Established in mid-February, the Ecological Council is composed of Russia’s leading ecological experts from both the government and private sectors. Experts from numerous environmental NGOs, including Greenpeace-Russia and WWF-Russia, representatives of the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade, as well as the Directorate for the Development of Sochi, used this first meeting to establish an open dialogue and agreed in a unanimous vote on the green development guidelines prepared by the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Under the proposed guidelines, an environmental impact assessment will become mandatory before the start of any construction work on a Sochi 2014 Olympic venue. To further guarantee that the proposed Games in Sochi will have no net impact on the environment, the approved guidelines will drive an initiative to tighten environmental legislation over the coming months.
Sochi 2014 Bid CEO Dmitry Chernyshenko said, “this critical first meeting of the Ecological Council confirms that Sochi 2014 will follow through with its promise to safeguard the region’s natural riches through an open dialogue with all stakeholders concerned. We believe that the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi will leave a long-lasting legacy for environmental policy in our country. Our goal is to ensure that thorough ecological planning and review play a key role in Russia's development projects in the future.”
Chaired by the Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Anatoly Tyomkin, the first meeting of the Coordinating Ecological Council gathered almost 30 experts including academicians Victor Osipov, Geo-ecology Institute Director, Dmitry Pavlov, Director of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution, and professor Nikolay Kasimov, the Dean of the Faculty of Geography of the Moscow State University.
