The killing of Lake Baikal
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — There are not many places in the world where you can leave an industrial plant in operation and doom hundreds of species of plants and animals to extinction. One such place is Siberia's Lake Baikal.
Under the impact of human intervention, a 1995 report by the Institute of Biology at Irkutsk State University concludes, the lake's unique ecosystems are likely to vanish from its southern basin by the year 2010.
Unless action is taken to radically reduce flows of industrial, agricultural and municipal waste into the lake, the report predicts, the majority of close to 1000 species of plants and animals that are endemic to Baikal (that is, exist nowhere else) will eventually die out.
Findings such as these helped prompt the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in 1996 to add Lake Baikal to its World Heritage list.
But this recognition that preserving the lake ranks as a priority for humankind has cut no ice with Russia's industrial lobbyists. Nor has it impressed Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who in July 1997 vetoed a law "On the Protection of Lake Baikal", drawn up on UNESCO's urging and passed almost unanimously by the Russian parliament.
Not just any lake
Baikal is a place to exhaust the dictionary's stock of superlatives.
Part of a rift system, it first appeared 25 million years ago. It is the world's oldest lake, and at 1637 metres, its deepest. With a volume of 23,000 cubic kilometres, it holds 22.5% of the fresh water on the earth's surface.
A striking feature of the lake's biology is the large proportion of endemic species, as many as 80% according to some. The flora and fauna make up two relatively distinct ecosystems: a common European-Siberian community inhabiting the shoreline and shallows, and a unique Baikal community found in the open waters.
The latter community has evolved over millions of years in highly distinctive conditions: exceptionally pure water with an impoverished but delicately balanced mix of nutrients. It is this chemical environment, and the organisms that have developed in response to it, that make the place special, not simply another cold-temperate northern hemisphere lake.
While most of Baikal is still remarkably clean by usual standards, relatively tiny chemical changes can favour the common Siberian over the endemic species, and have drastic consequences.
The significant human impact on Baikal dates back about 45 years. Now, the once-pure waters along the southern shore are unfit for swimming, and the endemic organisms are in retreat. The creatures affected are not merely phytoplankton, but also fish whose taste receptors and hence foraging behaviour have been seriously disrupted by pollutants.
Other victims of anthropogenic changes may include the lake's unique fresh-water seals. In May and June 1997, stretches of the coastline were littered "like battlefields" with seal carcasses.
The first serious pollution of Baikal came in the mid-1950s from industrial development and population growth along the Selenga River, the largest of the streams that flow into the lake. Then, in the mid-1960s, the building of a hydro-electric dam on the Angara River, which flows out of Baikal, raised water levels, flooding shoreline areas and adding to the load of pollutants. In the decades since, logging in the lake's catchment area has also played a role.
The greatest impact, however, has come from the Baikal Pulp and Paper Plant (BPPP), in operation since 1966 near the town of Baikalsk on the lake's southern shore. With a work force of 3300, the BPPP mainly produces cellulose pulp for tyres and for the paper and packaging industries. In recent years, as much as 80% of its output has been exported.
Pulp and paper manufacturing was an almost unbelievably bad choice of industry for the shores of Lake Baikal. The plant's effluent — more than 200,000 cubic metres of waste water per day — is equivalent to that from a city of half a million people.
Outmoded technology
To bleach its cellulose, the BPPP uses an outmoded process involving elemental chlorine. The products of this process include organochlorides, chemicals that do not occur in nature and many of which are highly dangerous.
Among the most lethal of the organochlorides in the BPPP wastes are dioxins, long-lived compounds that in almost infinitesimal quantities play havoc with animal immune and reproductive systems. Other substances in the effluent include lignin, phenols, sulphates, nitrates and mercury.
From the start, the plant's treatment facilities were unable to cope with the wastes. According to the Irkutsk province Committee for Nature Protection (CNP), the discharges in 1996 exceeded legal limits for 12 out of 19 indices; in the case of organochlorides, by 84,000 times, and for organic sulphur compounds, by 1300 times.
As far back as the early 1960s, Soviet biologists were outraged by the plans to construct the plant. In the 1970s the threat to Baikal provided much of the impulse for an important growth in the country's environmental movement. In 1987, pressure from environmentalists led to a decision by the Soviet government to convert it to non-harmful production within five years.
Nothing, however, was done. In 1992, the government of the Russian Federation reconfirmed the decision to convert the plant, but in December that year the BPPP was privatised. With 51% of the stock nominally in the hands of the workers, the plant was now controlled by its managers. Forcing changes in its products and processes was accordingly more difficult.
By this time, much of the plant's equipment was economically obsolete or physically worn out. Unwilling to convert the plant and risk unpredictable economic consequences, and without the massive capital needed to modernise it, the managers chose a third course: to continue as before, defended by supporters in the state bureaucracy. Meanwhile, accidental waste emissions due to worn-out equipment increased.
Industrial lobby
By this time also, the BPPP was in gross breach of Russian environmental protection legislation. By plying favours in the Irkutsk provincial administration, the plant directors were able to persuade a "conciliation committee" to minimise the penalties.
A more serious threat to the directors appeared in late 1995, when a government commission on Baikal was due to discuss the future of the plant. The directors weathered this storm with the help of a commission from UNIDO, the UN economic development organisation.
Made up almost entirely of representatives of the logging and pulp industries, the commission stated in its final report: "Due to the fact that, at present, no harm to Baikal is done by the Baikalsk plant, we recommend modernisation".
The plant directors could not prevent UNESCO from adding Baikal to its World Heritage list in 1996. At the time, UNESCO presented the Russian government with six recommendations, which it agreed to fulfil. These included the passage of a Lake Baikal law, conversion of the pulp and paper plant, the cessation of logging in the area and improved monitoring.
The law on Baikal, passed by the lower house by 393 votes to 1 in June 1997, then by the upper house soon afterwards, broke new ground for Russian environmental legislation by introducing the principle of ecological zones. In the central zone, all environmentally unsafe activity was to be banned.
Yeltsin vetoed the law on July 21, his staff claiming that it conflicted with existing legislation. Roman Pukalov, Baikal campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Russia, told journalists: "The very same industrial lobbies which for years have interfered with the preparation of this law are responsible for the president's [veto]."
A revised version of the law passed a first reading in parliament last November.
On the other UNESCO recommendations, progress has either been scant or the situation has continued to deteriorate. Real financing for the nature reserves and national parks around the lake has declined by around 50%. The BPPP continues to operate and its accident rate has risen. Logging continues on the northern and eastern shores, and the pollution load in the Selenga River has increased.
According to Greenpeace, the monitoring of the lake by the Russian Hydrometeorology Committee has "practically collapsed due to lack of funds". Although this has made data more sparse, it is clear that the position of the endemic Baikal organisms is worsening, with typical Siberian species making steady advances.
Dangerous pollutants have now reached high concentrations in animals near the top of the food chain. "One of the highly disturbing factors which suggests that the lake's ecosystem is close to a catastrophe", says Greenpeace, "is the discovery of high concentrations of organochlorides in the bodies of Baikal ringed seals".
While the immediate cause of the mass deaths of seals in 1997 was a viral disease, Pukalov believes that the underlying cause was probably damage by pollutants to the seals' immune systems.
International campaign
During recent months, environmentalists' campaigning around Baikal has focused on court action and on pressuring UNESCO to place Baikal on its "World Heritage in Danger" list.
With help from Russian State Committee on the Environment head Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, CNP has now brought an arbitration court suit against the BPPP which seeks to invoke legislation under which polluters can be compelled to pay for cleaning up the environmental damage they inflict. A hearing has been set for April.
The cost of the damage by the BPPP over the past four years alone has been estimated at US$3.5 billion. A court victory for the environmentalists would thus force the plant into bankruptcy. As a bankrupt enterprise, it would again be under state control, and forcing its conversion would be considerably simpler.
Environmentalists are seeking to increase the pressure of international opinion on the Russian authorities. The World Heritage Committee discussed the listing at a session in Japan early in December. Largely on the basis that a law on Baikal was before the Russian parliament, the committee agreed to postpone a decision until next June.
Even if the World Heritage Committee recognises that Baikal is under threat, there are no guarantees that the Russian authorities will act to convert the BPPP to environmentally safe production.
Environmental consciousness has never made much headway among Russian bureaucrats, and the BPPP managers have the backing of what Greenpeace describes as "a bizarre love quadrangle" involving the Irkutsk provincial administration, the State Forestry Service, various federal agencies and representatives of academic science.
Overcoming this opposition would be much easier if defenders of Baikal could point to sources of the money needed to convert the plant and save the jobs of thousands of workers. Since seeking the funds from the Russian government is almost certainly futile, if western governments take environmental protection and World Heritage seriously, they have an obligation to advance special-purpose credits.