Baikal

Offer you web-page devoted to lake Baikal: environmental problems and how to save the World Heritage Site?

Lake Baikal is a place of superlatives: the deepest, the oldest, the clearest, the cleanest, the highest level of biodiversity, the largest volume (20% of the total) of freshwater in the world, and home to a freshwater seal. For this reason Lake Baikal is on the World Natural Heritage List of Unesco.
Lake Baikal is still more or less intact, but it is under serious threat. The number of Baikal seals, at the top of the food chain, has decreased since the beginning of the 1990's by about one third. Pollution slowly accumulates in the Lake, causing changes in the number of organisms, as well as their composition and characteristics. From several threats most dangerous single pollution source is the Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill (BPPM), located directly at the shore. The BPPM bleaches its paper with chlorine and is discharging since 1966 in a Lake of 25 million years old.

This relic of cold war dirty technologies has resisted efforts to reform itself. Now it is time for the rest of the world to take action to protect this priceless World Heritage Site. In this year, "The International Year of Fresh Water", as declared by the United Nations, the issue is even more pressing. Only 15% of the world’s population has access to safe, clean water and its main owners (a Russian holding called BasEL and the Russian state) are polluting the biggest natural source of freshwater in the world. Natural justice demands that this stops.

Greenpeace claims: ZERO-POLLUTION! This means the mill should either function at the best environmental standards or should be replaced by environmental friendly alternatives.