Pacific Environment recently hosted a group of four Russian environmental activists for a really great exchange program which brought them to eastern Washington and northern Idaho to meet with a spectrum of groups that are in varying capacities involved in agricultural burning and wildfire management. Over ten packed days, we met with community advocacy groups, farmers, state air quality regulators, tribal smoke managers, and United States Forest Service fire specialists and smokejumpers.

(Photo credit: Anton Beneslavskiy, Greenpeace-Russia) Washington State Department of Ecology’s Air Quality Program staff explain the decade-long negotiation process between farmers, regulators, and communities.

For a little over a year, Pacific Environment has been supporting several pilot projects in Russia aimed at reducing agricultural burning in Siberia and the Far East through a combination of public outreach and education, fire-fighting, and policy advocacy. The four participants all represent these interesting projects, and traveled to the US to discuss with their counterparts strategies for expanding and replicating the successes these groups have seen in changing field burning practices.

Agricultural burning is widespread across Russia – commercial and subsistence farmers alike set fire to their fields in the spring and fall, as this is the quickest and cheapest way to get rid of stubble and extra straw. Control over the practice is poor to non-existent, and intentionally-set fires that accidentally escape field perimeters cause the majority of forest fires in Russia. In addition to public safety and forest conservation concerns, agricultural burning in Russia(pdf) has a considerable impact on global climate. These fires are significant contributors of black carbon, or soot, in the Arctic: smoke columns from massive burning in Siberia carry the carbon north, and where it eventually settles on Arctic ice, darkening the ice and lowering its reflective potential – causing the ice to melt faster. The pilot project efforts will hopefully result in considerable reductions of black carbon from agricultural burning in the Arctic.

(Photo credit: Anton Beneslavskiy, Greenpeace-Russia) Wheat farmer Jeff Schibel gives participants a tour of his farm near Odessa, WA, explaining the permitted burning process and fire safety protocols.

Wheat farmers in eastern Washington State and northern Idaho also burn intensively after spring and fall harvests, and have for decades, but this practice is now very strictly regulated through a state-run permitting system, while bluegrass seed farmers may not burn at all. In the 1990s, the Washington and Idaho departments of ecology created the current burning regulations after a multi-stakeholder coalition led heated campaigns to ban wheat and grass straw burning because of the public health impact of the heavy smoke it sends into nearby communities. A decade of litigation and negotiations between state lawmakers, farmers associations, and communities produced field burning which favors public health over farmers’ frugality.

In Spokane, we met first with activists from Safe Air for Everyone/Save Our Summers, who led much of the local coalition-building and media efforts during the anti-burning campaign, and we were joined by one of the lawyers that helped argue the citizens’ case in court. Of greatest interest to the Russian guests were local organizing tactics and communications strategies. From here, we went to the Washington State Department of Ecology to learn about the state’s burning regulation system and the agency’s role as coordinator between all involved parties. The participants noted that the intensive coordination was time- and resource-intensive, but seemed to balance the goal of increasing burning safety with farmers’ needs.

We also met with the Air Quality Program managers at the Idaho State Department of Environmental Quality in Coeur d’Alene to learn about the state’s very similar burn permitting program and the agency’s work to balance environmental concerns and farmers’ residue management needs. The participants and agency staff talked in great detail about programs to train farmers in safe burning practices and monitoring protocols. In the following days we also visited staff from the Coeur D’Alene Tribe Air Quality Program and then the Nez Perce Tribe Air Quality Program; these agencies collaborate closely with WA and ID air quality managers to control smoke levels within the respective reservations and the shared regional airshed.

(Photo credit: Anton Beneslavskiy, Greenpeace-Russia) US Forest Service hotshot crew leaders give participants a tour of the agency’s aviation equipment and Smokejumper base.

The clear priority of our hosts in WA and ID is to protect community health during agricultural burning seasons, while the Russian participants and their organizations are less concerned with this aspect – the majority of large-scale field fires in Russia occur in areas that aren’t very densely populated. It is the local organizing, strategic media outreach, and state agency-coordinated negotiations that effectively changed burning behavior here that were of greatest relevance for our guests.

Other interesting and useful meetings included a visit with an agricultural researcher (born and raised on a wheat farm) from the Washington State University Dryland Research Station, where he shared his findings on the impact of burning on soil health and wheat crop yield. As it turns out, burning is not as unambiguously beneficial, as wheat farmers in both countries attest – science-based arguments such as these will add further merit to the pilot projects’ campaigns to promote non-burning alternatives in crop residue management. A few of the alternatives offered are no-till farming or plowing stubble back into the soil, but hopefully farmers will soon be able to capitalize on their straw by turning it into an energy resource. The owners of Gady Farms and the director of their NGO FarmPower gave us a tour of their unique facility that converts grass straw into synthetic gas. This project is still in the research phase, but it has great potential to further reduce burning practices while offering a clean, renewable energy resource!

(Photo credit: Anton Beneslavskiy, Greenpeace-Russia) Washington State University agricultural researcher William Schillinger explains crop studies on crop stubble utilization at the Dryland Research Station in Lind, WA.

Our visit to the US Forest Service offices in Missoula, Montana were equally educational – experts in forest fire management and community fire safety answered participants’ questions on forest fuels management, inter-agency coordination, and positive incentives to stimulate public participation in fire prevention and community fire-safety programs. Afterwards, the Russian participants – all volunteer firefighters at home – met with USFS Smokejumper hotshot crew leaders to talk about suppression tactics and team managements, then were treated to a tour of the aircraft and heavy equipment hangers.

Since going back home, exchange participants have stayed in touch with several of the groups they met during the tour, sharing more detailed information about aspects of their respective work, and discussing potential for future advising or trainings.

Agricultural burning and resultant forest fires are much more than a public health and safety threat for Russia – rampant burning sends thick plumes of black carbon to the North during the spring and summer, leaving a dark layer on Arctic ice when the sun shines the longest, causing the ice to warm and melt at an increased rate. Pacific Environment is supporting several community-based projects in Russia to change burning behavior in the long term, with the hope that reduced black carbon emissions will buy time for the Arctic.

Photo credit: Audrey Wood, July 2011. Greenpeace Volunteer Program Director Grigorii Kuksin creates a model scenario in which an uncontrolled field fire spreads to a forest and then to a village on the other side, demonstrating to campers (all farmers’ kids) the importance of responsible burning practices.

During my recent bicoastal trip to Russia, I had the great opportunity to visit with two of Pacific Environment’s partner organizations for an up close and personal look at the incredible work these groups are doing locally to reduce seasonal agricultural burning and forest fires.

My first visit was with Greenpeace-Russia at their summer youth camp called “Let’s Restore Our Forests!”, located in the Meshcherskii National Park in the Ryazan region. The annual camp brings together children from rural farming communities for lessons in forest ecology, local botany, forest restoration (elementary), and fire safety basics; it is also this summer’s base camp for the Greenpeace volunteer fire brigade, so the crew doesn’t have to drive out from Moscow to fight local fires. When I arrive near the end of July, the rotating cast of Greenpeace staff and volunteers from Moscow and other regional towns has been fighting local fires for a month – mostly underground peat fires that smolder in dried-out bogs throughout European Russia.

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While Sunday 10/10/10 was celebrated all over the world by activists as “Global Warming Work Party” and now known as the “Biggest Day of Climate Action”, I was fortunate enough to participate in Pacific Environment’s Vessel Watch trip to the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to collect and record data on whales (humpbacks, blue whales, etc) and help raise awareness about the impacts of shipping traffic on our magnificent marine life that frequent this sanctuary.

 

Vessel Watch Trip Leaving San Francisco Bay

On board the 65’ Catamaran “KittyKat” were experienced naturalists plus my colleague Jackie Dragon, the director of our Marine Sanctuaries Program; fellow colleagues and researchers; and several members of the public who for the first time were going to see and hear these amazing creatures in the wild.  The trip took us 27 miles beyond the Golden Gate to the Farallon Islands, a group of six small islands and giant rocks near the edge of the continental shelf. The sanctuary supports an abundance of life, including many threatened or endangered species – including the humpback whale, blue whale, great white shark and even killer whales.  The naturalist informed us that just two weeks ago they saw pods of the endangered northern right whale dolphins, an extremely rare sighting.  There are three typical seasons where researchers come out to collect data and they are – birds, whales and sharks.  Right now is great white shark season and the Farallons are heavily frequented by shark cage divers.

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A few years ago, experts came together to discuss potential scenarios for the Arctic.  They discussed what the Arctic would look like in 50 years in the face of climate change and intensified resource development.

The experts developed several scenarios, ranging from a race by countries to extract natural resources to armed military conflict, from protecting the Arctic for its natural wonders to a vision of sustainable development that brought economic wealth to local peoples.  After Russia planted its flag on the North Pole, news outlets trumpeted the likelihood of a new “cold war” with conflict brewing in the Arctic.

This week, Russia held a conference to try to dispel this myth.  The conference, called “The Arctic:  A Territory of Dialogue,” Diplomats and scientists from around the Arctic talked about the importance of working together to address the challenges facing the Arctic.  Speeches by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Prince Albert II of Monaco, and Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson provided an official air to the discussion.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the conference by the Russian Geographic Society, which organized and hosted the event.  In many ways, the conference was organized to showcase Russia’s long-term commitment to exploration and research of the Arctic.  Although hosted by Sergei Shoigu – Russia’s Minister for Emergency Situations and the President of the Russian Geographic Society – the most visible participant was Artur Chilingarov, Russia’s colorful Arctic explorer who planted the Russian flag on the bottom of the North Pole. (more…)

Hearing news every day about forest fires in central Russia and the casts of smog choking Russian cities, villages, even more so– the city of Moscow, I could not ignore this subject.  I wanted to look at the reasons behind this natural disaster and discuss ways such disasters could be prevented, and if not, at least made more manageable.  Recent reports say that the mortality rate in Moscow has risen to 700 per day, which is double the normal rate. It has been reported that 22 out of the country’s 83 regions are now affected by the wildfires, and that there is no end in sight to the extreme heat wave that hit Russia this summer.

Over the past two years my family and friends in Russia all complained about unusually cold winters and hot summers. When I traveled to Altai in January I experienced the abnormally cold winter myself – temperatures there dropped down as low as -57 degrees Celsius, which is -70.6 degrees Fahrenheit. On my recent trip in June, when I stopped for a day in Moscow, temperatures were up to +41 C, the equivalent to + 105.8 F. My conversations with Russian scientists and environmentalists have all pointed to the scientific phenomenon called extreme temperature oscillations, which are believed to be caused by climate change. The notion of climate change has always been scorned by the Russian government and thought of as a hoax invented by the West. But recently, it seems to be that Russia is finally changing its stance. On July 30, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said the following: “What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning [including] all heads of state, all heads of social organizations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.”

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I couldn’t sleep last Saturday night. It was my second night in Anchorage, having arrived the day before to help lead an exchange that brought Evenk people from Russia’s Republic of Sakha-Yakutia and environmentalists from the island of Sakhalin to Anchorage and Barrow to discuss indigenous rights vis a vis oil and gas development.

But all I could think about was Kyrgyzstan, the country that I called home for the year before I came to Pacific Environment last fall. The country had been embroiled in political turmoil since earlier in the week, when soldiers opened fire on a group of protesters that eventually stormed the government’s headquarters. That evening, the mobs tore up much of the city; searching for loot or just looking to smash things. Photos showed bodies lying on streets that I had crossed every day. The supermarket next to my apartment had been looted and burned, and two professors from my university were dead. In the following days I discovered that all of my friends were safe, but the images followed me north.

What bothered me the most on that Saturday night wasn’t so much the actual violence, but rather the coverage of the events in the American media, which focused entirely on the revolution’s potential implications for an American airbase located in the capital. One lead-in to a CNN story illustrated this perfectly. “It’s hard to spell, and hard to pronounce,” announced the smirking journalist as video of Kyrgyz riot police played in the background, “so why should YOU care about political upheaval in Kyrgyzstan? We’ll tell you, after the break.” The implication, of course, was that if it doesn’t directly affect us, we really shouldn’t care about people being shot in the street. But to me those people being beaten in the place with the funny name were potentially my friends, people who are like family to me.

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The 40^th anniversary of Earth Day provides a great opportunity to look back at the progress of the environmental movement – and how we are doing meeting the growing environmental challenges of the day.

As luck would have it, I am spending the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day in Moscow.  Since I have spent a significant amount of time the last 20 years working with grassroots environmental groups throughout Siberia and the Russian Far East, reflecting from Moscow seems somehow appropriate.

What have we learned in the last 40 years?  First, the environment is about people.  To protect the environment, we have to work with people.  We have found that building an effective, widespread environmental movement is critical to our success.  The environmental movement has been criticized for not reaching out broadly enough.  Time and again, we have proven that the environmental movement is not narrow.  The environmental movement is not limited to scientists and bird-watchers.  The environmental movement is made up of poor people, rich people, everyday people, people from labor unions, journalists, teachers, kids, parents, and many more. (more…)

While working with communities is core to Pacific Environment, we also need to build from those efforts and strengthen our support of critical environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act — both of which are currently under threat.

The EPA, which enforces the Clean Air Act (CAA), is under attack from special interests and their representatives in Congress.  Special interests are advocating removal of the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the CAA, which they won in the Supreme Court in 2007. Currently, there are two bills in Congress that would slow or kill the EPA’s new regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Two West Virginia Democrats, Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Nick Rahall, have co-authored a bill that would freeze the agency’s move for at least two years and “protect clean coal state economies.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska introduced a bill that would undo the EPA’s ruling that greenhouse gas emissions pose public harm. The state of Texas is also challenging the EPA’s attempts to regulate greenhouse gases claiming that the agency’s finding that “gases blamed for global warming threaten public health” is “based on flawed science and would harm the state’s economy.”

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Global climate change needs to be addressed on many fronts.  Looking globally in scope, international efforts to stop or slow down global warming are essential.  Communities in Alaska and around the Arctic are being impacted by bigger storm surges, thin or no ice which is impeding seal and whale hunts and creating extremely dangerous conditions for people to practice their subsistence way of life.  Additionally, global warming threatens many species of wildlife including polar bears, Pacific walrus and seals.  We must work together to get commitments from the US and other countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 350 parts per million, meaning greenhouse gas pollution from the United States and other developed countries should be reduced by 45% or more below 1990 levels by 2020.

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Click here to read this on the Huffington Post

In the weeks leading up to Copenhagen, the Chinese government made a surprising move. After refusing to publicly commit to any numerical target all along, China suddenly announced it would reduce its carbon intensity by 40% to 45% by 2020, base on 2005 levels. It basically means China will continue to grow but will do so more efficiently and in ways that will emit less greenhouse gas. Other developing countries scrambled to catch up by announcing their own commitments to reduce carbon intensity. India followed with an announcement of 24% reduction by 2020.

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