Report - UNDP Russia

nature of the impact (atmospheric emissions,wastewater discharge, solid waste disposal, landdisturbance, etc.), as well as specific features ofthe ecosystems, which are affected (scale andquality of land reclamation is also important).Russia has enormous geography (17 million sq.km.) and encompasses a great variety of climatezones and an even greater variety of ecosystems.Hydrocarbon production is carried out all over thecountry as well as offshore, affecting terrestrialand marine ecosystems, but is located mainly innorthern areas: southern tundra, forest tundra,and taiga. Major increase of oil & gas productionis also to be expected in the near future on theoffshore continental shelf. Atmospheric emissionsby the fuel & energy sector are carried over vastdistances. It has been established that sulfurdioxide (SO 2 ) and nitrogen oxides (NO x ), whichare the primary causes of acid rain, can travel upto 4000 km from their source. Many lakes,including Lake Baikal, absorb more pollutantsfrom the air than from discharge water.Carrying of air pollutants over largedistances makes it difficult to estimate theirquantitative impact on ecosystems. Mixture ofpollutants from various sources (industries) in theatmosphere adds to the difficulties. So, our abilityto determine the share attributable to each typeof source is limited to relatively simple cases.Satisfactory results can be achieved in modelingof air pollution by one or two industrial sources,but accurate estimates for three sources are notyet possible.Methods of observation from a distanceallow identification of impact zones, whereecosystems are under pressure from a specificpollutant source, and fuel & energy enterprisesfigure frequently among such polluters. Mostsuch enterprises are located in undevelopedareas, in the ‘wilderness’, and this makes it mucheasier to identify facilities, which are havingmajor impact on their close surroundings. This isalso true for pollution of coastal areas and waterbodies by leaks from pipelines. High-resolutionsatellite images are available, but they costmoney and they need to be supplemented byintegrated ground-based observations, whichalso require significant investment, especially inremote areas. Analysis techniques for distancemonitoring data now exist, which can identify thesource of close impact and track the spread of oilpollution (‘spots’) in water bodies (seas, lakes,reservoirs, rivers, canals). Wide implementationof these techniques is hampered by shortage ofmonitoring information and of money to pay forits collection. The biggest obstacles to progress,however, is the absence of any authority in Russiacommitted to carrying out these tasks (theMinistry of Natural Resources and Ecology of theRussian Federation is principally focused onmaximizing natural resource extraction and noton preventing environmental damage oraddressing other environmental concerns).Meanwhile, for want of monitoring, assessmentand forecasts of fuel & energy impact onecosystems, and for want of estimates of theeconomic damage arising from these impacts,there is a risk that Russia’s biggest ‘bread-winning’sector could become the destroyer of Russia’snatural environment, and, consequently, thedestroyer of its economy.In order to maintain the current level ofoil production in Russia, it will be necessary toexpand the geography of production and todiscover and develop new oil deposits,particularly in eastern Siberia and offshore. Thesame is true for the gas industry. The coalindustry will open new mines adjacent to existingfacilities. If per unit indicators of environmentalimpact (emission, discharge and solid waste perunit of production or transportation of rawmaterials) remain at current levels, there will bemore pressure on ecosystems, which are alreadysuffering large impacts. Russia is currently aglobal environmental donor, since overall impactof Russia's economy on the environment is lessthan the useful yield of Russian ecosystems forsustaining the global ecological balance. Russianboreal forests and wetlands (where most of thecountry’s fuel & energy enterprises are located)are important carbon sinks. But Russia could losethis role if it allows the unfettered fuel & energyexpansion, which we have just described, tocontinue.129