Amur Needs un Clean-up Aid

The United Nations may allocate $7 million within a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) budget for an ecological preserve on the Amur River. On November 24 the international supervisory board including the experts for the UNEP project from Russia, China and Mongolia discussed in China’s city of Harbin major issues to be addressed within the project, named ‘Complex control in the Amur River basin’. Among the project’s priorities, the Russian experts stressed the need to provide ecological security to Primorye’s residents by increasing the purity of the Amur River water and its fish resources.

The specialists also expressed the necessity to frequently exchange information gathered on the Amur River and its tributaries.

Overall, Russian experts offered eight major ecological problems to be tackled within the project. All of the suggested items were accepted by Chinese and Mongolian experts for consideration.

“Russia took the initiative at the meeting since the country’s Kabarovsk region is located at the river’s lower course and we experience in full the negative effects of its pollution,” cited the Head of the region’s Department of Natural Resources Sergei Andriyenko.

To receive the money for the project, the three participating countries must conduct a cross-border analysis of the Amur River to receive the UN grant for the Amur clean-up. At the next working session to be held in the Chinese town of Heihe in January 2007, the project participants will choose the ecological issues which will top the agenda.

The river, according to experts, has been suffering from rampant pollution for many years. Public attention to ecological problems on the Amur River was greatly increased last December, when it became contaminated by a toxic slick of chemicals which reached it from the Songhua River.

The explosion at a petrochemical factory in the Chinese city of Jilin resulted in 100 tons of benzene spilling into the Songhua River. The previous UNEP ecological projects implemented in the Far East are those in Primorye’s Khanka Lake and in Mongolia’s Daurian Steppe zone, which are the parts of the Amur River basin. The neighboring countries of Mongolia, Russia and China participated in both projects, which did not, however, receive wide attention.

Combined reports