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ATTEMPTS by the Soviet Union to clean up the environment are meeting
heavy resistance from industries that still strive above all else to meet
their production quotas. The large industrial ministries, which set the
targets, have been told to reduce pollution, avoid wastage of resources
and limit damage to the environment.

‘Our country has an abundance of natural resources. Maybe that is why
we are wasting them,’ says Vladislav Rumyantsev, the director of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Lake Research in Leningrad. The region
suffers from a multitude of problems which reflect the tensions nationally
between industrialists and environmentalists, says Rumyantsev.

The biggest hope for environmental reform nationally is the State Committee
for the Protection of the Environment which was established in January 1988.
The SCPE, which has branches in every republic and in every region, handles
all aspects of environmental protection. Before it existed, the Soviet Union
spread responsibility for environmental protection between a number of ministries,
so action tended to be patchy.

Andrei Atamanenko, the head of the department for water protection at
the headquarters of the SCPE, explains that the regional branches of the
committee are relatively powerless to enforce changes until the Soviet Union
adopts the new Law on the Protection of Nature, which is now in its third
and final draft.

The proposed law contains provisions that would force enterprises to
pay for natural resources, including water, land and even air. The law also
sets limits for the discharge of wastes. The branches of the committee will
collect the levies on resources and impose fines when pollution from industry
exceeds certain limits. These levies will be the main source of money for
the regional branches, says Atamanenko.

Some scientists still fear that the committee and its subsidiary branches
will fail to tackle the root of the problem. The answer, as Rumyantsev sees
it, is for scientists and technologists to play a more active part in overhauling
outdated and polluting technology.

Rumyantsev says: ‘We hope for better links between science and industry.’
There is now a big gap. There are some very interesting and important scientific
projects under way, but industry and agriculture are still using old methods
‘to clean up pollution’. Just installing cleaning systems is ‘not the right
approach’, he says. ‘The main problem is to make industry adopt new technology
and wasteless production methods.’

Cleaning devices are expensive ‘and it is crazy to build modern devices
for old factories. We should rebuild the enterprises themselves to be more
efficient.’ Industry, often committed to fulfilling targets and output quotas,
opposes this approach.

Rumyantsev believes that this is a ‘fatal mistake’. He says: ‘By this
approach we simply legitimise old methods of production.’ He also favours
a more radical approach to agricultural development. ‘In agriculture we
should introduce grain which produces better yields and resists parasites.
We must change the structure of agricultural production. In this way we
will use less fertilisers and pesticides.’