Nature as a gift from the Creator

The first year of work of the State Duma of the sixth convocation has ended. My long-time acquaintance, Tula deputy Oleg Lebedev, has been working in the Duma for the first year, who was given the mandate of the legendary “red” politician Vasily Aleksandrovich Starodubtsev, who passed away exactly a year ago and was respected by many. I’m talking with Oleg Lebedev, a member of the Committee on Natural Resources, Environmental Management and Ecology.

- Oleg, it’s been a year since you’ve been in the Duma, what is the main problem, from your point of view, facing the “ecological” Committee of the Duma today? What should you do first?

- As in any economy, we need to understand what we have (and we have the unique richest Russian nature) and how to preserve it from complete “wasting.” We need a whole set of legislative instruments to stop its barbaric destruction. I am deeply convinced that it is necessary to adopt a special “Environmental Code”, that is, to codify various laws on environmental protection. Write new, urgent ones. Systematize environmental legislation. It turns out very strange. We have a Family Code, a Labor Code, but no Environmental Code. It’s as if we don’t care what kind of air our children breathe and how protected thousands of workers today in “harmful industries” will be. This is a question of both nature protection and the health of our nation. This is all we do in the Committee.

-I know that this year you participated in a special “ecological teleconference.”

-Yes. This bridge was organized by Komsomolskaya Pravda. Seven television studios took part in the conference. We were in touch: Novosibirsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don and Irkutsk. Representatives of the Federal Forestry Agency, Rosprirodnadzor, regional forestry departments, business, media and the public gathered. At the teleconference, issues of Russia's accession to the WTO in 2012, issues of environmental responsibility of business, and the importance of stimulating business investment in the environment at the state level were discussed. Naturally, everyone understood that it was impossible to solve these problems without legislative support, and a systematic one.

- Where should we start creating the “Environmental Code”? From what legislative initiatives?

- We need to start with the forests. Forests occupy 70% of the territory of the Russian Federation, and we have 20% of the world's timber reserves. On the one hand, the problem of forests is 100% environmental. Forests are the “lungs of the planet.” Their insane cutting down will lead to a lack of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere. On the other hand, it is economic. Forests are our “living green gold”. Someday we will run out of oil and gas. These are irreplaceable natural resources. With any reserves. But forest is a renewable resource and the need for it in the world is extremely high. However, deforestation is chaotic, unorganized, it is not controlled, and forestry processing enterprises are not developed. We sell unprocessed wood, the infamous “round timber”, abroad for pennies. And we are losing huge amounts of money for the budget. Here are just a few numbers. Our country has a fifth of the world's forest reserves, and the Russian timber industry accounts for only 1.2% of the gross domestic product and 4% of the country's total exports.

- But it seems that Russia already has a “Forest Code”?

-Forest legislation, unfortunately, has changed constantly in recent years. Unsystematically. Chaotic. The apotheosis was the latest edition of the Forest Code in December 2006. By the way, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation then came out categorically against its adoption. What did you get as a result? Reduction of the staff of foresters, destruction of forestry enterprises, massive sale of forests into private hands, destruction of forest aviation. And then came 2010 with its fires. There was simply no one left to monitor tourists lighting fires in the forests, or to promptly notice new fires, or even to extinguish those that had already started. Such fires destroy 1000 times more forests than even barbaric logging.

Forestry policies must be radically revised. Without waiting for new forest disasters.

1. Illegal logging. Russia's policy in the field of illegal logging should be aimed at the inevitability of punishment for violation of the law. Now the majority of violators either avoid punishment altogether, or they are subject to such measures as suspended imprisonment and fines, which in no way serves to strengthen the preventive role of the application of the law, but only stimulates an increase in the number of crimes committed in the forestry sector.
2. Firefighting forest aviation. Today there is practically no aviation protection of forests from fires. Its urgent revival is necessary.
3. Restoring the human resources potential of forestry.

Recently, losses of forest resources occur not only from fires, but also from pests and diseases. The damage from this significantly exceeds the total costs of conservation, protection and reproduction of forests. Taken together. We need to modernize forestry and strengthen the scientific and human resources potential of the industry. It is necessary to establish additional social guarantees for forestry workers. How can you get people interested? Of course, stable and high wages, a solid package of social guarantees.

- I read that you participated in a meeting devoted to the problems of replenishing forest rangers. There, an exotic idea was expressed about attracting Cossacks to protect the forests. How do you feel about this?

-It was at the Federal Forestry Agency that there was such a meeting of the permanent specialized commission to attract military Cossack societies to the protection of forests and participation in the development of the forestry complex of the Russian Federation as part of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation for Cossack Affairs. At it, by the way, they said that the involvement of Cossacks in patrolling forests is carried out in 14 regions of the country: in the Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Rostov regions, Krasnodar Territory, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, etc. In principle, I am not against it. Only for now there are many unresolved problems in this endeavor: what will the Cossacks be equipped with, who will be involved in their “retraining as huntsmen,” what their powers will be.

- How will Russia’s accession to the WTO affect the state of forests?

-I think it's very negative. We do not have an adopted “Environmental Code,” and foreign countries will probably immediately demand lower requirements for the environmental safety of existing industries. America is an example.

Even she was forced to reduce the environmental safety requirements for cars, which led to an increase in annual nitrogen oxide emissions by 5-7%, but stimulated the sale of gasoline. What can we say about us? And then, we do not have powerful wood-processing enterprises, so Russia can turn into a raw material appendage of the West in this area as well. Cheap and high-quality waste cardboard from Europe will immediately flow into the “open gates,” primarily into the border areas. We have always held down the timber industry through relatively high import duties on pulp and paper products. But, according to some reports, these duties will drop threefold by 2015. Hard times await the domestic industry...

-Oleg, you were elected to the State Duma from the Tula region. Of the 83 regions of the Russian Federation, the Tula region has been ranked 80th in terms of environmental problems since 2011, behind only the Moscow, Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions. What have you been able to do to improve the ecology of your native region?

- Oddly enough, one of the main environmental problems of the region is not even chemical production, but the banal disregard of local authorities towards their work. Take, for example, garbage dumps. Or, as they say, municipal solid waste (MSW). Just before Tula City Day, Tula residents approached me with a request to look into this problem. In the Proletarsky district, huge garbage dumps were formed at once on four container sites and another, already spontaneous, on the outskirts of the city, on the border of Tula and the Leninsky district, next to the Epifanskoe highway. I sent a deputy request and went to the site myself. Workers and equipment immediately appeared, as if out of the ground. The “Augean stables” of the hero city were cleared for City Day. The administration reproaches the population that they are guilty, they are unclean. Yes, it is clean where there is no litter, but the blame cannot be removed from the organizations called upon to clean up. I think it is necessary to develop a regional target program for the elimination of spontaneous landfills. Concentrate in one hand both the maintenance of sites with solid waste and waste removal. Oblige business entities to enter into agreements for waste removal. Including from the so-called “private sector”.

It is understandable when “irresponsible citizens” “clutter up” their yards with garbage, but when irreparable damage to the environment is caused to entire enterprises, this is a crime. This year, the question arose about the poisoning of sewage water from the mouth of the legendary Don River, which originates in Tula. In the city of Donskoy, the treatment facilities of the local Vodokanal fell into disrepair and untreated sewage water flowed directly into the Don River. We went to the site after the indignation of citizens. Specialists took a water sample in the area of ​​the wastewater treatment facilities of Sewerage Systems LLC in the city of Donskoy and natural water at control points in the Don River. A special appeal was prepared and sent to the Office of Rosprirodnadzor for the Tula Region. As a result, the discharge of dirty water was stopped, and Vodokanal suffered an administrative penalty under Part 4 of Art. 8.13, Article 8.15 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation in the form of a fine. I understand that its size, unfortunately, is not great yet. It is necessary to increase environmental fines for enterprises many times over, from tens of thousands of rubles to millions, so that this is tangible for their owners and forces them to care about the environmental cleanliness of their production.

-Did any detective story even happen in Bogoroditsk?

-Yes, there, in the immediate vicinity of residential buildings, with gross technological violations, highly toxic sludge was loaded. Local residents began to sound the alarm. Investigator of the Bogoroditsky Interdistrict Investigation Department of the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Tula Region, Kirill Maksimov, Secretary of the Bogoroditsky City Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Tatyana Leonova and witnesses were called to the place of loading of iron-containing sludge. But the security did not even allow the investigator and witnesses to enter the loading site. From behind the fence, those who arrived saw that toxic substances, approximately 10 tons, were stored right on the ground, loading was being carried out next to residential buildings. We intervened in the situation with the support of local residents who held a number of protests in Bogoroditsk. The situation was taken under personal control by the head of the Investigative Directorate of the Russian Federation Investigative Committee for the Tula Region, Tatyana Sergeeva. A number of violations were identified during the processing of toxic sludge. Part 2 of Article 51 of the Federal Law “On Environmental Protection” was violated. Moreover, it turned out that the offending enterprise, a certain Deka-Chem LLC, unauthorizedly occupies the territory on which it loads sludge.

-What is the result?

- As a result, when order was restored, ecologists discovered a red-brown spot with a radius of 100 meters on the land of this LLC. The sludge even poisoned the ground. Now the situation in Bogoroditsk is under our complete control. As, by the way, in the village of Spassky, Novomoskovsk district (the birthplace of V.A. Starodubtsev), where an unauthorized toxic waste dump was created, constantly burning and poisoning the surrounding air with combustion products.

- Question about the situation in the Shchekinsky district, where residents tripled the people’s meeting against depriving the area of ​​the status of a contaminated territory...

- I fully share both the concerns of people here and the position of the governor of the Tula region V. Gruzdev. It is impossible to deprive a number of areas of the region of the status of those affected by the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant without reason. As far as I know, the governor is not just against depriving Shchekin of the status of a contaminated area, but wants to come up with a proposal to include a number of other regions of the region in the register of contaminated areas. So far, his proposal to install an electronic board next to the Shchekino chemical plant, which would show the environmental situation in the area of ​​the plant, Pervomaisky village, Shchekino and the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate is optimal. Moreover, I believe that such “environmental boards” should be installed at our own expense in ALL hazardous industries in the Tula region.

-And the last thing. A year later, what do you think are the origins of environmental problems? Imperfect legislation, lack of funding, improper organization of environmental services?

- Of course, everything mentioned has a place to happen. But I think that the main thing is, oddly enough, morality. Many people treat the surrounding nature as a “workshop” (as Turgenev’s Bazarov, I remember, said in “Fathers and Sons”), in which the main thing is production, and the consequences of the merciless exploitation of the “workshop” do not interest such people. And nature is a gift to us, people, from the Creator.

And we must treat this gift with care. If we learn this, we will solve all other environmental problems. Sure.