Castelanelli Brothers Dairy cows stand patiently while their barn is cleaned - their manure heads to a sealed lagoon, where it turns into methane gas and high quality fertilizer.

By Galina Angarova

What a great experience I had in the past few days. Unforgettable! I have probably learned more information in the past ten days than I normally do in two months. On November 8th Pacific Environment brought a group of Siberians from Lake Baikal area to the Bay area to learn about renewable energy and energy efficiency. Tatiana Molchanova, the Deputy Head and Tatiana Tivikova, the Chief Ranger of the Pribaikalsky region of Buryatia, and a well known journalist in Ulan-Ude, Sergey Basaev, participated in the exchange.

The purpose of the exchange stems from the current rate and type of development plaguing the Baikal region: privatizing public property in the area has resulted in the saturation of both legal and illegal dwellings in the area, which have escalated the cost of electricity for the local people. Now the Russian government plans to invest more in infrastructure in the region in order to increase the quantity of hotels, restaurants and other recreational establishments on the lake’s shores. This - if not monitored correctly and not using environmentally-efficient methods - could cause tremendous cultural, social and environmental tension in the area, including between tourists and the local residents. California and, particularly, the San Francisco region, which is considered to be the second greenest city in the U.S, have a lot to offer in terms of learning about green technologies. We hoped to give our Baikal participants the opportunity to learn from government offices, businesses and other organizations about renewable energy and planning.

We visited a ‘green’ hotel, a renewable energy and sustainable living demonstration site, a geothermal power plant, a wind farm and a dairy that uses methane digesters to generate electricity. The group also met with local legislators to learn about California’s renewable energy policies, renewable portfolio standard, and energy efficiency standards.

Overall, I think the exchange was a real success and that our participants got a ton of useful information that can potentially lead to real projects in Pribaikalsky region. They are now back in Buryatia, full of ideas and eager to jump into projects in their own communities. That success had a lot to do with the valuable information and tips they got from meetings or tours.  I think it was especially valuable to show them the entire spectrum of various technologies - wind, solar, geothermal, methane, and complement this knowledge with what they learned about energy efficiency. Results will be long-term, and I am looking forward to organizing a follow-up exchange and working with communities back in Siberia.

Sakhalin-II caused severe environmental and social damage

Posted by Rachel James and Leah Zimmerman.

On the morning of September 7, 2008, Exxon and Sakhalin Energy prepared to face off in a much-anticipated soccer match to celebrate Oil Workers’ Day. Meanwhile, we (Rachel and Leah, two Pacific Environment staffers) packed a vehicle and headed north on the island with two staffers from Sakhalin Environment Watch, including Dmitry Lisitsyn, a superstar of the Russian Far East environmental movement. We traveled with Dmitry and Katya for three days along the Sakhalin-II pipeline route, a several hundred mile gash running the length of the otherwise wild island.

Dmitry’s questions are relentless. Whether addressing us, shopkeepers on the side of the road, or construction workers on the pipeline route, Dmitry is able to disarm and charm, while extracting critical information with measured precision. For us, time with Dmitry is a lesson in the art of community organizing as well as a lesson about Sakhalin-II itself.

We are struck time and time again by similarities between Shell’s activities on Sakhalin Island and the company’s current strategies in the Alaskan Arctic. Shell could easily write a textbook on how to break promises, give and take bribes, buy off scientists, employ divide and conquer tactics with local opposition, and emasculate environmental assessment processes.

Sakhalin Island was once a prison destination. Today, oil and gas pipeline infrastructure crisscross the island and inflation from the flux of oil executives and construction works has seriously changed the capital city, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. A two-room apartment goes for an exorbitant $1600/month, food prices are among the highest in Russia, and luxury SUVs can be counted by the dozens. While oil executives enjoy a luxurious lifestyle on Sakhalin, Sakhaliners bear the brunt of the grossly inflated costs for food and housing in addition to the devastating environmental, social and economic damage Sakhalin-II brought.

Now that construction of Sakhalin-II is nearing completion, Sakhalin Environment Watch predicts its next great battle will be poaching. We saw first-hand this week how Sakhalin’s rivers, like many on Kamchatka, are being raped by poachers who operate without fear of punishment from disempowered or corrupt government agencies. Imagine thousands of salmon returning to spawn in the river where they were born after years at sea. Now imagine a net stretched across the entire mouth of the river, preventing only a handful of fierce jumpers from among the thousands to return upstream to spawn. After a few years of this, we don’t understand why people are surprised that there are no fish left in the rivers. And so, Dmitry and SEW plot their next move …

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!