Valery Mikhailovich, at the BRICS + forum you are one of the main speakers, and not for the first time. From your point of view, what is the meaning of this event and its main goals? - BRICS was created in 2006 in my native St. Petersburg during the World Economic Forum (by the way, Kuban is also my homeland, hence my ancestors, I myself was born in Sochi). The four largest developing countries have decided to cooperate more closely: Brazil, Russia, India, China. Later, the Republic of South Africa (South Africa, hence the abbreviation - BRICS) joined. Russia is chairing the BRICS this year and planned to hold a summit summit, that is, a meeting of the heads of five states, in St. Petersburg in July. But due to the coronavirus, the event was canceled. So BRICS +, apparently, is intended to partly pick up the baton and make up for this omission. But at the same time, BRICS + is a broader association in terms of the composition of the represented countries - there are 15 declared here, and it is less strict and formal. I was most pleased with the mission and agenda of this forum. I have been devoting all my efforts, as well as my family and business team, to environmental issues and sustainable development for over 10 years, since I realized that this is the most important thing for the survival of all of us - people. And so I was very happy when I learned that this forum is being held in my native Sochi, and immediately agreed to take part. Among the speakers, the head of the new party with the current name "People against Corruption", Roman Putin, is intriguing. With equal interest I am waiting for the speech of the ardent ally in the fight for the ecology of the small and large homeland, adviser to the governor of the region, Andrey Rogach. He stands for the transformation of the Kuban into a world center of ecology, and I hope that with his persistence and professionalism, with the support of other participants and the authorities, this ambitious, but well-founded task can be solved for the common good. JOINING EFFORTS - What proposal did you come to the forum with? - The state of affairs on the planet Earth with its climate, ecology and biological extinction is catastrophic. Warming up of the atmosphere and climate change occur faster than forecasts, and the consequences can already be seen by anyone with eyes and mind: unprecedented heat and droughts, including in the Kuban, in Europe and other places, forest fires on millions of hectares and here in Siberia, in Brazil, Australia and the United States (two million hectares are burning right now in California and other states, with smoke reaching Europe!). The state of terrestrial ecosystems is deteriorating: forests are being cut down, soils, rivers and lakes are contaminated, 80% of the seas and oceans are infected with plastic, the atmosphere is filled with harmful substances. Biological extinction is not a frightening term, but reality - more than a third of the species of flora and fauna that make up our habitat have been destroyed, and it occurs due to anthropogenic factors, that is, due to human activities. The July UN report on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (the main tasks to be fulfilled by the UN and all 200 member states, including Russia, which themselves approved these goals in 2015) was, in fact, a report on the failure to fulfill these tasks. The UN complains about the coronavirus, but it doesn't make it any easier. Of course, many of these problems are unknown, and yet they exist, and soon they will affect everyone, if urgent and effective measures are not taken. But who will undertake them? The UN does not have the necessary resources and influence, the majority of states pretend that they care about the environment, but in fact continue to squander all kinds of natural resources, in addition, some states solve their environmental problems at the expense of other countries, for example, harmful industries. Business cannot afford to spend money on the environment, so as not to lose in the competition. In my opinion, today only the European Union is taking real measures in the form of the Green Deal Pact, providing it not only with well-thought-out programs and a roadmap, but also with investments of about a trillion euros. But here another difficulty arises - the countries of the European Union are highly developed, and the inhabitants there are accustomed to comfort, they seek to solve their problems through scientific and technical developments, creation of production facilities and the use of all kinds of devices, and this in itself is harmful to nature. As a result, they will undoubtedly achieve carbon neutrality and improve the environment and improve the quality of life of people, but, quite possibly, due to the deterioration of these parameters in other countries and on other continents. - What exactly do you mean? - We find a large-scale and vivid example in the interaction of Europe with China. Thirty years ago, in the Middle Kingdom one could see ten-twenty-row streams of cyclists in many cities. At this time, European countries languished and suffocated in traffic jams. When the West moved manufacturing facilities to China, it also shared its experience of creating auto-highways with their enormous destructive power to nature. Now Europe is almost completely riddled with bike paths, and hundreds of millions of Chinese have moved into cars and languish in traffic jams that sometimes reach hundreds of kilometers. As a result, everyone globally lost: both the Chinese, who wore masks even before the pandemic, and Europe - after all, the air has worsened all over the world. The atmosphere is one for everyone, and what the Chinese or residents of other countries throw into it, scatters all over the planet. CONTRIBUTION OF A CITIZEN - What, in your opinion, can be a way out of such a controversial situation? - First of all, people need to stop shifting responsibility to others. The most effective, simple, but at the same time difficult way is to consume less. For to create 1 kg of an average product (industrial, food and any other), we take from nature 100 kg of its primordial resources. After all, she saved many of them for hundreds of millions of years, and by no means only for us, but also for our descendants, as well as animals and plants. But since I was lucky enough to participate in the BRICS + forum, I would suggest creating some kind of global eco-power club like the Big Seven or Twenty, but ecologically .. If we all do not want to die, we urgently need to change the basic concepts and the order of things based on them. The traditional, still dominant economy prioritizes GDP. From the standpoint of GDP, the most useful member of society is one who produces and sells a lot to others (no matter to whom, how and why), earns a lot (no matter how and with what costs) and spends a lot (no matter why and on MANY PEOPLE THINK ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS IS SOMETHING VERY FAR. What). But all these benefits (things, houses, yachts, airplanes, etc.) for you will instantly lose all meaning and meaning as soon as you lose your health or you have nothing to breathe due to atmospheric pollution. Such an idea is difficult for adherents of a consumer society to accept, but for the environment, a Chinese, Russian or Brazilian peasant who lives a poor but healthy eco-friendly life is much more valuable. Or Indian sadhu, Arab dervish, American Indian, African bushman. To survive now, it is simply necessary to learn from these people and reduce consumption. And at least not to impose standards of excessive consumption on them. And this is the huge ecological potential of the BRICS + states, where only two countries - China and India - have more than a billion potential new consumers who, fortunately, do not strive to become such. The world should be grateful to them for this, and maybe somehow pay for this restraint. It is equally important that these countries have enormous natural resources (the forests of Brazil and Russia alone are worth as the lungs of the entire planet, and how many minerals there are!). The Arab and other southern countries have a huge potential for solar energy. Today we need to look for mechanisms and rules how not to inflate consumption where it is still in a calm state. How to stop deforestation of the most valuable forests in the Amazon, Siberia and others. How to stimulate environmentally friendly business for the good of the whole world, so that those who provide it receive fair compensation. Maybe we should remember the non-violent economy of Mahatma Gandhi, something will be suggested by the thousand-year wisdom of Chinese thinkers, the way of life of Arab nomads, Russian Old Believers. Now it is already obvious: on the path we are following now, an abyss awaits us, and we urgently need to change our principles. In particular, Machiavellian “Divide and Impera” should be changed to “Share (first of all, best practices, knowledge) and unite (allies)” (“Share & Unite”). We would propose this principle as one of the bricks in the foundation of an eco-power club based on BRICS +.

Grigory Antipenko