacred site for Altai indigenous peoples.  Working with Sergei to apply an economic analysis to the problem would be an important opportunity to make the case for shifting the pipeline route.

Misha and Irina are both passionate about protecting the natural wonders of the Ukok and ensuring that regional development projects benefit local people.  Misha, originally an art history professor, is always ready with a wry smile and a joke to bring forth a room full of laughs, a skill he employs with colleagues and government officials alike.  He took up the cause of preventing construction of a large dam project on the Katun River and created his own television station in order to do so.  Irina carries a soft, welcoming expression, yet manages the daily operations of the organization with intense conviction.  She is now in conversation with indigenous leaders in the southern Altai about conducting the economic evaluation.

On making a difference…

Coming to a meeting that evaluates our movement’s performance with successes on hand offers an added incentive to push forward.  This year has brought more than one success to Russia’s environmental movement.  In addition to protecting Lake Baikal from potential oil pipeline spills, we received positive news during our meeting regarding efforts to protect Sakhalin Island from oil and gas developments.

Dimitry Lisitsyn, director of Sakhalin Environment Watch, spent free time between conference sessions glued to his cell phone with reporters asking about the Russian government’s decision to revoke permits for oil pipeline construction based on negative environmental impacts.  Dimitry’s phone conversations were enlivened by lively hand gestures, emphasizing his points to his invisible audience.  This level of energy is consistent with Dimitry’s commitment to the campaign and his tireless work photographing the Sakhalin oil pipeline construction documenting engineering problems which compromises pipeline safety and allows for extreme erosion, impacting salmon streams.

The list of accomplishments from the meeting goes on, with poignant moments ranging from the recognition of long-term partnerships between indigenous community activists and environmental advocates, to a new level of excitement around Russia-China relations and policy opportunities for sustainable natural resource management at the international level.

In most countries, the odds are stacked against citizens’ environmental protection efforts.  Russia is no different.  Yet our Sosnovka Coalition is a small group of people, who are able to maintain a sense of optimism (and a sense of humor), despite the challenges we face.  And for several days, the strength of our network was palpable.  The ravens of the Russian environmental movement have taken flight.