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Not In My Back Yard

The Arctic Ocean is likely to become the dumping-ground of the world if it will be developed on the basis of economic principles only.

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President of Russia Mr. Putin called for sustainable development and protection of Russia’s unique ecosystems in his speech at the Security Council on 20 November, 2013. He acknowledged that 15 percent of the country’s territory is in unsatisfactory environmental condition. 

In his speech, Mr. Putin paid special attention to the bad condition of such freshwater reserves as Lake Baikal, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. The evolving concern over the environmental situation in the Arctic Ocean was referred to but not a single concrete step was proposed for the protection of this territory.

Just a month earlier Mr. Putin called a Muscovite political science professor Sergei Medvedev a “moron” after the latter had proposed international protection over Arctic waters.

The moronisation of Prof. Medvedev might be due to his idea of the subordination of Russia’s Arctic areas to international supervision. From the Russian point of view, any interference by international actors with the use of Russian land resources is deemed as sacrilege.

Both Prof. Medvedev and international spectators recognize that there is a high potential of a catastrophe in the territory because of extreme weather circumstances with an unlikely recovery of the Arctic nature in case an ecological catastrophe occurs.

Russia is not the only country subject to Prof. Medvedev’s criticism. Equal attention has to be paid to Norwegian government’s plans to extract oil in the Barents Sea.

But Mr. Putin’s concerns over the protection of some of the country’s freshwater reserves and simultaneous negligence of Arctic nature appear highly hypocritical. This kind of policy-making is well-known as NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard.

At the bottom of NIMBY politics is the notion that one may advocate some global agendas – such as sustainable development or environmental protection – in general but oppose the same ideas when one’s short-term interests are threatened. Russia’s territorial interests may be considered being under threat if its Arctic waters were subordinated to international inspection.

But as professor Medvedev argues, international cooperation in the Arctic territory would serve Russian national interests as well. We have not seen an ecological catastrophe in the Arctic waters yet, but in case such occurs, the effects will be global. Russia would be the country most affected by the catastrophe.

Professor Medvedev has put forward a serious argument, and his statements should be taken into international consideration. At the moment he has been marginalised and demonised by the Russian authorities. We must rehabilitate him by furthering his ideas to the global audience.

To sum, I would like to cite Mr. Putin’s ideas expressed in the Security Council on 20th of November:

“Let me say again that we must make effective use of international cooperation mechanisms in environmental protection, especially in cases when environmental problems are cross-border in nature, such as the situation with the Amur and Irtysh River basins and pollution of the marine environment.”

This sounds good. Further steps need to be taken in this direction and mental obstacles to be overcome.