WWF dissatisfied with ecological support of 2014 Sochi Olympiad

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) of Russia is dissatisfied with the way its opinion in taken into account in ecological support of Olympiad-2014 in Sochi; while the State Corporation (SC) "Olympstroy" emphasizes that the requirements to Olympic objects meet the experience of foreign countries as regards ecological construction.

The WWF states that despite a higher last year's involvement of the public in discussing the course of preparing the Sochi-2014, the decisions are not fulfilled, causing doubts of the efficiency of this sort of consultation mechanisms.

"Thus, the WWF, Greenpeace and other public nature-protecting organizations have regularly drawn attention to very poor quality of the project documentation on Olympic objects. Nobody has ever made a complete assessment of the influence of these objects on the environment," ecologists assert. "For example, the assessment of the ecological influence of the Adler-Krasnaya Polyana combined motor and railway road, currently the largest Olympic project (estimated as 240 billion roubles), is based on the zoological and botanical study, which was made by less than 10 persons within a couple of weeks."

"The Olympiad organizers fail to trace how the civil works have already affected the ecosystems of the region. The 'Roshydromet' (Russian Federal Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring Service) in charge of this sort of tracing said that they would start it in 2012, which is senseless, because by then all the objects will be finished and nothing could be changed," the WWF notes.

"Huge building projects always assume compensatory measures, including creation and expansion of specially protected natural territories. It was also planned in preparation for the Olympiad. However, so far, not a single protected territory was set up or expanded. Moreover, borders of some territories, on the contrary, were cut down," the "green" activists assert. "In July 2009, the city-resort Sochi adopted the General Development Plan, in which about 8000 hectares of the Sochi National Park are marked as the territory of the city, not of the Park. The area of the designed 'Utrish' Reserve was reduced from 15,000 down to 9000 hectares. In the end of December, 'Rosregistry' changed the borders in order to build a road to the resort of 'Gazprom'. This decision was accompanied neither by a governmental decision nor by public debates."

Ecologists also emphasize that "obstacles are built for work of public organizations." "Twice - in August and October - ecological activists, mainly employees of the Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus, were arrested for breaking the frontier regime, although tourists who come here in plenty, even don't know about its existence," the statement of the WWF says.

"We believe that presently the preparation for the Olympiad has got off the track, the quality of construction is low, a huge damage has already been and will be caused to the environment, while public organizations are deprived of any chances to run their independent control over the course of construction," the official website of the Russian WWF quotes Igor Chestin, its leader.

In their turn, the press service of the SC "Olympstroy" has stated, in the official comment, that "compensatory measures considerably exceed the volume of negative influence on ecosystems."

"The SC 'Olympstroy' has developed, together with 'Minprirody' (Russian Ministry of Natural Resources), additional ecological requirements and recommendations to designing and construction of Olympic objects," runs the statement as quoted by the "Gazeta.Ru".

Let us remind you also that one of these days Yuri Trutnev, head of the "Minprirody", promised that the Sochi National Park, from which one percent of the territory was withdrawn before the start of Olympic objects, will get 22,000 hectares from the forestry fund instead.