Australia and Russia: How do their environmental policy processes differ?

After 20 years of creating Australian climate policy: was the proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme a change in direction?

“…The research of Australian scientists on climate change and impacts, especially of atmospheric scientists, climate modellers and geographers was well supported by the government (Taplin 1995). The Hawke government also initiated the Australian National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (NSESD) round table process in 1990(Australian Government 1992aFirsova & Taplin 2009) which attempted, in part, to establish links between formulation of climate change policy and the NSESD. Public awareness and media coverage of global environmental concerns, such as ozone depletion and climate change, were relatively high due to governmental support of the prominent Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) conferences Greenhouse 1987 and Greenhouse 1988.…”

A Review of Kyoto Protocol Adoption in Russia: Joint Implementation in Focus

“…Another democracy-connected problem is the current Russian emphasis on forceful government ('silovoe gosudarstvo') (Illarionov 2007;Wood 2007) which has created an environment where everything depends on unwritten rules and the rules of the economic game are unclear and change all the time, with lack of transparency, money-laundering and bribery. The state cannot be a guarantor to fair business arrangements due to the state 'capture' (described above as the symbiosis of government and big business) noticed by Wood (2007) and plus agency 'capture' such as in the case of the MNR (Firsova and Taplin 2007).…”

“…Despite the problems presented in the previous section with regard to Russia's involvement in JI projects, arguably there has been significant progress for future (2006), Evans et al (2000), Firsova and Taplin (2007), Illarionov (2007), Kasparov.Ru (2007), Korppoo (2005), Korppoo and Moe (2007), Laroui et al (2004), SOVA Center (2007), The World Bank (2006), Vasilyev (2006), and Wood (2007) development of these projects. In Russia, the majority of GHG emissions come from the energy sector (Russian Federation 2006) and there is considerable potential for reduction of these emissions, because energy efficiency in Russia in general is very low.…”

“…Unfortunately, little information on potential JI projects is available from the websites of Gazprom and other Russian companies which plan to host JI, and few professional or scholarly papers have been published on this issue in Russia, especially on projects other than from the energy sector. For example, Yulkin (2007) attempts to overview the prospective JI project for the company Ural Steel on modernisation of its electric steelmaking shop, but fails to give any detailed (2006), Evans et al (2000), Firsova and Taplin (2007), Illarionov (2007), Kasparov.Ru (2007), Korppoo (2005), Korppoo and Moe (2007), Laroui et al (2004), SOVA Center (2007), The World Bank (2006), Vasilyev (2006), andWood (2007) information with regard to it. Nevertheless, there is significant business and industry interest in Russia in JI especially from the environmental auditing perspective and Russian consulting companies offer their services on preparation of JI project documentation (Khaymin 2007 To improve the Russian situation with JI, it would be obviously helpful if the problems described above, and in particular related to institutional and legislative frameworks could be solved by the Russian Government, however, this may not be easy to do.…”