From: "Marina Ivanova" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Information about Socio-Ecological Union (SEU)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 23:30:03 +0300
Dear friends!
This information may be interesting for you. My NGO is a member
of SEU as many other ecological NGO in Russia and many other
contries.
If somebody want to take SEU information every month, you can
write me or directly to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your email will be
include to the list and you will take SEU-information regularly
Marina Roubtsova,
CIS, cohort7
Dear friends from all over the world,
SEU TIMES is talking about Socio-Ecological Union - an
international umbrella community with 295 members in 19 countries
of Northern hemisphere - activities and events. This covers life
of wide-range SEU member organizations in different countries.
The SEU Times will come to you monthly, and you are welcome to
distribute, publish and use information it contains.
We are expecting eagerly for your comments and ideas for possible
cooperation.
Sincerely yours,
Sviatoslav Zabelin
Goldman Environmental Prize winner-93
Co-chairman of the Council of Socio-Ecological Union,
International
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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*** The SEU TIMES
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*** Socio-Ecological Union Newsletter
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N 5
May/June 99
Published by Socio-Ecological Union
Center for Coordination and Information
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IN THE ISSUE
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FSB: THE ANTI-ENVIRONMENTALIST ESPIONAGE CAMPAIGN CONTINUES
THE MINATOM WAR CHRONICLES
THE PIPE: THE BLACK SEA COAST FACES CORPORATE THREAT
THE WORLD HERITAGE OR ANOTHER HIGHWAY
TALKING DEMOCRACY IN BELARUS
BALKAN TALKS
A BREAK IN "URANIUM REPUBLIC" CASE
WORLD ACTION DAY AGAINST PLUTONIUM ECONOMY FOR NUCLEAR FREE
FUTURE
TADJIKISTAN: WE ARE MAKING THE CHANGES
CHINESE GOVERNMENT IRRIGATION PLANS WILL DRY UP KAZAKHSTAN
ENVIRONMENTAL VIDEO SCHOOL
PEOPLE REJECTED MILITARY "GIFTS". IN COURT
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MAYDAY!
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FSB: THE ANTI-ENVIRONMENTALIST ESPIONAGE CAMPAIGN CONTINUES
On June 28 in Vladivostok (Russian Far East) the Federal
Security
Service (FSB) officers searched apartment and laboratory of
specialist
in nuclear oceanology professor Vladimir Soyfer. Documents and
letters
were confiscated during the searches and sent for examination to
the
General Staff's Eight department. The FSB claims that Soyfer had
violated rules for handling classified documents, as it was found
earlier by Pacific Institute of Oceanology commission. The
official
statement on the action FSB promised to issue on the next week.
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NUCLEAR ATTACK
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THE MINATOM WAR CHRONICLES
PR- attack: no one killed, newspapers injured
The nuclear dreams of Russian Ministry of Nuclear Energy
(Minatom) ran into SEU member strong opposition. Roaches to
change Russian legislation currently prohibiting nuclear waste
import into country received wide and unfavorable publicity,
provided by environmentalists. Information exposing both Minatom
dirty deals and greedy MP's eager to give green light to nuclear
waste dumping in Russia in exchange to Minatom promised dollars
rose public anger. One could hear even saleswomen discussing the
issue using academic terminology and arguments.
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.
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SEU-TIMES SPECIAL
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THE PIPE
Story of people's war against the corporate oil pipeline
The Black Sea was known to be a "cradle of civilizations"
for thousands of years. And yet there are places remaining wild
and beautiful. Surprisingly, some of them are close to populated
areas - like 40 km long coastline between two Russian cities of
Krasnodar region - Novorossiisk, which is industrial center, and
Anapa - one of the last clean resort areas.
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CONSERVATION
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THE WORLD HERITAGE OR ANOTHER HIGHWAY
a tough choice for Adugeya government
UNESCO is considering option of placing the North Caucasus
(North -East Black Sea region) on the World Heritage list. The
UNESCO expert commission worked there from June 7 to June 15 to
evaluate the compliance of the area with the criteria of World
Heritage nomination terms. The commission chief - Martin Price
(head of the Mountain Areas and Environment Protection program
from Oxford university, GB) on the work results stated that
Northern Caucasus definitely should be on the World Heritage
list.
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POLITICAL REFLECTIONS
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TALKING DEMOCRACY IN BELARUS
Anyone following the last developments within FSU knows that
democracy is a word hardly relevant to some of the countries, and
Belarus is among them. Its even in the air of Minsk, the republic
capital, giving almost a physical sense of what is going on.
That is why only under the auspices of OSCE watch group and
UN Office in Belarus the conference "Establishment of Civil
Society within the Sustainable Development Context in Belarus"
gathered by the Belarus SEU "Chernobyl" became possible. The
issues discussed may sound routine outside the republic but for
Belarus the conference was a brave civil action.
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IN BRIEF
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THE BALKAN TALKS
On July 8 the SEU Councul Chairman Sviatoslav Zabelin met in
the SEU Moscow hedquarters Pekka Haavisto, former Finnish
Minister of Environment, now the Head of UNEP and Habitat Balkan
environment task force on Environment and Human Settlement.
According to Mr Haavisto it was important to know how the
SEU members active in expressing their position regarding Kosovo
consider the activities of this UN group. Balkan task force of
UNEP and Habitat is aimed to investigate how the military
conflict affected the environment and health conditions in the
region. Balkan working group publishes its weekly activity
reports available on Internet: http://www.grid.unep.ch/btf
A BREAK IN "URANIUM REPUBLIC" CASE
"The uranium case came to a break but is not stopped, so its
too early to celebrate" - said Dmitry Rybakov, one of the protest
campaign against uranium mining in Karelia leaders. We already
wrote about the case in SEU Times, but let us give a short
reminder.
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WORLD ACTION DAY AGAINST PLUTONIUM ECONOMY FOR NUCLEAR FREE
FUTURE
Second International Action Day "Stop MOX" was held in May
17. An AntiMOX action is the initiative of SEU Antinuclear
campaign. More that 50 cities all over the world participated in
it at the same time.
This action was prepared in cooperation with March 2000 for Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament.
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...
TADJIKISTAN: WE ARE MAKING THE CHANGES
Tadjik NGO "For Earth" started new educational project
"Children in emergency situations". It is aimed to teach kids how
to behave in accidents and nature disasters.
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* * *
Dushanbe Student Nature Guard and NGO "For Earth" started
lobbing the Convention on access to environment information. This
document was signed by European countries at the Ministerial
Conference in Aarhus (Denmark) the last summer.
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CHINESE GOVERNMENT IRRIGATION PLANS WILL DRY UP KAZAKHSTAN=20
This spring Kazakhstan NGOs drew the attention of the State
Government to the plans of China to use a part of Irtysh River
flow for the irrigation. Irtysh is a big Siberian river, its
springs come from Chernyi (Black) Irtysh river in China. Irtysh
flows through Kazakhstan and Russia, then conjuncts in to great
Russia river Ob' which falls into Arctic Ocean.
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..
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SEU - MEDIA
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ENVIRONMENTAL VIDEO SCHOOL
"The video is everywhere, one simply has to see it. Some
times, one frame tells more than and hour of text", - said Igor
Alimpiev, director of photography from "Lenfilm" studio, one of
the environmental video school trainers.
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IN COURT
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MESCHERA PEOPLE: MILITARY GIFTS? - THANKS, NO!
Early May became a celebration of a victory over the
industry for people of Kasimov, a town in Ryasan region (around
200 km from Moscow). Together with "Rainbow keepers" and
grassroots organizations they have been campaigning against
dangerous project since the last summer. Together with SEU
Chemical Safety program leader Lev Fedorov (doctor in science)
they brought up the action in the court against the local
Environmental Committee. It's experts approved construction of
non-ferrous metal waste recycling facility near Kasimov. The
metal waste planned for treatment turned out to be highly toxic -
as it was taken from military missiles.
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This issue was written and complied by
Sviatoslav Zabelin, the SEU Council Co-Chair, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Olga Berlova and Viktoria Kolesnikova, SEU CCI Press-secretaries,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Previous Issues of The SEU Times may be found at "The Online
Gadfly"
at www.igc.org/gadfly
***
SEU - DECADE OF WORK, DECADE OF MAKING DIFFERENCE
On 1998 Christmas eve SEU - the largest environmental
organization founded in CIS - celebrated its official 10th
anniversary. Ten years ago, the founding conference in Moscow
gathered more than 400 people from 89 places of then still
existent USSR to pronounce establishment of the Socio-ecological
Union. This notable event was publicized by the central and most
powerful then newspaper Pravda, and in ten years of its existence
SEU has proved to become one of the really influential
environmental forces.
Among SEU first projects one should definitely mention
all-USSR public campaigns, widely supported by people and media,
against ill - prominent projects of turning Siberian rivers' flow
and channels' Volga - Chograi and Danube - Dneper constructions.
These victories of then young organization gave it a good start,
but one would be mistaken if consider the SEU only a protest
organization. This, by and large is not true, as SEU different
member organizations lead numerous educational, civic,
conservation, human rights, environmental impact assessment,
clean up, training projects, may be less chanting but of no less
importance.
Devoted to the protection of humanity and nature living
space, SEU has another attractive feature - active civic and
social development work. Thus, in early 1991 the first Soviet -
American NGO conference was held, bringing together socially
active people from once completely different worlds and launching
many friendships and joint projects lasting up to day.
Among these the most large scale, important and useful was
environmental telecommunications project, carried out by the
Sacred Earth Network (SEU member organization) and SEU Center for
Coordination and Information. This project, providing CIS NGOs
with equipment for e-mail access, gave start to now sophisticated
and well developed NGO information network, enabling fast
information exchange and cooperation.
Today SEU and its members may boast different international
awards. Among them acknowledgement as one of the 50 exemplary
communities, selected on the 50th UN anniversary.
So what is the unique structure of this organization -
exemplary community - enabling to cooperate people and
organizations of different views and work styles, and where the
springs come from?
The story of SEU actually goes back to 60's, when Student
Movement of Nature Guards arose - being non-formal, uncontrolled
by the authorities, it was probably first legal and still
independent civic structure.
For years of its existence movement has developed its own
traditions and democracy, and a whole network of concerned
people - once movement active participants. Concern for the
future and friendship based on common work brought these people
together a year before the SEU founding conference in Caucasian
reserve, where the very idea of SEU as an organization emerged.
Based on cooperation and democracy, SEU has no governing
authority obliging members to conduct or to refrain from certain
activities. Decisions are made by SEU conference, and elected by
the conference Council has representation rights in between.
Today the SEU has gathered 250 member organizations from
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Chekhia, Finland, Georgia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Norway, Palestina, Russia,
Scotland, Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, USA and Uzbekistan,
its overall membership is near 25.000. Activities are different
as the members are, but making attempt to generalize, public
involvement in environmnetal safety issues, social ecology,
chemical and nuclear safety, alternative energy, biodiversity
conservation, sustainable forestry, environmental health, ozone
and climate, air and water problems. Lobbying and pressure groups
are also working within SEU. The programs on environment-friendly
housing, childrens' health, nuclear safety, environmetal
education, chemical safety were adopted as all - SEU programs.
The Chairman of Zaporozhie Environmental Club (Ukraine)
wrote: "It is good to feel involved into something great
which SEU, its goals, its members and its work definitely are. I
am proud of being a founder and member of SEU.
Well, I guess, we all are. And, I hope, will be for a long
time".
Tel/fax: +7 095 124-79-34
E-mail: < [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >
www-site - http://cci.glasnet.ru =20
Mailing address for inquiries:=20
P.O.Box 211, 121019 Moscow, Russia
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