Lars Rowe - Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia: The Arctic and the Environment

Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia: The Arctic and the Environment — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia: The Arctic and the Environment" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...50

Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia

For Vera and Isak

Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia

The Arctic and the Environment

Lars Rowe

Contents

Map

The Pasvik valley and surroundings

Figure

Emissions of sulphur dioxide, copper and nickel to air from the Pechenganikel enterprise, 19772004.

Photos

Thanks to the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, and more specifically now former director Geir Hnneland for supporting this work, particularly through less productive periods. Thanks to Ola Solvang, who has allowed me to use some of his remarkable images from Nikel. Thanks also to Amund Trellevik and Anne Berteig for letting me use their photos. Professor Sven Holtsmark has been an invaluable resource throughout my career. This study was no exception. I am also indebted to Magne Red and Jan Thompson, both now retired from their positions in the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment. Magne, Jan and their colleagues at the ministry archive were most helpful in making documentation available to me.

Thanks lastly, to my family. I dedicate this book to Vera and Isak, in the hope that they will experience a future less endangered by waste from human activities.

Hlen, spring 2020
Lars Rowe

The research for this book was funded by the
Norwegian Ministry of Defense.

AIP (in notes)	Miljverndepartementets avdeling for internasjonalt miljvernsamarbeid og polarsaker (Department for International Environmental Cooperation and Polar Issues in the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment)
BEAR	Barents Euro-Arctic Region
ET (in notes)	Elkem Technology
GIEK	Garanti-instituttet for eksportkreditt (the Norwegian Export Credit Agency)
Goskomekologiya	Gosudarstvennyi komitet po ekologii (State Committee for Environmental Protection)
Goskomgidromet	Gosudarstvennyi komitet po gidrometeorologii i monitoringu okruzhayushchei sredy (State Committee for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring)
Goskompriroda	Gosudarstvennyi komitet po okhrane prirody (State Committee for Environmental Protection)
KGMK	Kolskaya Gorno-Metallurgicheskaya Kompaniya (Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company)
KMO	Komitet Molodezhnykh Organizatsii (Committee for Youth Organizations)
m. (in notes)	mappe (Norwegian archival unit (file))
MD (in notes)	Miljverndepartementets arkiv (Archive of the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment)
Minpriroda	Ministerstvo po okhrane prirody (Ministry for Environmental Protection)
NIB	Nordic Investment Bank
NME	Norwegian Ministry of the Environment
NOK	norske kroner (standard abbreviation for the Norwegian currency, kroner)
oblast	Soviet/Russian administrative unit, county
PERG	Pechenga Nickel Expert Review Group (est. 2000 to assess the Russian modernization proposal involving Vanyukov furnaces)
PRC	Pechenga Reconstruction Consortium (unit created by Norwegian Elkem Technology, Norwegian Kvaerner Engineering and Swedish Boliden Contech, for modernization of Pechenganikel installations)
raion	Soviet/Russian administrative unit, municipality
RSFSR	Rossiiskaya Sovetskaya Federativnaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic)
SFT	Statens forurensingtilsyn (Norwegian Agency for Pollution Control)
SMK (in notes)	Statsministerens kontor (Office of the Norwegian Prime Minister)
Tsvetmetekologya	Ecological branch of the Soviet Ministry for Non-ferrous Metallurgy
zapovednik	nature protection area

But nature has little time to lose. We are still closer to where we started than we are to the goal line. The reconstruction of the nickel works is a gigantic industrial project, the Soviet Union is going through a deep transformation. Responsibilities are unclear. Decision making processes in the east are difficult, but decisions are necessary. Time is of the essence.

Jan Peder Syse, 1990

While the small Norwegian municipality Sr-Varanger, in the county of Finnmark, is unique in many ways, its primary claim to fame lies in its location. The eastern stretches of Sr-Varangers territory make up Norways national border with Russia. This fact has a multitude of implications for Sr-Varangers municipal administrators, local NGOs and roughly 10,000 inhabitants. The main settlement Kirkenes has a palpable Russian presence, and sports clubs, various cultural groups and other associations are engaged in a plethora of collaborative projects with Russian counterparts.

The Pechenganikel plant seen from the southeast and facing the RussianNorwegian border. Note the extensive damages to vegetation.
Photo: Amund Trellevik

However, the proximity to Russia does not only produce cooperation, trade and cultural exchange. It can at times, especially during the cold Arctic winter when meteorological factors conspire to put a frosty lid over the area, result in something entirely different. For instance, on 25 February 2019, during an especially frigid period when temperatures plummeted towards minus 40 degrees Celsius, the Sr-Varanger administration felt obliged to warn local citizens to stay indoors. It was not the freezing cold that constituted the danger (people in Finnmark are well equipped to handle low temperatures). Rather, it was a specific Russian export which flowed unchecked across the RussianNorwegian border that necessitated this public announcement: streams of sulphur dioxide emitted from the industry in the Russian border town Nikel. According to the local newspaper, an air quality measuring station close to the national border reported sulphur dioxide content in the atmosphere that well surpassed the established danger levels of 500 milligram per cubic metre of air.

The same article informed that the Russian owner-oligarch Mikhail Potanin pledged to reduce his companys total emissions by 75 per cent by 2023. Potanins statement, promising air quality improvement around his industrial facilities, is but one of many that have been issued by him and previous owners over the years. To the inhabitants of Sr-Varanger, such promises will hardly raise any hopes. They have seen bright prospects fall through on too many occasions to be swept away by optimism.

In this book, we shall look closer at the historical processes that so persistently curb their enthusiasm by examining the many attempts at decreasing industrial pollution stemming from the Pechenganikel plant in Russias northwestern corner. These efforts have since the late 1980s involved, inter alia, Soviet and Russian industry and government agencies, Finnish and Swedish industrialists and officials and, not least, Norwegian environmental authorities, foreign services and ecological activists. Thus, the history of pollution control in Northwest Russia is both a transnational history and an environmental history. It is also, inasmuch as the book follows the development from the dying breaths of the Soviet Union to the final Norwegian decision to withdraw from the collaborative efforts in 2010, a contribution to post-Soviet history. Finally, this book is an account of how Russias transformation from a socialist superpower to a quasi-democratic and ultra-capitalist state was handled by Western societies, in this case a small neighbouring country.

Next page

1234567...50

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia: The Arctic and the Environment»

Look at similar books to Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia: The Arctic and the Environment. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Lars Lih

Lenin

Matthew Light

Fragile Migration Rights: Freedom of movement in post-Soviet Russia

Katja Richters

The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church: Politics, Culture and Greater Russia

Elana Wilson Rowe

Russia and the North

Zeev Wolfson

The Geography of Survival: Ecology in the Post-Soviet Era: Ecology in the Post-Soviet Era

Alexander Sergunin

Russia in the Arctic: Hard or Soft Power?

Elana Wilson Rowe

Arctic Governance: Power in Cross-Border Cooperation

Lars Rowe

Industry, War and Stalins Battle for Resources: The Arctic and the Environment

Dmitriĭ Trenin

Russias Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia

Oliver-Semenov

Sunbathing in Siberia: a marriage of East and West in post-Soviet Russia

Collier

Post-Soviet social: neoliberalism, social modernity, biopolitics

Ėtkind

Warped mourning : stories of the undead in the land of the unburied

Discussion, reviews of the book Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia: The Arctic and the Environment and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.