The leader of the Communist Party faction in the People’s Khural of Buryatia, Viktor Malyshenko, collapsed to the head of the Communist Party faction in the State Duma with an open letter regarding the clearing of forests along Baikal allowed by Putin to expand the BAM and Transsib. “This law completely abolishes the state ecological expertise of objects erected in specially protected natural areas,” the letter says. “The same law cancels, until December 31, 2024, environmental expertise in federal protected areas, as well as in the Baikal natural territory.”
Viktor Malyshenko, in this regard, notes that “now objects of modernization of transport infrastructure – railways and roads, ports, airfields and everything connected with them – will be built without taking into account environmental risks.” He refers to the opinion of ecologists who argue that “clear cuttings of forests on Lake Baikal in mountainous areas will lead to soil erosion, which in turn will lead to the drainage of clay, sand and biogenic elements into Lake Baikal.” And this is especially dangerous for specially protected natural areas of regional significance. Now it will be possible to do almost anything on the reserved lands, without considering that these projects would never have been approved by the environmental expertise, the leader of the Communist Party faction in the People’s Khural of Buryatia notes.
“The fate of Baikal is becoming more and more deplorable, given that right now the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation is developing a new draft resolution of the Russian government“ On the approval of the list of activities prohibited in the central ecological zone of the Baikal natural territory ”. Malyshenko claims that with its acceptance, Baikal as a UNESCO site is actually deprived of protection from predatory development and development.
“Thus, any investment project can be implemented in the central ecological zone of the Baikal natural territory, if it is developed on the basis of government decrees or orders, or decrees, orders of the President of the Russian Federation,” the parliamentarian concludes. – If the new list is adopted, such a decree will in fact be allowed to build any facility on Lake Baikal, even a pulp and paper mill, even a nuclear power plant, as well as neutralize production and consumption waste by incineration without purifying emissions to standard quality, ground and underground disposal waste, including radioactive substances (materials), and this is not the entire list of permitted activities. “
Viktor Malyshenko believes: “What is happening now with environmental standards is a direct violation of the obligations of the Russian Federation to protect the world cultural and natural heritage, this may lead to the fact that Lake Baikal will lose the status of a UNESCO site and will be transferred to the list of world heritage under threat “.
In this regard, the leader of the Communist Party faction in the National Economy of the Republic of Belarus asks Gennady Zyuganov to initiate amendments to legislative acts at the federal level to return the provisions on the obligation to conduct a state ecological examination of objects erected in specially protected natural areas of regional significance, in federal protected areas, as well as in the Baikal region. natural territory.