Sochi Olympic construction destroys environment
MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia is ignoring environmental concerns as it prepares for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a leading activist group said Tuesday, threatening to cease cooperation with the authorities in protest.
The Russian branch of WWF accused the government of inflicting "huge damage" on nature in its rush to build infrastructure for the 2014 Games in Sochi, a Black Sea coastal resort town in southern Russia.
"We believe that Olympic preparations have gone out of control, the quality of construction is low, and huge damage has been done to the environment," WWF Russia chief Igor Chestin said in a statement quoted by Russian media.
WWF said tens of thousands of hectares (acres) of nature reserves had lost their protected status to allow construction and roads were being built through virgin forests without adequate steps to compensate for deforestation.
It said WWF, Greenpeace and other environmental groups had met repeatedly with officials to discuss their concerns but further cooperation was "in question" because their recommendations were being ignored.
The state-owned company overseeing the construction, Olimpstroi, denied it was ignoring environmental concerns.
Olimpstroi has "taken into account the experience of foreign countries in the field of 'green' construction," it said in a statement distributed to Russian state news agencies.
Meanwhile the top environmental official for the ruling United Russia party accused the WWF of being unpatriotic.
"The fact that WWF made this statement during the Vancouver Olympics shows the environmentalists want to negatively influence the image of our Games for everyone who is there," the official, Konstantin Tsybko, told the Kommersant daily newspaper.
Sochi pulled off a stunning victory to win the right to host the Games at the International Olympic Committee vote in 2007 beating off favourites Pyeongchang, from South Korea, and the Austrian resort of Salzburg.
However, since then Sochi has been beset by problems over the speed of the work in building the infrastructure required and environmental concerns as it gears up to become the first Russian venue to host the Winter Games.
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