Environmental issues in Russia

Environmental issues in Russia include pollution and erosion, and have impacts on people, wildlife and ecosystems.

Many of the issues have been attributed to policies that were made during the early Soviet Union, at a time when many officials felt that pollution control was an unnecessary hindrance to economic development and industrialization, and, even though numerous attempts were made by the Soviet government to alleviate the situation in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the problems were not completely solved.[1] By the 1990s, 40% of Russia's territory began demonstrating symptoms of significant ecological stress, largely due to a diverse number of environmental issues, including deforestation, energy irresponsibility, pollution, and nuclear waste.[2] According to Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Russia is currently warming 2.5 times faster than the rest of the globe.[3]

Photograph of a Siberian tiger.
Several species, such as the Siberian tiger and Amur leopard, are at risk of extinction.
  1. ^ Sobisevich, A. V.; Snytko, V. A.; Postnikov, A. V. (2019). "The surrounding environment monitoring in the Soviet Union: A review of establishing new "ecological" science". IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. 350: 012017. doi:10.1088/1755-1315/350/1/012017.
  2. ^ Curtis, Glenn E., ed. (1996). "Russia: A country study". Environmental problems. Washington: GPO (United States Government Printing Office) for the Library of Congress. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
  3. ^ Antonova, Maria (2015). "warming '2.5 times quicker' than global average: ministry Archived 2023-01-02 at the Wayback Machine". Yahoo News. Agence France-Presse.