Yahoo News 16 Mar 10;
MOSCOW (AFP) – The United Nations on Tuesday criticised Russia for taking too long to implement decisions to protect the environment from the impact of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The alpine and nordic events in the 2014 Games - Russia's biggest sporting event since the collapse of the Soviet Union - are to be held in a region of outstanding natural diversity in the mountains above Sochi.
Russian environmentalists have long complained the extensive building works risk harming the environment and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said it dispatched a mission to Sochi in response to their protests.
"The implementation of decisions taken at the political level relating to the mitigation and compensation of impacts of Olympic and tourism projects are taking too long," the mission's report said.
It said that these included enlarging the existing Sochi national park, strengthening of the level of protection of the most sensitive areas and the setting up of new areas to protect habitats for birds and animals.
Meanwhile, assessments of the building projects "did not take into account the cumulative... effects on the ecosystems of the Sochi region and its population," the report said.
The report nonetheless praised the organisers for being open to discussions on the issue.
It also noted that while ecologists felt they were being ignored, "those contracted to develop projects also feel that some NGOs were only interested in stalling the entire Olympic project."
The Russian branch of WWF expressed satisfaction with the report, saying UNEP had agreed with NGOs and underlined "the necessity of rapidly setting up monitoring of the impact of the construction on the environment."
WWF has already accused the government of inflicting "huge damage" on nature in its rush to build infrastructure for the 2014 Games and threatened to cease cooperation with the authorities for the event.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, the government's pointman for the Games, had at the weekend launched a scathing attack on Russian environmentalists who had been criticising the Olympics.
Russian NGOs were adopting "an unconstructive position and many are simply trying to obstruct the Olympic project", Russian media quoted him as saying.
Sochi pulled off a stunning victory to win the right to host the Games at the International Olympic Committee vote in 2007, helped by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin pleading its case in English.
But officials have a major challenge in ensuring the Games are ready on time, with much of the infrastructure in the Black Sea port city and the mountains above needing to be built from scratch.
Kozak said almost all the facilities were on schedule, with only the luge and bobsleigh sliding track lagging behind.
