• by IPS Correspondents (washington)
• Tuesday, November 08, 1994
• Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov 08 (IPS) - The World Bank Tuesday cleared its first- ever environment loan to Russia -- for 110 million dollars to help fund an Environmental Management Project.

The project will help begin to address what has been called one of the most environmentally devastated nations of the world today.

Total cost of the project, which will also be funded by the Russian government, local firms and banks, will be 194.8 million dollars, according to the Bank.

Almost all of Russia's cities, rivers, lakes and estuaries, and diminishing forests suffer from pollution or some form of environmental degradation.

The Bank's blames much of the devastation on decades of inefficient economic development which "basically failed to include environmental factors in macreconomic and sector development strategies and national investment plans."

Much of the pollution damages the country's human, as well as natural, resource base. Air pollution in particular threatens the health of millions of urban-dwellers across the country.

No less than 43 cities, according to the Bank, need urgent measures to reduce dangerously high levels of air pollution, while Russian industries discharge more sodium dioxide -- the key agent in forest-killing acid rain -- than Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Britain, and the former West Germany combined.

Virtually all of the country's major rivers are contaminated by industrial wastes, only about 12 percent of which is currently being disposed safely, according to the Bank.

Some 30,000 tonnes of banned pesticides have still not been safely disposed, while radiological contamination and nuclear waste disposal pose formidable and very expensive challenges to the country's environmental health and economic development.

In addition, much of the countryside has suffered serious deforestation due to urban encroachment, acid rain, and the harvesting of trees for fuelwood. Deforestation has itself contributed to serious soil erosion, the Bank said.

The new project will support the establishment of a 282 million dollar Environment Framework Programe (EFP), which will be supported by a number of donors who met at a Bank-chaired meeting earlier this year.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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