Environmental News Archive

Central Asia Is Corrupted by Cotton
Financial Times, March 10, 2005
By Quentin Peel

The World Trade Organisation ruling last week that billions of dollars in US subsidies to cotton farmers were illegal amounts to a big moral victory for developing countries trying to compete on the world market.

If sanity and fairness were to prevail in both the US and the European Union, scrapping subsidy systems that guarantee wealthy farmers prices far above the world market level should curb unfair competition. In Africa alone, such market distortion is estimated to cost producers more than Dollars 400m (Pounds 207m) a year. Yet even if change comes - and that depends on facing down formidable lobbies in Washington and Brussels - hundreds of thousands of cotton farmers in central Asia, the source of over 15 per cent of world cotton exports, would not benefit. For most, a chronically corrupt farm system at home means they are so far removed from the world market that its price fluctuations have no impact on their daily lives.

Cotton is a vital industry in what is an increasingly unstable but strategic part of the world. It is a crop that dominates the economies and the politics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, autocratic post-Soviet states bordering Afghanistan. They are big routes for heroin smuggling to Europe and the west. All face potential threats to their undemocratic systems from underground groups, including those inspired by radical Islam.

The problem is that cotton in those countries is not a source of stability but a curse, as a graphic new report from Crisis Group*, the non-profit conflict resolution group, declares. It is a monoculture "more destructive to central Asia's future than the tons of heroin that regularly transit the region", it says. Yet while the international community has invested millions of dollars in trying to curb drug running, practically nothing has been done to counteract the negative impact of the cotton industry.

The sorry story of cotton growing in central Asia is an extraordinary combination of blind Soviet ambition, Stalinist compulsion, post-Soviet corruption and utter disregard for the environment. Although the region has an ideal climate for cotton, it relies on massive irrigation for its cultivation, causing chronic salinisation of farmland, desertification, and destruction of the Aral Sea, which has shrunk by three quarters and turned into two small inland lakes.

The political and social consequences of the industry have been just as destructive as the ecological ones since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The crisis stems from a common failure to reform the old collectivised agriculture system and its domination by state buying and supply agencies. Instead of the state exploiting the farms, however, a system has developed in each republic where well-connected middlemen, closely related to the ruling dynasties, perform that role.

In Tajikistan, for example, they are known as "investors" or "futures companies" - fancy names for a form of usury that combines a monopoly on credit, inputs and purchasing in each region. Financed by international traders, they advance credit to farmers to buy inputs, against future sales of cotton. The prices of the inputs are inflated while the cotton purchase price is depressed. The consequence is that Tajik cotton farmers now owe an estimated Dollars 220m to the middlemen.

The state gets a 10 per cent sales tax from cotton but the private "investors" earn the big profits, supported by government pressure on the producers. The state still owns the land and sets production quotas. Collective farms are now called "collective peasant farms", with no real independence for the farmers. In their desperation, they grow more and more cotton at the expense of food crops. Tajikistan was never able to feed itself but now imports about half its needs, relying increasingly on food aid.

Tajikistan is the least oppressive of the three main cotton-growing republics of central Asia, described by the US State Department's annual human rights report as having "an authoritarian government (with) some democratic institutions". Elections in 2000 were "neither free nor fair". The recent democratic revolts in Georgia and Ukraine have caused the government to clamp down on any signs of serious opposition.

Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have far worse human rights records. In both, cotton plays a central role in the system of corrupt exploitation and rural poverty. Forced labour during the cotton harvests is widespread, including child labour. "All three countries outlaw child labour," says the Crisis Group report. "Yet during any given harvest the cotton fields will be full of children, some very young."

The combination of state compulsion to grow cotton and miserable incomes in return has caused widespread flight from the land, both to the cities and out of the country (mainly to Russia). The young unemployed rural labourers are a prime source of recruitment for radical Islamic movements.

Although the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, have invested in model projects of agricultural reform, they have barely dented the system. The international cotton tradersmay express concern privately at the social conditions but offer little hope of change. After all, they deal with state organisations and middlemen, not farmers.

The prospects for reform seem grim. It is a post-Soviet world that in many ways is more oppressive and corrupt than the one that used to exist. But it is not a priority in Washington or Brussels. It probably will remain that way until the revolution comes.

Siberians Fear Minus 30 Is Too Warm for Comfort
The Daily Telegraph(London), March 05, 2005
By Julius Strauss in Yuchyugay

The afternoon high is a little below minus 30 degrees Celsius an hour outside the small Siberian settlement of Yuchyugay, even in the pale winter sun. But at this time of the year, locals say with a frown, it should be a steady minus 50. As cars roll across the wide, frozen rivers, traces of running water show where the current runs so fast that the ice melts, a phenomenon, the locals insist, that should only occur much later in the season.

Environmental research already points to rapid climate change in the Arctic and sub-Arctic in years to come, endangering many animals native to the taiga. If some forecasts are to be believed, the polar bear could be extinct by the end of the century.

But in the remotest parts of Siberia the changes have been under way for more than a decade and are even now disrupting the lives of the nomadic herders, hunters and trappers.

According to the locals, the problem is less a rise in temperature than the fact that the weather now varies dramatically from one day to the next, with temperatures sometimes rising or falling up to 30 degrees in the space of a few days.

The Yakuts who live here, an Asiatic people who made their way north centuries before the first Russians arrived, are alarmed. Valentin Adlasov, the local mayor, said: "The average temperature here in winter used to be minus 53 to 55 degrees and would last for two or three months continuously. Now temperatures vary from week to week. One week its warm, say minus 30, then the temperature falls suddenly to minus 55." Now that the ground no longer freezes properly in winter, in summer the roads and bridges built on the permafrost subside, making transport difficult.

There is also frequent and widespread flooding in summer. "We have unfamiliar birds that come here now and insects that we have never seen before," the mayor said. "For the old, the changes are dangerous. The huge variations in pressure mean that people have become susceptible to strokes. Others have headaches."

There is also concern that the change in climate will ruin the Yakuts' efforts to pull themselves out of the post-Communist economic mire following the cut in central funding.

Sergei Popov, an ethnic Yakut and a tourist guide, said: "There is no longer proper freezing in the winter and because of that the rivers flood in the summer. They carry away bridges, houses, sometimes whole villages. "The flooding also strands animals and disrupts their migratory patterns. For the reindeer herders it has made life much more difficult."

The problem is not confined to Yuchyugay. Locals say communities all over Yakutia, a Russian republic larger than Europe, are also aghast.

In Chukotka, the region to the east of Yakutia and hard up against the Bering Strait, the Chukchis say that, as the ice thins, the walrus, a mainstay of their diet, is becoming scarce.

For years the Kremlin echoed the view of the Bush administration that the evidence for global warming is insubstantial and may be wrong.

Only last year President Vladimir Putin made light of western ecologists' warnings. Tatyana Vlassova, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, recently spent four years working on the Arctic Climate Impact Survey. Her team surveyed 10 areas of northern Russia.

She said: "When I began I was very sceptical. But the evidence the locals put forward is overwhelming. The reindeer pastures are going, the permafrost is thawing, there is flooding and soil erosion. It's having a huge effect on the traditional way people live."

Russia's Birth Rate Grows, Though Not Enough
RIA Novosti, March 03, 2005 By Olga Sobolevskaya

Moscow -- "Every year 1,500,000 babies are born in Russia -- this dynamics has been increasing since 2000. But it is still not enough for normal reproduction of the Russian population", vice-president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Vladimir Kulakov told the RIA Novosti press conference on women's problems. He is the chief gynecologist-obstetrician at the Ministry for Health Protection and Social Development. The conference is held on eve of March 8, International Women's Day.

He said that the country needs another 700,000-800,000 newborns to reach the normal level of population reproduction. Meanwhile, of the 37.5 million Russia women of the reproductive age - between 15 and 45 years of age - up to 7 million are infertile. Annually, from 170,000 to 200,000 wishful pregnancies are lost in Russia. "Given sufficient state financing and due approach, the figure could have been reduced", Mr. Kulakov stressed. Physicians have all the necessary technologies to do so. "The state should put motherhood and childhood under protection", allocating larger sums for the treatment of infertility, help in pregnancy, he said.

Should a serious increase in the birth rate be hoped for? Evidently not. Out of the 10 million girls below 18 years of age only 10 to 15 percent are in good health. The incidence of sexually transmitted diseases is increasing.

It is more social than medicinal question. "Now, we have only 1.32 births per woman, while 2.2 is needed for the normal reproduction of population", said Anatoli Vishnevski, head of the Demography and Human Ecology Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In their reproductive behavior Russian women are approximating to European - births come at an older age.

The average age of women giving birth to the first child is now 26.3 years in Russia. Ten years ago it was 24.5 years. "Since 2002 women of twenty six years and over have for the first time been contributing more to the birth rate than younger mothers", Mr. Vishnevski noted.

Today's increase in the birth rate is very much due to the realization of put-off births, when women first make a career and reach wellbeing, after which they give births. Russian women are beginning to afford having two and even three children, Mr. Vishnevski said. It is yet premature to think if this as a tendency, he thinks.

Nuclear Wasteland: Stalin's Legacy To Kazakhs
The International Herald Tribune, March 4, 2005 By C.J. Chivers

Semipalatinsk -- The road is an aged dirt track running in a line across the Central Asian steppe, past grazing cattle and horses, arriving at a hillock overlooking a parched basin.

There are no warning signs. There is no gate beside the abandoned guard shack at the remains of the fence. Only the climbing numbers on the radiation detector suggest that perhaps it would be best to turn around.

In the basin below, before much of it was vaporized, there once was one of the more awful open-air laboratories a nation has ever made, and one of the darker secrets ever kept.

Here, briefly, stood a metal tower roughly 30 meters, or 100 feet, high, ringed by sturdy objects: brick buildings, a bridge, bunkers of reinforced concrete and a park of idled tanks and aircraft, some with live animals tethered inside, set at various distances to see how they weathered what came next. Concrete observation towers were arranged at fixed distances in several directions, their instruments connected by subterranean cable to a distant command post where the experiment's masters could assess their work.

On this spot on a summer morning in 1949, Soviet scientists detonated Stalin's first atomic bomb. Over the next 40 years, in the air above the steppe and the soil of the surrounding area, scientists detonated at least 455 more.

Kazakhstan's nuclear arsenal is now gone; it was returned to Russia in the 1990s. But one of this sprawling country's dismal inheritances after decades of Moscow's rule is this vast poisoned zone. It is a measure of the disarray bedeviling many corners of the former Soviet Union that access to it is fully unrestricted. If you can find your way here, you can enter at will.

The car continues on, bouncing over the washboard trail and passing the buckled remains of an observation tower about three kilometers, or two miles, from ground zero for the first bomb, which U.S. intelligence officials dubbed Joe One, a derivative of Stalin's first name.

Near the very center, Yuri Strilchuk, an employee at Kazakhstan's National Nuclear Center, which conducts limited monitoring of the radiation emanating here, leaves the car and moves forward with careful steps, taking care not to drag his feet or overturn small stones. The ground, he says, is still "hot." Flipping stones turns the hotter sides up.

The dangers vary. Experts say that short visits, with a guide and a radiation detector to navigate through "cooler" areas, are not necessarily unsafe. A longer visit, or any disturbance of the soil, increases the risks.

Before Strilchuk are the ruins: scorched embankments of a vanished bridge, concrete bunkers with tops sheared away by shock waves of unimaginable force, the pond-sized hole on the spot where the tower that held Joe One stood.

Stalin regarded the work here as so vital that the atomic program's director, Igor Kurchatov, worried that if he failed he would be shot. The nearby research city, now a near ghost town called Kurchatov, was not marked on maps. Its postal address was frequently changed to mislead spies. (The names included Moscow 400, Semipalatinsk 21 and Nadezhda, Russian for hope.)

Strilchuk moves forward. The sights are otherworldly. The blasts generated such heat that the surface of the steppe was liquefied and splashed onto the surviving steel and concrete. The substance remains a thick and dark lacquer, frozen as it oozed and dripped.

It is also underfoot. Marble-size balls of glassified soil crunch beneath Strilchuk's boots. He reads his meter. Safer to stand here, he says. Not there.

Bits of life have returned around him. Grass pokes through the baked soil. Birds bank on the wind. Scattered here and there are the droppings of sheep, goats, horses and cows. There are signs of man as well: empty vodka bottles on the baked earth, torn potato chip bags.

The test range is a peculiar post-Soviet legacy. In an area roughly the size of Israel, the Joe One site is just one of several places where the hundreds of bombs were detonated.

No one who lives nearby can be sure the meat in markets did not come from animals that grazed on radioactive grass. No one knows where all of the irradiated metal has gone. What is known is this: The site has been stripped almost bare. Scavenging gangs have yanked the thick copper cables from the ground and dismantled and carted away the parked aircraft and fighting vehicles.

Almost everything has vanished radioactive waste converted to scrap. "They take the metal and sell it," he said. People as far away as Siberia have complained of symptoms from exposure. Various studies have labeled the region an environmental disaster. And the extent of pollution remains unknown, in part because Russia has not provided detailed information about the tests.

Russian, US Scientists Discuss Polar Research Cooperation
ITAR-TASS News Agency, February 26, 2005
By Ivan Lebedev

Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Laverov met in Washington with leaders of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to discuss prospects for cooperation between Russian and U.S. scientists in connection with the International Polar Year.

Laverov in an interview with Itar-Tass on Friday reminded that Russia proposed to implement the programme of the Third International Polar Year in 2007-2008. Under discussion now are concrete steps in Arctic research, including organisation of scientific Arctic expeditions, the academician said.

Preparations for the Third International Polar Year are under way also in the Arctic Council in which Russia recently took over the presidency for two years.

Objectives of the organisation set up nine years ago are protection of the environment in the Arctic, development of cooperation among countries in the region and social and economic support for northern indigenous peoples.

The organisation groups Russia, the United States, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland. Moscow considers the international Polar Year one of the main areas of its work in the Arctic Council.

Russia to Pursue UN Project of Arctic, Siberia Development
ITAR-TASS News Agency, February 25, 2005
By Andrei Polyakov

A UN project of development of Arctic and Siberian regions will be implemented in Russia.

The project was approved at the 23rd session of directors of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) finishing in Nairobi on Friday. Protection of water and Arctic resources was written large on the agenda of the session.

"This is the problem in which Russia is interested in a full measure," Deputy Minister of Economic Resources Valentin Stepankov told Itar-Tass. He led a Russian delegation to the five-day session.

UNEP Executive Director Klaus Topfter has taken big personal efforts in order this 30-million dollar project of sustainable development of our Arctic and Siberian regions became possible" Stepankov said. The major project will be carried out not in a group of countries but only in Russia. The project has been prepared for five years in order it encompassed Russia's most acute Arctic problems.

It envisages preservation of biodiversity, the establishment of rational use of water resources and the cleaning of contaminated areas a lot of which have appeared over the years of development of the Arctic.

The project is aimed at solving the difficult task of achieving a balance between ecology and the economy and at development of indigenous ethnic groups.

WWF Study Hails Value of FSC Certification
Printing World, February 24, 2005
By Catherine Carter

Forest Stewardship Council certification brings added value to society, the environment and the economy, says WWF. A study by the organisation into the changes required for certification of 18 million hectares of forests in Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Russia, Sweden and the UK shows significant improvements to biodiversity conservation, management planning, health and safety and the employment rights of forest workers.

The study analysed 2,817 Corrective Action Requests raised by independent certifiers as forest managers detailed shortcomings on environmental, social and economic issues. These were the basis for WWF's analysis of the improvements achieved on the ground through FSC.

Duncan Pollard, head of the WWF European Forest Programme, said: "We simply looked at what actual changes FSC certification has brought in forest management, and the results speak for themselves. The study also brings out clearly the social and economic benefits which FSC brings for policymakers, governments, forest owners, the forest industry, employees in the forest industry and recreational forest users."

In Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Russia, Sweden and the UK, biodiversity values were improved through measures such as: lower impact silviculture; improved protection of key habitats; increased deadwood levels; measures favouring species diversity; reduced soil compaction; improved water management and improved pollution control.

In all six countries, FSC certification led to safer working conditions and enhanced worker skills, improved long term planning and strategies for minimising economic damage.

Pipeline Spells Doom for World's Rarest Cat
The Daily Telegraph (London), January 22, 2005
By Charles Clover

A proposed oil pipeline could be the death knell for the last 30 Amur leopards living in the wild, a spokesman for London Zoo said yesterday.

The zoo expressed its "disbelief and concern" at the decision by the Russian government to allow the pipeline to be built through the cats' last redoubt. The Amur leopard, named after the river on the border between China and Russia, is the most northern of eight leopard sub-species and is distinguished by its long winter coat and its large rosettes.

The Zoological Society of London, which runs the zoo, learned about the planned pipeline through the Kedrovya Pad nature reserve, a Unesco biosphere reserve, following a recent meeting between the Russian industry and energy minister, Victor Khristenko, and the Japanese foreign minister.

A society spokesman said: "The pressure on these fragile ecosystems will be disastrous. We fear this will be the death warrant for the rarest cat on Earth."

The pounds 5 billion pipeline, intended to carry oil from central Siberia to the Japanese Sea, will cut through both the protected reserve and unprotected areas of the Amur leopard's range, between Vladivostok and the Sino-Russian border. Construction work will bring roads, houses and labourers who are likely to hunt for food.

The route proposed will reach the sea at Bukhta Perevoznaya, at present a pristine stretch of coast.

The zoological society said lobbying by local interests seemed to be responsible for the proposed route which makes little sense economically or environmentally. There is a terminal site with existing infrastructure further north and that route would miss the leopard's habitat. It appears that the proposal bypassed a legal requirement to consider alternative sites.

Conservationists said the Amur leopard population had begun to recover, thanks to the efforts of conservation bodies including the Zoological Society of London. There are about 100 Amur leopards in breeding programmes in European zoos.

Sarah Christie, conservation programme manager for the society and European co-ordinator for the Amur leopard breeding programme, said: "The choice of this route for the pipeline will tip the balance for the last 30 Amur leopards and for many other endangered species in south-west Primorye." The area, in Primorski Krai province, is considered, environmentally, to be the richest in the Russian Far East, having 30 per cent of the country's endangered species.

Conservationists said the Russian oil industry had the worst environmental record in the world with large areas of Siberia and the Russian Arctic, where oil was being pumped, being turned into black lakes and swamps.

Warm Weather Sets New Record for Moscow
Moscow News (Russia), January 19, 2005
By Anna Arutunyan and Oleg Liakhovich

The recent warm spell has broken all temperature records for a Moscow winter, sending the thermometer up to 6 degrees Celsius, which is the highest in recorded history for January, second place goes to the winter of '92 at 5.6 C.

Meteorologists attribute the unusually warm weather in the European part of Russia to high cyclone activity and expect a fall in temperatures in the second half of January. The anomaly has caused not only mild problems - such as for members of several ice sculpture contests - but some serious concerns as well - storm warnings were released in Moscow, while St. Petersburg was flooded due to the rapid rise of the Neva River. People suffering from various cardiovascular conditions may also be affected by the anomalous temperature shifts, medics warn. Meanwhile, for some Muscovites spring has indeed arrived early this year: visitors to the Moscow Zoo have witnessed mating rituals among some of the inhabitants, namely black swans. Although meteorologists deny that the current warm spell is related to global warming, it has been acknowledged that in the past 20 years winters in Russia have grown considerably milder, with only occasional legendary Russian frosts of yore. Better enjoy them while you can.

Race for the Arctic: an International Cold War Has Begun
The Independent (London), January 5, 2005
By Daniel Howden

Deep inside the Arctic Circle, hundreds of miles beyond the frontier of human habitation, a solitary red flag with a white cross flies in the freezing winds, its pole hammered into the unyielding rock of Hans Island. Next to it lies a plaque that tells the world the Vikings have returned.

The tiny island, a hostile wedge of rock poised between the north-west corner of Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island, where winter temperatures plummet to 40C below, is normally home to a seal colony and the occasional polar bear.

Now it finds itself on the front line of the race to claim the North Pole, a modern scramble for the Arctic that has pitted tiny Denmark against its Nato ally Canada, with Russia and the United States lurking in the wings. At stake, in what could be the last great territorial land-grab, is the promise of untold mineral riches that has prompted an increasing number of governments to throw tens of millions of pounds at scientific and military missions in a bid to get ahead.

These days the Vikings do not come in long-ships. The Danish navy sent HDMS Vaedderen, a 3,500-ton frigate with a reinforced hull, into the disputed channel that forms the maritime border between Canada and Greenland, the world's largest island and a semi-independent Danish territory, and more importantly, only 500 miles south of the North Pole.

And the elite Sirius Patrol, a contingent of specially trained Arctic soldiers, sleds and dogs, completed a hazardous patrol to the north-east shore of Greenland. The success of the Vaedderen and Sirius missions in proving their ability to operate so far north has given Denmark the confidence to stake its claim to the North Pole.

Trine Dahl Jensen, a geologist, is heading the team of scientists tasked with proving that Denmark's northern frontier is a lot further north than anyone expected. And she is more aware than most that the Danes' argument is complex and expensive to prove.

What they must resolve, Ms Dahl-Jensen says, is where Greenland's continental socket ends and where the ocean floor begins. Under the North Pole, the 2,000km-long Lomonosov Ridge of mountains runs from north of Greenland to north of Siberia. If hi-tech measurements prove Greenland's socket is attached to the ridge, they are in business. "We must be able to argue that it is a natural extension of Greenland," she says.

In the lobby of her offices at the Geological Survey of Greenland and Denmark (GEUS), there is a mechanical reminder of what they are working towards. A giant Foucault's pendulum is patiently tracking the rotation of the Earth around its South and North Pole axis. So far, no nation has actually secured territorial rights to either but the dawning of 2005 means the clock is ticking. That is the deadline for the Danish parliament to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The 1986 treaty affords coastal countries an economic zone extending 370km from their shores. If the socket is part of Greenland, then the North Pole could be part of Denmark.

"In 100 or 150 years, the ice may have melted significantly, making the area available for ships," Ms Dahl Jensen says. "This may seem far away, but in 10 years we will lose the right to make any territorial claims whatsoever."

The scientific work has to be completed within 10 years from the date that Denmark ratifies the UN convention. Ms Dahl-Jensen and her team have been given pounds 14m in government grants for a project said by the Danish ministry of science to have "historic dimensions". The windfall budget is a dream come true. "In any other situation, we would never have received this kind of funding," she says.

At her desk in an overheated, cupboard-sized office lined with polar maps on both walls, the Danish scientist with her blonde hair and broad forehead looks a true descendant of her Viking forebears. Contrary to expectations, the main challenge her group faced this spring, on their first expeditions into the Polar Basin, was weather warmer than usual. "We need cold conditions, preferably between 30 to 40 degrees below," the geologist says. "We can't land helicopters on the ice, if there is too much water on it."

After landing and setting up camp, the team uses sonar equipment and audio waves produced by controlled explosions and air cannons to map out the sea bed. Some of the equipment is already in place along the northern shores of Greenland.

But there is a greater imperative behind the latest round of grandiose territorial claims than the workings of international law. The Inuit, who have lived for centuries in and around the Arctic Circle were among the first to notice it and they do not even have words for what they were seeing. Many indigenous languages have no vocabulary for the legions of animals, insects and plants that have advanced north as global warming melts the polar ice and invites forest to creep over the thawed tundra. "We can't even describe what we are seeing," says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference which claims to represent more than 150,000 people across Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.

An eight-nation report in November revealed that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and that the North Pole could be ice-free in summertime by the end of the century. Around the Arctic, salmon are moving up into more northerly waters, hornets are beginning to buzz and barn owls are appearing in regions where indigenous people have never seen a barn. The Arctic report said polar bears were "unlikely to survive as a species" if the ice disappeared and they were left to compete with their better-adapted brown and grizzly cousins.

What is for some an environmental catastrophe might be a great commercial opportunity. Diamond finds in Canada's Nunavut have already fired a mining rush and propelled the country into the ranks of a top-three producer. Ottawa is counting on tapping what the government suspects are major natural gas reserves in the Beaufort Sea, the frigid zone bordering the Yukon and Alaska, where diplomatic swords were crossed with the US when it tried unsuccessfully to auction off the area to oil companies last year. The companies reportedly balked at the prospect of finding their purchases challenged in an international squabble.

What no one disagrees with is the riches that would come from the thaw creating a north-west passage. The centuries old bane of Arctic explorers could become a reality thanks to global warming, cutting thousands of miles off the shipping routes between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and delivering a windfall to any country able to tax its users.

In August, Canada spent C$ 4.9m (pounds 2.2m) in a show of force, sending hundreds of troops, helicopters, a frigate and an ice-breaker on a training exercise in search of mock satellite debris. Bad weather grounded planes, two soldiers were lost for a night and a fire on an ageing Sea King helicopter exposed the limits of the present force. This year, the government has approved the launching of the Radarsat II to provide high-resolution surveillance across the Arctic and monitor ships on the surface.

Canada's Defence Minister, Bill Graham, was well aware global warming has added a new urgency to claims in the Arctic. " It has created new possibilities and new threats," he told The New York Times. "We need more resources up there and we are going to look for ways to deploy them. The sense is that now is the time." The government has allocated C$ 70m for its own underwater mapping. One Canadian diplomat says: "To stake a territorial claim, you must be able to demonstrate you can actively patrol and enforce it, if necessary militarily."

Beneath the pack ice are the nuclear submarines of Russia, patrolling the dark water. Moscow has already made a failed attempt to stake its own claim to the Lomonosov Ridge, and thereby to the North Pole.

Faced with a common enemy, Canada and Denmark have begun to negotiate to fund a joint programme, which will divide the hefty expenses. Kai Sorensen, the deputy director of GEUS, says Denmark and Canada share a common interest in arguing that the natural divide of the North Pole is formed by the Lomonosov Ridge, which creates a natural median line between Canada, Greenland and across the North Pole to Russian territory.

Moscow has based claims on the so-called sector principle. A division along the median line would give Denmark territorial rights to the North Pole in accordance with the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, but the sector principle would divide the North Pole along sectors formed by longitudes, thus splitting the Pole into several territories.

That has not stopped the Danes getting excited. "The North Pole is one of the only virgin territories left on the globe," says Torquil Meedon, a senior official at Denmark's ministry of science and technology. "Climate changes indicate that ice in the Polar Sea may disappear within 50 to 100 years. That will open up the North-west Passage as a new and valuable shipping route. It will also be open to fishing, and the oil and gas reserves which may prove significant. Who knows how valuable the rights to the North Pole could be 100 years from now?"

Denmark feels it has been left behind by its neighbours. Norway, once a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, is now the world's number three oil- exporting nation, but Danes have been bystanders. Once, the Viking influence stretched from the Baltic across the North Sea and even, some historians say, across the Atlantic.

Now the Danes are eyeing the chance of taking the lead in what they hope could become the fossil fuel bonanza of the 21st century. But not all those leading the scramble agree that victory will make the winner rich. Ms Dahl-Jensen says there is no solid evidence to suggest the area of 200,000sq km will contain any wealth of natural resources.

Just as in long-gone eras, the race to claim new territory is, in large part, about regaining long-lost status. "It is all surreal," says Ole Kvaerno, director of the Institute of Strategy and Political Science at the Royal Danish Defence College, who finds the sudden territorial ambitions amusing."Strategically speaking, the North Pole is unimportant. It's not at all like Greenland." The US-controlled Thule air base has been a vital listening and patrol post between east and west throughout the Cold War.

"It really strikes me that various nations have begun to make these impossible territorial claims," he says. "What will be the next territorial claim: space? If Denmark gains territorial rights according to the UN convention, we would control the seabed and any resources beneath. In this case, we would have to make regular flights in the area to make sure nobody puts up unwanted oilrigs. It would be very expensive, but not impossible."

With bragging rights to one of the last, great, unexplored territories at stake not everyone is being rational. Mr Kvaernoe smiles wryly, and shrugs. "The North Pole; it sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?"

Not a Single National Reserve Was Set Up in Russia Since 2000
RIA Novosti, December 29, 2004

Moscow -- Not a single national reserve or park was set up in Russia in the past four years, merited ecologist of Russia Vsevolod Stepanitsky, former head of a department at the state nature protection agencies, told journalists today. "The last breakthrough in the development of protected areas was made 50 years ago," he said.

Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said attempts have been made in the past few years to illegally transfer a part of 13 reserve territories to economic cultivation. "Regrettably, state agencies cannot, and frequently do not want to, take measures to protect reserves."
There are 95 state reserves, 35 national parks and 11 federal preserves in Russia, which occupy about 3% of the national territory and are located mostly in European Russia and in southern areas of the Far East. Their aggregate personnel is more than 10,000.

A group of 28 reserves are part of the international network of biospheric reserves involved in global ecological monitoring. Nearly all of the Russian reserves are subordinate to the Department of Protected Territories and Facilities at the National Resources Ministry. The Barguzin reserve set up in 1917 is the first officially registered state reserve.

Russian Coal Region Governor Says Output Boost to Be Curbed by Eco-Concern. BBC Monitoring International Reports, December 28, 2004
Source: Radio Russia, Moscow, in Russian 1030 gmt 28 Dec 04

Kemerovo Region is to curb increases in coal output to address environmental concerns, the region's governor Aman Tuleyev said in a telephone interview given to Radio Russia's "At first hand" on 28 December. He also spoke of his reservations about the new law allowing the president to appoint regional leaders.

Tuleyev began the interview with host Natalya Bekhtina by saying it had been in some ways "a difficult year" for his coal-mining region. He recalled that there had been three pit tragedies during the year. At the same time, overall it had been "a year of creating, a year of great labour and records", the governor said.

Coal industry: Tuleyev noted that for the first time in 15 years the region had achieved coal production of 157m tonnes. He added that nine new coal enterprises had been opened, which means 4,500 new jobs. In addition, R14bn had been spent on modernizing plant, he told Bekhtina.

However, the main success had been to "conquer global markets", Tuleyev said. After all, the governor pointed out, the key thing is not to mine coal but to sell it. He said that an important factor contributing to this success had been the building of coal terminals in various parts of Russia.

Tuleyev recalled that he had told President Putin recently that whatever other concerns the head of state might have he could rest easy about coal. "Russia is fully stocked with coal," Tuleyev stressed. He also drew attention to the fact that Kemerovo Region was the only area in Russia to increase its coal production this year.

However, there are problems, especially environmental ones, the governor said. "The length of our rivers has decreased by something like 100 km, and 200 rivers have been ruined, " Tuleyev noted, adding that 65,000 ha of land has to be reclaimed and recultivated after being exploited by mining.

Tuleyev said that in view of these environmental concerns coal production should not be pushed beyond 170m tonnes a year. At the same time, he stressed the need to adjust the region's economic strategy away from simply mining coal to processing it so that it can sold at higher prices.

Money should be channelled into projects to rehabilitate land, forests and rivers, the governor said. He went on to stress the importance of agriculture in the regional economy, saying that Kemerovo Region needed to produce at least 1m tonnes of grain. This year the region produced over 1.3m tonnes, he added.

New law on appointing governors; Asked about the change in the law on the appointment of governors, Tuleyev said he would not be trying to challenge it. "Now the law has been passed, I'm a loyal soldier. You have to implement a law that has been passed," he commented. At the same time, in the new conditions governors need some sort of protection from bureaucratic corruption in Moscow, he argued.

WB Ready to Allocate Grants for Ecological Projects in Russia
ITAR-TASS News Agency, December 20, 2004

The World Bank is ready to allocate grants for the implementation of ecological projects in Russia, the WB director for Russia, Kristalina Georgieva, told the Prime-Tass news agency on Monday.

According to the WB official, there are several funds within the World Bank with a total amount of 800 million dollars, which extend grants for ecological projects. Such projects are actively implemented in Latin American countries.

Besides, the World Bank is ready to provide Russian companies with technologies for the assessment of ecological projects and their conformity with global international relations in ecological issues.

Within the framework of negotiations with the Russian government, the World Bank can offer a system for monitoring carbon emissions into the atmosphere to assess Russia's possibilities for trading emission quotas. According to Georgieva, this market is estimated for Russia at dozens of billions of dollars.

As for projects for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the World Bank has experience in the marketing of remaining quotas for greenhouse emissions. In particular, the World Bank can help concrete enterprises, cities and municipalities implement projects for the reduction of greenhouse emissions, their efforts financed by the funds formed by companies from other countries, which may obtain certificates and thus some of the quotas.

She said the Unified Energy Systems of Russia demonstrates interest for such projects, as it can transfer some electric power stations for geothermal sources instead of liquid fuel.

According to Georgieva, the money Russia can get within the framework of quotas, can be channeled into the sphere of power industry and for the updating of infrastructure.

Norway, Russia Attach Importance to Environmental Cooperation
ITAR-TASS News Agency, December 8, 2004
By Nikolai Gorbunov

Oslo -- The Norwegian government attaches great importance to cooperation in environmental protection with Russia, Norwegian Minister for Environmental Protection Knut Arild Hareide said on Wednesday in connection with the tenth anniversary of the Russian-Norwegian "Clean production" ecological program.

Norway has invested 53 million crowns ($8.5 million) for the program's implementation in Russia over the past ten years. Many enterprises have started producing "cleaner" products in ecological terms. More than 1,500 engineers have been retrained, toxic emissions in the atmosphere have been cut. "Norway will continue supporting the implementation of such programs in Russia," Hareide emphasized.

Russia, France to Set Up Joint Lab in Antarctica
ITAR-TASS News Agency, December 6, 2004
By Daria Tokareva

Russian and French researchers will set up a network of joint laboratories for work in promising directions, including in the Antarctica.

Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Platte and French Ambassador to Russia Jean Kades on Monday signed seven agreements on cooperation in the field of science and research and on the establishment of research centers I the field of chemistry, physics, mathematics and environmental studies.

"An entire network of joint laboratories will be created, one of them in the frame of a global warming research project, which will study carbon and ozone climate cycles in Siberia," Nikolai Plate said at the signing.

According to him, Russia and French researchers will also "drill through the glacier atop Lake Vostok on the icy continent at the South Pole for the purpose of climatologic studies."

The Russian Academy vice-president stressed, "The agreements will not only consolidate Russian-French scientific ties but also expand the common scientific space between Russia and Europe."

German and French researchers will take part in the implementation of two of the seven joint projects. Earlier this year, a Russian-French convention was signed in Paris concerning joint work in prospecting for, and developing deposits of metals, according to sources at the Russian Academy of Sciences. French and Russian specialists have set up a joint center for work in this direction.

The steering committee for cooperation of Russia with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) decided at its recent meeting to expand cooperation of Russia's state higher schools with the world leading scientific research centers.

"Young Russian scientists will conduct research and studies at major international venues , and postgraduate students from Germany and France will come to Russia in the nearest future to defend their research theses," an official at the Russian Education and Science Ministry told Itar-Tass.

Space Photographs to Help Curb Timber Theft in Russia
RIA Novosti, December 02, 2004

Moscow -- Russia will use space photographing to fight timber theft. Mr. Valery Roshchupkin, head of the Federal Timber Agency, said a system of operational monitoring, in particular space and aerial photographing, will be employed soon to fight timber theft.

"At first, we will control a million hectares and spread the system to the whole of the national territory within three years," Mr. Roshchupkin told the newspaper Vedomosti.

In his words, modern military projects will be used for the purpose. Five processing stations will be set up in the Khabarovsk territory, the Novosibirsk region, the Krasnoyarsk territory, the Vologda region and in St. Petersburg or Karelia.

"Our aerial and space photographs will be used as proof in court trials of timber theft," he said. The agency head also called for raising timber export duties. He thinks it is not right that export duties on many kinds of deep-processed timber commodities are higher than the export duties on coniferous and broadleaf felled timber.

"Timber export duties should be raised in a differentiated manner," Mr. Roshchupkin said. "The top rate should be set for sawn timber, plywood and veneer sheets."
He believes that this will have a positive effect on the work of Russian sawmills and plywood companies, many of which are seriously short of raw materials.

Russia to Certify 0.3 Percent of Wood in 2004
RIA Novosti, December 03, 2004

Moscow -- Roman Shipov, adviser of the federal forestry agency chief, has reported about 0.3 percent of the entire wooded area in Russia to have been certified in 2004.

"Some 2.2 million hectares of forests have been already certified while the certification of another two million hectares is nearing completion. This means that about 0.3 percent of the entire area under forests in Russia will be certified in 2004," said Roman Shipov.

As of today, 150 million hectares of woods have been certified throughout the world, which constitutes 0.3 percent of their total area. Such countries with developed ecological legislation as Finland, Germany, Austria and Sweden have already certified 100 percent of the area under woods.

In Russia, most intense certification has swept the Arkhangelsk region, the Komi republic, the Irkutsk region and Krasnoyarsk territory. Voluntary forest certification in Russia has been since 2003 the responsibility of the national council for forest certification founded by agencies representing the government, business, science and public.

Adjustment, approbation and registering of documents on voluntary forest certification are planned for 2005 while the wide introduction of this system is scheduled for 2006, said Shipov. A forest certificate is a permit to utilize forests and an obligation on their restoration. Not only does certification confirm the legality of timber origin, it hampers the illegal felling of woods.