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News, June 2012

05.06.2012

The Fund for Sustainable Development (FSD) organized a round table at the Central House of Journalists entitled “Twenty Years After: Conservation Needs Reloading. Actionable Solutions for Sustainable Development”.


E.Bondarchuk, FSD projects manager, presented the Responsible Water Management for Sustainable Development partnership program of FSD and the ALCOA Foundation

The Fund for Sustainable Development (FSD) organized a round table at the Central House of Journalists entitled “Twenty Years After: Conservation Needs Reloading. Actionable Solutions for Sustainable Development”.

This event took place on June 5, 2012, the International Environment Day, and in view of the forthcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development scheduled to be held in Rio de Janeiro on June 20-22, 2012.

The participants in the roundtable discussed conservation and sustainable development both in Russia and in the world 20 years following the historic UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) that was the largest world forum of the 20th century.

The discussion at the round table was joined by leading experts in the field of sustainable development Victor Danilov-Danilyan, director of the Institute of Water Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and corresponding member of RAS, and Vyacheslav Rozhnov, corresponding member of RAS and deputy director of A.N.Severtsev Institute of Ecology and Evolution, and participants in the 1992 conference.

Victor Danilov-Danilyan, who was a member of Russia’s delegation at the Conference in Rio, shared both his reminiscences and opinion regarding the current situation in the social and environmental sphere. He believes, along with other scientists, that “a global advance to sustainable development is utterly insufficient. Moreover, today it is important to retain the level of the understanding of the 1992 issues, to at least be able to correctly cite the principles and program that had been formulated then. Regrettably, during the past 20 years even the term “sustainable development” has not been defined uniformly. To say nothing about actual accomplishments and achievements in resolving humanity’s social and environmental problems. There are practically none.”

Vyacheslav Rozhnov, having agreed with his colleague, nevertheless called upon the audience to raise and discuss on all levels questions related to the environment and sustainable development in an attempt to change the situation at least on a public awareness level.

The main conclusion reached during the discussion was that the international community must admit that global progress toward sustainable development models has been highly unsatisfactory, with Russia not being an exclusion. Moreover, it is one of the few countries where an interest in this challenge on the part of its government and top leaders is practically lacking.

Many real practical achievements in the transition to sustainable development are taking place not on a global or national level, but on a local, community level. That is where measures are taken to save and rationally use natural resources and reduce pressure on ecosystems; however, the essential aspect of this effort is the development of environmental thinking among community members.

FSD executive director, Oleg Fokin, spoke about what non-profit organizations in Russia can do for sustainable development and noted, in particular, the contribution of the Fund for Sustainable Development to this process.

The brochure “Small Business and Sustainable Development in Russia: Best Practices” with descriptions of 29 examples of successful environmentally and socially oriented businesses was presented at the round table: http://fund-sd.ru/citi-album/index.htm, as well as an information CD-ROM disc of the Institute of Water Problems developed under the FSD program Responsible Water Management for Sustainable Development.


Prof. V.Pryazhinskaya, chief researcher at the Institute of Water Problems, presented the information disc Water Management and Sustainable Development

E.Lvoutina, FSC director for development and communications, presented the publication project Environmental Encyclopedia


The discussion at the round table was joined by leading experts in the field of sustainable development Victor Danilov-Danilyan, director of the Institute of Water Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and corresponding member of RAS, and Vyacheslav Rozhnov, corresponding member of RAS and deputy director of A.N.Severtsev Institute of Ecology and Evolution

On June 5, 2012, the Fund for Sustainable Development organized a round table at the Central House of Journalists entitled “Twenty Years After: Conservation Needs Reloading. Actionable Solutions for Sustainable Development”
 
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