ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of Russia’s contemporary environmental situation, highlighting trends at the national and regional level since 1991. It explores Russia’s environmental monitoring system in order to gain insight into the way in which environmental data are generated and presented in official documentation. Russia’s specially protected areas fulfil a number of functions related to conservation, scientific and socio-cultural concerns. The marked falls in gross pollution levels across the post-socialist countries of central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have received considerable attention in the Western literature during the last decade or so. The relationship between gross pollution output and environmental quality is multifaceted and mediated by a range of natural and social factors. The influence of certain types of environmental pollution, such as that associated with the Chernobyl’ explosion, on public health and biophysical systems is difficult to determine with accuracy.
