Conditions of environmental impact assessment for the economic and military objects in the Russian part of the Barents region
Elena Komleva
Russian Academy of Sciences, Kola Science Centre, Institute of The North Industrial Ecological Problems

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) in our region is determined by international, All-Russian and local factors.

Legal basis

Even the Federal legal basis is not complete and stable. From 1992 to 2000 there were adopted three editions of the All-Russian Instructions (Regulations) on EIA. But also the latter framework document has some weaknesses. Practical experience of its application is actually lacking. The Federal basis is expected to be further developed and improved. In addition, detailed elaboration of the EIA-procedure is to be carried out at the local level taking into account regional characteristic properties. Currently only the draft of this document is known in our region and only with reference to the Arkhangelsk region. For comparison: in Russia only Moscow and Tomsk regions have the "advanced" local legal basis. Such situation does not further the high EIA-quality in the Russian part of the Barents region. Approach of the Tomsk region (which is characterized by the development of nuclear and oil-gas enterprises) to the solution of this problem may be a good example and analogue taking into account features of the Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions now and in future. Departmental papers are examples of additional level of detailed elaboration.

The key concept of "environment"

The concept of "environment" is not qualitatively identified by the legal EIA-documents, it is first of all incomplete and ambiguous. An attempt to define this concept was made in the EIA-Instruction of 1992. The EIA-Regulation of 2000 does not include special explanation of "environment". This has lead to some cases of disorganizing use of two different terms "environment" and "natural environment" in the same semantic meaning within the same documents. This finally creates prerequisites for limited interpretation of the EIA-procedure. First, careless terminology and subsequent "legitimation" of the partial EIA dealing only with nature contradicts the canons of construction existing in the Russian language. Second, as it is shown at the ARIA Web-site, conception of "environment" in its expanded version (including social, economic, technical, cultural environment and their interaction with natural components) dominates in the Arctic countries. Third, linking the concept of "environment" with such notions as "ecology", "natural and artificial material components of the environment", "social, economic and cultural conditions", "development", "employment of population", "demography", "infrastructure", "safety of the whole life-cycle of an enterprise", "vicinity of several objects being extra-hazardous for ecology", "engineering-ecological investigations, including the study of social sphere as well as objects of historical and cultural heritage", "strategic ecological assessment", "interaction of various ecological, social and economic factors", etc. immediately in the texts of the mentioned Russian legal documents does not give the legal grounds to ignore the social, artificial component of human milieu. It is especially actual for assessment of the long-term impact, in particular of nuclear objects, as well as of new objects located on the territory or near the built-up area (f.e. the oil terminal in the Kola Bay, accumulation site for spent nuclear fuel at the "Atomflot" enterprise, depository of reactor units in the Saida Bay).

Social orientation

Social component of the assessment is included into the EIA-procedure within the Russian and international ecological legislation. It is also a part of the ideology of ecological humane societies. However, regional practice shows its poor realization interrelated to the methodical weaknesses of the Russian standards mentioned above. The principles of precaution and traditional values handed down from generation to generation are not used in full measure. Information activities and public participation are insignificant. Transboundary aspect is not considered in a broad sense. Let us give one more regional example. Among ten environmental "hot spots" of the Barents region, The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) has selected two priorities of environmental activity connected with future of nuclear technologies. Because of their consequences, these technologies are potentially dangerous in view of radioactive pollution or radioactive waste for tens of thousands of years. However, from 1995 to present the concomitant complex of social-economic problems has been considered by Russian experts only retrospectively and only for one (Arkhangelsk) of two "nuclear" regions (Murmansk and Arkhangelsk) within the Barents region. Besides, there has not been carried out the assessment of both past and future social-economic conditions of the adjacent foreign territories (not only the stability is fixed here), there is not any forecast of these conditions, at least for the Russian part of the region. Methodological weakness is present by considering the future of the most long-term and disturbing sphere. Social conditions, their stability mainly determine the impact of one or another activity on environment. Industrial desert around the "Pechenganickel" and "Severonickel" smelters is chiefly the consequence of social conditions, which existed before. Substantial reduction of the safety of Russian nuclear and military objects, including the northern ones, is a result of a drastic and painful change of these conditions after the USSR collapse.

Support in the mass media

Information activities for a wide public on EIA in the region are poor or lacking at all. For comparison: EIA of other boundary territories, for example, near the Caspian Sea or for Kaliningrad region is intensively discussed in the Russian-language part of the Internet.

International financial support

The World Bank and The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, for instance, do not finance EIA in our region. But they do it in other regions of the Russian Federation (in particular, on the Sakhalin) by grounding the investments.

Transboundary aspect

Transboundary EIA is regulated additionally by separate international documents – Convention on EIA in a Transboundary Context (Espoo, 1991), Protocol on Strategic Ecological Assessment of Environmental State (Kiev, 2003), Guidelines of Public Participation in EIA in a Transboundary Context (draft, Kiev, 2000). Barents region comes within these documents. However, we are still not aware of such practices here. For comparison: there are some positive examples in the North-West of the Russian Federation. They are connected for example with participation of the Russian public in the EIA procedure for the Finnish NPP "Loviisa-3" as well as the Finnish depository for spent nuclear fuel (the "Posiva" project), and Swedish specialists have taken part in the EIA on the Norwegian depository for nuclear materials at Himdalen.

Characteristic properties of EIA for military objects

This sphere is only at the beginning of its development according to the Russian legislation, in particular concerning the Service of Ecological Safety at the Russian Defence Establishment.

Problem of the long-term assessment

In the Russian part of the Barents region there already exist some objects, which "life cycle" amounts hundreds and thousands of years. Some new objects of this type are due to be built as well. These are the depositories of reactor units with reactors from the atomic submarines in the Saida Bay, spent nuclear fuel in the Andreeva Bay and Gremikha, analogous objects in Severodvinsk, regional depository of radioactive waste and others. The objects are Russian, but the problems caused by them are international. The corresponding long-term EIAs, especially within the context of interrelation and development of social environmental components, present serious difficulties and are limited by methodological scope of the contemporary science. However, it should not mean that the problem of the long-term assessments may be set aside, at least because the law of the Russian Federation "On Protection of Environment" (2002) determines the EIA procedure as the assessment of impact’s consequences (i.e. it considers the time factor) and the draft law of the Russian Federation "On Ecological Safety" bans "the economic and other activity, which ecological consequences are unexpected" (chapter VI, clause 15, item 1). The ban on nuclear technologies under social conditions of Saddam Iraq is, for example, a fact. At last, the long-term forecasts become especially important by growth of trends assessing the whole life cycle of production up to the burial of waste. These trends are developed within the basic international management system of ecological safety, in particular standards’ series ISO 14000.

Executive organizations of EIA

As a rule these are the large and authoritative scientific organizations, for instance, the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute and the Institute of the North Industrial Ecology Problems of the Kola Science Center, Russian Academy of Sciences. But recently there are allowed EIAs made at a low level by small incompetent firms. Taking into account incompleteness and imperfection of the Russian legal EIA-basis as well as the boundary location of the Russian part of the Barents region, the long term potential danger of most of the objects situated here under conditions of easily vulnerable Arctic nature, it is expedient to carry out EIA of these objects using the more "advanced" international norms and efforts of international expert groups.