Russia and the environment

I went to a talk organised by Article 19  - the global campaign for free expression (Disclosure: I am a trustee). They have published a new report on access to information (or lack of it) on the environment in Russia. This may seem slightly esoteric - it isn't. It basically says Russians are being denied access to information about pollution, food contamination, nuclear waste and radiation -- and are dying as a result.  On the panel were Alexey Kiselev from Greenpeace in Russia, Frederica Prina from Article 19, Freiderike Behr from Amnesty and Steven Eke from the World Service. The head of Article 19, Agnes Calllamard, made an important point, saying that the right to access to information, enabling informed choices,  was as important as the right to food, water, health - and in this case they were linked. The panel agreed there is still a culture of secrecy in Russia where officials regard the public as "opposition", there is good legislation but it is not implemented or enforced, many officials are in denial and blame the west as a reflex, and there are still ominous legacies like 40 closed cities and sites and a "secret decree on secrecy" which is used to prevent disclosure.   As Steven Eke said, there are a number of conflated issues: general secrecy, lack of free media and scrutiny, lack of accountability, specific environmental issues, which combine into a dense and complex problem.

Allegedly five of the most polluted places on earth are in Russia, life expectancy is falling but there is little publicly acknowledged connection between the two. A BBC poll suggests more than 80% of Russians trust state TV - less than 2% trust independent sources of information on the internet.

Comments

[Ellee]

What a fascinating post, I would loved to have been at the conference. I have a couple of Russian Federation bloggers who have posted comments on my site today, maybe you could bring this to their attention.