Posted by Evan Sparling

My recent trip to Altai is proof that life imitates art. Just a few days before leaving the US I watched the film “Everything is Illuminated.” Even if you’ve never seen it, you know the plot: a mismatched cast of characters (an octogenarian Ukrainian anti-Semite, his hip-hop obsessed playboy grandson, a shy young American Jew, a deranged dog) embark on a road trip to an unlikely place (the Ukrainian countryside) and adventure (and illumination) ensues. In my case, the characters include an American GIS expert visiting Russia for the first time, two native-rights activists from Kamchatka, and a flamboyant military veteran turned professional driver. We have spent our days crammed into a van with all of our luggage and supplies, traveling across windswept tundra and over frozen mountain passes, spending our evenings in a three-room cabin with no running water and no heat beyond a wood stove. In between work-related discussions and meetings with local conservationists, we have had adventures ranging from a visit to an Altai shaman who interpreted our dreams to a swimming excursion in weather more fit for skiing.

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Posted by Evan Sparling

Last Sunday, the penultimate of our ten days in Kamchatka, was ostensibly a rest day. Everyone was eager to relax and enjoy the glorious surroundings that we had spent the last week helping to preserve in countless meetings, seminars, and strategy sessions. We initially planned to spend the entire day traversing a local park on Nordic skis, but two of our local colleagues suggested over dinner on Saturday that we instead try our hands at dog sledding at the home of two members of a local native community organization. (more…)

Posted by David Gordon

I worry that while governments are trying to move forward new language for a treaty – a text from the Danish government was just released that has been roundly criticized by delegates from developing countries – we are losing time to move forward real initiatives that will actually reduce warming.

For example, governments can agree now to take serious action to reduce “short-lived climate forcers.”  These pollutants include black carbon (soot), methane, and tropospheric ozone.  These pollutants are having a large impact on the warming of the Arctic and could be causing the Arctic to warm faster than originally predicted.

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Posted by Evan Sparling

On 16 November 2009 a panel of Kamchatkan activists from the Lach Ethno-Ecological Information Center awarded first, second, and third prizes in a photography contest held during this summer’s salmon spawning season. The panel selected 34 finalists from 70 entries addressing the topic “The salmon in the life of the native peoples of Kamchatka” before whittling the group down to three winners. The top three submissions are displayed after the jump. All 34 finalists can be viewed here.

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Posted by Evan Sparling

David Gordon and I spent the last few days at the Wild Salmon Center’s annual “Sustainable Salmon Fisheries in the Russian Far East” conference in Portland. Still in my first month on the job, I boarded the plane last Sunday both excited and anxious. I was thrilled at the opportunity to meet my American and Russian colleagues and learn from their experience, but I was also nervous to be a neophyte among so many respected and experienced conservationists.

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Posted by Doug Norlen

Today, the U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank announced its official carbon policy.

Ex-Im Bank’s policy does nothing to curb the agency’s growing overall portfolio of greenhouse gas emissions.  In fact, applications to Ex-Im Bank for greenhouse gas-emitting projects are skyrocketing after the financial crisis, as project sponsors seek public subsidies to prop up economically and ecologically damaging projects.  Ex-Im Bank continues to subsidize fossil fuel-related transactions despite the recent G-20 pledge to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

Ex-Im Bank touts is support for renewable energy and energy efficiency, yet in recent years its support for these transactions represent less than 2% of its overall energy portfolio.

Ex-Im Bank’s carbon policy perpetuates the approach taken under the Bush Administration and undercuts the Obama Administration’s claim to international leadership on climate change.

Read the story as reported by Environmental Finance here.

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!

Shannon Kellman, Development and Communications Associate at Pacific Environment, sat down with Galina Angarova, the Grants Administrator for the Russia Program at Pacific Environment to talk about Galina’s recent trip to the Altai Region and Altai Republic in Russia.  They talked about the work the Galina and Pacific Environment’s partners are doing in Altai to protect Sacred Sites and biodiversity.

SK: Why are the Altai Region and Republic so important?

GA: They are very critical because of the biodiversity there.  They are critical places with beautiful animals and plants, and very important culturally. There’s a place called the Ukok plateau. It’s a place with thousands of petroglyphs, dating back thousands of years ago.  There are traces Pazyryk culture found and this is the place with the famous Ukok princess was found, completely preserved with all of her ammunition, clothes, and utensils.

SK: What were the highlights of your trip?

GA: The highlights were the meetings with our main partners in the field, the Fund 21 Century Altai, the Foundation for Sustainable Development Altai and the School of Sustainable Energy Tengrit.  The highlights were meeting with those people, and my trip to Ukok.  Also, my trip to the Chemal region, where the Katun damn was going to be built.  It’s a place where people come for tours and conferences on alternative energy.

SK: How have recent events (the dam explosion) affected work in the Altai region?

GA: That’s a difficult question.  The supply of electricity comes from that region which means that this will generate an electricity shortage.  With the energy situation, it aggravates the whole issue.  The energy sources, particularly for the Altai region, are very scarce, and some percent comes from the exploded damn.  Other sources are coal plants and the gas pipeline from Gorno-Altaisk, and they are building a gas fire plant, which would significantly impact the electricity supply.  In terms of how it affects the environment, there’s a pipeline in the Altai Region that goes through the Altai Republic.  With the explosion, people can come back to construct to plans to make a dam in the Republic of Altai, which is really bad news.

SK: In your assessment, what have the Altai people done well in protecting their environment?

GA: Well, in terms of recent successes, we’ve been doing this project together on sacred sites registration and land registration into communal use registration.  We are also working to promote this law on broader level for sacred sites preservation and that will give another level of protection.

SK: What were your goals in meeting with our partners there?

GA: Just to getting to know, learning what happening on the ground, participating in the conference, and updating our partners on our grant from the National Science Foundation and working with them on reporting.  I went there as a grants manager and someone who is working on the reporting of Altai.

SK: What else do they need to be doing to accomplish their goals?  What’s the next step?

GA: I think we’re already working on the next direction.  Just doing what we’re doing.  The next step is our conference at the end of this year.  It will bring together 50 people from the Altai Region and Republic.  It will be to talk about sacred sites preservation, to replicate this experience in other regions, particularly Kamchatka and the Russian Arctic.  We will be working on methodology for sacred sites preservation. A book will be released sometime later this year which details the process.

By Galina Angarova

On Monday July 20, the Governor of the Altai Republic, Alexander Berdnikov, approved the development plan of the Chemal region in the Altai Republic. This seemingly unimportant event is of considerable significance for the environmental health and safety of Chemal. The exclusion of the Katun Dam project from the Chemal development plan is going to save 770 hectares of vital land.  This land contains critical habitats for rare and endangered plant and animal species, local fisheries, as well as hundreds of residential areas along Katun River that provide employment to local communities.

On March 18^th, Berdnikov made an official statement that the region needed alternatives to the proposed Katun Dam to combat the lack of energy generating capacity in the Altai Republic .  The Altai gasification project was completed in 2008, bringing a major pipeline from Barnaul to Gorno-Altaisk and now project developers are working on designs for a 96 megawatt gas-fired power plant in Maima. Berdnikov said that a plant in Maima could be a potential alternative to the dam. “It is a possibility that the hydro-electric dam construction does not make economic sense. We do not have a goal to build the dam at all costs; our main goal is to resolve the problem of the energy deficiency in the region. If it turns out that the power plant in Maima and a cascade of small hydro dams on Chuya River are sufficient to supply energy needs in the republic, it is most likely that we [will] reject the plans for the dam construction in Chemal region,” noted Berdnikov.

The idea to build a hydro electric station on the Katun River first emerged in the 1980s, but the project declined thanks to strong local opposition. In the late 1990s the project was again under consideration, but the plans did not bloom until early 2005 when the local administration, backed by Moscow-based financial interests, tried to re-launch the project. Like 20 years ago, the dam construction plans met a great deal of opposition – a coalition of local and international environmental activists initiated a large campaign against the dam by sending petitions to the local and federal governments and providing information to prospective investors about the project’s environmental and economic risks. Although the news about the adoption of the new Chemal development plan and Berdnikov’s recent statements were a great relief for a lot of people, there is always a chance that these plans make way their way back on the decision-makers’ table.

By Audrey Wood

New reports of corruption at the highest levels of government never fail to surprise, especially when cases of profiteering are coming from within a democratic, constitution-based administration. Still, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has pointed to official corruption as one of the biggest challenges his country faces since being elected in March. President Medvedev makes big talk about eliminating corruption from his government, but the most recent report out of Siberia illustrates exactly how pervasive systemic bribery is in Russia and how very much is yet to be done:

On December 9, director of the Siberian Federal District Office of the Russian Federal Service for Ecological, Technical and Atomic Supervision, Leonid Baklitsky, was arrested on extortion charges by the Novosibirsk FSB office as the result of an undercover investigation. The investigation revealed that Baklitsky had organized a racketeering system with directors of factories in Siberia that emit a lot of pollution. Baklitsky allegedly received a bribe in the amount of 465,000 rubles ($16,666) while sitting at his office desk (fittingly, December 9 is International Anti-Corruption Day). The sum was handed over by the head of a government agency seeking to illegally acquire the right to conduct inspections and expert examinations that the institution is not licensed to do. Searches of the indicted official’s office uncovered undisclosed sums of cash and bank cards. The list of charges is long: an FSB investigator disclosed that during 2008 alone, Baklitsky received similar bribes from other organizations to for the illegal right to conduct technical examinations of buildings and equipment, inspections of dangerous industrial facilities, and to train and certify industrial safety specialists.

Among other things, Baklitsky was responsible for environmental regulation enforcement on the Boguchanskaya Hydroelectric Dam project that has been under construction in the Krasnoyarsk Krai for more than 20 years. In 2006, Ust-Ilismk city Duma deputies appealed to the President with the request to lower the dam’s height from 208 to 185 meters, citing that environmental expert reviews indicated a high likelihood that that the resultant reservoir would be contaminated by industrial runoff from facilities in the Irkutsk Region.

Baklitsky, however, protested this change. It is unknown whether his opposition to the measure was backed by actual scientific data or, perhaps, a different type of currency.