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<text id=89TT0028>
<title>
Jan. 02, 1989: The Greening Of The USSR
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
Jan. 02, 1989 Planet Of The Year:Endangered Earth
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
PLANET OF THE YEAR, Page 68
The Greening of the U.S.S.R.
</hdr><body>
<p>As his public cries out for a cleanup, Gorbachev fights a pall
of pollution
</p>
<p>By Dick Thompson
</p>
<p> The Soviet Union is an environmentalist's nightmare. The
industrial city of Nizhni Tagil, some 700 miles east of Moscow,
is sometimes wrapped in clouds of gaseous wastes so thick and
toxic that drivers must turn on their headlights at noon and
children walking home from school get skin rashes. Every year
700,000 tons of toxic substances are spewed into the city's
air. Not only Nizhni Tagil but more than 100 other major
cities, including Moscow, also have air-pollution levels ten
times as high as the acceptable standards set by the Soviets.
</p>
<p> The land and water are not in any better shape. The riverbed
of the Neva, which meanders beside the magnificent Hermitage in
Leningrad, is covered with a thick layer of oil. Ill-advised dam
construction and inappropriate irrigation projects have caused
the level of the Aral Sea to drop 40 ft. It is possible that
this body of water, the world's sixth largest sea, will not
exist in 20 years. Siberia, once pristine, is laced with wastes
from steel, chemical and coal industries. Worrisome numbers of
dead sturgeon are floating atop the polluted Volga River,
threatening the Soviets' prestigious caviar supply. Resorts
along the Black Sea have banned swimming after the government's
warning that the waters are contaminated with dysentery and
typhoid germs.
</p>
<p> For decades the Soviet people accepted the situation in
silence. But glasnost has made them less afraid to speak out.
Citizens worried about the environment are demonstrating by the
thousands and contributing to political unrest in the Baltic
States. Elsewhere, budding environmental groups have even
sponsored candidates for city elections.
</p>
<p> Amid the turmoil the Soviet government has finally begun to
move. The Kremlin has reorganized a number of departments into
the new State Committee for the Protection of the Environment,
Goskompriroda, and given it an impressive range of powers. "In
this restructuring," said Nicholas Robinson, a Pace University
professor and an expert on the Soviet environment, "the
Communist Party Central Committee has decided that, after
disarmament, environmental protection is the No. 1 world
issue." An aggressive cleanup program has already begun.
Projects are being re-evaluated in light of their environmental
impact. Fines have been levied on some polluters, and criminal
proceedings have been started against others.
</p>
<p> Internationally, the Soviets are pushing for stronger
accords to protect the environment and are seeking ways to
integrate their atmospheric-research efforts with those under
way elsewhere. For the first time since World War II, the
Soviet Union and the U.S. may have found a common enemy: global
climate change. Said President Mikhail Gorbachev in his speech
this month to the U.N. General Assembly: "International
economic security is inconceivable unless related not only to
disarmament but also to the elimination of the threat to the
world's environment."
</p>
<p> One sign of the Soviets' willingness to join international
environmental efforts was their presence at the TIME conference
in Boulder. Fyodor Morgun, the recently appointed head of
Goskompriroda, made his first trip to the U.S. (and only his
second journey outside the Soviet Union) to attend the meeting.
And he was startlingly frank about the situation in his
country. "We have started too late," Morgun told the group. "Our
air is not up to the proper mark, our soil is polluted, and our
forests are affected. Drastic measures were taken in the West
15 to 20 years ago to improve the environment. Now my country
must get to work on this as well."
</p>
<p> The Soviet environmental disaster has been a long time in
the making. Beginning in the days of Stalin, ecological
concerns were shunted aside in the rush toward
industrialization. Valovaya produktsiya, a phrase that
translates into "gross output" and is abbreviated as val, was
at the heart of the problem. Industry bureaucrats have long been
evaluated -- and rewarded -- only in terms of gross output.
Rivers were fouled and forests stripped in the rush to transform
raw materials into material wealth. No premium was placed on
efficiency, and no environmental concerns restrained val. Trucks
in Siberia, for example, are still left running every hour of
every day throughout the winter because the vehicles are very
difficult to start in the cold, and diesel fuel is plentiful.
</p>
<p> Nowhere are the consequences of unchecked industrialization
more obvious than in Siberia's Lake Baikal basin. Nearly 30
years ago, Minlesbumprom (the Ministry of Timber, Pulp and
Paper, and Wood Processing Industry) erected the Baikalsh pulp
factory on the shores of this majestic body of crystal-clear
water. The crescent-shaped lake holds 80% of the country's
fresh water and 20% of the world's supply. Three-fourths of the
lake's 2,500 fish and plant species, including the Baikal nerpa,
a fresh-water seal, are unknown anywhere else in the world.
</p>
<p> All that is under assault. Currently, the pulp factory
produces 200,000 tons of cellulose fibers a year, and its
effluent, discharged directed into the lake, has created a
polluted zone 23 miles wide. Clouds of yellowish smoke belching
from the factory's smokestacks have settled over 770 sq. mi. of
Siberian wilderness and have killed an estimated 86,000 fir
trees.
</p>
<p> The environmental offenses at Baikal and elsewhere revived
the deep relationship that the Soviets have with nature. "Please
believe me," said Morgun, "the people have awakened." From
Armenia to Zaporozhye, hundreds of thousands have taken to the
streets to protest everything from air pollution to
nuclear-power plants. In April 10,000 people demonstrated
against the conditions in Nizhni Tagil. Protesters in
Priozyorsk were successful in closing a major paper plant that
had been dumping waste into Lake Ladoga, the source of drinking
water for 6 million people. Many of the political demonstrations
in the Baltic States are linked to the environment. Said
Marshall Goldman, associate director of the Russian Research
Center at Harvard University: "In almost every republic in which
there is a movement for independence or the assertion of
political rights, it has been led by an environmental movement."
</p>
<p> Gorbachev, whose background is in agriculture, has shown a
special concern for the environment from the beginning of his
reign. Early on, he toured the country and took care to detour
from the carefully prepared showcase routes to inspect
firsthand the polluted rivers and devastated forests. Funds for
environmental protection, about $24 billion this year, are
projected to reach $46.4 billion annually in the first half of
the 1990s. At the same time, Gorbachev's regime has cracked
down on polluters. Around Lake Baikal, about two dozen
violations of ecological standards have been referred to
prosecutors. In Nizhni Tagil the government has closed ten
factories for failing to control toxic emissions and has begun
criminal investigations against more than ten other plants.
</p>
<p> But the Soviet leader may face a potential conflict between
his desire for a cleaner environment and his hopes of rapidly
raising the living standards and consumption levels of his
people. Without careful pollution control, boosting production
will befoul the environment even more. And money that goes into
antipollution equipment cannot be used for industrial
expansion. In Boulder, Morgun emphasized that the Kremlin wanted
to get around this dilemma by redirecting money from military
spending into the civilian economy. That, he said, depended on
continued progress in arms-control talks with the U.S.
</p>
<p> From an international perspective, the most disturbing
aspect of the Soviet economy is the enormous quantity of carbon
dioxide it puts into the air. Because the machines in many
Soviet factories are obsolete and inefficient, they consume an
inordinate amount of energy, making the country one of the
largest contributors to the greenhouse effect. The Soviets are
aware of this problem and hope to solve it by importing
technology designed to improve energy efficiency and pollution
control. They hope that much of that technology will come from
the U.S. Said Morgun: "We will go anyplace, over any mountain,
over an ocean to get the technology. And if you offer some kind
of technology, we will be glad to accept it. We would be most
grateful."
</p>
<p> That is a plea the U.S. should take seriously, by easing
restrictions on the export of industrial technology to the
Soviets. Unfortunately, the biggest barrier to such shipments is
not export controls but the lack of hard currency. The U.S.
cannot finance the Soviet drive to conserve energy and control
pollution, but America should offer as much technical
assistance as possible. The Soviets seem to be sincerely
determined to clean up their act, and the U.S. should help out.
</p>
<p>-- Ann Blackman/Moscow and Richard Hornik/Washington
</p>
</body></article>
</text>