Environmental racism in Russia

Russia, an International Labor Organization member, has not ratified ILO 69, an agreement that explicitly asserts the right to self-determination for all indigenous peoples. This allows the Russian Federation to continue to deny Indigenous peoples' control over their land and resources. Russia is also a member of the United Nations, which recognizes indigenous peoples of classically colonized lands, but is somewhat vague about indigenous minorities who are not separated from their colonizers by an ocean. This is one of the arguments Russia uses to justify not complying with UN treaties in the case of the indigenous peoples of Siberia.

Environmental racism in Russia also affects Romani people and migrant workers.

Effects on Indigenous groups in Russia

Throughout Russia, there has been significant industrial development and pollution on Indigenous lands. In many cases, these industrial developments arguably result in disproportionate harm for the Indigenous inhabitants, who in many cases do not benefit proportionally from industrial resource extraction and transportation projects. According to environment and geography scholar Craig ZumBrunnen, two of the most heavily polluted regions in Russia are Northeastern Russia and the Kola Peninsula.

The dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands throughout Russia for natural resource extraction has a long historical context of racism. According to Indigenous studies scholar Aileen Espiritu, "As non-European peoples, the Khanty, Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets were seen as inferior races by the Russians, and were therefore exploited for their goods and resources. Forcible Tsarist jurisdiction over Khanty, Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets territory began in the sixteenth century." Espiritu expands on the social implications of historical dispossession, writing

Throughout the eighteenth century, the exaction of exceedingly high yasak [tribute in furs] payments forced the Yamalo-Nenets and the Khanty to abandon their traditional economy of hunting and fishing in order to trap sables, and later foxes, for Russian officials and traders. The Khanty, Mansi, and Yamalo-Nenets were, therefore, forced to leave their own territories in an attempt to live as they had lived for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years (Prokof'yeva, et al. 1956:515) ... These effects on the Khanty, Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets, while serious, were minimal when compared to the imposition of Soviet rule and hegemony.

Bolshevik policies from 1917 onwards quickly focused on the transition of Indigenous economies from traditional livelihoods into socialist economies based upon, in the words of anthropologist Debra Schindler, "the creation of a 'modern,'... urban-industrial settlement system; collectivization of the indigenous production economy; development of natural resources and the industrial development of other branches of the economy; and the introduction of the indigenous population to and their incorporation in 'modern' (Russian) society (1991:70)." According to Espiritu, the result of these state policies "based on rigid and dogmatic Leninist ideology" has led to severe damage for the cultural traditions, identities, and indigenous lifestyles of aboriginal Russian peoples. In the opinion of geography scholar Gail A. Fondahl,

Upon assuming power, the Soviet state identified the peoples of the North as exceedingly primitive, and in need of a special policy body to facilitate the transition to socialism (Sergeev 1995; Slezkine 1994). At the same time the Bolsheviks fingered the North as a storehouse of wealth to be exploited for the development of the new socialist state. In the first decade of Soviet power, planners deliberated on balancing aboriginal needs and state aspirations in debates regarding northern development policy, but by the mid-1930s the latter took clear precedence over the former. When development concerns dictated, the state confiscated aboriginal lands and relocated Natives.

The drive for increased resource extraction intensified under Joseph Stalin's regime, resulting in particularly deleterious patterns of dispossession for indigenous peoples in the European North, Siberia, and the Far East. In the opinion of ZumBrunnen,

Since the inception of Stalin's forced industrialization campaigns in the 1930s, these extensive, remote, resource-rich regions have been targeted for industrial development, mineral and energy resource extraction and processing which have had particularly disruptive and contaminating effects ... not only did Soviet development plans favor industrialization over traditional forms of economic activities, but all too often these industrial developments have been in conflict with traditional indigenous economic activities, such as reindeer herding, fishing, fur harvesting, and self-sufficient forms of agriculture, domestic animal husbandry, and logging, all of which require healthy ecosystems."

Many of these issues of environmental degradation and indigenous dispossession have arguably continued from Soviet times into the present day. As described by one observer in 1991, "In the majority of regions inhabited by [the numerically Small Peoples of the North] the ecological situation has sharply intensified, the systematic destruction of established norms and rules of natural resource use has been allowed (O dopolnitel'nykh 1991)."

For Indigenous peoples in Russia, environmental degradation can often affect deeper cultural and metaphysical sentiments beyond ecological and economic concerns, extending to all aspects of indigenous lifestyles and epistemologies. As argued by Fondahl, "Northern peoples differed from other citizens of the Russian Federation due to their involvement in activities that required an intimate connection with, and an extensive use of, expansive homelands. If symbolic of primitivism in the eyes of many Soviet citizens, the traditional activities also symbolized a special, harmonic and intense interaction with the natural environments.

For example, when Soviet planners attempted to "rationalize", collectivize, and commercialize traditional Indigenous livelihoods such as reindeer husbandry, their efforts were frustrated by the realization that indigenous peoples worldviews treated such economies as intrinsically tied to non-economically quantifiable values of social and spiritual significance, which ran contrary to Soviet modernization rationale. Reindeer "conveyed a family's protective spirits, provided not only physical but spiritual nourishment at life-event celebrations, and accompanied the owner on her or his voyage from this world to the next". These metaphysical Indigenous values were rooted in the working indigenous vocabulary of reindeer husbandry to such an extent that Soviet workers assigned to the field with Indigenous groups frequently had little choice but to learn the Indigenous languages as no corollary terms for these expressions existed in Russian, yet were vital to learning the trade.

The effect of industry on the well-being of reindeer herding has been a profound concern to many Indigenous people in Russia. Speaking at the Second International Working Seminar on the Problems of Northern Peoples (Prince George, BC, Canada, 1996), V.A. Robbek, Director, Institute of the Problems of Northern Minorities, Yakutsk, Sakha Republic (Yakutia), stated, "Destroy our reindeer breeding and our traditional lands and you destroy us, the Even, as a people."

Similar views were expressed by another Russian Indigenous commentator in 1996, who stated

Our Native lands are being annexed and barbarically destroyed by rapacious petroleum and natural gas, coal, gold, and non-ferrous mining interests without any form of just compensation...and this phenomena [sic] is depriving us of our lands and rights to part of the resource wealth, [and] deprives us of our basic right—a right to life (Social...1996).

Oil and gas development

In 2014, 70% of Russia's crude oil exports, and 90% of its natural gas exports, went to Europe. According to Henderson and Mitrova of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, European gas output is expected to slip from around 250bcm in 2014 to 225bcm in 2020 and 150bcm in 2030, leaving an import gap of over 310bcm by the end of this decade and over 420bcm by 2030. Much of this gap in demand could potentially be supplied by Russia. In the words of Henderson and Mitrova, "Gazprom's exports to Non-FSU (Former Soviet Union) countries rose from an initial level of 3.5bcm in 1970 to a peak of 162bcm in 2005, with sales extending across 28 countries in the region". Record quantities of oil were produced in Russia in 2015, with 534 million tons extracted, an increase of 1.5% over 2014 production levels. In 2015, a record 23 million tons of Russian petroleum products (including liquefied natural gas) were shipped through Arctic waters from Russian ports such as Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and Varandey, as well as Norwegian ports such as Hammerfest, according to statistics provided by Vardø Bessel Traffic Service Centre in Norway.

Much of this energy supply was extracted from the traditional territories of Indigenous peoples, raising questions surrounding Indigenous rights, title, and environmental marginalization.

Nenets Autonomous Okrug

In 2015, 14.6 million tons of oil were produced from Nenets Autonomous Okrug, a 6.4% increase over 2014 production. There are 14 new oil and gas fields planned for development in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, which lies within Northwestern Russia.

As of 2003, there were an estimated 6500 Nenets and 5000 Komi individuals residing in Nenets Autonomous Okrug, a majority of whom were engaged in reindeer husbandry. Large-scale degradation of reindeer grazing lands took place between the 1960s and 1980s; after a slowdown in development, the situation began to worsen by the early 2000s. In the words of Peskov and Dallmann, "In addition to the high unemployment among indigenous peoples, the situation in the reindeer husbandry sector is deteriorating: decreasing numbers of reindeer, misappropriation, absence of appropriate marketing schemes for products. These and other factors provoke a general degradation of indigenous society." Peskov and Dallmann identify responsibility on the part of both oil companies as well as the Nenets Autonomous Okrug government, which they claim has not lived up to its legal obligations to protect Indigenous rights. Peskov and Dallmann provide an overall opinion that "Nenets and Komi in this region have for many centuries maintained a traditional way of life rooted firmly in reindeer husbandry in the area. These are the people who mainly suffer as a result of the attitudes of newcomers to the Arctic natural environment, in spite of all legal guarantees."

Novaya Zemlya

In 1870 Nenets people were permanently settled on Novaya Zemlya by the Russian Empire to prevent Norwegian expansion. The traditional Nenets name for the archipelago, which lies in Northwestern Russia, is Edey Ya. According to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, during the Cold War approximately 500 Indigenous persons were relocated from Novaya Zemlya to make way for nuclear testing. The reindeer living on the island either died or were relocated to the mainland. Between 1954 and 1990, 132 nuclear test explosions, ninety four percent of the aggregate yield of nuclear testing in the former Soviet Union, were conducted on the islands. On October 30, 1961, the Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb was tested, representing the largest man-made explosion in history.

In spite of inexplicably high levels of cancer among Arctic Indigenous peoples in Russia during the 1960s and 1970s, comprehensive analysis of cancer statistics in 2004 indicate that overall, Indigenous peoples on the Kola Peninsula and in Nenets Autonomous Okrug (where there is significant radiation contamination) today experience below-average levels of cancer compared to the rest of Russia. However, reports by the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences indicate high rates of chromosomal diseases and birth defects among Indigenous people around Novaya Zemlya which may be linked to nuclear testing. Locals have nicknamed the islands "the archipelago of death".

Komi Republic

In 2015, 14.9 million tons of oil were produced from Komi Republic, an increase of 5.4% over 2014 production. The Komi Republic, which lies in Northwestern Russia, is home to the Indigenous Komi people, has 152 hydrocarbon fields, of which 87 produce oil and gas; 65 are currently in commercial production, and 22 are designated as experimental. In 1994, a pipeline fractured near the city of Usinsk, Komi Republic. According to Komineft (Komi Oil) and local government officials, 14,000 metric tons of oil leaked; however, this figure is disputed. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the leak in fact saw 270,000 metric tons spilled. In the words of a press release from the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, "it was the site of the world's worst ever terrestrial oil spill."

The Pechora, Kolva, and Usa rivers have all experienced significant contamination from oil leaks. 1,900 leaks were documented along Komineft-owned pipelines between 1986 and 1991. Throughout the region, there are also concerns surrounding the accountability of environmental monitoring and cleanup programs.

For example, in the settlement of Kolva in Komi Indigenous territory, Komi Indigenous people were left to clean up the site of a major oil spill themselves, with minimal assistance from government authorities or oil company workers; the Head of Usinsk District, Alexander Tian, responded to Komi requests for help by allegedly stating "If you do not want to breathe in oil fumes, you should take a boat out and remove the oil yourself!" and offered to pay 10,000 rubles (approximately 250 Euros) per barrel recovered—a reimbursement that Kolva residents claim was not honoured. Out of 117 persons cleaning the site, 11 were workers from Rusveitpetro, the owner of the pipeline, a number that some activists felt was inadequate. Later, the inhabitants of Kolva asked for regular water testing over concerns of drinking water contamination. The results of the samples, sent to Syktyvkar, were never released, yet Komi Republic officials insisted that the tests determined the water was safe, leading to allegations of government unaccountability. According to an unidentified source from within the Komi Republic government administration, there were allegations word of the spill was suppressed by Rusveitpetro for a period of possibly several months, and that lawsuits would likely not cover the full costs of cleanup.

On April 10, 2016, members of the Komi Izvatas (also known as Komi Izhemtsy) Indigenous subgroup reported to the Committee to Save the Pechora that a large oil spill had taken place on the Yagera River near Ukhta. According to the Committee, 400 metric tons of crude oil reached the Izhma River, reportedly causing concerns of effects on Izvatas livelihoods. On April 26, sixteen days later, a possible source of the leak was identified by the Committee to Save Pechora at Malyi Voivoizh creek, although government officials could not confirm.

Many residents of Izhma district believe that cancers are occurring at an increasing rate of incidence due to pollution. Food sources such as fish have allegedly become contaminated, and reindeer have been poisoned by oil spills on their grazing areas. According to Makliuk, most residents of the district live in poverty. They also claim discriminatory hiring processes that give preference to non-local workers, in spite of the enormous revenues generated from their traditional territories. According to one resident, "we have to live on the disposal dump of [the] oil industry. We can't even sell our houses and move away, because they cost nothing."

On April 11, 2014, the Izhma district council passed a resolution to support a complete shutdown of oil and gas operations in the area. The decision was in part due to concerns over economic effects on reindeer herding; the residents of Izhma, many of whom are Izvatas, are part of the only subgroup within the Komi Indigenous people who still practice this livelihood. In particular, concerns were sparked by the discovery of new drilling rigs in close proximity (200 meters) to the village of Krasnobar, which had been installed without prior notice, permission, or consent of Izvatas communities or Izhma district administration, in contravention of environmental legislation. 150 people, representing twelve settlements, gathered for the vote, held in Krasnobar village; the Izhma district council voted unanimously in favor.

On June 5, 2014, a demonstration was held in Ust-Usa Village in Usinsk District, Komi Republic. The demonstration, held in the same region affected by the 1994 spill, followed earlier protests in Izhma and saw the adoption of a "strongly worded" resolution by Indigenous groups present. Protesters threatened to boycott future Komi Republic elections if their demands were not met. An excerpt from the declaration reads,

We, the inhabitants of villages within Usinsk municipal district, have been experiencing the terrible consequences of oil extraction in our land for over four decades. Our rivers, lakes and swamps are being mercilessly polluted. Our ancestral land is being destroyed. We are deprived of the natural resources which are our main source of livelihood. Our constitutional rights to a healthy living environment, to clean air and clean water is being violated systematically. Oil companies, and first of all LUKOIL-Komi, the main operator of oil production within Komi Republic, are brushing off our letters and appeals with dismissals, promises and deceit. Neither have we never received an adequate and constructive response to our repeated enquiries to various authorities, from the municipal district administration to the country's leadership. They do not listen, they don't understand us. Therefore we are gathered here at the rally in the ancient village of Ust-Usa, and we declare that we join the residents of Krasnobor, Shelyayur and other settlements of Izhma district in that we will no longer idly observe the barbaric destruction of our land and the pollution of our rivers. People have come to our ancestral lands, who are not interested in our future and future of our children – they are only interested in the "black gold" – our mineral resources. And for its sake they are prepared to turn it into a lifeless space; and they do so.

Kola Peninsula

On the Kola peninsula in Northwestern Russia, Sami people were displaced from their traditional territories during the Cold War. The greatest single displacement took place when Sami fishermen were evacuated from the coastline in order to make way for secretive naval installations. Meanwhile, reindeer herders were dispossessed from their territories along a 200-mile zone adjacent to the border with Finland and Norway. This border was soon closed, effectively shutting communication and movement between Sami peoples in Finland, Norway, and Sweden with those on the Russian Kola.

Further displacement was caused by the arrival of increased heavy industry and natural resource extraction such as forestry and mining during Soviet times. Hundreds of thousands of workers from other areas of the USSR arrived, many of whom were forcibly interned as workers in the Gulags. This industrialization disrupted reindeer herding livelihoods, and led in part to the settlement of Sami into Soviet-designed urban areas such as Lovozero. Today, most Russian Sami live in extreme poverty and poor housing conditions.

Acid rain is a major concern on the Kola peninsula, where it has caused severe damage to thousands of square kilometres of tundra and taiga. The ecological balance of the peninsula has been adversely affected by mining operations, which has contributed to atmospheric pollution, damage to forests and natural meadow lands, and groundwater depletion and pollution.

According to ZumBrunnen, between 1964 and 1986 approximately 11,000 containers of "dangerous wastes" were dumped into the Kara and Barents seas. Nuclear waste dumping is believed to have occurred in Arctic waters nearby, and, as of 1997, many ships anchored near shore either stored or contained radioactive waste along the coastlines which had once been inhabited by evacuated Sami fishermen.

According to Sami activist Larisa Avdeyeva, the first public Sami protest in Russia took place in 1998, when a Swedish company attempted to establish an open-pit gold mine in the middle of Sami reindeer grazing lands. Today, vast areas of the Kola continue to be ecologically devastated by pollution from smelting, including operations such as the Kola Mining and Metallurgy Combine near the Norwegian border. Many nuclear facilities operate throughout the area, which continues to host numerous nuclear-waste sites. Pressure to expand mining as well as oil and gas production, and plans for new long-distance pipelines, have been growing concerns for Russian Sami.

Some Sami leaders have reported harassment, allegedly at the hands of the Russian government. In one notable case, the head of Russia's Sami parliament, Valentina Sovkina, was reportedly harassed and assaulted on her way to a UN Indigenous conference in New York in 2014, while other Sami leaders reported incidents such as alleged tampering of their passports en route to the event. According to SkyNews journalist Katie Stallard, "The Kremlin sees the region as a source of oil, gas and mineral wealth – a crucial part of its energy and security ambitions. Ms Sovkina thinks the authorities are worried the Sami will assert their right to self-determination, and to their share of the natural resources."

As of 2006, 1,600 Sami were living in Russia.

Western Siberia (Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug)

By 2008, more than 70 billion barrels of oil had been extracted from the Western Siberian province of Khanty-Mansi. Representing 70 percent of Russian oil production at a 2008 rate of seven million barrels a day, vast quantities of energy resources from Khanty-Mansi are destined for Western Europe annually. According to journalist Paul Starobin, the region's Indigenous inhabitants have experienced ongoing social and economic marginalisation, in spite of the economic wealth generated by oil and gas development. In the words of Starobin,

When Siberia's oil lands came under development, native people were forcibly herded into villages and cut off from their hunting and fishing grounds. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the nomads won legal status as "aboriginal people," with the right to roam the oil fields. In spite of their new status ... their lot has hardly improved. Their numbers are small, about 30,000 in all; their languages are nearly extinct; and they are heavily afflicted by the scourges of contemporary Russia—AIDS, alcoholism, and tuberculosis. Some oil-tax money is being invested in medical ships that stop along the rivers to care for patients. But critics say these floating clinics diagnose disease, then leave patients with no means to get treatment.

By the early 1970s, oil and gas reserves began to deplete in northeastern Russia, and production started to shift towards Western Siberia. Yet by the late 1980s, it was becoming increasingly visible that much of the wealth generated by oil and gas development was not reaching Indigenous groups. According to Espiritu, by this time the living conditions of many Indigenous people in Siberia was in a precipitous state, and Yamalo-Nenets groups were documented as living in "squalid" conditions in close proximity to the city of Salekhard.

As part of the rapid ramping up of production of oil and gas during the 1960s and 1970s, proper infrastructure for both the handling of petroleum products, as well as social infrastructure for the influx of workers, was frequently overlooked. Thousands of kilometres of pipelines were built using substandard construction codes for the harsh climate, resulting in vast numbers of leaks and spills. According to a 1997 essay by ZumBrunnen, environmentalists at the time estimated that 35,000 pipeline ruptures were occurring each year, accounting for between one and three percent of Russian oil output (3 to 10 million metric tons annually). Meanwhile, 19 billion cubic meters of gas were being flared in West Siberia annually, releasing polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, carbon, and nitrogen dioxides into the local atmosphere. In 2012, the figure was estimated at 17.1 billion cubic metres.

Due to pollution from the oil and gas developments, reindeer herding, fishing, and hunting became unviable for many Yamalo-Nenets in the area, and many had little choice but to request government assistance. Since the 1980s, fluctuations in energy production in Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenetskiy Autonomous Okrugs have caused many Indigenous Khanty, Mansi, and Yamalo-Nenets peoples who were employed in the energy sector to find themselves out of work, with no viable traditional livelihoods to return to.

It has been estimated (according to statistics given in an interview by Evgenia Belyakova, Arctic project coordinator for Greenpeace Russia) that the total cost of replacing Russia's ageing pipelines could cost 1.3 trillion Russian rubles (approximately 1.5 billion US dollars), but could be achieved within five years if companies were prepared to absorb a 25% drop in profits at 2015 energy prices.