Rich in Gold And Grizzlies - Russian Far East peninsula Kamchatka - Brief Article

Sierra, Nov, 1998

Kamchatka, that remote peninsula in the Russian Far East, is one of the wildest places on the planet--thanks to the cold war. A giant nuclear-submarine base at the southern port city Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky made the entire California-size region a closed military zone until the end of the Soviet period. As a result, Kamchatka boasts the world's largest grizzly population, some of its healthiest wild salmon stocks--and up to 1,000 tons of gold. Thanks to the Sierra Club, it may not need to trade its natural riches for its mineral wealth.

The collapse of the Soviet Union finally opened Kamchatka to adventurous visitors eager to see its 29 active volcanoes, geyser fields, and spectacular wildlife. The Soviet breakdown also opened the area to Western-style private investors eager to exploit its large reserves of precious metals. In 1994, a consortium of Russian, Canadian, and U.S. firms formed a joint venture called Kamgold to develop the Aginsky mine, which the company hoped might contain as much as 30 tons of gold. To finance the project, Kamgold's U.S. and Canadian partners went to OPIC, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a quasi-governmental U.S. development bank.

Around the same time, Sierra Club activist Susan Holmes (later elected to the Club's Board of Directors) visited Kamchatka. Meeting with local ecologists and representatives from indigenous groups, she learned that the Aginsky mine site was on traditional Native lands on the edge of the pro posed Bystrinsky Nature Park, then under consideration by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. After learning about the multiple threats the mine would pose to wilderness, biodiversity, and Native culture in the area, she says, "I had to get involved."

That meant diving into the complex world of international trade, which Holmes did with the help of a few key Club staff and volunteers, plus the Environmental Defense Fund and the Pacific Environment and Resources Center, an advocacy group focusing on protecting ecosystems of the Pacific Rim. Together they wrote a letter to OPIC--with copies to Vice President Al Gore and other top U.S. officials--asking that funding for Aginsky be denied. If the mine's toxic holding ponds were to fail, they pointed out, Kamchatka's vital salmon industry could be irreparably damaged. "The proposed mine area is situated in the high headwaters of one of the most important salmon spawning regions not only in Kamchatka but in all of Russia," they wrote. "Seventy percent of all the salmon-catch spawn in rivers potentially impacted by the mine."

The group's lobbying efforts appear to have made an impression. In August 1996, Arthur Ditto, the president of Kinross, one of Karogold's U.S. partners, wrote to the U.S. National Mining Association complaining about "the usual badgering from an [sic] preservationist coalition fronted by the Sierra Club." Ditto says OPIC told him that Kamgold's application was "in trouble" and that "follow-up at a political level ... tells us that OPIC and the administration is [sic] responding to coercion from the Sierra Club et al."

The funding was denied that same month. In October, the World Conservation Union approved a Sierra Club-sponsored resolution opposing any U.S. funding for the mine. The resolution was endorsed by 70 governments and 600 nongovernmental organizations. Two months later, UNESCO officially recognized the Bystrinsky Nature Park as part of the "Volcanoes of Kamchatka" World Heritage Site.

But the would-be gold miners refused to give up. Last October, they mounted a challenge to OPIC in Portland, Oregon, where Russian and U.S. business and political leaders were meeting under the auspices of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation. In the back of the hall sat Susan Holmes, who stood up and addressed a "sea of dark suits" in support of the salmon, grizzlies, and indigenous people of Kamchatka. As a result, Kamgold never got its needed show of support from the assembly. "I don't think I fully understood the power of the Sierra Club until that moment," says Holmes.

In a final blow, the United Nations recently earmarked $20 million to protect biodiversity and salmon fisheries in Kamchatka, the result of lobbying by--who else?--Holmes and her allies.

Holmes sees the fight against the Aginsky mine as "one small effort with huge repercussions." It is also a demonstration of anthropologist Margaret Mead's famous dictum that "a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world."

For more information on what you can do for Kamchatka, write to Susan Holmes at susan.holmes@ sierraclub.org.