June 05, 2013
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation has prepared the first Environmental rating of Russian cities in 2011 – the first quarter of 2012. Rating and estimation procedure have been made by order of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and meet world standards and criteria of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Environmental rating methodology has been prepared for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation by Ernst&Yang.
Rating during 2011 was calculated for 82 Russian cities, representing the individual subjects of the Russian Federation. Assessment methodology covered environmental issues, while taking into account international recommendations and the experience of similar ratings for other countries and regions. It should be noted that the methodology based on the limited quantitative indicators, data for which were provided by the city administration.
More than half the world's population now lives in cities. Russian urban population is about 74 %. In 2011 there were about 55 million people (more than a third of the population of Russia) directly in the cities covered by the ranking. At these rates the quality of the urban environment is a key factor in living and working conditions of people.
Rating evaluates the city in terms of seven categories: air environment, water consumption and water quality, waste management, use of areas, transportation, energy, management of environmental impacts.
In 2011 Volgograd, Moscow, Saransk, Vologda and Kursk took the first five places in the overall ranking of the quality of the urban environment. Moscow and Kazan were on the 6th and 7th place ranking respectively. All these cities took quite high positions in different categories, but only in rare cases they were the absolute leaders in any of the categories: Volgograd ranked first only in the category of waste management, Vologda was on first place into category of air quality, and Kursk leaded into category of water use.
Cities that were not able to provide sufficient data, and probably did not have systems to collect accurate statistical information on a number of important indicators in the field of environmental protection have become outsiders.
The purpose of ranking is to ensure the most favorable conditions for life by reducing negative impacts on the environment and improve natural resources use.
The collected information permits us to compare Russian cities both among themselves and with cities of Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. This is especially important so far as the scope of existing environmental problems in Russian cities may be overlooked today. Thus the average domestic wastes generation index per year per citizen of the Russian substantially exceeded not only used by Russian standards, but similar rates of cities in Europe, Asia and Africa.
In the preparation of such kind of rating in the near future it is planned to make additional efforts to ensure the necessary completeness and reliability of data and to take into account a number of important indicators of environmental quality and urban management.
Russian Ministry of Natural Resources plans to train Environmental rating for 2012 in September of this year.
Source: http://www.mnr.gov.ru/news/detail.php?ID=130961