{"id":675,"date":"2019-12-11T04:07:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T03:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noyardstick.com\/?p=675"},"modified":"2019-12-11T04:07:21","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T03:07:21","slug":"ny-dispatches-the-issue-of-waste-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.noyardstick.com\/?p=675","title":{"rendered":"NY Dispatches: the issue of waste management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Sunday thousands protested <\/a>in Kotlas, a town of only 60 thousand in Russia\u2019s Northern Arkhangelsk oblast against a landfill near the Shies station between Arkhangelsk and the Komi Republic, which is planned to absorb 46 million tons of waste from Moscow and the Moscow Region in the next twenty years. A smaller protest took place in Syktyvkar, the Komi capital. These were only the latest in a series of protests in several Russian regions triggered by an issue that has, to many, come to represent the problems with the Russian state more than anything.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Shies site<\/a> was selected in near total secrecy, without an environmental impact analysis or consultation with the local population who fear, with good reason, that the landfill, dubbed euphemistically an \u201ceco-techno-park\u201d, will contaminate groundwater that most northern regions depend on. Protests, which united activists of vastly different convictions and took on a regionalist character over time, started shortly after local residents found out about the construction, but just like in many other similar cases recently, it took Vladimir Putin to put the project on hold. Even so, clashes are commonplace between activists watching the site<\/a> and the guards \u2013 private security personnel as well as National Guardsmen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shies, along with several other sites in relatively remote regions, was selected following a spectacular failure of waste collection in the Moscow region itself. Following protests in the town of Volokolamsk against an overburdened landfill that was leaking toxic gases in March 2018, officials in the capital simply decided to bring the waste elsewhere to unburden the capital and its commuter town, which had been in the focus of costly facelift operations \u2013 and from where news travel faster than from the regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moscow produces around 20 percent of Russia\u2019s waste: more than 13 million tons<\/a> of solid municipal waste and industrial waste a year. While the Volokolamsk protests showed the gravity of the issue, problems started earlier. Since 2013, almost two-thirds of the 39 regional landfills in and around the Russian capital have closed. And most of the waste is indeed dead weight. Even though hundreds of recycling plants operate in and around the capital, these operate at about a fifth of their capacity. Nationally, between 90-95 percent of waste ends up in landfills, bucking the trend in the developed world. In fact, regional officials who take decisions on waste collection, are incentivised<\/a> not to sort waste: their budget is determined on the basis of a standardised figure per inhabitant, which would decrease if the amount of waste to be disposed of were smaller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Landfills,\nmeanwhile, are proving to be a lucrative business. Following the Volokolamsk\nprotests, contracts to \u201csolve\u201d the capital\u2019s waste problem were awarded to\ncompanies with links to the Moscow City Hall. For the Arkhangelsk project alone\n10.5 billion roubles were allocated. Guarding the site has cost more than a\nbillion itself \u2013 so much that in the Moscow Region a local deputy of the\nCommunist Party organised a protest against spending the regional budget on inefficient\nlandfills. Meanwhile, local officials supporting protesters were punished. Pyotr\nLazarov, the mayor of Volokolamsk who sympathized with protesters saw his home\nraided by police. Alexander Shestun, the head of the Serpukhov district who vocally\nsupported the protests, was charged with fraud. This was enough to discourage\nofficials in other regions \u2013 whom the Kremlin expect to manage, rather than\ngovern their territories anyway \u2013 from supporting local protesters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly to last year\u2019s protests in Yekaterinburg against the construction of a church, which only reached their goal when Vladimir Putin personally intervened in the matter, the president had to come up with a solution for this problem as well. In January Putin ordered<\/a> the creation of a \u201cRussian Ecological Operator\u201d, which would oversee a new system of national waste disposal, as part of Putin\u2019s ambitious \u201cNational Projects\u201d. By 2024, the government wants to build more than 200 waste management plans to handle 36 percent of municipal solid waste. Nearing 2020, however, only rubbish collection fees seem to have been raised, along with plans<\/a> for Rostec and VTB, a state-owned corporation and a bank, to build incinerators near Moscow together with Middle Eastern sovereign funds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And people\nin the North are protesting again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue\nof waste disposal has so far exhibited almost all symptoms of Russia\u2019s dysfunctional\npolicymaking. It is a chronic and systemic issue that should have been\naddressed long ago but the can was kicked down a road. The present policy gives\nundue preference to Moscow over remote regions. It causes enormous and tangible\ndamage to Russia\u2019s human capital. Attempts to solve it are hampered by powerful\nvested interests as well as hapless local and regional leaders who are accountable\nto their superiors rather than to voters and lack the necessary authority (and\noften the financial means) to solve the problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And thus citizens\nare likely to seek a direct line to the president, a rare political figure in\nRussia\u2019s distorted political system who is both accountable and has the\nauthority to solve problems. And over time, they will certainly also blame the\npresident for problems that remain unsolved, be they local or federal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday thousands protested in Kotlas, a town of only 60 thousand in Russia\u2019s Northern Arkhangelsk oblast against a landfill near the Shies station between Arkhangelsk and the Komi Republic, which is planned to absorb 46 million tons of waste … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,6],"tags":[181,182,12,177,19,120,180],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dispatches","category-policies","tag-arkhangelsk","tag-komi","tag-moscow","tag-national_projects","tag-putin","tag-regions","tag-waste_collection"],"yoast_head":"\nNY Dispatches: the issue of waste management - No Yardstick<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On Sunday thousands protested in Kotlas, a town of only 60 thousand in Russia\u2019s Northern Arkhangelsk oblast against a landfill near the Shies station\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.noyardstick.com\/?p=675\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NY Dispatches: the issue of waste management\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Sunday thousands protested in Kotlas, a town of only 60 thousand in Russia\u2019s Northern Arkhangelsk oblast against a landfill near the Shies station between Arkhangelsk and the Komi Republic, which is planned to absorb 46 million tons of waste from Moscow and the Moscow Region in the next twenty years. 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