Russia bans environmental associations

After Greenpeace, now it’s the WWF’s turn: Russia has also banned the famous “panda” association. If you try to enter the Russian site of the World Wildlife Fund you will find this inscription: “On June 21, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation recognized the international non-governmental organization World Wide Fund for Nature as an undesirable organization in Russia” .

In fact, it is a ban on the activities of the well-known environmentalist association in Russian territory because, according to the government of Vladimir Putin, WWF Russia presents “threats to security in the economic sphere”, explain the prosecutors who deal with the matter, emphasizing how allegedly carried out “tendentious campaigns” against the oil and natural gas energy industries as well as those involved in the development of mineral deposits and precious metals, the same industries that are in great difficulty after the Russian invasion of Ukraine today due to the stop to imports and European sanctions.

Indeed, according to Moscow, the Russian WWF has the aim of “chaining down” and “blocking” Russia’s economic development. Similar accusations had been leveled against Greenpeace recently, when the ban on the organization in the country was announced.

Also on the association’s Russian site, now offline, it is remarked with a statement that Moscow considers WWF Russia as a “foreign agent”, a term which also carries with it possible accusations of espionage or interference with Putin’s policies, arguing that the WWF is allegedly “gathering information” that could harm the Kremlin. Not only that, the charge is also of “working on behalf of the United States against Russia’s economic and security interests, especially in the Arctic.”

Wwf International’s reply is ready, recalling on the contrary how the Russian office is “a non-partisan national organization, completely governed and managed by Russian citizens who work for the conservation of the planet’s biological diversity”. In the last thirty years (the beginning in Russia dates back to 1989), the WWF has worked successfully on various animal conservation projects, including for example the protection of endangered species such as Siberian tigers, bison, polar bears and it has distinguished itself in cases such as that of the reintroduction of the leopard in the Caucasus. In the past, Russian leaders had congratulated the WWF on several occasions and in 2014, as several online users recall, Putin showed all his “profound admiration” for the association.

Now that it has been banned, WWF Russia will no longer be able to use the famous panda logo or the WWF acronym, but many of the zoologists and researchers who work for and with the group will continue – as far as possible – their commitment to the conservation of species, a necessity especially in times of “climate crises and biodiversity loss that are accelerating around the world”.

The methods with which Putin is cutting one after the other environmental associations, often accused by Moscow of using “environmental issues for other purposes”, is definitely worrying for the protection of nature. Again using the formula with which certain groups are defined as “foreign agents”, in addition to Greenpeace and the WWF, the environmentalist group Movement 42 which operates in the north of the country and Sakhalin Environment Watch (SEW), an environmental observatory based in the east, have also been banned . Same fate also for Friends of the Baltic.

In some cases, such as the WWF, the allegations are specific: in addition to economic interference, there is, for example, the fact of “the WWF’s use of ESG scores to evaluate Russian companies, which are based exclusively on standards and subjective criteria developed by the WWF” or to have “provided material and other support to various Russian NGOs which have been included in the register of foreign agents”.

To all this, the international WWF responds with numbers. “In 28 years – they write – the Fund has implemented more than 1,500 field projects. With the support of WWF Russia, more than 145 specially protected federal and regional natural territories with a total area of ​​72 million hectares have been created and expanded. European bison have been returned to the wild: today more than 1,800 purebred animals graze freely in the forests of the European part of Russia The first leopards have been released into the wild in the Russian Caucasus: a program is being implemented together with our partners to restore the Persian leopard population. A network of ‘bear patrols’ has been created to preserve polar bears and prevent conflict between humans and a rare predator. This work would have been impossible without the support provided by our supporters. Today there are more than 1,500,000 across Russia. We are deeply grateful to these people.”