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 Current Programs
Baikal Watch's objective is to achieve permanent protection of Lake Baikal and its Siberian surroundings, and to restore the integrity of the environment throughout Russia, by:
- Promoting the growth of the Russian environmental movement and of Russian grassroots organizations in particular;
- Educating the local public, and providing for the participation of the people in making regional environmental policies;
- Strengthening the rule of law in Russia;
- Supporting the development of economic alternatives, such as ecotourism, and other sustainable activities.
In keeping with this mission, this Earth Island project has initiated a number of different programs, all of which have been organized in collaboration with local Russian partners. These principal partners (all of whom have received some sort of financial or organizational support through Baikal Watch) include:
- Baikal Ecological Wave (Irkutsk)
- Baikal Fund (Chita)
- Baikal Center (Irkutsk)
- EcoJuris (Moscow)
- Sakhalin Environmental Watch (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk)
- The Russian State Committee on the Environment (Moscow and regional capital cities)
- Pacific Environment and Resources Center (San Francisco)
- SouthWest Research and Information Center (Albuquerque)
- NorthWest Medical Teams (Portland)
The following is a comprehensive list of our ongoing programs:
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EcoJuris Environmental Law Network
This network provides training and general support to lawyers from all over the former Soviet Union, allowing them, in turn, to "sue the bad guys" as well as take other legal actions to protect the environment (including lobbying for and enacting stronger conservation laws, both nationally and locally). [Ecojuris website] |
The Great Baikal Trail
Earth Island and the Baikal Federation for Sport Tourism and Mountain-Climbing are starting to build the GREAT BAIKAL TRAIL. This trail will travel around this great Siberian lake, some 1000 miles in all, and in so doing, it will connect 3 national parks and 4 nature reserves along the shores of Baikal! |
NGO-Training Exchanges
These training programmes have been developed to build the capacity of Russian and other former Soviet colleague non-governmental activist groups, with several hundred "graduates" to date, and dozens of local and national groups "prospering" from the financial, legal, and other operational and "informational-support" systems of Earth Island Institute. |
Eastern Russia Oil and Gas Programme
Through education, research and monitoring, the preparation of impact assessments, and possible legal suits in Russian courts, as well as through heightened public awareness and action, Earth Island is helping local and national groups as they attempt to "embarrass" the multinational oil companies, investors, and Russian bureaucrats, so that these latter take maximum precautions to protect the environment in the oil-rich regions of Sakhalin Island and the Russian east. |
Save the Russian National Parks
Baikal Watch has provided international training for hundreds of park officials from throughout Russia, and has arranged numerous ecotours that benefit the parks, and has worked with (and worked on!) Russian and US government agencies, as well as the World Bank, as they plan for multi-million dollar support programmes that may keep the parks alive during these difficult financial times in Russia. |
Baikal Communities Anti-Toxics Project
One of the newer projects, also operated in cooperation with the Baikal Wave, this finds us promoting research, education, and up-in-arms action by local communities, as they fight to counter the polluting activities of the Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Plant, for instance, the principal source of contamination at the lake (e.g., a recent Dioxin conference that Baikal Wave and Baikal Watch recently co-organised). [Dioxin and Pollution backgrounder page] |
Siberian Mining Programme
This project is geared to stop environmentally dangerous gold/uranium/coal mines in eastern Russia, both by supporting public involvement, and by helping prepare official environmental impact assessments on the individual mines; the project also promotes ecologically clean technologies for mines, and has helped secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical supplies for those regions that are adversely affected by the radioactivity released through mining. [Uranium and Gold Mining backgrounder page] |
Save the Nerpa
Managed in concert with the Baikal Ecological Wave, this project keys on educating the local public, and on applying pressure on government decision-makers, to make sure that they are all aware of the value of wildlife at Baikal, and especially of the importance of the Baikal nerpa, the only fresh water marine mammal species in the entire world. [Baikal Wave website | Endangered Nerpa backgrounder page] |
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