Marina Rikhvanova
April 14, 2008

I am very grateful to the Goldman family for recognizing my work to preserve Lake Baikal, a pearl of Siberia and one of nature’s great miracles. I accept this award not for myself, but on behalf of many people in Russia: the environmentalists, scientists, students, journalists, senior citizens, and all those people who combined their efforts to protect Baikal from the pipeline construction. Without this cooperative movement, the world’s largest reserve of fresh water would be in constant danger.

But our struggle is not over. Recently the Russian government decided to create the International Nuclear Enrichment Center in Angarsk, 90 kilometers from Baikal. We fear that the thousands of tons of radioactive and chemical waste housed in that facility will be environmentally catastrophic to our region. We will not stand for this.
Our public campaign against this center has been met with furious resistance from regional and federal authorities and from the Russian Federal Agency of Atomic Energy. The Federal Security Service – the former KGB – raided the offices of our organization and confiscated our computers.

Last summer, there was a carefully planned attack against a camp of anarchists and environmentalists that unfortunately my son was implicated in. He was subsequently jailed and the prosecutors persecuted him in the media in order to tarnish the reputation of our movement. I believe there is a connection between his imprisonment and our opposition to the nuclear facility.
This work is clearly difficult for us, but our struggles are not in vain. With great fanfare, President Putin publicly proclaimed that he would move the Siberia-Pacific Pipeline away from Lake Baikal. It was our movement that prompted Putin to finally listen to the people.

We are now fighting a pulp and paper plant in the south of Baikal. It is poisoning our air and water and has been threatening the unique species of Baikal for more than 40 years. Our governor just sent a letter to President Putin calling for the pulp mill to be moved away from Lake Baikal. But our governor is under pressure to resign by the Russian oligarchs. We must work together to support our allies who face great risk in their public struggles for the environment. We hope that the Russian government will once again hear our voices.

I hope that this award will help our movement to continue defending our land, water and air from the destructive industries that use our natural resources without regard to future generations.

Thank you for your attention.

Contact:
pr@goldmanprize.org
(415-345-6330)

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