Ebook: Assessment of environmental impacts and Ecological Expertise: Professional experience of EIA issues in Russia and Germany

Irkutsk, Dresden, Berlin, Bonn, Dessau: Publishing house of the Sochava Institute of Geography of the SB RAS, 2012. — 76 с.No other country on earth has such vast land resources as Russia. Moreover, the major part of it can still be considered untouched, or at least a minimally impacted natural landscape. Precisely this wealth of biodiversity, and not the non-renewable extractable resources, is the true value of the land, and the foundation of life for coming generations. However, the development of new areas, especially in the Asian part of Russia, is gradually increasing the pollution level, and reducing the quality of life of people. This takes place in particular in the context of such major projects as the development of gigantic hydrocarbon resource reserves, the creation of energy centres, increased wood production, and many other projects. All this is necessarily of concern to experts and to the public, especially considering that in recent years, in the context of the many-year administrative reform and other actions, not only the institutions but also the legal foundations of the procedures of ecological accompaniment of project planning in Russia have been reduced. In 1992, the German Russian Agreement on Cooperation in Environmental Protection was signed, and has been implemented through a large number of measures. One example is that, based on the German model of landscape planning, environmental planning instruments adapted to Russian conditions have been developed. It became clear very early that these instruments were well suited to be incorporated in the environmental impact assessment procedure. They constitute the ideal basis for the selection of environmentally appropriate site alternatives for projects, and for the evaluation of the environment in accordance with an environmental impact prognosis. For this reason, the transition from landscape planning to the establishment of the methodological foundations for ecological expertises and the environmental impact assessment is a must. This view was shared by both the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation and the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation. The German-Russian consultations for exchanges of experience and for the adaptation and ultimately the translation of the legal foundations of the procedural regulations and substantive methodological aspects continued for more than five years. At the same time, the Sochava Institute of Geography of the Siberian section of the Russian Academy of Sciences drafted a large number of expert papers on the ecological accompaniment of major projects in the Asiatic section of Russia: the Vostochnaya Sibir’-Tikhy Okean (East Siberian-Pacific/ VSTO) oil pipeline from Tayshet in Eastern Siberia to Nakhodka on the Pacific coast, the development of the Kovytkinsk condensed gas storage facility, and many others. The experience gained, and the numerous fruitful consultations with the Russian and German experts led to the creation of the present compendium.