Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Map of Soviet Russia showing major hydropower sites
- 1 Challenge of the third generation of Soviet power
- 2 Building authority around a new agricultural policy
- Part I Advice and dissent in the shaping of Brezhnev's agricultural and environmental programs
- Part II Implementation of the Brezhnev programs
- 7 Loosening the grip of old priorities: the long struggle against hydropower
- 8 The new environmental program: do the Soviets really mean business?
- 9 Slow gains at a high price: the frustrations of reclamation
- 10 Carrying out a third-generation program with second-generation methods
- 11 Conclusion: lessons of the Brezhnev policies and the future of reform
- Notes
- Index
8 - The new environmental program: do the Soviets really mean business?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Map of Soviet Russia showing major hydropower sites
- 1 Challenge of the third generation of Soviet power
- 2 Building authority around a new agricultural policy
- Part I Advice and dissent in the shaping of Brezhnev's agricultural and environmental programs
- Part II Implementation of the Brezhnev programs
- 7 Loosening the grip of old priorities: the long struggle against hydropower
- 8 The new environmental program: do the Soviets really mean business?
- 9 Slow gains at a high price: the frustrations of reclamation
- 10 Carrying out a third-generation program with second-generation methods
- 11 Conclusion: lessons of the Brezhnev policies and the future of reform
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In the southern USSR, an expanding agriculture competes for scarce water not only with hydropower, as we saw in the last chapter, but also with industry and municipalities. These have long been accustomed to using water as a free good to dilute and evacuate their wastes. The only way to liberate additional water for irrigated agriculture is to make industry and municipalities use less and clean what they use. Therefore, the implementation of the southern strategy in the Brezhnev plan depends in part on whether the clean-water program launched in the early 1970s can actually be made to work. That will not be easy. Until quite recently, as we saw in Chapter 3, the Soviet Union had no environmental program worthy of the name (at any rate outside the two or three largest cities). Starting virtually from scratch, a skeptical industry and a newly formed enforcement bureaucracy are being asked to develop a major program in a hurry.
How well is it working? According to Soviet sources, water quality has already improved slightly in the areas of highest priority. The deterioration of the Volga has been halted. In Moscow, water quality has improved “somewhat” in the last ten years. Some sources claim that waste-treatment capacity is already catching up with the growing volume of industrial wastes nationwide. It is hard to tell, however, which claims are real and which are inflated or overoptimistic. And if we cannot establish that, how can we judge the real priority and prospects of the water-quality program? Fortunately, we can get a better answer by looking at the system of planning, implementation, and enforcement.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reform in Soviet PoliticsThe Lessons of Recent Policies on Land and Water, pp. 111 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981