SOCHI, RUSSIA—The state company responsible for developing the world’s largest mountain skiing resort system in southern Russia at a cost of $15 billion has publicly unveiled the draft policy principles and advisory council concept that will guide its efforts toward reconciling planned economic development with the requirements of an ecologically sensitive region, which will also host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
“The North Caucasus is one of the last untouched mountain areas on the planet and represents a unique natural treasure for Russia and the rest of the world,” said Alexei Nevsky, CEO of OJSC Northern Caucasus Resorts Company (NCRC). “We commit to applying the best global practices in environmental management for developing our resort cluster, and to taking responsibility to help create comprehensive mechanisms to preserve and ultimately enhance the entire region’s ecosystem.”
He said a key instrument for achieving that goal would be a new Ecological Council that NCRC will initiate with local residents, regional governments, and interested private and state companies, as well as with Russian and international conservationists that have identified the North Caucasus as globally significant for biodiversity. The charter being developed for the new body will be the subject of further national and international consultations and be finished at the end of November. NCRC will begin immediately soliciting expert member candidates for the policy consultative group worldwide.
Initiative Announced at Roundtable
The council initiative was announced at a roundtable entitled “Preserving the North Caucasus Ecosystem” held atop Krasnaya Polyana, a popular ski resort near Sochi, Russia that will host the snow events of the 2014 Winter Games. The gathering was held under the auspices of the Russian UNESCO Commission, reflecting a concentration of protected World Heritage sites in the region, during the 10th Annual Sochi International Economic Forum.
Organizations including the All-Russian Society for Nature Protection, known by its Russian acronym VOOP since 1924, North Caucasus Ecological Watch and WWF Russia met with other private and official stakeholders to exchange views on balancing badly needed economic and social development in the restive region and preservation of its intensely rich natural and cultural heritage. Among the foreign participants were globally renowned explorer, film-maker and conservationist Jean-Michel Cousteau and European Network of Leaders of Civil Society General Secretary Sir Stephen Bubb.
At the seminar, Nevsky also introduced for public discussion a set of draft corporate environmental policy principles that will guide NCRC’s general activities in this area and drive the development of the company’ environmental management program, a key element of the master plan according to which NCRC will create a cluster of five world-class skiing resorts across the North Caucasus. The document addresses, among other issues, land use, waste management, energy, legal compliance, monitoring and local and international cooperation.
Company Aims to Learn from Past
Nevsky also noted the vast environmental experience accumulated over the decades in the skiing resort industry in Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere. He said that NCRC aimed to learn from mistakes made and capitalize on successes achieved in deriving know-how that safeguards and enhances ecosystems under conditions of commercial development.
“Environmentalism and the emphasis on sustainability were actually triggered in my country as a result of the rapid development of our mountain skiing industry,” said roundtable participant Laurent Vigier, director of European and International Affairs at France’s Caisse des Depots et Consignations, a state-owned group and long-term investor working in the public interest that has signed a strategic joint venture with NCRC to deploy French expertise for the mega-development project. “The growth in tourism that brought France international environmental cooperation in the form of the Alpine Convention, establishing a common protection framework among the eight countries sharing the Alps, is a good example for Russia.”
Nevsky also announced that NCRC would help drive the development of an environmental preservation regime across the entire affected area, which includes parts of the North Caucasus Federal District, Krasnodar Region and the Republic of Adygea—all currently ecologically threatened by illegal logging, unregulated tourism leading to frequent forest fires and unchecked waste disposal polluting mountain lakes and rivers. He added that because the natural environment would be the most critical asset of a new region-wide sustainable tourism industry, the company would have an overwhelmingly powerful motivation to preserve the regional ecosystem.
“Negative tendencies that have been developing from local misuse in the North Caucasus threaten irreparable harm by the middle of the century,” Konstantin Tsybko, chairman of VOOP, which is the oldest national environmental group in Russia, told the audience. “Development of a socially responsible and sustainable tourism industry in the region holds the prospect of reversing these trends and enhancing the eco-system on the basis of enlightened self-interest.”
About OJSC Northern Caucasus Resorts Company
Moscow-based NCRC is a state enterprise charged by the Russian federal government to manage a $15 billion public-private initiative to build and operate five world-class skiing resorts in the North Caucasus as part of a broad official scheme to promote economic and social transformation of the depressed region. Later stages of the project will include mineral-waters spas and beach resorts on the Caspian coast. NCRC has been initially capitalized by a Russian government allocation of $2 billion. Russian Olympic Committee Vice President Akhmed Bilalov serves as NCRC board chairman.
