News
Publish date: July 2, 2007
News
The state residence “Dolgiye Borody” is located on Lake Uzhin, 20 kilometers away from Valday in the Novgorod region. This is the very residence that Russian President Vladimir Putin often arrives at by helicopter. The head of state’s addiction to Valday has created a lot of interest among the big city elite; the magazine reports that the first Vice-Premier Dmitry Medvedev, Vice-Premier Sergei Naryshkin and St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko, as well as other VIPs have had summer houses built in Valday.
The number of tourists and religious worshipers from the Iversky monastery has increased, but the city has been unable to deal with the tidal wave of guests; the city sewer has to be flushed out 90 times a year; straight into the Valday Lake. Georgy Zhdanov, director of the Valday National Park, commented that “a pilgrimage center for two thousand people is being erected on the Iversky monastery’s territory. Supposedly all sewage dumps will be directed into the Valday Lake, which is inadmissible by law. Even though the lake’s water is completely changed only once every forty years, our hands are tied because the monastery is Vladimir Putin’s personal patron.”
Moreover, the director is worried by the local authorities’ sale of land for housing construction on the border of the national park’s territory. Zhdanov stated that “a tender to build on land in the region of the Bainevo countryside, right on the national park’s border, had been made. This is land meant for farming that the authorities assigned for settlement, and then happily sold it for cottage development. The trouble is that we cannot try to stop this according to law, even though people who bought these lots have no idea that they will not be able to go for a walk in their neighbor’s obsolete forest; this is a restricted area that is closed to visitors. We will be fining people from 1 to 2 thousand rubles for every outing; another 300 rubles if they are caught gather mushrooms and/or berries, and if they were forced to drive, there will be a 300 ruble fine for every square meter of soil that their wheel s passed over.
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.
After years of inaction, Germany is working on its Carbon Management Strategy to resolve how CCS can play a role in climate action in industry. At the end of February, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action published first key points and a proposal to amend the law Kohlenstoffdioxid Speicherungsgesetz (KSpG). Bellona Deutschland, who was actively involved in the previous stakeholder dialogue submitted a statement in the association hearing.
In the midst of a global discussion on whether natural gas should be used as a transitional fuel and whether emissions from its extraction, production, transport and use are significantly less than those from other fossil fuels, Russia has developed ambitious plans to increase its own production of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the Arctic – a region with 75% of proven gas reserves in Russia – to raise its share in the international gas trade.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our main focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution risks and climate change.