Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal June 2004 1461-5517/04/020121-10 US$08.00 IAIA 2004 121

Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, volume 22, number 2, June 2004, pages 121–130, Beech Tree Publishing, 10 Watford Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 2EP, UK

Russian Federation

Environmental assessment in the Russian Federation: evolution through capacity building

Aleg Cherp and Svetlana Golubeva

The Russian Federation environmental assess-ment (EA) system comprises state environmental review (SER) undertaken by state authorities and assessment of environmental impacts (OVOS) undertaken by the developers. Despite significant progress in the 1990s, integration between SER and OVOS, screening and scoping provisions and alignment with international approaches were often seen as problematic. These issues were addressed in the EIA Regulations issued in 2000. However, the system immediately came under a major threat resulting from the closure of the Ministry of Environment. Supported by capacity-building efforts and strong networking, the Russian EA community has largely deflected this threat and enrolled various stakeholders into supporting EA, which now encompasses SER and OVOS components. Activities at regional level and critical evaluation of the existing sys-tem were key elements in these efforts.

Keywords: environmental assessment; Russia; state environmental review; capacity building

Aleg Cherp (corresponding author) is at the Department of Envi-ronmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, Nádor u. 9, 1051, Budapest, Hungary, E-mail: cherpa@ceu.hu; Website: www.ceu.hu/envsci/. Svetlana Golubeva is Business Development Manager, ICF/EKO, Tverskaya zastava, 3, off. 240, Moscow, Russia; E-mail: sgolubeva@icfeko.ru; Website: www.icfeko.ru.

The authors are grateful to numerous Russian EA practitio-ners for discussing ideas presented in this paper and to the World Bank and Ecoline in Russia for providing forums for such discussions. All the opinions expressed are the authors’ who bear full responsibility for possible errors and omissions.

HE RUSSIAN FEDERATION (RF) is one of the largest emerging democracies. For centu-ries, it has exercised a profound cultural, po-

litical and economic influence on both immediate and more distant neighbours. The newly independent states (NIS) of the former USSR still look up to Russia in many matters of environmental policy, including environmental assessment (EA).1 That is why understanding the Russian EA system is espe-cially important.

Several internationally published studies of EA in RF and its context (for instance, Cherp and Lee, 1997; Govorushko, 1991; Khotulyova et al, 1998) identified and explored specific challenges facing the Russian EA system in the 1990s. However, it had always been obvious that both the system and its political and economic context were undergoing a rapid transition, while the knowledge about its func-tioning was accumulating. The authors thus felt it necessary both to update the reader on the most re-cent changes in the Russian EA system and to show it from an angle that should help to understand its ‘dynamic’ as well as its ‘static’ features.

The observations and analysis reported in this ar-ticle have been accumulated in the course of several EA studies and capacity-building projects under-taken over the last five years. The most important have been the World Bank study on the effective-ness of the EA system in Russia (von Ritter and Tsirkunov, 2002), the project on strengthening EIA in Russia conducted by the University of Manchester and Ecoline (EIA Centre, 2001), as well as research by Volostnov (1999), Prokopets (2001), Verzhbit-skaya (2001) and additional information gathered for the national State of the Environment Reports 1997–2002.

T

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The authors sought to analyse the Russian EA system as a “dynamic policy system” as suggested by Cherp and Antypas (2003). This means exploring the ways in which EA policies are formulated, im-plemented and adjusted, including through ‘policy networks’ that are able to bring together diverse forms of knowledge, perspectives and experiences. To achieve this objective, instead of giving a snap-shot of the Russian EA system, we first discuss its context and the main driving forces and challenges as they existed at the end of the 1990s. We then ex-amine the evolution of the system paying special at-tention to the capacity of networks of EA actors to deal with the most pressing issues. Finally, we out-line the future challenges facing EA in Russia and the most promising ways of dealing with these.

EA in Russia and context at turn of century

Overview of the EA system in the 1990s

Although, certain elements of EA have existed in the USSR since the 1960s, a coherent EA system emerged only in the late 1980s in response to the ris-ing awareness of environmental problems, the in-creasing interest in international approaches to environmental regulation, and the emerging policy of glasnost (openness and transparency). The Soviet Government of that time was especially attracted by the possibility of incorporating the US National En-vironmental Policy Act and other western experi-ence in the existing system of socialist expertizas (expert reviews of planned economic activities). Es-sentially, this was an attempt to achieve ‘western’ results by socialist means, typical for many envi-ronmental policies of the perestroika (see Larin et al, 2003). Thus, the system of ‘ecological experti-zas’ was rapidly institutionalised and became the central pillar of the Soviet and then Russian envi-ronmental protection system (Cherp and Lee, 1997).

The concept of ecological expertizas, deeply rooted in the hierarchical and technocratic manage-ment of the centrally planned economy, was initially translated as EIA (see, for instance, Govorushko, 1991). However, its fundamental differences from western EA were soon realised, so the term state environmental review (SER) was coined in inter-national publications.2

The formal SER procedure, stipulated by key en-vironmental laws (Federal Law on Environmental Protection (1991; 2002), Federal Environmental Re-view Law (1995)) has not changed much over the last eight years. It has been centred on the review of the design or planning documentation for proposed pro-jects (or other planned activities) by state-appointed special expert committees, and issuing a mandatory ‘resolution’ on whether, and under what conditions, the proposed development can go ahead. Hundreds of thousands of SERs have been conducted in Russia since 1989 (see, for instance, Table 1).

However, by the early 1990s, the Russian practi-tioners familiar with international EA experience pointed out that the procedure of environmental impact assessments by which developers prepare part of the documentation to be reviewed by SER, called OVOS,3 is, in fact, more similar to the west- ern EIA than SER. Unfortunately, the concept of OVOS, a ‘soft’ environmental policy tool, was much harder to sell to politicians, officials and the public. Therefore, it was hardly mentioned in the legal acts of the 1990s, except the OVOS Regulations (1994) which were largely ignored by both developers and officials.

In the mid-1990s, progress was slower than it could have been, partially because of somewhat different views within the Russian EA community regarding the best approach for strengthening the system. There was the SER group of experts in key positions in the Ministry, who relied on well-established institutions, laws and practices, and ex-tensive bureaucracy. They maintained that SER is the most appropriate preventive environmental pol-icy tool for Russia. In their view, improvements could only be achieved through gradually strength-ening SER provisions and institutions.

Many such developments in regulations, guide-lines, technical capacities and institutions have been made over more than a decade of a functioning SER system resulting in conceptual and procedural de-velopments of EA. However, these improvements arguably came at a slow pace, partially because there were no obvious ‘benchmarks’ (either domestically or internationally) for ‘best practice’ of SER, and innovations were difficult to introduce and dissemi-nate, given the scale of the country and the constant administrative reform.

Another factor slowing the development of the SER approach was that it was not obviously com-patible with western EA, so that lessons from inter-national EA experience could not directly be

Table 1. Number of SERs conducted at the federal and regional level in Russia, 1991–1994 and 1997–2003

Year Number of SERs

Federal level Regional level

1991a 50,000 1992a 56,000 1993a 78,200 1994a 80,800

1997b 402 57,600 1998b 873 60,700 1999b 568 75,000 2000b 430 61,000 2001b 165 53,000 2002b 173 36,000 2003c 250 48,000

Sources: a Lopatin (1995) b von Ritter and Tsirkunov (2002) and State of the

Environment Reports (1998–-2003) c Ministry of Natural Resources (2003)

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incorporated into SER practice. For much the same reason, alignment of the SER approach to that of in-ternational investors and international development agencies (such as European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank) was complicated.4 The public, though generally suppor-tive of the clear-cut and strict nature of SER resolu-tions, often demanded a degree of access to information, transparency and participation, which was difficult for the technocratic and bureaucratised SER system to grant.

Finally (and, perhaps, most importantly), the growing business community was increasingly irri-tated by SER provisions (particularly by their indis-criminate application to almost all types of activity), which they considered as yet another bureaucratic obstacle to investment. In times of declining econ-omy, low investment and populist governmental policies, this was not such a significant factor; however, it proved to be decisive when the economy turned around at the end of the 1990s.

The second, OVOS, group of Russian EA practi-tioners held the view that the SER system had to be radically reformed, if not dismantled, to give way to EA provisions modelled after best international practice and centred on the OVOS procedure. The investor/developer and the public should be the main actors in this process, with state authorities playing an auxiliary role. Not surprisingly, this position was not enthusiastically supported by SER bureaucrats. Moreover, many environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were also extremely suspi-cious about any proposals to reform the SER system, which they viewed as the only real safeguard whereby environmentally dangerous developments could be stopped.

Nevertheless, the proponents of OVOS managed to develop its discourse and practice, the latter in connection with the activities of international lend-ing institutions, especially as facilitated by the Cen-tre for Project Preparation linked to the Russian Pollution Abatement Facility operated by the World Bank, EBRD and other international funding institu-tions (Maximenko and Gorkina, 1999). Within this context, EIAs were prepared with regard to the 1994

OVOS Regulations but mostly according to the international (such as the World Bank) procedures.

The dialogue between the two ‘camps’ was com-plicated by their institutional affiliations and inter-ests and, in some cases, became deadlocked. It was also framed by such endemic Russia’s questions as: finding its own way vs adopting western experience; autocratic regulation by enlightened bureaucracy vs a self-regulating democracy; and so on. These were spiced up by more modern discussions of environ-ment vs development, and federal vs decentralised government. It should also be noted that the forma-tion of Russian environmental policy, especially the tools for mainstreaming environment in develop-ment planning, environmental policy integration, and other tools characteristic of ‘ecological modernisation’ proceeded very slowly in Russia in the 1990s (Larin et al, 2003).

All these circumstances had unfortunate conse-quences in the lack of integration of SER and OVOS. In particular, it was frequently noted that OVOS reports (‘volumes’) often did not focus on the core environmental issues, did not meet the expectations of the SER, and did not influence deci-sion-making on proposed activities (Cherp and Lee, 1997; von Ritter and Tsirkunov, 2002).

As already mentioned, very large numbers of SERs have been conducted in Russia (see Table 1). The overwhelming majority of them have focused on project-level activities, with only 1% or 2% ad-dressing regional plans or development schemes. Moreover, according to Volostnov (1999), up to three-quarters of developments reviewed by SER have not been environmentally significant.

According to von Ritter and Tsirkunov (2002), the decline in the number of SERs between 1999 and 2001 reflected a worrying combination of two nega-tive trends: declining capacity within the SER institutions and increased focus on cases with low environmental impact at the expense of coverage of cases with significant impact. Moreover, a sample re-view of SER cases reported by these authors shows that SER resolutions were becoming shorter and in-creasingly focused on procedural issues rather than on substantive recommendations of mitigation measures.

Nevertheless, those cases submitted to SER typi-cally complied, at least formally, with the SER requirements. On the other hand, compliance with OVOS Regulations (1994) and the EIA Regulations (2000), has been very low particularly with regard to public participation and preparation of terms of reference.5 Thus, meaningful OVOS practice was mainly limited to large projects with foreign partici-pation and much of it occurred within the framework of the Russian pollution abatement facility (Maxi-menko and Gorkina, 1999).

Thus, the broad critical issues facing the Russian EA system at the end of the 1990s included:

• finding the way to incorporate international best-practice experience of integrating the environment

Improvements to the state environmental review came slowly, partly because there were no obvious benchmarks for best practice, and innovations were difficult to introduce and disseminate, given the scale of the country and the constant administrative reform

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into decision-making into the Russian system without compromising its capacity and ability to integrate with existing institutions;

• ensuring the effectiveness of the system in the face of the rapidly changing political and eco-nomic context of its application;

• ensuring constructive co-operation and dialogue between OVOS and SER professionals that could lead to integration and mutual enhancement of both instruments;

• ensuring consistent implementation of EA provi-sions by all relevant actors. This could only be achieved through gaining support from the public, the business community, various government agencies and international organisations.

All these issues largely related to individual and sys-temic capacities of various actors and institutions in-volved in the development and implementation of EA policies. Some capacity-building projects were initi-ated throughout the 1990s (for example, the operation of the Public Environmental Review Centre from 1995 to 1998 (Ecoline, 2001)), and their collective ef-fects were becoming evident by the end of the decade. However, the unexpected changes in the political and economic context at the end of the last decade suddenly, and profoundly, affected these priorities.

Economic, political, environmental policy context

If the development of the EA system in the 1990s was taking place in a declining or stagnating econ-omy, the situation of the last five years has been dramatically different. Following the financial crisis of 1998, the Russian economy has been rapidly re-covering, bringing about an increase in investment and a rise of industrial production. Most of the in-crease has occurred in the raw materials and energy sector associated with significant environmental impacts (see for instance, Cherp et al, 2003). This recovery resulted, inter alia, in increasing foreign business presence, strengthened business lobbies and, at the same time, increasing attention of busi-nesses (especially foreign-owned) to environmental risks and liabilities and the rise of Russian domestic environmental services (consultants).

The political situation in Russia has also changed in connection with Vladimir Putin becoming the President in 2000. Many administrative structures and laws were consolidated and the political and economic instability of the 1990s has all but gone. Moscow has sought to concentrate power through extensive administrative reform and cutting down on non-essential bureaucracy. At the same time, the Putin Government has shown signs of intolerance towards political, including environmental, dissent. This all took place in the context of a continued tug-of-war between the federal centre and the regions.

Public interest in environmental matters has sub-stantially declined from its high point in the early 1990s; this has resulted in the environment all but

vanishing from the political agenda. However, where such interest has remained (for instance, in environmental health in some local groups or in bio-diversity in nation-wide NGOs), the opportunities, the mechanisms and the skills for translating it into specific policy action have arguably increased.

An important contextual factor has been the change in the foreign policies of the Russian Federation. This can be best summarised as doing away with the ‘new thinking’ of the Yeltsin and Gorbachev eras and replacing it by ‘real politik’ where Russian national interests take the highest priority. While discussing rapprochement with the European Union (EU), even to the point of harmonising Russian and EU legisla-tion and access to the World Trade Organisation, Rus-sia has grown increasingly critical of foreign aid and meddling in its internal affairs by western powers.

All these factors heavily reflected on both exter-nal and internal environmental policy. Externally, the most noticeable phenomenon was the recent Russian scepticism towards the Kyoto treaty, which, as high officials emphasise, would only be signed if it corresponded to “Russian national interests”. Sur-prising to many, such an approach has long been evident in Russia’s dealing with other environmental treaties. For example, although a signatory to the Espoo Convention, Russia has still not ratified it, apparently because of foreign policy considerations. The Aarhus Convention, signed and ratified by most of its neighbours, also lacks the Russian signature.

The new political and economic situation has had even more profound impact on Russian domestic environmental policy. The Russian EA system be-came the focus of international attention when in May 2000 the Government abolished the State Committee for Environmental Protection (SCEP) and merged environmental management, including the EA function, into the Ministry of Natural Re-sources (MNR). Many environmentalists have con-sidered this the most significant setback to environmental policy in the last 15 years (see for in-stance, Larin et al, 2003).

Von Ritter and Tsirkunov (2002) refer to two main explanations of this event, one is that it was part of a broader Government effort to reduce the number of ministries and independent authorities, another that environmental protection policies (first of all SER) were perceived as an obstacle to eco-nomic growth. Whatever the rationale, the Russian EA system was dealt a major blow. The next section describes how and why the EA community was able to organise and ensure the survival of the system.

Recent evolution of the EA system

Evolution of EA capacity

Since the formal introduction of the main elements of the SER/OVOS system in the late 1980s, the capacity of the Russian EA community has developed

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significantly. It is possible to note the rise in aware-ness of developers, authorities and the public, tech-nical skills and experience of consultants, and the number of guidelines, textbooks, university courses, and other resources. However, this section will focus on two aspects of the EA system’s capacity that are less frequently noted: the ability of the system for critical self-reflection; and the emergence of net-works of EA actors.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, there has been a gradual evolution in the manner in which Russian EA policy is formulated and implemented. Arguably, the policy process has become more in-clusive, participatory, knowledge-intensive and sys-tematic. The first steps in this direction were made during the formulation of what would become the 2000 EIA Regulations. The process of drafting the regulations took more than three years and involved many individuals and organisations. It provided a fo-rum for the discussion of the strengths and weak-nesses of the existing system, as well as its relationship with international best practice. This debate proved to be very important for finding the right balance between institutional reality and ideal expectations.

In particular, the EIA Regulations formally coined the notion of the “Russian EA system” as including both SER and OVOS. This development has proved to be critical in bridging, in legal terms, the two pre-viously disparate approaches to EA in Russia. On a conceptual level, this bridge was justified in a book entitled Environmental Assessment and Environ-mental Review (Cherp et al, 2000), several editions of which were published and widely disseminated by the NGO Ecoline approximately at the same time as the EIA Regulations were formulated and issued.

It was both a textbook on the common elements of EA international practice, and a detailed analysis of the Russian EA system, including the interpreta-tion of the emerging EIA Regulations (2000). The authors sought to interpret the features of the spe-cific Russian EIA system in western terms, thus both making its experience available to the international EA community and increasing the availability of international experience to the Russian EA commu-nity. The book played an important role in establish-ing a common language among EA professionals, thus contributing to the cohesiveness of the Russian EA community, which would play a key role during the crisis of 2000.

Other capacity-development efforts recently car-ried out in Russia include the development of Guide-lines on EIA for the NIS by the Centre for International Projects (supported by UNEP). This facilitated unification of Russian-language EA ter-minology in the NIS and is likely to further increase the influence of the Russian experience on the EA systems of neighbouring countries. The international EA experience was made more widely available to the Russian EA community as a result of translating to Russian the UNEP’s EIA Training Resource

Manual (UNEP, 2000) and Ecoline publishing it on the Internet.

As the majority of EIAs in the Russian Federation are undertaken at regional level (see, for instance, Table 1), many capacity building efforts of the late 1990s focused on regional capacity. For example, the capacity-building project by Manchester Univer-sity and Ecoline (supported by the British Govern-ment) included training and creation of EA centres in the Tomsk, Chita and Irkutsk oblast (EIA Centre, 2001). These and other regional capacity-building efforts were associated with the increasing number of regional EA regulations further described below.

Disbanding the SCEP came literally the day after the new EIA (OVOS) Regulations were issued in 2000. In response to local and international protests (Larin et al, 2003), the MNR invoked a working group, which comprised academics, experts and the public, to elaborate a new concept of the EA system, but soon discontinued it because it failed to arrive at a common vision regarding the future of SER, though all participants agreed that it had to be pre-served (see Golubeva, 2001).

In 2001, the SER staff at the federal headquarters of MNR was reduced from 33 to 15, while the total number of SER officials in Russia declined from about 700 in early 2000 to about 400 in 2001 result-ing in sharply rising case-loads despite the reduction in the overall number of SERs (von Ritter and Tsirkunov, 2002). However, the Russian EA com-munity was able to organise itself even under these circumstances.

World Bank study of the effectiveness of Russian EA

The main ally in protecting the Russian EA system from complete destruction turned out to be the World Bank, which expressed its concerns about the viability of the reorganised Russian system soon af-ter the disbanding of the SCEP. The World Bank de-cided to hold off on the signing of two operations until it received assurance from the Government that it had restored a working EA system that could en-sure the environmental safety of new investments. Under the threat of lending to Russia being suspended, the SER Department was reinstalled in

The World Bank decided not to sign two operations without Government assurance that it had restored a working environmental assessment system that could ensure the environmental safety of new investments

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the MNR. At the same time, the World Bank, par-tially supported by the Ministry, initiated a study of effectiveness of the Russian EA system in 2001.

This study (reported by von Ritter and Tsirkunov (2002)) capitalised on the capacity-building efforts undertaken previously and the existence of EA net-works extending to various geographic regions and various stakeholder groups. In particular, it involved experts from the Government, academia, NGOs, in-dustry, consultancies, and the federal and regional levels. Several international experts were also asked to review the methodology and the findings of the study, which are summarised in Box 1.

Although most of the World Bank’s findings were well known to Russian EA professionals, the study was really important in its ability to pronounce these conclusions at a relatively high level. Another im-portant outcome of this study was that it provided a forum for discussion and critical self-reflection for the Russian EA community. In comparison with similar debates taking place in the 1990s, this one was more systematic, as it sought to rely on objec-tive evidence. In this case, the participants in the debate also had more incentive to co-operate, as they

had to prove to policy-makers the value of the EA system.

The debate within the framework of the World Bank study arguably resulted in strengthening the cohesion and political power of the Russian EA community. Much of this improvement has resulted from the fact that different EA actors identified common language, interests and agendas. For in-stance, the difference between the proponents of the OVOS and SER approach has all but vanished, as the former realised the need to protect the SER insti-tutional structure from being demolished and the lat-ter embraced the idea of a more flexible process meeting the need of the developers and the public. The concept of the ‘Russian EA system’ (including both SER and OVOS) that needs strengthening and protection in its entirety became the common cur-rency of the discourse associated with the study.

The World Bank study recommended the creation of a professional association for EA in Russia that could institutionalise the networks formed as a result of the study and other capacity-building activities. The objectives of the Association, endorsed at the national EA workshop in Cherepovets at the end of 2003, included (Vologda Environmental Protection Committee, 2003):

• developing capacity in EA through education, re-search and information dissemination;

• maintaining professional and ethical standards in EA; and

• strengthening contacts between EA actors in Rus-sia and abroad.

Regulatory developments

In addition to the Federal Law on Environmental Review (1995) and the Federal Environmental Pro-tection Law (1991, updated in 2002), there are three currently active federal regulations on SER and one on OVOS/EIA.6 In addition, a number of regulatory acts were issued by the regions, which have a consti-tutional authority to legislate within the framework provided by federal laws (see, for instance, Box 2 and note similar EA regulations in Perm,

Box 1. World Bank study “How effective is EA in Russia?”

The study stated that the EA system had been a keyelement of the Russian environmental policy. It challengedthe assumption that EA is an obstacle to business by proving that the delays and costs associated withcompliance to EA provisions are generally low to moderate(though disproportionately greater burdens fall on small andmedium-sized projects with no significant environmentalrisks). A business survey quoted by the study demonstratedthat environmental regulations were ranked the 23rd out of30 other obstacles to business.

The study evaluated the context for the operation of theEA system, the legal and institutional framework, thepractical implementation, the impact and the institutionalcapacity for EA in Russia. Of all these aspects, only thelegal framework was found satisfactory, whereas theinstitutional capacity was considered to be under thegreatest threat. The following critical deficiencies of the system were identified:

● Lack of integration of the OVOS and SER subcomponentof the system. This was especially evident in the limitedrole that SER authorities played in determining the scopeand reviewing the quality and relevance of OVOS.

● Lack of effective screening provisions resulting in‘dispersing’ scarce financial resources and wasting timewhile analysing impacts of low-risk projects to comply with complicated assessment procedures.

● A limited impact of EIA on decision making, except inselected cases of highly visible and internationallyfinanced projects. This is the result of excessive focus onmeeting formal requirements to attain a formal SERapproval and is exacerbated by the declining capacity tomonitor and enforce EA conclusions.

● Declining institutional capacity, which has been broughtabout by the ongoing restructuring, the lack of, ormisleading, guidance from the centre, and the shrinkingof Russia’s environmental management system.

● Unclear relationship between federal and regional functions in EA.

Source: von Ritter and Tsirkunov (2002)

Box 2. Draft EIA regulations and guidelines in the Arkhangelsk oblast

The draft EIA regulations prepared in 2002 are aligned with the federal EIA Regulations (2000). However, they proposed a specific screening system. For category A projects, the full EIA procedure, as envisioned at the federal level is con-ducted. There is a screening list to assign activities to these categories. For category B projects a simplified EIA proce-dure is conducted (largely limited to a preliminary EIA). However, if there are significant public concerns, as identi-fied at the stage of preliminary EIA, the project may be as-signed to category C where additional public consultations are required. The draft EIA guidelines were prepared to in-terpret, explain and clarify both the federal EIA procedure and the regional EIA Regulations (Khotulyova, 2002).

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Sverdlovsk, Tomsk, Vologda and other Russian re-gions (Ecoline, 2003)).

Of all the federal documents, the 2000 EIA Regu-lations are undoubtedly the most important. They define, for the first time, in legal terms the steps of the project-level EA procedure in Russia and its re-lationship to the traditional instrument of SER. These regulations are in line with international prac-tice, including most requirements of the Espoo Con-vention, Aarhus Convention and the EU EIA Directives.7 The following are the most important elements introduced by the regulations:

• the two-stage EIA procedure with scoping (pre-paring terms of reference) taking place after the first stage;

• explicit requirement to produce a publicly available

environmental impact statement with a specified

content; • requirements for public notification, public hear-

ings and provision for public participation in scoping.

The 2000 EIA Regulations also tackle the issue of screening, which has proved to be a matter of bitter debate and division within the Russian EA com-munity for years. According to the framework environmental legislation and the 1995 Environ-mental Review Law, all economic activities and other activities that may result in direct or indirect environmental impacts are subject to SER, which should review “materials on the assessment of envi-ronmental impacts”.

Some stakeholders had interpreted this as the requirement to conduct EA for all activities, how-ever small and insignificant. At the same time, the majority agreed that such an approach would be ineffective and unsustainable, because it over-whelms SER authorities, leads to procedural defi-ciencies, opportunities for corruption, and lower effectiveness, and puts a disproportionate burden on small and medium-size projects with no significant environmental impact.

There have been numerous attempts, including the 1994 OVOS Regulations, to introduce lists of envi-ronmentally significant activities for which EIA would be mandatory, but such attempts were criti-cised on a variety of grounds, and even challenged by prosecutors’ offices on the grounds that they violate federal legislation.

The 2000 EIA Regulations took an intelligent step towards resolving the screening issue by a) estab-lishing a screening step within the EA procedure and b) delegating to the regions the authority to “sim-plify the EIA procedure” for certain “environmen-tally insignificant categories of activities”. Such regional screening regulations, which should be approved by the federal authorities, were to reduce the number of EIAs conducted at the regional level to manageable size.

This solution has opened the door to experiments

with regional screening regulations (for instance, in Arkhangelsk (Box 2), Moscow, Tomsk and Vologda oblast), which in a number of cases has been success-ful. However, taking into account the insufficient ca-pacity in many Russian regions, the most realistic approach to establishing screening provisions is to is-sue framework federal guidance and enforce its trans-lation into regional regulations, at the same time, building the awareness and skills of regional officials. Such guidelines will be drafted in the near future with the participation of regional representatives (Vologda Environmental Protection Committee, 2003).

Conclusions and recommendations

This paper provides an overview of the recent evolu-tion of the EA system in the Russian Federation. It demonstrates how various contextual factors af-fected developments in EA regulations and practice. The EA system emerged in the late 1980s and the early 1990s as a result of growing public and politi-cal awareness of environmental issues, pressures for transparency in decision-making and increasing interest to environmental policy tools used in devel-oped countries.

In the mid-1990s, the EA institutions operated under conditions of economic decline, political in-stability, relatively weak government and businesses rather indifferent to regulations. At present, they have to adapt to rapidly expanding economic activi-ties, the low political profile of environmental matters, consolidating executive power, more sophisticated politics and businesses intensely lob-bying for their interests.

Such a change provides both a threat and an opportunity for an EA system. For example, the growing political influence of private business may threaten EA institutions. This is partly what hap-pened in Russia when SER provisions were inter-preted as an “obstacle to investment” and were all but revoked in 2000. At the same time, as businesses evolve and consolidate they are increasingly inter-ested in playing by clear, transparent and universal rules, thus they may support rule-based, transparent and clear EA provisions.

Despite many difficulties, the Russian EA com-munity has managed to avoid several threats and utilise some opportunities arising from the change in its societal context. The paper demonstrates that such an ability to respond to change, a characteristic of an ‘adaptive policy system’, is linked to the capacity of EA actors to form cross-sectoral net-works, to critically evaluate and reflect on existing experience, to experiment with various approaches, and to be open to diverse forms of domestic and in-ternational knowledge.

The networks of EA actors in Russia described in this paper, show a distinct characteristic of ‘trans-lating’ various ideas and interests.8 Perhaps the most remarkable translation occurred between the

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advocates of SER and OVOS. The poor ability of the two groups to co-operate had slowed the devel-opment of the system in the mid-1990s. However, when the SCEP was abolished in 2000, both camps felt sufficiently threatened to initiate meaningful co-operation. They tacitly agreed on a concept of the “Russian EA system” that included both SER and OVOS and needed strengthening in its entirety.

Moreover, the Russian EA community success-fully enrolled the World Bank, some large indus-tries, environmental consultancies and NGOs, as well as regional environmental bureaucracies, willing to experiment with pilot approaches, into this project of strengthening the Russian EA system. Much of this ‘translation’ and ‘enrolment’ occurred in the course of the World Bank’s study of the effec-tiveness of EA in Russia.

For example, during the World Bank’s study, the traditional barrier between the officials and the NGOs was lowered, because the former clearly needed public support for the EA system. The indus-try and the regulators could both argue for a trans-parent rule-based internationally benchmarked approach that would stimulate, rather than hinder, investment. The regions and the centre could also co-operate in piloting regionally specific solutions and in mobilising both bottom-up and top-down support for the system. Facing the destruction of the Russian EA system, the international community be-came keen to learn how it functions and how it can be protected, whereas Russian EA professionals be-came very interested in collecting evidence on the value of EA systems internationally.

The paper highlights an important lesson from Russia, potentially relevant to larger countries with semi-autonomous regional administrations. Many regulatory and practical developments have proven to be easier to implement at the regional level than national level, because political commitment can, in many cases, be easier to secure and the institutional structures are more flexible. “The diversity of Rus-sia’s eighty-nine regions is a fertile ground for pilot testing new approaches” conclude von Ritter and Tsirkunov (2002). Regional-level policies are also easier to implement since they are often formulated by those directly involved in implementation. However, a bottom-up approach, where pilot EA policies are formulated and tested at the regional level can be successful only if there is a vigorous ‘horizontal’ dialogue between the regions supple-mented by a ‘vertical’ dialogue with the central government.

The Russian EA community shares the opinion that the overarching goal, at present, is to have the EIA Regulations (2000) consistently and effectively implemented, while retaining the capacity and increasing efficiency of the SER institutions. Estab-lishing a coherent screening system is a pre-condition for attaining this goal. Retaining the capacity of the SER institutions, can be achieved if the division of responsibilities in this sphere between

Moscow and the regions is adequately resolved. During the debates on the World Bank study, this was flagged as a contentious issue, which attracted significant controversy.

Many observers maintain that, in view of dramatic cuts of federal bureaucracy planned by Putin, it would be sensible to delegate some EA responsibili-ties to the regions, which have significant legal and executive autonomy. Opponents point out that any such dramatic changes in administration are likely to result in collapse of the vulnerable SER institutions, that regions do not have adequate capacity for im-plementing EIA provisions and that, last but not least, the present politics at the regional level is unlikely to favour national and global environmental goals.

The World Bank recommendations envision a gradual process for developing a vision and studying options for the division of responsibilities between the centre and the regions, taking the experience of other federal states (Canada, Germany and the USA) into account.

Finally, the issue of the integration of OVOS and SER, haunting the Russian EA system for more than a decade, should be resolved. This is one of the three principal recommendations of the World Bank study (the other two are improving screening and scoping, and strengthening SER institutional capacity). For example, involvement of SER in approving terms of reference for OVOS is a logical step to facilitate such integration. Tighter integration of OVOS, SER and environmental permission can also be achieved relatively easily by strengthening the integration of ‘new’ and ‘traditional’ environmental policy tools (see OECD, 2003).

A number of other issues are widely discussed within the Russian EA community. The most promi-nent one is probably strategic environmental as-sessment (SEA). The existing SER and OVOS regulations do not have any specific requirements for strategic-level activities, which are presumed to be assessed in the same way as project-level devel-opments. In practice, the number of SEAs is very small and they are almost entirely limited to plans and programmes rather than policies (see the section “Overview of the EA system in the 1990s”). At the same time, there are several mechanisms, beyond the SER system, for incorporating environmental con-siderations into strategic documents such as urban and territorial development plans.

How effective these mechanisms are and how they might be linked with the SER and OVOS re-quirements is not very well understood. SEA was explicitly excluded from the World Bank study and the awareness of this issue is only just starting to emerge (Vologda Environmental Protection Com-mittee, 2003). The first steps in strengthening the Russian SEA systems are currently underway within the joint project between Ecoline EA Centre and the Regional Environmental Centre (REC) for Central and Eastern Europe funded by the EU. This project

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will involve, not only the existing networks of EA professionals, but also economic planners and re-gional-level politicians to explore and pilot various options for implementing SEA (Ecoline EA Centre, 2004).

Thus, the Russian EA system still faces many challenges related to both regulation and practice. Some of these are fairly trivial (such as screening), while others are difficult even for more mature EA systems (such as SEA). The risk of the collapse of the system is still a real threat, though less so than three or four years ago. The World Bank proposes four sensible “guiding principles” for dealing with these challenges (von Ritter and Tsirkunov, 2002):

• assured basic implementation capacity; • efficiency and business friendliness; • effectiveness, by focusing limited institutional,

analytical and financial resources on the most sig-nificant environmental impacts;

• long-term impact by evolving the EA system from a ‘do-no-harm’ tool to an instrument supporting sustainable development decision making.

The first of these principles deserves further com-ment. While “basic implementation capacity” (in terms, first of all, of the number and resources of SER employees) is a precondition for the survival of the system, it is certainly not sufficient for its effec-tiveness and development. To explain the ability of the system to develop, such a notion should be sup-plemented by that of ‘advanced capacity’, related, inter alia, to the ability to learn and network as described above.

The domestic and international EA communities may help to develop such a capacity in Russia, based on systematic evaluation of capacity needs and de-veloping capacity-building strategies. Provided that such strategies are well formulated, implemented and effective, we can expect new dynamic develop-ments in the Russian EA system.

Notes

1. See for example, Khusnutdinova’s discussion of the influence of the Russian system on EA in Uzbekistan (pages 167–172 of this issue). See also Bektashi and Cherp (2002); Cherp (2000); and Galstyan (2002) for examples from Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus respectively.

2. The first usage of the English term was in Cherp and Lee (1997). ‘State ecological (or environmental) examination’, ‘eco-logical expertise’ and other translations have also been common.

3. OVOS is the Russian abbreviation for the assessment of im-pacts on the environment.

4. It was not uncommon for developers to undertake two EIAs: one to satisfy an international lender or investor; and one to meet the Russian SER requirement (see, for instance, Proko-pets, 2001). The main problem was often that western devel-opers could not easily submit to SER the project documentation prepared by the strict and formal project design rules.

5. These were not widely familiar to proponents and authorities and often were deemed too complex, especially for smaller

activities. A similar situation was earlier observed in relation to the OVOS Regulations 1994.

6. The full updated list of Russian EA regulations can be found at the Internet site of the Network for Environmental Assessment in Countries in Transition (see CEU, 2004).

7. With the notable exception of screening — see below. 8. The terms ‘translation’ and ‘enrolment’ are used in the author-

network theory to describe “interaction within networks … as a continuous process of ‘translation’ and ‘enrolment’ in which ac-tors negotiate the definition of each others’ interests, and try to link the interests of others to projects they themselves want to carry out” (Latour, 1987 and Callon, 1986 quoted in Cherp and Antypas, 2003)

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