TO MAIN

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 joined (South Africa, hence the abbreviation - BRICS). Russia is chairing the BRICS this year and planned to hold a summit, that is, a meeting of the heads of five states, in St. Petersburg in July. But due to the coronavirus, the event was cancelled. So BRICS+ seems to be designed 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 countries represented - 15 of them are 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 strength, as well as my family and business team, to environmental issues, sustainable development for more than 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 was 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 no less interest I look forward to the speech of the fiery comrade-in-arms in the struggle for the ecology of the small and large motherland, adviser to the governor of the region Andrey Rogach. He advocates for the transformation of the Kuban into a world center of ecology, and I hope that with his perseverance and professionalism, with the support of other participants and authorities, this ambitious but well-founded task can be solved for the benefit of all. JOIN EFFORTS - With what proposal did you come to the forum? - The state of affairs on planet Earth with climate, ecology and biological extinction is catastrophic. The warming of the atmosphere and climate change are happening faster than forecasts, and the consequences can 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 USA (two million hectares are burning right now in California and other states, with the smoke reaching Europe!). The state of land ecosystems is deteriorating: forests are being cut down, soils, rivers and lakes are being polluted, 80% of the seas-oceans are contaminated with plastic, the atmosphere is filled with harmful substances. Biological extinction is not a frightening term, but a reality - more than a third of the species of flora and fauna that make up our habitat has been destroyed, and occurs due to anthropogenic factors, that is, due to human activity. The July UN report on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (the main tasks that the UN and all 200 of its member states, including Russia, which themselves approved these goals in 2015) should fulfill, was, in fact, a report on the failure to achieve these goals. The UN complains about the coronavirus, but that doesn't make it any easier. Of course, many of these problems are unknown, and yet they exist, and will soon affect everyone, unless urgent and effective measures are taken. But who will undertake them? The UN does not have the necessary resources and influence, most states pretend to 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, by taking their borders harmful production. 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, providing it not only with well-thought-out programs and a roadmap, but also with investments in the amount 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, the creation of industries and the use of all kinds of devices, and this in itself harms 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 striking example in the interaction between Europe and China. Thirty years ago in the Celestial Empire one could see ten and twenty rows of cyclists in many cities. At this time, European countries languished and suffocated in traffic jams. When the West moved production facilities to China, it also shared its experience in building highways with their enormous destructive power for nature. Now, almost all of Europe is riddled with bike paths, and hundreds of millions of Chinese have moved into cars and are languishing in traffic jams that sometimes reach hundreds of kilometers. As a result, everyone lost globally: both the Chinese, who wore masks even before the pandemic, and Europe, because the air has deteriorated all over the world. The atmosphere is one for all, 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 contradictory 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 100 kg of its primordial resources from nature. After all, she saved up 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 a kind of global club of eco-powers like the big seven or twenty, but on ecology .. If we all do not want to die, we must urgently change the basic concepts, and the order of things based on them. The traditional, still dominant economy puts GDP at the forefront. From the standpoint of GDP, the most useful member of society is the one who produces a lot and sells to others (no matter to whom, how and why), earns a lot (no matter how and at what cost) and spends a lot (no matter why and on MANY PEOPLE CONSIDER ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS SOMETHING VERY DISTANT. But all these benefits (things, houses, yachts, planes, etc.) will instantly lose all meaning and meaning for you as soon as you lose your health or you have nothing to breathe due to atmospheric pollution. Such an idea is difficult to accept for adherents of the consumer society, but for the environment, a Chinese, Russian or Brazilian peasant living a poor but healthy eco-friendly life is much more valuable. Or an Indian sadhu, an Arab dervish, an American Indian, an 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 eco-potential of the BRICS+ countries, where only two countries - China and India - have more than a billion potential new consumers, who, fortunately, do not aspire 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 huge natural resources (the forests of Brazil and Russia alone are worth something like the lungs of the entire planet, and how many more minerals there are!). There is a huge potential for solar energy in the Arab and other southern countries. Today it is necessary to look for mechanisms and rules for how not to inflate consumption where it is still in a calm state. How to achieve an end to the deforestation of the most valuable forests of the Amazon, Siberia, etc. How to stimulate environmentally friendly business for the benefit of the whole world, so that those who provide it receive fair compensation. Maybe we need to remember the non-violent economy of Mahatma Gandhi, the thousand-year-old wisdom of Chinese thinkers, the way of life of Arab nomads, Russian Old Believers will tell something. 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, the 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 the club of ecopowers based on BRICS+.

Grigory Antipenko