Trans-boundary Environmental
Issues in the Former Soviet Union
Contents
I.
I.
Introduction
II.
II.
The Soviet Legacy
III.
III.
The Nuclear Issue
IV.
IV.
The Water Issue
V.
V.
The Energy Issue
VI.
VI.
Strategies for the Future
VII.
VII.
Endnotes
Appendix A: Map-Water
Consumption as a Percentage of Water Availability
Appendix B: Map- Energy
Imports as a Percentage of Energy Consumption
Appendix C: Maps- Asia and
Europe
I.
Introduction
The landmass that comprises
the former Soviet Union (FSU) stretches 11 time zones, includes 15 independent
countries, and is home for hundreds of ethnic groups with a total population of
nearly 300 million. From the islands
off north of Japan to Central Asian steppe, and from the frozen Siberian taiga
forests to the fertile agricultural belts of eastern Europe, the area's
features have shaped history. Just as
the region's cultural traditions and physical topography have shaped its
political history, so too have they shaped the many environmental
characteristics of the region. Fresh
water, fisheries, fertile land, nuclear power, and the pollution of a Soviet
legacy are all issues that remain to be solved by the newly independent states.
In
this paper, I will address water quality, the flow of oil, the nuclear dilemma,
along with other issues, and show how the land and the peoples that inhabit
distinct regions within the former Soviet Union interplay with these
issues. I will also show how the legacy
of Soviet rule has been responsible for the extent to which these problems are
important and difficult issues today.
II. The Soviet
Legacy
Inseparable
from the discussion of environmental, economic, or social problems in the FSU
are issues of a weak infrastructure left behind by the Soviet regime. The centrally planned nature of state
socialism or communism has left many if not all FSU states with deep internal
problems that exacerbate the difficulties of participating in a market system
as sovereign nations.
Table
1 shows some basic economic indicators for the FSU. Of particular interest is the overspecialization in agricultural
production for certain countries such as Moldova and Uzbekistan. You will also notice that Purchasing Power
Parity (PPP) varies from $2550 per capita in Azerbaijan to $6850 in the case of
Belarus. But these statistics only
begin to show the dysfunctional system that communism spawned.
Communism also failed to relate
inputs to outputs in production with no concern for efficiency. Many factory or farm managers simply needed
to boost output, no matter how many resources that were squandered in the
process. This legacy continues today
with respect to water use and land use for farming. In many regions the government still owns, provides free, or
heavily subsidies farm land and water.
The problem is that without incentives for more efficient use of water
and other products such as fertilizer many countries, such as Uzbekistan, face
a great risk of squandering their water resources.[i][1]
The
SU has also left behind a catastrophe in the Aral, Black, and Caspian
Seas. Agricultural runoff high in metal
rich fertilizers, the introduction of exotic species, and weapons related tests
and facilities have left fisheries and drinking water supplies on the verge of
collapse. Water extraction for
agriculture has also caused immense calamities for the Aral and Caspian Seas
whose shores have shrunk considerably in the wake of improper water management
practices.
The
Caspian Sea is also a battleground over natural resources, namely oil. The unique nature of the sea being
landlocked and the number and character of the countries that surround it
present a unique problem in the arena of natural resources. Who has the rights to tap the oil
reserves? Right now Turkmenistan,
Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Kazakhstan are making claims to its oil
reserves. These trends leave the FSU
with three major priorities: nuclear materials, water resources, and the
management of natural resources such as oil and gas.
III. The
Nuclear Issue
For
reasons known to all of us, the Soviet Union (SU) developed a large nuclear
industry for both military and energy purposes. While prior to 1991 this wide network of nuclear facilities was
regulated by Moscow, the fact that many of the facilities lie outside of Russia
is a major problem today given both the environmental and the military threat
of these materials.
In
Russia alone there are 320 cities and 1548 other locations used to store
radioactive material.[ii][2] In
Ukraine approximately 100,000 small nuclear facilities exist and there are
11,000 in Moldova.[iii][3]
Geologists in Kazakhstan have found about 80 million tons of radioactive
waste and since the mid-1960's the Atyrau oblast has been the test site for
some 17 nuclear tests.
The
incident of reactor four at Chernobyl in 1986 in Ukraine graphically displays
the severity of this issue. Ukrainian
government officials put the direct death toll of the accident at 8,000 with
another 12,000 individuals being badly irradiated.[iv][4]
Other sources place the expected death toll from cancer as a result of
the accident at up to 100,000. In
Ukraine, nearly 17 million acres of land was contaminated by the cesium 137
fallout from the reactor and similar exposures were incurred by Belarus and
Norway. It is further estimated that
Belarus has suffered a loss equal to ten national budgets and Ukraine spends
28% of its annual budget on matters related to the incident.
Clearly
a disaster of this magnitude requires swift and extensive assistance from the
federal government. However, efforts to
remedy the situation during the twilight of the Soviet Union ranged from
misplaced to nonexistent and now an entirely new problem has emerged. How can you hold responsible a government
that no longer exists?
Illustrating
the problem is Aramais Petrossian, one of 3,000 Armenian volunteers who worked
at the Chernobyl site in 1986.[v][5] At
the time volunteers such as himself were held up as heroes but now he remains a
casualty, suffering from a radiation exposure of 180 roentgens. Making the situation worse is that he is no
longer able to receive the specialized treatment once available in Ukraine
since nonresidents are no longer permitted to receive such treatment. Petrossian's care now defaults to the
government of Armenia, whose economic difficulties and ongoing ethnic war with
Azerbaijan dilute the importance of treating such heroes of the past.
IV. The Water
Issue
Water is arguably the most valuable resource
for any civilization. Water is vital to
plant growth and the transport of goods.
Water supports the vast fisheries of many coastal countries. And perhaps nowhere else in the world are so
many varied issues of water such as pesticide contamination, over extraction,
saltification, and overfishing so vividly displayed. From the collapsing fisheries of the Baltic Sea to falling levels
in the Aral Sea, the FSU is home to a host of transboundary issues surrounding
water.
Illustrating this point with clarity
is the case of Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan
is a country heavily dependent on water for the irrigation of its agricultural
fields. In Uzbekistan, 92 percent of
its cropland is irrigated and the country uses 76 percent of its available
water supply. This need has taxed its
main sources of water, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, that flow through the
country to the Aral Sea. The flow of
these rivers has declined from 110 cubic kilometers to nearly no flow since
1985.[vi][6]
The
problems for this lack of water are multiple.
First, Uzbekistan is highly populated for the amount of arable land in
the country creating a stress on scarce resources.[vii][7]
There is only .37 ha of arable land per capita in Uzbekistan compared to
nearly 2 ha in Ukraine.[viii][8]
Second, the country is artificially specialized in agriculture from
Soviet times when the country provided 60 percent of the cotton output in the
SU.[ix][9]
Third, there is extensive mismanagement in regards to the use and
division of water resources and rights.
Forth, there is little international cooperation which is vitally
important given that the country is dependent on rivers that originate in
Turkmenistan.
The
greatest reason for the lack of water in Uzbekistan is that the government does
not charge any per unit fee for providing water to farmers. While this might seem very amiable of the
government, it leads to over-exploitation of the resource since there is no
incentive to cut back. Further, studies
have shown that crops such as cotton may fair better with less water since the
water is only going to nourish other competing plants.[x][10]
Seepage and evaporation losses from the extensive system of canals also
waste approximately 50% of the water channeled away from the Amu Darya and Syr
Darya rivers.[xi][11]
To
help resolve this problem many scholars have proposed charging for consumption
of water since the government currently bears the burden of the construction,
maintenance, expansion, and operation of the irrigation systems.[xii][12]
Researchers at the Central Asian Scientific Research Institute of Land
Reclamation and Irrigation propose a fee of $6.33 per 1000 cubic meters of
water to help curb consumption to modest and necessary levels.[xiii][13]
Other suggestions include the use of tradable water permits, reminiscent
of the use of pollution permits in the United States and elsewhere. This would achieve a reduction in the amount
of water consumed and provide the necessary incentives for reduction to the
farmers.
The
last issue of water in Uzbekistan takes on an international dimension. While under the Soviet Regime it was
possible for Moscow to regulate each republic's extraction of water from the
Aral Sea watershed (at least in theory), few international agreements exist
between countries such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan to regulate
the use of water today. A strong reason
behind this is the tradition of prior appropriation water rights as in much of
the western United States. Prior
appropriation is seen as a "use it or lose it" policy that encourages
countries to overuse otherwise they may not be "entitled" to such use
in the future.[xiv][14]
To remedy this situation there needs to be more extensive cooperation
and economic incentives behind the use of water to help prevent the disastrous
effects that have befallen the Aral Sea from over-extraction.
The
case of Uzbekistan helps to show the sorts of environmental issues that
permeate the Aral, Black, and Caspian Seas.
In the Aral Sea basin the extraction of water from watercourses has so
depleted the inflow into the Aral Sea as to shrink the shoreline, sucking
nearly two-thirds of all the water from the world’s fourth largest inland sea.[xv][15]
This decrease in the shoreline has unveiled salt flats and increased the
salinity of the Aral Sea. Winds have
carried this saline air into Karakalpak ASSR and Syr Darya Oblast and turned
200,000 ha or 13% of the arable land in Uzbekistan unfit for agriculture.[xvi][16]
This
trend not only threatens agriculture but also the many marine and terrestrial
organisms that depend on the Aral. As
the level of the sea falls, the concentrations of the many pollutants such as
nitrates and phosphates rise, as with the salinity. The Aral once provided the SU with an annual fisheries catch of
50,000 tons, but with the water three times as saline the waters cannot support
life.[xvii][17]
The
Caspian Sea is in a similar situation despite earnest efforts of Soviet
engineers to remedy the situation in 1980.[xviii][18]
In that year they completed a barrage across the entrance to the
Kara-Bogaz Bay. This bay was shallow
and accounted for much of the evaporation from the Caspian Sea. By isolating the bay they hoped to reduce
the decline in the Caspian shoreline.
It worked all too well. Coupled
with a few rainy years the sea rose two meters and in the late 1980s the waters
overtook the barrage and Turkmenistan decided to dismantle the barrage.[xix][19]
This resulted in several villages on the Caspian coastal plain to be
flooded and several Azeri oil fields as well.
These oil fields have only complicated the extensive demise of environmental
conditions in the southern part of the sea.[xx][20]
To add to the situation, an old nuclear waste dump in Turkmenistan is
only 150 meters from the rising Caspian Sea.
The
Black Sea has its own scourge as well.
The unintentional introduction of Mnemiopsis
leidyi, a tiny jellyfish, in the early 1980s has decimated native
populations in the absence of natural predators.[xxi][21]
By feeding on eggs and larvae of fish, Mnemiopsis leidyi has reduced the catch of fish in the Black Sea by
90% in six years. If this invader was
not enough, recall that the Black Sea has the dubious honor of receiving much
of the agricultural and urban wastes of Europe.
The
Danube and the Dneiper rivers flow into the sea, bringing with them nutrients,
heavy metals, and pesticides.[xxii][22]
Nutrients such as phosphates and nitrates from detergents and
fertilizers lead to algae blooms. The
algae then dies, sinks to the bottom, and decays. This process requires oxygen and large amounts of it, thereby
causing the waters to become eutrophic.
This has further depressed populations of aquatic life in the sea.
Along
with nutrients, the rivers from 13 countries also drain into the bay carrying
pesticides, once including lindane and DDT.
These chemicals have catastrophic effects on marine organisms and
humans. Further, the pollution from the
SU's Black Sea Fleet is also responsible for extensive contamination.[xxiii][23]
Once there were 26 active fisheries in the Black Sea, now there are 4.
These
are just a few examples of the range and extent of water-related environmental
problems in the FSU. At the heart of
these problems are monitoring, cooperation, and policy. There needs to be monitoring to understand
the impact of human activity on rivers and lakes. There needs to be cooperation between the states that share these
resources. And there needs to be common
policy that makes sense to uniformly regulate these resources among
states. Without these provisions,
governments and individuals will continue to exploit these precious areas.
V. The Energy
Issue
Energy is an environmental issue
that transcends politics, countries, and economics more so than any other issue
facing the FSU. The wealth of oil,
natural gas, and rare metals are of pivotal importance for these emerging
economies as a means to higher standards of living and rising GDP. A simple but vitally important factor in the
struggle over natural resources such as fossil fuels is that they are unevenly
distributed over the surface of the earth.
Where a country draws its boundary line whether on land or in the sea
determines the amount of these fuels to which it will have access. Furthermore, the levels of fossil fuels to
which a country has access greatly affects the level of influence a country can
exert in a particular region.
Such
is the case with the FSU, a collection of countries with varying amounts of
energy sources, with most FSU states dependent on select few energy
exporters. Table 3 shows several energy
statistics for the FSU including the levels of energy importation as a
percentage of domestic energy consumption.
As the table displays, only Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan have a net export of energy out of the 15 FSU states. This definitely creates areas of tension,
none greater than the region's heavy dependence on Russian oil and
Turkmenistani natural gas.
Essentially
two important issues exist with respect to these natural resources: property
rights and transportation rights. Given
that many of the states of the FSU are landlocked in theory or in a practical
sense, great debate exists as to where the pipes to carry oil and gas should be
placed. This is even a larger question
given that many areas with existing pipelines, notably Chechnya, are highly
unstable. While initial property rights
might not be a huge debate for oil fields that lie well behind Kazakhstan's
borders in the Tengiz Oil Field, there is a bit of debate over the oil that
rests at the bottom of the Caspian Sea.
The
case of the Caspian Sea is of great interest because five states: Russia,
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan, all border the sea. Russia would like all the countries to
observe the 1940 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation that the SU signed with
Iran.[xxiv][24]
This treaty would grant each country a 10-mile fishing zone adjacent to
its coast but provide for shared rights beyond that limit. Other states surrounding the sea adhere to
the 1982 international Law of the Sea which allows for countries bordering
territorial or inland seas to carve them up as they see fit.[xxv][25]
Assuming that this debate is resolved, the question of where and how to
transport the oil to market via the seas.
Tensions
between Armenia and Azerbaijan are high and therefore Russia, Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan would like to avoid transport through most
of the Caucasus. Iran is also rather
unstable given its political history.
Further, the US Senate Banking Committee has approved legislation that
would impose sanctions on non-US companies doing business with Iran.[xxvi][26]
Although France and Japan also have a financial interest in the region,
the financial and political support of the US is seen as vital by most involved
parties. Furthermore, many parties,
especially Kazakhstan, fear Russia having too much control over the flow of
oil.
One
of the most extensive proposals for the transport of oil was made by the
Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).[xxvii][27]
The group includes Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Oman. The proposal would move oil to the Black Sea
port of Novorossiysk from Tengiz and Caspian Sea oil wells.[xxviii][28]
Another proposal was made by Turkey's Botas, a division of Turkish
Petroleum Corp. It proposes a
Caspian-Mediterranean Pipeline to relieve the congestion in the Straights of
Bosporus.[xxix][29]
While
these debates are long from over, the present and future challenge to energy
policy and use is clear. The entire FSU
has a vastly economic stake in how energy policy takes shape in the region. The simple logistical matters of oil and gas
transport are extensive, however, when coupled with the ethnic and political
disputes between Chechnya and Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the fear of
continued Russian control, the true complexity of the issue becomes apparent.
VI. Strategies for the Future
Water resources, nuclear materials, and
fossil fuels are environmental issues that touch every part of the emerging
independent states of the FSU, from health to economics. The policies of the Soviet regime have
spawned mismanagement of natural resources, over-specialization in particular
economic sectors, and a defunct infrastructure for the transport of goods and
resources. The environmental problems
that were once only the SU's are now the problem of all the successor states. Although they inherited these problems, they
did not inherit an infrastructure to cope with them.
Despite
these numerous environmental challenges, the FSU is not without its share of
success stories. While most of the FSU
has not begun to address environmental problems, the Baltic states, Lithuania
in particular, have become a model for Eastern Europe and Asia. Lithuania has developed an extensive
environmental protection program in cooperation with several international
bodies including US Environmental Protection Agency, US Agency for
International Development, and the governments of Latvia and Estonia. Their plan incorporates representivity,
complexity, sufficiency, non-excessiveness, reliability, flexibility, and
biocentricity into their strategy.[xxx][30]
Moreover, they have taken steps to include citizen groups in
environmental monitoring to increase awareness and supplement scientific
data. These plans are also
forward-looking as opposed to other policy actions that merely respond to
environmental problems.
Successful
cases of Lithuania and Latvia guide us toward several conclusions about
potential strategies for resolving environmental problems in the FSU. First, the strategies must be forward
looking and not simply come in the form of responses to catastrophes. Second, all countries and parties with a
stake in environmental or resource planning must be included in the discussions
and the outcome. This is vitally
important because nearly all environmental problems are caused by externalities,
and without complete cooperation pollution and other environmental maladies
will simply be displaced over space and time onto other countries and
peoples. Third, there must be public
education and involvement. Furthermore,
there needs to be economic incentives to guide the public’s actions with
respect to resource consumption and the production of non-product outputs. In this setting a framework can be developed
to prevent the economically and socially harmful effects of environmental
problems and help alleviate the current environmental challenges in the FSU.
Endnotes