There’s something in the air in Russia

‘Air quality is a big issue here,’ says Alexander Kolotov, an environmental expert from Krasnoyarsk, Siberia’s third largest city. ‘We regularly have to go into “black sky mode”, when industrial plants are recommended to drop their emissions levels because of bad weather conditions. Every public discussion of our general environmental situation includes the problem of atmospheric pollution.’

…Given the lack of access to information about air quality, public protests against air pollution in Russia generally concentrate either on companies known to be pollutants and new infrastructure projects such as motorways, or the protection of threatened green zones. 

In Moscow, for example, current protest campaigns include opposition to the building of a stadium on the site of the existing Park Druzhby (Friendship Park); a road to be built across the 18th century French style Kuskovo Park, regarded as one of the most beautiful in all of Russia and the felling of trees in Kokoshkino, a village incorporated in the recent expansion of the capital known as ‘New Moscow’.

Further east, in the Siberian town of Krasnoyarsk, a group of environmental specialists and local residents is currently fighting for the survival of a wood inside the city limits. The wood is threatened by plans for the Universiade Krasnoyarsk 2019, a worldwide student winter sports competition. Another group has won its campaign against the construction of a ferroalloy plant, thanks to protest actions and a media campaign that led to a referendum on the issue. It has now started a new campaign against a planned nuclear waste burial site outside the city.

Read more: https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/angelina-davydova/theres-something-in-air-in-russia