#12
strana.ru
March 20, 2002
Charting a Course for Mighty Volga's Future
International project seeks to keep the river Russia's "lifeblood"
By Michael Stedman

Scientists are preparing to launch a major visionary study of what Russia's greatest waterway may be like a generation from now and how the mighty Volga can best be protected for the good of those living in its basin lands.

The 2,300-kilometre artery has fed, watered, moved and powered the lives of more than 40 percent of Russia's population down the years.

And to nurture the future of this unique natural resource, multi-disciplinary teams of experts are being assembled for a scientific study of an eco-system effectively linking the northern Baltic and White Seas with the southern Caspian, washing the shores of Iran.

It's to keep the great river the "lifeblood of Russia" for those still unborn that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNESCO has spent the last two years planning a project to plot the waterway's most positive course up to the year 2030.

Experts in social and environmental sciences, demographics researchers, legal experts and representatives of cultural organizations are poised with others in associated fields for the launch of a study planned as a blueprint showing how the river and its lands can best be developed.

The go-ahead is likely to be announced by a top UNESCO official in May at the Great Rivers 2002 international scientific and industrial forum in Nizhny Novgorod.

This will prime the pumps for a science-based study slated for completion by the end of next year and viewed by those behind the plan as a stimulus for potential development projects by big-money investors such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank, and international agencies such as the United Nations Development Program.

"This will be a holistic view elaborating compromise," UNESCO science and ecology expert Uli Grabener told The Russian Observer at the agency's Moscow office.

"It's looking at balance for best results- how much water is needed for transport, ecology, drinking and energy. It's a science-based vision of what the Volga River Basin should be like for the generation to come, a view of what science can do to facilitate sustainable development."

Researchers will be studying a watercourse discharging between 28,000 and 30,000 cubic meters of water every second through a delta of 275 channels covering some 12,000 square kilometers into the landlocked Caspian Sea. This is the end of a journey starting northwest of Moscow in a series of springs rising in the Valdei Hills.

As it flows through 33 political and administrative territorial "subjects" of the Russian Federation, the Volga connects by canal to two major bodies of water - one to the Baltic by the Volga-Baltic Waterway and the second linked to the Don River, thence to the Black Sea, the Adriatic and the Mediterranean.

It's fed by the Moskva, Oka and Kama rivers as it travels through forests, steppes and arid zones - drainage land in which half of Russia's farmers live and where more than half of Russia's industry is located.

And it's the human influence on the river that will most pre-occupy the experts from Russia and abroad during their investigations. They'll be studying waters that have been used through history principally for fishing and navigation, recreation and transport purposes and in modern times for generating electricity via a series of reservoirs and dams down its length.

For the river is no longer as nature intended, and books on the Volga speak today of a drop of water now taking months instead of weeks to travel the river's now interrupted course.

The water flow is highly-regulated, UNESCO's Grabener notes. "The system's been changed already and we don't plan to turn the clock back," he says. "It doesn't seem realistic to think about removing the dams, but we are looking to make the river work better."

Like tackling erosion, sedimentation and inadequate farming methods which have silted up the reservoirs, he says. And massive interference in the lives of the river's prized sturgeon where the river's lower reaches are harnessed by the huge hydro-electric power complex near Volgograd.

"The water level is governed by energy demands, not ecological needs," Grabener says. Since Soviet dam builders made their first impressions on the river, he says, sturgeon have been cut off from all but the lowest reaches, their river-long spawning grounds now things of the past.

As they may remain. Still, the project planners have set their sights on defining a far better environment for the peoples of the Volga.

And the river's unique characteristic of lying within one single country gives the project a special chance of realizing dreams that would be far-fetched if it crossed national borders.

It's powered, too, by Russia's massive high-level scientific talent, Grabener says. That talent looks like being tasked now to help deliver community-based results beyond science for the sake of science, or research ending up on a bookshelf.