"The border is now passing exactly in the middle of the Great Lake"

Administrative innovations in our country are always designed to hide the inability of the authorities to achieve real progress in the development of the country and its management. So with the last initiative of the Kremlin about the accession of Buryatia and Transbaikalia to the Far Eastern District. This is not justified by any local needs, and the consequences, and the most diverse ones, will be deplorable. In any case for Lake Baikal.

Now the Baikal basin and the region will be divided into "Siberian" and "Far Eastern" parts. The new reform threatens the very possibility of Baikal’s management on the pool principle , which suggests that nature management is carried out in a coordination throughout the water area. Now, in the middle of the Great Lake, the border of the Siberian and Far Eastern districts is like, for which various development mechanisms are legally provided for today.

It is most shocking that the next innovation did not go through a detailed expert study and legitimate public discussions. As a result, a million “Siberians” were recorded on the night of November 4 in the Far East, without explaining in detail the consequences and without asking their opinions.

The accession of Buryatia and the ZK to the Far East is not justified by any local needs. Preferential flights and the notorious "free hectare" will not save anyone, although some of the population will even rejoice at first. The previous 10 years of the metabolic stay of these subjects in different development programs of the Far East and the Baikal region showed that DV-centric management does not promise them special benefits and attention.

The explanations of what is happening first of all: geopolitics and administrative idiocy.

In September in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met with the participants of the round table of the leaders of the regions of Russia and China, during which Xi Jinping proposed to activate the role of municipal authorities, to use traditional twinness between cities and provinces and encourage the establishment of new ones, as well as look for new models and channels of interaction. Si called for "combining the development strategy of China with the development strategy of the federal districts of Russia" in order to "conjure the economic belt of the Silk Road and the Eurasian Economic Union."

The Trans-Baikal Territory and Buryatia in the Chinese sense are border regions that play a key role in the formation of the "Sino-Mongolian-Russian Economic Corridor of the belt and the path" stretched from Kamchatka to Ulan-Ude. Therefore, their addition to the Far East simplifies further actions to unify the rules and procedures for the development of the corridor.

In the Eastern Economic Forum, Russia and the PRC signed (but never published) a new "Program for the development of Russian-Chinese cooperation in trade, economic and investment spheres in the Far East of the Russian Federation for 2018–2024." The old similar program for 2009-2018 remained half -unsuitable. There was no joint public assessment of the failed program. The old program covered both Buryatia and the Trans -Baikal Territory. The new program also, apparently, includes them by default. But if earlier the program was aimed at coordinating the development of two regions on both sides of the border: Eastern Siberia and the Far East of Russia on the one hand and north-eastern China-on the other, now, according to China, Ivan Zuenko from the Carnegie Center, we are only talking about the "Russian Far East", and it does not concern the Chinese territory at all. The Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and the Committee for the Development and Reforms of the PRC were responsible for the old program signed by the prime ministers, and the ministers of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Commerce of the PRC signed the new one. That is, this mechanism of regional border cooperation with the PRC is reduced in status and acts strictly within the "oprichnina", previously allocated by the Ministry of Wasis. Probably, in order to catch this withdrawing train, Buryatia and the Trans -Baikal Territory and moved harshly to the Far East.

At the same time, not so much China and its investors as the Russian federal bureaucracy are interested in administrative retortion. On the one hand, this will reduce administrative disconnection (one belt - one path, one embassy - one Ministry of Medical Sciences), and on the other, to disguise the obvious small efficiency of programs for the development of the Far East by territorial expansion.

If we talk about the well -being of Baikal, then right now it is necessary to demand the immediate literal fulfillment of the basic requirements of the Convention on the Heritage, namely, the creation of a single system and management plan for the entire territory of the Baikal section of the natural heritage

In fact, the development of the DV did not switch to intensive rails, the outflow of the population continues, the priority of cooperation with China is the export of raw materials from Russia and the products of the first redistribution. All direct Chinese investments in the Far East, including the promised, barely reach $ 4 billion, which is equal to the average cost of one major Chinese infrastructure project in Indonesia, Malaysia or the Philippines. At the same time, the once active local middle-small business that ruled here the ball in the 90s is mainly replaced by the arrived large companies with Moscow registration, which the future of the region to the light bulb. The raw material base is depleted, the feeding places for the distribution, apparently, are in short supply, therefore, instead of really maintaining diversification and innovative development models, two more regions are added to the territory of the Eastern Basket, still rich in natural resources, but having a weak economy. Guess what will be "developing" there? But the reporting will be fade with new tori, tocers, and if the imagination is enough, then free ports.

If you do not take immediate measures, then for Lake Baikal this means a tough conflict between the priorities of preserving the World Heritage Party and the extremely anti -ecological policy of the Ministry of Wasis, which is sanctified by the release of Thor from the most important procedures of environmental control and examination. I have not yet seen official legal analysis as environmental reliefs practiced for investors in the Far East are related to the Law on Baikal and other specific regulatory acts designed to ensure the safety of the lake.

In addition, I am afraid of the allocation of "Far Eastern hectares" on the banks of Lake Baikal in the central ecological zone and other serial packs to "improve the life of the population."

If we talk about the well -being of Baikal, then right now it is necessary to demand the immediate literal fulfillment of the basic requirements of the Convention on the Heritage, namely the creation of a single system and management plan for the entire territory of the Baikal section of the natural heritage. The institution of the national body responsible for this is also necessary (the profile department in the Ministry of Natural Resources is too low). The Russian government has been feeding the international community and own citizens for 20 years for breakfasts about the imminent formation of the proper management system, without which, according to the Convention, the legacy section cannot exist.

Otherwise, in the new artificially created bureaucratic confusion, the entire Baikal protection system will be distinguished, and the lake will be distributed by pieces to “develop the economy” to everyone.

Evgeny Simonov - Ecologist

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office