Environmental racism is a form of institutional racism, which has led to the disproportionate disposal of hazardous waste in communities of colour in Russia. It also results in indigenous people disproportionately bearing the environmental burdens of mining, and oil or gas extraction. In Russia, there are 47 officially recognized indigenous groups, who have had some rights to consultation and participation under Russian law since 1999. However, these guarantees have steadily eroded with the re-centralization of state control, and several indigenous autonomous territories have been abolished since the 1990s.
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.Donhahoe, Brian. "The Law as a Source of Environmental Injustice in the Russian Federation." Agyeman, Julian and Ogneva-Himmelberger, Yelena et al., eds. Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2009. Print. 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.ZumBrunnen, Craig. "A Survey of Pollution Problems in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Russian North." Contested Arctic: Indigenous Peoples, Industrial States, and the Circumpolar Environment. Ed. McCarter, Joan and Smith, Eric Alden. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997. Print. The dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands throughout Russia for natural resource extraction has a long historical context of racism.Espiritu, Aileen. ""Aboriginal Nations": Natives in Northwest Siberia and Northern Alberta." Contested Arctic: Indigenous Peoples, Industrial States, and the Circumpolar Environment. Ed. McCarter, Joan and Smith, Eric Alden. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997. Print. 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.Fondahl, Gail A. "Environmental Degradation and Indigenous Land Claims in Russia's North." Contested Arctic: Indigenous Peoples, Industrial States, and the Circumpolar Environment. Ed. McCarter, Joan and Smith, Eric Alden. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997. Print. 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 statedOur 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 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.Lloyd, Claira. "Russian Oil and Gas." Energy Global. Hydrocarbon Engineering. Palladin Publishing: July 29, 2015. n. pag. Web. May 22, 2016. 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.Henderson, James & Mitrova, Tatiana. The Political and Commercial Dynamics of Russia's Gas Export Strategy. The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Oxford University. September 2015. Web. May 22, 2016. 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.Staalesen, Atle. "50 million tons of Russian Arctic oil: The country's three leading Arctic oil producing regions are pumping as never before." The Independent Barents Observer. February 3, 2016. n. pag. Web. June 10, 2016. 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.Nilsen, Thomas. "Sharp increase in Barents Sea petroleum shipments." The Independent Barents Observer. January 19, 2016. n. pag. Web. June 10, 2016.