The Far East still counts on getting federal budget support to carry out all construction projects necessary to prepare Vladivostok for the APEC Summit 2012. Vladimir Putin will soon arrive to the region to inspect this situation. Ecology issues attract more and more attention. Last week an ecological forum took place in Vladivostok, next week there will be an international conference. Amur Leopards, one of the most endangered species of Russia, are losing their range due to wood poachers and forest fires. Learn more in the weekly report by FederalPress.
The Far East still counts on getting federal budget support to carry out all construction projects necessary to prepare Vladivostok for the APEC Summit 2012. Vladimir Putin will soon arrive to the region to inspect this situation. Ecology issues attract more and more attention. Last week an ecological forum took place in Vladivostok, next week there will be an international conference. Amur Leopards, one of the most endangered species of Russia, are losing their range due to wood poachers and forest fires. Learn more in the weekly report by FederalPress.
APEC Summit
Igor Shuvalov, vice prime minister of Russia, declared at a Council of the Federation meeting that the government was going to fulfill its financial obligations in regard to construction of objects and infrastructure in Vladivostok for the APEC Summit 2012. The federal budget is prepared to spend 202.2 billion rubles for various preparation projects. Also, last week Minister of Regional Development of Russia Viktor Basargin visited Vladivostok and inspected airport reconstruction works under the renovation project for the summit.
Russian sailors need help
Four ships in different parts of the world carrying crews from Vladivostok are stuck in ports due to financial troubles. Southern Pearl in Bulgaria, Piruit in Panama, Magdalena in UAE, and Madero in South Korea have all been literary left to sink or swim. The crews haven’t been paid for many months in a row. Reserves of water and food on board are quickly reducing.
Pyotr Osichansky, inspector of the International Transport Workers Federation, follows the situations up and tries to help the crew members.
Ecological Forum
The 4th EcoForum “Nature without Limits” took place in Vladivostok last week. Marine ecology issues were discussed by the scientists, power officials, business community and ecological organizations representatives from Asian-Pacific Region. The event was also attended by the UN International Environmental Technology Center representatives.
Ecology professionals discussed the problems of waste, marine environment protection and complex ocean research.
Amur Leopard
Amur Leopard, one of the world’s rarest feline species, which now is represented by only about 30 animals, might soon actually become extinct in wild nature. WWF Russia sees two main reasons why this is happening. First, leopard’s range is getting smaller and smaller due to poachers cutting wood even in the restricted nature reserves. Second, forest fires add considerably to damaging leopard’s native environment. This year forest fires destroyed nearly one third of the region’s woods, including 11% of wood in the leopard’s reserve.
Andrey Fereferov, project coordinator at WWF Russia Far East, believes that only way out is enforcing responsibility over the gamekeepers, wood cutters, land owners and land renters for taking care of the fires on their territory and appointing responsible commissioners for monitoring fires on the governmental land.
USA and Russia unite against poachers
Vladivostok Center for organized crime studies will house an international conference devoted to environmental crimes on October 20-21, 2009. USA is going to be Russia’s partner in this event. Four experts from America will arrive to deliver reports. The conference will dwell on such topics as illegal fishing, illegal wood cutting and environment pollution.
Opinion poll
Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) conducted a poll to study people’s attitude to the new scheme of governor elections. Currently governors in Russian regions are appointed by the President, instead of being directly elected by people as they used be.
Citizens of the Far East and Siberia consider that the quality of work of governors appointed by the President increased. Generally, every fifth Russian citizen shares this opinion. However 51 percent of Russian people don’t see any considerable changes in the efficiency of work of the regional governance bodies.
23% of respondents reported that the level of social responsibility of the appointed governors increased. But one the whole 49% don’t find any significant changes in social responsibility of the governors.
1600 people in 140 locations of Russia have participated in this poll.
Crisis in Khabarovsk
Statistics indicates that the industrial production in Khabarovsk Region continues to slide down. Companies’ turnover this year makes 143.6 billion rubles, which accounts for only 84.6 percent of the level of 2008. The volume of investments makes 17.6 billion rubles, or 66% of the last year’s.
Defense industry, processing and machine building are the most troubled sectors of the production. These industries experience reduction of orders from the customers, decrease in sales, debts to banks and business partners.
Back pay is another serious problem in the region. As of beginning of October back pay estimated 290 million rubles, which is 2.7 times more than in January 2009.