Vladislav Larin - Review of the System of Environmental Monitoring in the Russian Federation and Former Soviet Union and Related Environmental Policy Issues. Thesis for MSc Degree, MCMXCVII

However, most of all environmental information of the former USSR and partly of NIS kept in the governmental organisations of Russian Federation.

2.2. Existing sources of environmental information

2.2.1. Institutional and organisational set-up of reporting and indicator framework

in the NIS

In the recent work «Environmental Reporting in Central and Eastern Europe: A Review of Selected Publications and Frameworks», the authors notice, that:

Only in very few cases in the required data collected within the systems of national environmental authorities. More often they have to count on information obtained by monitoring networks belonging to other agencies. These agencies are either responsible for the exploitation of natural resources not covered by the mandate of an environmental authority (e.g., mineral resources, waters, forests, lands, commercial wildlife and fish resources),for specific aspects of environmental issues (e.g., public health, emergency situations) or for collecting and managing specific types of information (e.g., national statistical offices, surveying and cartographic agencies, networks of hydrological and meteorological observations). Information may also be received from research and academic institutions and NGOs, however the extent of such co-operation depends upon a country’s attitude towards «unofficial» sources of information. (UNDP/CEU, Denisov et al., 1997).

From the point of view of governmental officers all reliable environmental information could be collected only by official organisations specialised for environmental monitoring (RosGidromet) or in collecting data about environmental pollution and influence of pollution on public health (GosComStat, MinZdrav, GosComSanEpidNadzor) (for details about limitations of official and non-official environmental information see Chapter 2.2.2. and 2.5.3.).

2.2.2. Limitations of reliability of collected data

Every system for collecting environmental information has limitations linking with the reliability of collected data. This limitation could be:

– methodological, due to incorrect or wrong methods of collecting and processing of data;

– technical, due to differences in equipment and used to wrong regulation of this equipment;

– organisational, due to problems of organisation of permanent work of system for collection of unified data from the vast territory. There is not enough control for quality of environmental information collected by the remote stations of environmental monitoring.

All listed limitations in reliability of collected data, as a rule, are minimised by the implementation of unified methods, used in large information frameworks. That is why it is possible to speak about good quality of environmental information collected by different official organisations. Anyway, the Russian Federation and NIS have no alternative systems for collection of environmental information and researchers are forced to use official data.

2.2.3. New participants in the process collecting environmental information

In the last years small organisations and are trying to compete in this sphere with state monopolists. For years analysis of the environment in the USSR was restricted for independent experts. All data on the state of the environment was confidential and any unauthorised activity around this problem was considered as illegal and prohibited. Citizens and independent researchers did not have access to official data and could not collect their own data about the state of environment (independent researchers are professionals and experts in the field of environmental problems which are not staff of governmental bodies – researchers, scientific journalists and writers, chemists, biologists and geographers, experts of NGOs, etc.).

This situation started to change during the «perestroyka» times when «ecological glasnost» become effective weapon for the new political reformers. Legal regulations in this sphere were not formed and holders of environmental information did not make it available for public use. It was the time when independent environmentalists wrote serious articles and books on the basis of newspaper publications.

At that time with the growing public concern about environmental problems small private enterprises started to appear, offering services for of air, water and soil analyses. Under the conditions of information vacuum this activity was successful. But the reliability of the information obtained was not better (and very frequently ever worse) than the data from official organisations. This was a result of poor equipment; bad training of the staff; absence of knowledge about existing methods for analysis of environmental samples; willingness to present not real, but expected information.

Data on the state of the environment at that time was collected by the following bodies, besides official organisations:

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Names of the organisations referred their status for the 1996 (Larin, 1996);