A leading Russian environmental group hit back Thursday at an assertion by President Vladimir Putin that environmental concerns should not be allowed to hold back economic development.
“The Russian president doesn’t understand that there is a direct link between economic prosperity and the state of nature,” the Ekozashchita! (Ecodefence) organisation said in a written statement.
The group said that comments by Putin on national television on Wednesday signified the imminent abolition of the current system of environmental screening of potential industrial projects, in which state and non-state actors both have a voice.
The abolition of such controls “represents the giving over of Russia’s natural resources to destruction by big business and the ending of the opportunity for social organisations to participate in decision-making,” the statement read.
In his comments on Wednesday, Putin particularly criticised environmental objections that had held up a number of projects.
“As soon as we start to do something, one line of attack against us is always environmental problems… Ecological expertise shouldn’t obstruct the development of the country or the economy,” Putin said.
Putin gave as an example environmental objections that had caused the re-routing of an oil pipeline currently being built from western Siberia to Russia’s Pacific coast in order to supply Asian markets.
Having to build the pipeline around the northern shore of Russia’s Lake Baikal had cost “hundreds of millions of dollars more,” Putin said.
