Environmental Regulation in Russia and India

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In Schola’s latest instalment showcasing the winners of the International Academic Cooperation of HSE University competition, Aleksei Sorbale speaks about the project ‘Regional and Inter-Regional Associations in Norm-Building and Norm-Control in the Area of Environmental Regulation in Russia and India,’ carried out jointly with a research team from India’s University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES).

— How did the idea for your project come about? Why is it relevant?

— In India, there is a special word for a rather contentless conversation, started simply to pass the time and entertain oneself and one’s companion—bakwas. It was precisely during such a bakwas that the idea of a mirror laboratory was born. On one of the most exhausting days of International Partnership Week, held at the HSE Campus in St Petersburg last year, my good friend and colleague Dr Himanshu Jha from UPES and I were standing on the Griboyedov Canal embankment exchanging stock phrases about the importance of such international events as Partnership Week.

And suddenly, at the same moment, the same thought struck us both: how wonderful it would be to launch some interesting and accessible project that would unite the teams at UPES and HSE

The routine of everyday work quickly overshadowed both our recollections of that conversation and our good intentions. Yet, at the end of 2024, when the International Academic Cooperation competition was announced, Himanshu and I returned to the idea of a project—and this time our discussion was substantive.

Our project is entitled ‘Regional and Inter-Regional Associations in Norm-Building and Norm-Control in the Area of Environmental Regulation in Russia and India.’ I admit, I did not have to deliberate long over the topic—it came to me on its own. A few years ago, I defended my Candidate of Sciences thesis, in which I examined the phenomenon of compliance in the European Union.

I analysed the reasons why EU member states are more or less inclined towards normative compliance and adherence to directives that regulate a wide range of policy areas—from energy and the environment to agricultural production and retail

One of the key conclusions of my work is that, beyond the objective administrative, bureaucratic, and material factors, an extremely important driver of compliance failures in the EU is the underdeveloped nature of supranational enforcement mechanisms. For a while, I was frustrated that I had not been able to fully realise the potential of the thesis, limiting myself to just a few articles. And here at last was the chance to put that right.

It is obvious that the European Union and the organisations we use as examples—BRICS, ASEAN, and the Eurasian Economic Union—are at completely different levels of integration and development of supranational institutions and decision-making protocols binding on all member states. Yet in many respects these organisations converge. Above all, this concerns the so-called mechanisms of legitimate coercion. In all the organisations mentioned above, we can observe an interesting phenomenon: countries voluntarily join these unions, cede part of their sovereignty to the supranational level, and comply with the requirements of supranational institutions in cases where, in the regulator’s view, their actions violate the legal status quo. Social researchers are generally accustomed to such behaviour from small European countries belonging to an organisation with very high international agency—the European Union. What is more surprising is to see the same behaviour from Russia and India—countries which, firstly, are members of far less institutionalised and integrated organisations than the EU, and secondly, possess far greater international weight and sovereignty than many European states.

Hence arises the first major question: why do Russia and India bring their legislation into line with the norms of external organisations and comply with the rules handed down by supranational regulators?

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The project’s focus on environmental policy is also no coincidence. This year, staff from the Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences, including myself and our dean, Alexander Sorokin, took part in two field expeditions to the region of the Greater and Lesser Himalayas in the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The purpose of these expeditions was to determine how climate change affects the daily lives of local communities and how households and stakeholders adapt to new climate conditions. For me as a political scientist, the key issue in these expeditions was the analysis of political courses pursued by local authorities (panchayati raj), state governments, and at the federal level. Comparing Jammu and Kashmir on the one hand and Himachal Pradesh on the other, we found that the latter has been far more successful in developing a coherent and effective policy of comprehensive support for local communities affected by natural disasters, soil degradation, and the disappearance of traditional flora and fauna. Among other things, this difference can be explained by the varying levels of autonomy these two regions enjoy within India’s federal system: while Himachal Pradesh in most cases is obliged to follow the course of national social policy and environmental standards, Jammu and Kashmir actively makes use of its special status and can say ‘no’ to Delhi’s environmental regulation requirements. A similar picture can be observed in the Russian context when comparing, even at a basic level, regions of the Arctic and Eastern Siberia.

Thus, there are at least three levels of governance that ensure the more or less successful implementation of environmental policy and the enforcement of these norms: the supranational (ie the level of the international organisation), the national, and the regional. At the same time, it is important to understand that the pool of stakeholders at each level includes not only top-tier decision-makers but also niche actors who contribute to the success or failure of environmental law-making and enforcement: city mayors, regional representatives of sectoral ministries, heads of industrial enterprises, vendors, and many others. It is precisely this complex web of resources, interests, and capacities that we aim to unravel within the project.

— What are the main objectives of the project?

— Our main task is to understand how environmental regulation practices in India and Russia differ, and to assess the degree of influence of the international organisations to which these countries belong on the success of creating, implementing, and enforcing environmental norms. To achieve this, we plan to work with extensive empirical material.

We intend to conduct a series of field studies in various regions of Russia and India, expert interviews, and conversations with stakeholders and business actors in order to study local practices in the field of environmental protection

We will also analyse normative legal acts regulating different aspects of the interaction between humans and nature.

— How is the cooperation between the HSE and the UPES teams organised?

— The Russian team mainly consists of staff from the Centre for Comparative Governance Studies. The centre primarily studies issues related to the functioning of so-called multi-level governance systems, which include international organisations. Its staff have considerable experience in researching the interaction of different levels of authority within such systems, the problems of information asymmetry, and the adaptation and resilience of multi-level systems to internal and external shocks. In particular, at present some participants of the mirror laboratory from among the centre’s staff and I are implementing another project funded by the Russian Science Foundation and dedicated to the practices of adaptation of Russian developers and the construction industry as a whole to the multiple shocks of the post-Covid period. Our groundwork in the study of multi-level governance systems, their resilience, and their structural weaknesses is extremely useful for the International Academic Cooperation project. Our team is complemented by colleagues from the Departments of Sociology and Public Administration—specialists in anthropogenic climate change and the evaluation of environmental policies at the regional and national level.

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Our partner university team at UPES is in many ways similar to ours. It also includes specialists in international organisations—political scientists, international lawyers, geographers, and sociologists

While we have strong expertise in the Russian case, our Indian colleagues provide the contextual understanding of environmental law-making in India.

In addition to the obvious forms of cooperation, such as organising joint workshops and reporting conferences, and co-authoring academic papers, there is another format which I value particularly highly: joint summer and winter schools for students. Over the past two years, our Bachelor’s programme in Political Science and World Politics has taken part in organising two themed schools hosted by UPES. Both our students and the Indian students showed great interest in these events, expressed not only in the individual activity of some participants, but also in the institutionalisation of cooperation between the student research societies of the HSE Department of Political Science and International Affairs and UPES.

The schools we plan to organise under the current laboratory project are intended to bring together research assistants and other interested students from both universities, fostering the exchange of experience and scholarly ideas between the two national teams

— What problems currently exist in the field of environmental regulation in Russia?

— I would highlight three key problems: the vagueness of wording in strategic documents, a lack of authority, and conflicts of interpretation.

At present, many Russian regions have adopted so-called regional strategic projects for sustainable development. These projects were introduced with the aim of attracting additional investment and developing tourist and industrial clusters, which, however, should be accompanied by the design and implementation of specific measures to protect the environment and the traditional way of life of local communities.

Unfortunately, good intentions are undermined by the excessively vague wording of the documents

The texts of most strategic projects set out too broad a range of priority tasks to be addressed by regional stakeholders. At the same time, the projects themselves serve only coordinating and guiding functions. They do not assign zones of responsibility to executors and do not provide for sanctions in cases of missed deadlines or inadequate fulfilment of project goals. The absence of clear regulation often leads to conflicts between the stakeholders involved, as happened, for example, during the construction of a new tourist complex in the Krasnoshchyokovsky District of Altai Krai, where disagreements arose between the developer and the management of the Tigireksky Nature Reserve.

Problems are also observed in the relations between different levels of authority engaged in the strategic development of regions. Difficulties typically arise in the interaction between representatives of local industry and local administrations in implementing environmental assessment and rational land-use programmes. Such cases are frequent in Siberian regions, where businesses refuse to invest in the implementation of strategic projects and, lacking other sources of co-financing, regional authorities are constantly forced to request assistance from the federal centre.

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Finally, the ambiguity of wording in the main document creates scope for different interpretations and goal-setting around the concept of sustainable development. While the key business stakeholders of the projects—representatives of resort clusters and regional agribusinesses—are quite successfully implementing those aspects of strategic projects aimed at building new production facilities, expanding agricultural output, and growing the ‘experience economy,’ the development of optimal land use systems and environmental monitoring becomes a secondary or even tertiary priority. This dissonance causes conflicts not only among stakeholders but also between executors and the local population. For example, the extensive growth of agricultural business has led to water shortages in the southern regions of Siberia, where much of the project’s territory lies in semi-arid zones. Reduced water resources available to households have forced many locals to narrow the range of crops they cultivate, which in turn has led to the loss of a significant share of additional income from intra- and interregional trade.

Another recurring conflict arises between local residents and tourists. While regional authorities introduce incentive programmes and subsidies for owners of tourism businesses, sociological research shows a growing negative sentiment among local people towards both domestic and foreign tourists

This trend can be explained in part by increasing social stratification. Owners of significant assets—large properties and vehicles—who already had higher incomes before the launch of strategic projects, have gained substantial additional income from the surge in tourist flows, whereas the incomes of the majority of local residents have remained virtually unchanged. In the absence of supportive social programmes, the active ‘touristification’ of many Russian regions exacerbates inequality, creating additional triggers for conflict.

— What results do you expect to achieve? How will the success of this project be measured?

— In a sense, our project is exploratory and aimed primarily at familiarisation with the field. Surprisingly, in research on environmental law-making and enforcement, very little attention is paid to international organisations—especially if we exclude the large body of work on the European Union.

Therefore, I would say that our primary goal is to determine the degree of involvement of integration groupings such as ASEAN, BRICS, and the Eurasian Union in environmental regulation processes in the two countries we have chosen.

At the same time, of course, we must not forget that our study is comparative. Hence, the second important goal is to develop a methodologically and theoretically robust mechanism for identifying similarities, differences, and best practices in law-making and enforcement in Russia and India.

As in most projects, our main form of reporting is academic articles. Given that the Russian and Indian teams consist of participants from a fairly wide range of specialisms, we are targeting our publications so that they are suitable for journals of different profiles: political science, international relations, and the natural sciences. In most cases, these are international journals included in HSE’s A-list, but we are also interested in publishing in Russian journals. Our first article, devoted to second-order multi-level governance, is expected to be published in August.

Read the original in Russian on Schola.