Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 19 – Makhachkala,
Nalchik, Vladikavkaz, and Grozny are among the most polluted cities in the
Russian Federation, ranking 75th, 71st, 64th,and
77th respectively in a list of 87 cities released at the end of last
week by Ministry of Natural Resources, yet another problem for the residents of
that restive region.
The ratings, based on 2013 data,
were based on a combination of statistics on “the level of pollution of the
atmosphere, water use and its quality, handling waste, the share of extractive
and industrial firms on a particular territory, access to public transport,
level of energy use and other factors” (mnr.gov.ru/upload/files/docs/reyting_2013.pdf and
The compilers acknowledge, Kavpolit.com
says in its report, that “the standing of many cities is lower than it might
have been as a result of incomplete or incorrect data,” something that pushed
the ratings of several cities down and may play a particularly negative role in
the case of the North Caucasus.
But however that may be, the North
Caucasus figures are disturbing and make Moscow’s ongoing campaign against
environmental groups like the Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus
especially unfortunate because it means that there will be little public
pressure to clean up what is obviously a public health disaster.
Aleksey Yakovlev, an ecologist at the Russian Academy
of Sciences told Kavpolit.com that he is always skeptical about such rankings
but that there is no question that the environmental situation in the cities in
the North Caucasus both those listed and others is bad and is almost certainly
getting worse.
That is because, he continued,
Moscow is pushing for investment at all costs and among those costs are “the
health” of the population of the North Caucasus. Thus, “it is necessary to
change the direction not only of ecological policy but of all policy” if the
people in the cities of the North Caucasus and indeed in all Russian cities are
to have a better future.
No comments:
Post a Comment