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News. May, 2009

Representatives of the Fund for Sustainable Development Take Part in the International Scientific and Practical Seminar ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. RATIONAL NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

The seminar, which took place on May 22-23, 2009, in Yasnaya Polyana Estate Museum in Tula Oblast, was organized by the Center of Russia’s Environmental Policy and Culture, a national NGO; the Commission for Environmental policy and Conservation at the RF Public Chamber; and Tula State University. It was attended by nearly 50 scholars, educators, experts and journalists from six regions of Russia and from the US.

Presenters from FSD spoke about the best practices of projects that promoted sustainable community development in Russia and were carried out in 30 municipalities in the Russian Far East, Lake Baikal Region and the Northern Caucuses under the Community Development Support Program in the Russian Federation.

Social technologies of involving citizens in regional development programs; reduction of environmental impacts through energy and resource saving; and environmental education projects – these are the elements of fostering new attitudes among the public toward the environment, i.e., enhancing environmental culture in practice.

In their presentations, R.Butovsky, FSD program director, and E. Bondarchuk and E.Milanova, projects managers, acquainted the audience with the results of FSD activities in the following areas:

• Sustainable Environmental Community Development: FSD Best Practices.
• Sustainable Development and Community Wellbeing (on the example of Lake Baikal Region).
• Environmental Education Projects – the Basis of Education for Sustainable Development.

The key concept of the seminar – interaction and inseparability of ecology and culture – has been formulated not only by the country’s scientific community, but also in the “Russian Federation National Security Strategy through 2020” approved by President Medvedev in May 2009, in which the issue of ecology and culture in Russia is set forth as a priority. Thus, a new vector of multi-sector cooperation in preserving the natural and cultural environment in Russia has been defined. In these conditions, the vast expertise of public organizations such as the Fund for Sustainable Development, which operate on the “extradepartmental” plane, is helping to strengthen partnerships between business, local government and citizens to address environmental and social development issues in communities.