Posted by Leah Zimmerman

Last year I wrote of Sosnovka as “being in the epicenter of something great, of witnessing a movement coming into its own.” I wrote those words just one day before Misha Jones’ passing. Losing Misha, who held us together and pushed us forward in so many quiet ways, could so easily have brought discouragement, could have easily caused Sosnovka to stumble or fade with time. Instead, a stronger, more mature and more enduring Sosnovka has emerged.

The maturity we glimpsed this year at Sosnovka comes with the passing of seasons, both bright and dark. How easy it is to grow weary in this work, to lose oneself. But Sosnovka defies, linking us together and driving us forward with a million threads of friendship and partnership.

The defining moment of this year’s Sosnovka was the awarding of the first annual Misha Jones Award to Sergei Shapkhaev from the Buryat Regional Organization for Baikal for his community-based work to empower people in remote communities. Like Misha, Sergei never passes up a chance to help out a leader from a distant village, offering an encouraging word or piece of technical advice. The applause that erupted when Sergei’s name was announced for the award was intense and sustained, offering sweet release for hidden thoughts and emotions.

Sustained by memories of Misha’s wit, intellect, and life fully sacrificed for Russia’s people and wilderness, Sosnovka carries on. This year we welcomed participants from previously forgotten regions—Chukotka, Tuva, and the Jewish Autonomous Region. We rallied behind Aleksei and Sasha from Krasnoyarsk, brave defenders of the Angara River who were falsely accused of extremist activities this spring, but were ultimately vindicated in court. We feverishly planned campaigns for the coming year and forged brave new partnerships between indigenous and environmental organizations. And yes, oh how we soaked up the beauty of fall in Primorye and cherished every moment in such rich company!

Pacific Environment’s Russia staff is about to undertake its yearly exodus to Russia for the much-anticipated annual Sosnovka Coalition meeting. 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. 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. The strategy conversations are simultaneously overarching and specific, covering new and old topics: forestry, protected areas, mining, fisheries, oil and gas development, alternative energy sources, etc.

The Sosnovka Coalition is based on trust, mutual support, and effective communication. Modern-day Russian activists spend a lot of time on the road, in meetings, in court, conducting fieldwork and public outreach, and working multiple jobs. They are skilled in maximizing their time at the annual meeting, and the entire group communicates regularly and strategically via e-mail created to serve the Coalition and its working groups. Based on trust built over time, the Sosnovka Coalition is the backbone of the environmental movement in Siberia and the Russian Far East. All of the great modern campaigns (opposing financing for Sakhalin-II, rerouting the Siberia-Pacific Pipeline, etc.) can all be traced back to Sosnovka conversations. Stay tuned in October for the hottest news and the inside story on what Russia’s top environmentalists will focus on in the coming year!

The Russian Duma is considering new legislation that would restrict the activity of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Duma wants to force all of Russia’s 450,000 NGOs to re-register, which will be nothing more than a bureaucratic mess. As pointed out in Kathleen Braden’s wonderful op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (click here), this won’t be a problem for the big, national, well-funded NGOs. But it will be disastrous for the local community-based groups, spread out through Siberia and the Russian Far East, who will be dependent on the Oblomov-like whims of local bureaucrats for their success in re-registering. Many new people who want to make a difference will be scared away from becoming NGO activists. And some ofRussia’s brightest lights – people who are truly working toward sustainable and positive change in the society – will end up without support.

Supposedly, the Russian government wants to prevent foreign funding of political campaigns. I don’t have a problem with this. We have restrictions in the U.S. that prevent Pacific Environment, as a 501c3 charitable organization, from endorsing political candidates or spending more than a modest amount of our time and resources to lobby for legislation.However, these restrictions should be as minimal as possible to protect a free and open discourse. There are no restrictions here on our ability to raise concerns about administrative officials or administrative policies or to publicize issues, even if they are controversial. But inRussia, some pundits are saying that a ban on political activity should include a ban on working with the media to publicize issues or a ban on raising concerns about actions by governors or other administrative officials.

This would be ridiculous. Russian NGOs have played a fundamentally important role over the last decade in helping to promote rule of law within Russia. In the environmental sphere, they have helped ensure Russia’s Law on the Protection of the Environment and Law on Environmental Impact Reviews have been implemented. They have prevented capricious actions by local officials and companies when they did not follow a fair process of due diligence in reviewing industrial projects. Most of all, they have steadfastly argued for regular, engaged public participation to ensure that communities have a say in their environmental future. A recent article from Dow Jones highlights the role our partners at Sakhalin Environment Watch play in helping local government officials, who don’t have the resources to monitor large oil and gas companies like Shell and Exxon. In the article, Sergei Kotelnikov, Sakhalin’s head environmental regulator, said that “he relies heavily on information passed to his staff by local environmental groups such as Green Patrol and Sakhalin Environment Watch.”

As we wait for the pollution from Harbin to flow down the Amur River to Khabarovsk, and indigenous communities who live along the Amur worry about eating fish, don’t we want communities to have a voice in ensuring that they have access to clean water? What will happen if communities don’t have the ability to organize as professional NGOs and engage the government and the private sector in a healthy and open dialogue about the future, and instead problems are allowed to fester?

I hope that President Putin and the Duma will re-consider this proposed law. Meanwhile, inRussia’s increasingly hostile climate, I think it becomes even more important for organizations like our own to maintain and strengthen our partnerships with groups in Siberia and the Russian Far East who are working to create positive change in the society.

Cheers,

David Gordon