28/09/2005
CCB was introduced on the International NGO Forum in NW Russia
By Maret Merisaar, CCB Water Policies Officer

On 15 and 16 September 2005 an international conference assessing the state of the development and future perspectives of the civil society in Russia was held in The Republic of Karelia. First conference of this kind in Russia took part in 2003 in Moscow, followed by forums in St. Peterburg and Rostov at the Don in 2004 and Irkutsk in 2005. Vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Mr. Vladimir. J. Lebedenko and the secretry of the Karelian section of the political party “United Russia”, Mr. Vladimir G. Sobinski stressed in their presentations the importance of the principle of cooperation among the European regions. Energy safety, education and fight with infectious diseases were ranked as the first three among the topics of these common activities. Development of the third sector organisations was assessed as an inevitable tool of mobilising and involving the human resources. The Director for the political affairs of the European Commission, Mr. Klaus Schuman said that the non-governmental organisations are recognised as the fourth dimension in the EU, in addition to the national governments, parliaments and congresses of the representatives of the regions. The head of the department dealing with NGOs explained that EC in not granting money for projects but promotes the involvement of the civil society in political decision making by including NGO representatives to various governmental steering and working groups.

The Republic of Karelia has been taken as a pilot area for developing the civil society. For example an advisory board or roundtable of various NGOs was formed at the Parliament of the republic recently. The Mayr of Petrozavodsk said, that according to a recent study, about 60% of the citizens belong to some NGO and about 1/3 have an experience of participating in some kind of decision making. Biggest part of the presentations on the plenary were dedicated to the protection of the rights of the child and work with young people. Environmental topics were raised by the chairman of the Karelian Section of the All-Russian Society for Nature Protection, prof Vladimir Lukanin. CCB Water Policy Officer introduced the 15 year cooperation experience and priority topics of CCB. The audience of the forum was reminded about the location of Karelia on the catchment area of the Baltic Sea that is a good foundation of future cooperation with the NE European eco-region. CCB members probably know, that today the local greens and nature protection society cooperate with CCB on partnership principle but they may become full members in the future.

Thematic workshops were organised on 16 September, for example a lot of water experts gathered in the Ministry of Agriculture for discussing the common good practices for water management in the whole NE Europe. Numerous presentations were given by professors of the universities, scientists from local water institute, leaders of the water service enterprice “Vodokanal etc. Suggestions by CCB are attached here as separate file.

Republic of Karelia is rich for forests, rivers and lakes. 55% of the waterbodies belong to the White Sea , 20% to Onega Lake and 25% to Ladoga Lake basins. The water in Lake Onega is soft and brown due to high content of humic substances. A lot of effort is made for removal of excess iron from the drinking water in Petrozavodsk. Water in the Lake Ladoga is much harder, containing more calcium and magnesium. Due to cold climate the self purification capacity of water bodies is weak. River Svir flowing between two big lakes, separates the Leningrad Oblast from the Republic of Karelia. River Neva connects the Lake Ladoga with the Gulf of Finland.

Despite the abundance of fresh water resources , the round table participants recognised the strategic importance of elaborating good practices for water management and expressed readiness for cooperation with other water experts of the Baltic Sea region. The existing experiences on cross border cooperation are related to common management of the surface water bodies and wetlands with Finland. Similar work between Russia and Estonia for the common management of Lake Peipsi was not known to them. Thus, copies of the reports of the Peipsi TransboundaryCo-operation Centre on the use of practical methods in organising public consultations and on the overview of Russian legislation enabling public participation in environmental decision making were distributed to the interested persons.

Dmitri Rybakov from the Association of the Greens of Karelia was quite critical towards the protection and supervision of the water resources and about the recent abolishment of the ministries of environment protection (called ministries for management of natural resources) all over the country. He proposed the following measures to be included into the final declaration of the roundtable:
1) applying the “polluter pays” principle while distributing certain public subsidies;
2) elaborate the system of public monitoring over the usage of public funds for water management;
3) improve the public awareness rising on water management issues and other questions on environmental policies over the media, thus reaching better also the public authorities.

The final documents of the forum should appear on the web http://www.karelia- zs.ru

The newsletter of Karelian greens published by the local nature protection society is available on http://zellist.narod.ru

Additional information on the EU new Neighbourhood Policy, published in May 2004 can be found on http://europa.eu.int/comm/world/enp