Information for thought
Especially Protected Natural Territories of Belarus: to conserve or to hold economy?
Inessa Zenina, Electronic ecological dispatch "Zrukh", No 4, October of 2007, p. 2-3.
People are now at the problem of the global climate change caused in many respects due to human activities. The way is only to preserve remained natural ecosystems and to take measures on restoration of those intact where it is still possible. This is because it's not enough to enter a species into a Red Data Book. It is necessary to ensure preservation of its habitat. The EPNTs, such as national parks and reserves, now play a key role both for preservation of habitats of species of animals and plants and for protection of wild nature as a whole. An optimized system of the EPNTs is a requirement for ecological safety of the Republic of Belarus and for creation of the environment which can be favourable for the people's life.
To archive this, 1 biosphere reserve, 4 national parks and 527 protected areas of special purposes are present in Belarus. Big financial means are allocated from the state budget to keep them.
However, there are, unfortunately, too many problems in the field of conservation of wild nature in the modern Republic of Belarus. Many Belarusian EPNTs do not follow goals and objectives to a full extant determined by the legislation and statutory documents. In some of them, for example, in the national parks "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" and "Pripyatskiy", timber industry, agriculture and other sorts of economic activities have got holding sway over and have trampled down nature protection and science turned them to the background.
All national parks and the Berezinski Biosphere Reserve are subordinated to the Property Management Department (PMD) of the President. This, unfortunately, also makes certain problems and difficulties. The PMD is a body dealing with economical and infrastructural issues. Its purposes and objectives are far from protection of wild nature and researches. Besides, this kind of subordination gives certain privileges to nature protection institutions when making control for their activities by inspection bodies. Accordingly, the inspected bodies get troubles when making control for activities of these institutions. For example, the Zhitkovichi District Tax Inspection could not inspect documents in the National Park "Pripyatskiy" within three years as the Inspection could not get sanction from the PMD to do this. The situation of the last decade in some of the Belarusian EPNAs got as dramatic as this threatens to lose unique natural ecosystems.
The nature is essential and valuable for us in itself. This seems to be obvious, but this is not obvious even to today's representatives of the top authorities. To confirm this fact, a statement made by the Vice-Prime Minister Ivan Bambiza which was quoted in the Belarusian Forest newspaper in December of 2005 might be mentioned. This expression sounds "What is the value of the forest if we will not turn it to commodity and goods? Is it worth to plant Europe with trees and to make it for Europe? But what we will get?" And they turn forests including from the EPNTs to the goods.
With it all, a governing line when the public takes nearly no part in the decision-making process and management and doesn't have objective information about what is going on the EPNTs has been established.
Press-tours are specially organized only for reporters from selected state mass-medias. They create a one-sided conception of false about the situation and objectives of the EPNTs and misinform the population. The article by Lilia Khlystun "The Summer in the Pripyat River's area" about the National Park "Pripyatskiy" published in the "Sovetskaya Byelorussia" ("Soviet Byelorussia") newspaper on June 21th of 2007 is one of the examples. There is narrowed about "Features of the rest in the Reserve" under the heading "National parks". The second example is connected with the multi-part video film "National parks in Belarus" which was created by the TV-News Agency of the Belarusian State TV Company and was demonstrated on the First Channel. The aim of this video-film project which was announced on the website www.tvr.by was "...To show to viewers a virgin, untouched nature of Belarus, "an absolute reserve" and a unique natural phenomena which occur in these places".
However, in fact, almost every part of the video-film demonstrated utilitarian consumer's approach to the nature of the EPNTs. An advertisement of tourism, rest, fishing, scenes of beater's hunting and tormenting wild animals by dogs is present there.
The state mass-medias basically portraits the EPNTs as beautiful sites for rest, hunting and fishing or, at best, as some sorts of collection of natural rarities. Their role to form the environment and to keep ecological balance is not explained. We, therefore, consider propagation of the idea of protection of wild nature, its non-material values and its significance for the society as an important direction to provide the activity for the working group "Nature and Wilderness Protection" and the "Green" Networks.
Infringement of legislation, a lack of the dialogue with the local population, a lack of the attitude to its rights and demands, all of these are the problems of the present day concerning the activities on the EPNTs. Any public attempts to change the situation or, at least, to obtain reliable and full information face a strong resistance from officials.
The matter is not only that the Law of the Republic of Belarus "On Especially Protected Natural Territories and Objects" is not perfect. Many items of the Law are ignored when going into the practice. For example, in the summer of 2005, the director of the National Park "Pripyatskiy" has issued an order "On temporary zoning of the territory of the National Park "Pripyatskiy" and has autocratically changed the borders of functional zones, despite the fact that these borders are established and ratified, according to the Clause 24 of the Law of the Republic of Belarus "On Especially Protected Territories and Objects", by the decision of the President or the Government of the Republic of Belarus. The next example is a statutory regulation which, according to the Law "On Especially Protected Territories and Objects", should be created for every national park. However, this document, despite the requirement of the Law, was absent in both national parks "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" and "Pripyatskiy" for many years. Manage like you want. Unfortunately, the cases such as these are not only.
In our country, the system of public control over biodiversity and EPNTs and the practice of public involvement in the ecological decision-making process concerning the EPNTs are only lately to be under development. The public expresses deep concern over spring hunting for birds, shooting bison for the purposes of selection and lynxes for reduction of their number, although these animals are listed in the Red Data Book of the Republic of Belarus, and over other problems connected to conservation of biodiversity.
At the same time the public has a great potential for turning the theory of problems regarding protection of wild nature to their practical implementation. The activity of the non-governmental organization "Belarus Bird Life" on promotion of creation of new EPNTs and on the management of the existed ones, as well as its projects on conservation of rare species is the example of this statement.
When the Law "On Especially Protected Territories and Objects" is working, it means that our rights to the healthy environment can be realized. The Law will not be working if the society does not need of it, if, first of all, all educated citizens will not require the observance of this Law and the guarantee of their rights and their children's rights to the healthy environment.
Of course, efforts of single enthusiasts fighting for protection of wild nature and of lone non-governmental organizations working in this field are important, however, they are not sufficient. Many problems can be solved only if the joint activity by many people and organizations.
Thus, creation of the public network as a system of public participation in the Republic of Belarus in the field of conservation of biological diversity and protection of wild nature is nowadays very topical. This network represents a community consisted of people who are not indifferent, who wants and are able to make concrete acts for conservation of wild nature in Belarus. This is the community of those who are ready to the dialogue and joint actions, to fight for rights of nature to the existence and for rights of people to the healthy environment.
The Aarhus Convention and the Law of the Republic of Belarus "On Protection and Use of Fauna" and "On Protection of the Environment" are the legislative base for this activity.
We consider the working group "Nature and Wilderness Protection" in the frame of the public ecological network as an initiator, organizer and information centre. At present, 19 people have joined to the activity of the working group. They are not only environmentalists and representatives of public organizations but also professional biologists, experts on biodiversity and journalists. We consider the further activity of the group as being closely cooperative with representatives of state nature protection bodies, lawyers and other experts. We hope to involve in the work of the group as many experts in the field of biodiversity and nature protection as possible. The activity will hardly be effective without the professional approach. The more people who are not indifferent to problems of protection of wild nature of Belarus will take part in concrete actions, the best results for the sake of nature and people will be achieved.
We invite all of interested to join the working group (the address for contacts is redco63@yachoo.com)
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Inessa Zenina is an expert on mammals. A sphere of her scientific interests covers small-sized mammals.
She is involved in nature protection and management on especially protected natural territories (EPNT) for a long time. After she graduated the biological faculty of the Gomel State University, she worked as a researcher in the Polessie Natural Reserve (Ukraine). In 1991 she changed her job to the Pripyatskiy Landscape Hydrological Reserve which was reorganized into the National Park "Pripyatskiy" in 2006 where she continued her job till 2002.
She has over 40 scientific papers on ecology of mammals and problems of protected areas. Since 1989 she is involved in ecological education in a secondary school. She has published over 30 popular papers devoted to wild nature. From 1997 to 2001 she led a school ecological study group in the town of Turov.
From 1992 to 1996 she was one of the executors of the project "Belovezhskaya Pushcha Forest Biodiversity Conservation". From 1997 to 2002 she was an initiator and a coordinator of the campaign "Parks' March on the Turov Land" to support protected areas. She was familiar with problem of conservation of wild nature on especially protected natural territories of Belarus, as it's said, living inside of them. She tried to contribute to the answer to these problems.
After she became one of the authors of signing of the appeal prepared by the Belarusian public and sent to the European Council to support conservation natural ecosystems of Belovezhskaya Pushcha in 2002, she was fired from the National park "Pripyatskiy". At present she as a representative of the third sector is continuing to be engaged in problems of conservation of wild nature.
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