Baikal, bring us together.

Two members of a Russian/American team report bright promise for a plan to bring ecologically sustainable development to the vast forests nurturing the world's largest and deepest lake.

Russia's immense boreal forest--they call it the taiga--covers an area the size of the continental United States. It is the largest forest in the world, twice the size of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and embracing more than half the globe's coniferous forests. A huge carbon sink, the taiga can have an enormous effect on global climate change while at the same time driving Russia's local and national economy.

It was the taiga that commanded my attention when my wife Betty and I joined a Russian/American volunteer team working toward a sustainable-development plan for the 80.5-million-acre Siberian portion of the Lake Baikal watershed. Never had I been involved in an undertaking of such scale in my 34-year career with the U.S. Forest Service or in my current work as Pacific representative for AMERICAN FORESTS.

The taiga is the critical resource protecting and maintaining Lake Baikal, the world's largest, deepest, and oldest lake. The "Sacred Sea," as the Russians call it, is bounded by the vast taiga forest. Though the taiga is a renewable resource essential to Russia's transition to a free-market economy, it remains central to Baikal's pristine quality and the 1,800 unique plant and animal species found nowhere else in the world.

The team's challenge was to design a sustainable-development plan that both protected and allowed use of the region's natural resources. We joined our Russian and American counterparts during the summer of 1992 to integrate data and determine the capacity and suitability of taiga forests for the full spectrum of protection and uses.

George Davis, our team leader and a McArthur Fellow, stressed the theme, "Listen to the land and listen to the people." It served us well in determining resource and land capability and preferred uses. The Russian scientists had in-depth knowledge of the resources; the Americans contributed an interdisciplinary approach to both biological and sociological dimensions of the region. The old Soviet system neither encouraged nor honed these skills among Russian scientists.

The most visible influence on the taiga is its history of large fires, the majority of which are human-caused, and large areas of clearcut logging in the more accessible areas. The Russian foresters consider fire management to be their most demanding problem. Both prevention and suppression of fire have eluded them due to the vastness of the area and the scarcity of resources, both human and financial. Until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, widespread and indiscriminate clearcutting was virtually uncontrollable. Conflicting timber-harvest goals set in Moscow by a variety of ministries inhibited good forestry under the old system.

Now that the regions have some autonomy and control of their resources, there is an ability and a willingness to practice good forestry. Local governments have adopted the Sustainable Development Plan prepared by the Russian/American team. Zoning has established areas of forest that must be protected from cutting, and the plan outlines acceptable practices on designated commercial forests. No longer are collective farms and foreign contractors allowed to indiscriminately cut the taiga on the basis of economics alone.

Now that a sustainable-development approach has been accepted by both the central and regional governments, implementation can proceed. We are presently working with environmentally sensitive investors in the U.S. to partner with Russian state-level government and individuals to develop the taiga resource. Commercial timberlands containing larch, birch, pine, and spruce offer a sustainable economic base for the people of the region. American technology and investment matched with Russian plans and entrepreneurial energy promise to both protect and sustainably use this world-class natural resource

It would be impossible to identify a more appropriate metaphor for Russia than Lake Baikal. Deep, vast, frigid, pure, ancient, absolutely unique--and at risk.

This 20-million-year-old rift-valley lake in the middle of the Siberian north has seduced people and inspired them throughout recorded history. Even those of us weary of ecological evangelism--we post-'80s Americans who thought we were finished with excess and hyperbole--find ourselves describing it by reaching instinctively back to outworn superlatives, which we deliver in hushed tones.

Figures are not particularly helpful. That the lake is 372 miles long, 31 miles wide, a mile deep, has 20 percent of the planet's liquid fresh water, its winter ice is more than 39 inches thick, and hosts 1,800 endemic species not found anywhere else on earth--these numbers are mere data. The impact of the lake on the senses is the thing: the miracle clarity of its water, its scale, the contrasts of the steep green shoreline and rock outcrops of every color and texture against the lake and sky.

Expose your face to its winds and to the low sun glancing from the enclosing mountains, and inhale the sea smells along with the rising mists at night. Dash urgently across the beach from the sauna and plunge in, steaming, for an instant, then retreat. I think this is how you come to know Baikal.

No wonder, then, that the lake's degradation by air and water pollution and other forces is described so often in physical terms, like "intrude," "violate," "ravage," and "rape."

An enormous cellulose plant at the southern toe of the lake at Baikalsk spits endless gobs of particulates and chemicals into the atmosphere, adding to the emissions flowing down the airstream from the industrial cities of the Irkutsk Oblast to the west. The riveting cold of the lake water, which never rises much above 45 degrees F., and the mountain perimeter, trap the airborne pollution in a permanent inversion. You can see it in the morning; the same occurs at sunrise over Los Angeles. Astronauts have said the smog is visible from space, as evident as that over Moscow. And at the interface, the air gives up its burdens to the waters of the lake.

A paper plant, a municipal sewage facility, and a score of factories dump their effluents into the Selenga River at Ulan Ude to the southeast, joining pollution from industry at Ulan Baatar in Mongolia. The Selenga, principal tributary of the lake, dutifully bears its cargo downstream to a delta larger than the District of Columbia and thick with birdlife. Despite its size, this gigantic wetland, nature's water filter, is inadequate to the job, leaving quantities for poisonous wastes in the river water as it enters Baikal.

Agricultural and grazing activities within the watershed and mining operations add their erosion and siltation to the surface runoff. Inappropriate timber harvesting practices in the basin, including the rafting of logs on Baikal's surface, have contributed their share of damage to water quality.

The lake has remained relatively pristine only because of its vastness. Even so, the unique, tiny organisms that account for the water's clarity are dying; the famed omul, a fish of the salmonid family synonymous with Baikal for many people, is stressed; the nerpa, our planet's only freshwater seal species, is dying of a mysterious virus.

These and other outrages prompted an international convocation of environmentalists on Baikal in the summer of 1990. Referred to as Ekspertise 90, the group featured Dr. Gregori Galazy, former head of the Baikal Limnological Institute at Irkutsk, now head of the Baikal Museum; David Brower, a prominent American environmentalist; and George D. Davis, the American environmentalist and land-use-policy expert whose achievements have included New York State's program of land-use protection for the Adirondack region of New York State. All levels of government--the USSR, the Russian Federation, the Autonomous Republic of Buryatia, and the Irkutsk and Chita Oblasts--were represented in the group. After several weeks of travel on the lake and throughout the watershed, the group arrived at its recommendations.

Clearly, a comprehensive program of environmental protection for the entire watershed was in order. The program of regional protection in effect for the Adirondacks was labeled an appropriate paradigm for Baikal. The idea would be to collect natural-resource data for the region and produce a map and regulatory structure tailored to the preservation of Lake Baikal. The map, in effect, would "zone" the watershed according to the land's most appropriate use: timber growing, grazing, farming, human settlements, national parks, and other types of nature preservation. The regulatory structure would specify the policies and objectives to be pursued within each zone, and new land-use activities in those zones would be regulated accordingly. Recommendations for abating existing sources of pollution would also be part of the program.

At the same time that Ekspertise 90 was winding up, a UNESCO team was recommending that the Baikal watershed warranted designation as a World Heritage Site, provided effective steps were taken to reduce the water and air pollution threatening it. Our group decided that a program based on the Adirondacks plan would meet UNESCO's requirements. The kind of regional zoning pioneered in the Adirondacks and now in use elsewhere would be a novelty in Russia, but representatives of all levels of government participating in Ekspertise 90 endorsed the idea.

The recommendations received particularly enthusiastic support from Vladimir B. Saganov, chairman of the council of ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Buryatia. Buryatia has three-fourths of the watershed lands, and 70 percent of the lake's shoreline. Its capital, Ulan Ude, lies astride the Selenga River. Now a minority in their own region, the Buryats nevertheless contribute the predominant cultural influence in the Republic. For centuries they have been Lamaist Buddhists, but their cultural memory reaches back to a more distant shamanist period. With their nomadic and religious traditions of deep respect for the land and reverence for Baikal, it was inevitable that Buryatia would approve a policy of protection for the land and for Baikal. Chairman Saganov's support was to remain constant and effective throughout.

Ekspertise 90 invited policy expert Davis to assemble an international team of experts and return to Baikal with them in 1991 to begin the process. He agreed, with two conditions: that the majority of the team be Russian (including Buryats), and that the map and regulatory structure to be developed focus on the dual objectives of environmental protection and economic growth. He was convinced Baikal could become the world's first example of "sustainable development," the elusive dynamic balance between man and nature now on the minds of the world's environmental economists. Protocols were signed. Costs of the undertaking were to be borne by the regional governments in the Baikal watershed, augmented by support from American foundations.

Davis agreed to lead the team himself. Sergei Shapkhaev, a Buryat representative to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies who has worked incessantly for Baikal protection, would be project coordinator. Limnologists, geographers, geologists, ethnic specialists, agricultural and soil specialists, experts on air and water pollution, engineers, and forestry experts were to be included in the group. The team eventually included some 29 scientists or other experts, two-thirds Russian and one-third American.

I agreed to be the American land-use attorney on the team. I'd had experience with the Adirondack plan, and lived, coincidentally, on another of the world's extraordinary bodies of water--Lake Champlain. Thus on July 1, 1991, I flew to Russia to participate in a cooperative experiment in sustainable development with unknown colleagues in Siberia, a land I'd never seen.

Before joining our Russian counterparts at Baikal, we Americans spent several days in Moscow trying to accumulate data and making contacts. After consulting with Russian scientists, we quickly realized that cooperation would be limited, at least at first. There was suspicion and skepticism. Russian scientists were not about to share their work indiscriminately and gratuitously with Americans; we would have to earn our way.

We visited the department of geography of Moscow State University to see what maps might be available. We also asked if our host, Alexander N. Gennadiyev, vice dean of research, could critique the first draft of our proposal for Baikal. The conversation was cordial but vague. Sadly, maps were in extremely limited supply.

Gennadiyev pointed out that the Urban Planning Institute had prepared an extensive technical analysis of Baikal, referred to by its Russian acronym, TERKSOP, complete with maps, graphs, and copious data. This work, which, of course, was written in Russian, is book length and was said to be a state secret. Gennadiyev himself didn't have a copy. Davis admitted he had recently obtained a copy, but it was not yet completely translated. We all appreciated the irony that Davis had TERKSOP but couldn't read it, and Gennadiyev could read it but didn't have it. We came away with no commitments.

We met with political officials in President Yeltsin's office and with members of the USSR and Russian Federation Supreme Soviets and their advisors, laying the groundwork for adapting a regional zoning plan to the Russian legal system. My legalistic questions finally exasperated Professor Alexei Yablokov, Yeltsin's chief counselor on the environment, who has strenuously advocated the protection of Baikal even during the political distractions of the last two years.

"What is the importance of that?" he asked me. "You are asking trivial questions about the land law of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union is falling apart! This law is already out of date! We must concentrate on new ideas!"

On the evening of the Fourth of July, we congregated in Red Square, in the shadow of the Kremlin, where we burned sparklers for a euphoric moment, sang patriotic American songs, and made a small spectacle of ourselves. Then it was on to Irkutsk, where we joined up with our Russian counterparts. At the first working meeting of the entire team, we were addressed by Dr. Grigorii Galazy. In a talk that was both apocalyptic and upbeat, he assured us that politicians would destroy the world. Although billions of rubles are being spent on solutions to environmental problems, the effect is zero, he said, blaming ecologists, not for causing the problems but for not working hard enough.

All Soviet environmental legislation is based on the principle of establishing pollution "norms" or effluent standards, Galazy said. The assumption underlying this concept is dead wrong, since in condoning nominal pollution it assures the eventual destruction of the environment. The slowest drip will fill the pail. He categorically rejected this approach for Baikal: "These laws will not protect Baikal. We must unite to find the way. We need the United Nations, and Mongolia, since the Selenga flows out of Mongolia. Baikal is very special. It must be protected. And now we have a beginning. I wish you success. Maybe your efforts can serve as a model to the world." This great Siberian bear struck a spark of inspiration that ignited our hopes.

There followed a nine-day excursion on Baikal itself. We embarked from Listyanka, a village at the outlet of the lake. The mid-July weather was gorgeous, characteristic of the continental climate at that time of year, with a few high clouds over the mountain ranges and glorious sunshine marred only by the smog, so improbable in that rustic setting yet undeniable as the day advanced.

We headed across the outlet and continued west, hugging the shore. The forested slopes in the middle distance showed signs of recent fires. After paralleling the shore for about 12 1/2 miles, we sojourned on land for several hours among a profusion of wildflowers, then re-embarked due south across the toe of the lake toward Baikalsk. The lake is about 15 1/2 miles wide here, and about halfway across, we began to make out a low cloud that spread as we neared. The outline of mountains became visible to either side, and we eventually discerned the smokestacks of the Baikalsk Kombinat, the industrial colossus that sits astride the south shore. As we neared, we confirmed that our cloud was in fact the shroud of industrial pollution that hangs over Baikalsk year round, like a cosmic curse.

The quiet surface reflected, fugue-like, the distant silhouettes of the mountains until we passed under the hovering plume of steam and brown smoke and hove to in the Baikalsk harbor. Towering industrial structures occluded our view of the setting sun, and we spoke with one another quietly, distractedly, like witnesses at an execution.

At the beginning of our voyage, there had been considerable mutual suspicion as we Americans and our Russian counterparts felt one another out. Neither side could shake the conviction that some kind of exploitation was occurring. I remember well one conversation, which became quite pointed: "You in America have no culture. What contributions have you made to music, architecture, great literature? Where are your artists? How do you presume to instruct us on this environmental protection thing?"

I said, "Pardon me, but we have an independent judiciary. An effective public-protest capability. We have no culture? Fine. We have the rule of law. Think of it. A system of government that works. Meditate on that as you listen to Rachmaninov." This was getting us nowhere.

But somehow, as we toured the Baikalsk Kombinat--witnessing its sludge lagoons that have contaminated the local groundwater for generations to come--our mutual disgust brought us closer together. As we recrossed the lake and worked our way up the shoreline to Olkhon Island, exploring villages and hiking woods, and as we argued about procedures and mapping techniques and values, our mutual suspicions slowly gave way to mutual admiration and trust. We Americans came to have enormous respect for the expertise of our Russian opposites, and I think by the end of the cruise our Russian friends had satisfied themselves as to our sincerity. We were content to work together, and the amused password became, "Oo matrosov nyet voprosof" (The sailors have no questions).

This does not mean that there were no bitter disputes; how the map would look became a Byzantine struggle. Eventually we agreed upon a map that would not be representative of the way things are but a prescription of the way things should be. A policy document. This was the breakthrough we needed. The necessary data began to flow, and by the time we moved on to Ulan Ude, the two sides had begun to metamorphose into a single team.

Once we had left the lake behind and had begun to explore the enormous segment of the watershed within Buryatia and the Chita Oblast, most of the American team members had crossed the mental Rubicon. Nothing would prevent us from completing the project, on time and with a respectable product. The Russians, though now committed, still had doubts. How could one really "zone" an area the size of New England in two years?

The answer was that most of the work was already done. The Russians' existing land-use maps were excellent--maps showing existing vegetative cover, soil maps, topographic maps, demographic maps, and geologic maps. They had superb maps showing animal habitat, climate and rainfall, economic activity, the built environment, anthropological sites, and areas of traditional culture.

When all this data was added together via overlays, the "zoning" began to seem self-evident to the American half of the team: This area is remote, with steep slopes and shallow soils, so it should be in a protected zone. That area is somewhat remote, but has deep soils and a healthy tree cover, so it should be in commercial forest production. This wetland area and associated upland, which contains overlapping habitats of endangered species, should be given permanent protection as a new national park. Our Russian counterparts were troubled by any mapping process that depended on qualitative value judgments rather than hard science. And we differed on the zoning categories to be used.

We Americans returned to the United States in mid-August 1991, barely missing the attempted coup in Moscow. Our phones, faxes, and E-mail links went white hot for a few days as we sought assurances that our Russian colleagues were safe. All were, and work proceeded. By the time a draft report and map materialized out of intercontinental consultations and iteration in March 1992, the USSR had disintegrated. Happily, this did not impact our work; Professor Yablokov was now strongly supporting our efforts in President Yeltsin's office, and our colleagues in the Baikal region were unswayed in their determination to protect the lake and its basin.

We reconvened at Baikal that August to put finishing touches on the map and regulatory structure that comprised the main ingredients of the team's report. We had lost a couple of Americans who lacked confidence that the goal could be accomplished. But all the Russians, despite their doubts, remained committed to the project. After extensive excursions throughout the watershed for map verification and to obtain input via public hearings, the final version of the report was hammered out in two brutal days of argument in Ulan Ude. Disputes over the map were particularly strenuous. The Russians were forceful and passionate; trial lawyers I have known would kill for these skills. But at the end, to my amazement, we had reached consensus on zone categories, map delineations, the regulatory structure, the language of the final report, everything.

How had agreement emerged, I asked, from such deeply held diverse opinions? "We ran out of time," responded my colleague Dr. Vladimir Molozhnikov. "George Davis insisted," said Dr. Valery Mikheev. These men, an ecologist and a geographer, respectively, had argued powerfully in favor of various minority views concerning zone categories and mapping.

The final report and map were published in Russian and English and presented as a finished product by George Davis and Sergei Shapkhaev at public hearings in Irkutsk, Chita, and Ulan Ude in March 1993. We had met our deadline. Russian and American team members spoke in favor of it, published articles in support, and the report began to receive favorable reviews from the public, the press and government officials.

The final map apportions the region into some 25 zones, each tailored to allow the best economic use while protecting its natural resources. The "core area," where natural ecological processes must be preserved and hence new development is to be severely restricted, includes the lake itself, its immediate shoreline, and a number of national parks and other legally protected territories, some existing and some proposed. Seven of the 25 zones make up the "core area."

The other 18 zones make up the "buffer area," where land and water resources are to be managed and used in harmony with nature. One of these zones, the "Adjacent Airshed" zone, is actually west of the watershed, taking in the cities of the Irkutsk Oblast, which contribute significant air pollution.

Under the final regulatory structure for the 25 zones, land uses on the "preferred" list for a particular zone can be undertaken without a permit; uses on the "conditional" list for that zone can be undertaken after preparing an environmental-impact statement and obtaining a permit. Uses not on either list are prohibited. Both preferred and conditional uses are governed by performance standards.

For example, the zone designated "Managed Forest Resource" has as a "preferred use" the silviculturally sound harvesting of timber, not including clearcutting of more than 12.35 acres (5 hectares--1 h = 2.47 acres). Clearcutting more than 12.35 acres is designated a "conditional use" and requires a permit from regional authorities. Performance standards for timber harvesting incorporate certain published regional standards for maximum slopes to be cut, maximum clearcut sizes, methods of harvest, and similar requirements. In addition, clearcut widths are limited to 328 feet (100 meters), slopes of logging roads may not exceed 10 percent (6 degrees), and no-cut strips must be maintained along the shores of lakes, rivers, and streams. Specifications for location and "putting to bed" of roads, skid trails, landings, and stream crossings are also included in the performance standards. The rafting of logs on Lake Baikal is outlawed.

We also urged the use of public hearings at every stage of the proceedings, with full access to that process for citizens and groups. Citizens would be able to bring suit in a special environmental court, which also would handle appeals from regional decisionmakers on sustainable-development matters. And we recommended the enactment of a freedom-of-information law.

We recommended that special standards be developed for air and water emissions in the Baikal region, and we urged that existing industry be retrofitted to meet these new standards.

A central assumption of the final report was that a regional Baikal Commission would be created, with supervisory authority over land-use decisions throughout the basin. It would have national representatives, but a majority of the members would be appointed by the regional governments.

All the recommendations have been endorsed by the Chita Oblast and the Republic of Buryatia, and a Baikal Commission has been created by decree of President Yeltsin, though not in the form recommended.

The momentum for implementation of the recommendations should soon bear international fruit. UNESCO has stated that the Baikal region will qualify for World Heritage Site status if the recommendations are implemented.

Consistent with the sense of a joint statement on the conservation of Lake Baikal signed by President Yeltsin and then-President Bush on June 17, 1992, the U.S. Department of State has expressed a willingness to contribute funding for the first three years' administrative costs of implementing the Baikal report's recommendations, if a diplomatic means of doing so can be worked out. A dozen modest economic-development projects intended to demonstrate the workability of the proposed zoning and the concept of sustainable development are now being considered for funding by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Things are beginning to happen.

The Russian-American team that generated the Baikal report has now dispersed. Some of its members are busy pursuing demonstration projects in the Baikal region. Others have gone on to new challenges. George Davis is now finishing a similar study of the Selenga/Hubsugul drainage in Mongolia and has just embarked on a study of the Ussuri River, which forms the border between Russia and China. But without a doubt, we will all look back on the Baikal project with a sense of wonder, and with a not-significant touch of pride. Russians and Americans overcame the mindset born of two generations of suspicion and fear, and together crafted an important contribution to Baikal's environmental and economic policy.

Buoyed up upon perhaps the world's most precious body of water, captivated by its inimitable sense of place, yet sickened by the sacrilege of pollution disfiguring it in a dozen ways, one cannot but be moved by Baikal. This beautiful place and the diverse life it harbors are indeed at risk. The shared objective of prescribing for its ills brought out the best in us, and it brought us together.

G. Gordon Davis, former general counsel for the Adirondack Park Agency, island-use attorney for the Russian/American Baikal team. Zane G. Smith, a former Forest Service official, is Pacific representative for AMERICAN FORESTS and also a member of the Baikal team. The Davis article is adapted from a piece that appeared in the July 1993 issue of International Affairs, published by the Russian Foreign Ministry.