Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union

摘要

Widespread pollution in the former Soviet Union (FSU) led Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly Jr.to refer to the “ecocide” of Soviet citizens (Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege, New York: Basic Books, 1992).Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, in many ways and in many places the environmental situation has improved.One of the reasons for this was plummeting industrial production, which led to the shuttering of inefficient factories; this occurred even though the newly independent states of the FSU lacked the resources, legal structures, political will, and/or public interest to deal with the environmental legacies of the Soviet Union.In addition, the number of nongovernmental organizations focused on environmental issues grew rapidly in the 1990s.How many of these organizations still operate and what their focus is remains unclear, especially since economic issues rather than environmental ones have diverted public attention.