«Greeners» addressed to UNESCO about Sochi-2014 again

The Ecological Watch across Northern Caucasus sent a missive with offers to the address of the delegates of the 34-th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee which takes place on these days in the city of Brazilia, South America. «Greeners» call the delegates again to include the object of the World Heritage “Western Caucasus” into the list of “World Heritage Under Threat”.

The 34-th session of the World Heritage Committee plans to adopt a number of radical decisions on maintenance of safety of «Western Caucasus”, as ecologists informed. And there should be extremely important decisions. However they cannot be in any way considered sufficient.

The measures concern both the plans of Adygeya Republic about construction of a mountain-skiing complex “Oshten”, and the plans of Krasnodar region about a resort complex “Lagonaki” in the framework of the tourism development program in Northern Caucasus “Height 5642”. In addition it is expected that they would offer Russia “to toughen considerably the security regime in the regional nature sanctuaries “Riverheads of Psheha and Pshehashkha», «Riverheads of Tsitse», «Buiniy Ridge”, the natural park “Big Tkhach” down to their inclusion into the structure of the Caucasian natural reserve”.

However, according to the ecologists, in the project of resolution of the session the problems connected with the mounting skiing resort “Lunar Glade” and the Olympic construction in Sochi are absolutely not mentioned. They believe that it is a result of a compromise between the UNESCO World Heritage Center and the Government of Russia: the World Heritage Center does not accent on the problems mentioning the projects priority for the federal authorities, but makes radical decisions on projects proceeding from the regional authorities.

As the ecologists consider, another result of such compromise is that at the session they do not plan to focus attention on the question of including «Western Caucasus” into the list “World Heritage Under Threat”. Having reminded about the most significant fears, the Ecological Watch asked in the missive to consider an opportunity of inclusion of «Western Caucasus” into the above-named list, but also suggested to include in the project of the resolution of the session additional items:

— To provide measures on that construction of the Olympic objects in the area of Red Glade settlement would not touch the territory of the Object of the Heritage and its security zone.

— To stop development of the resort “Lunar Glade” on the World Heritage territories as well as construction on it of new recreational objects; to provide its transformation into real scientific centre «Biosphere» in accordance to its official name.

The ecologists noted also in the letter that the majority of the former threats to the World Heritage “Western Caucasus” remain actual, and the most part of the recommendations of the 32-nd session of the Committee, to which they had addressed, too, was not executed. Thus, as they emphasize, new threats appeared.