Pollution of Lake Baikal

IDENTIFICATION: Freshwater lake located in Siberian Russia

When industrial water pollution began to threaten the unique nature of Lake Baikal, with its pure waters and distinctive plant and animal life, the Soviet Union experienced its first environmental protests.

Lake Baikal is the oldest and deepest lake on Earth. Almost 650 kilometers (400 miles) long, its surface area is approximately the same as that of Lake Superior, but its water volume makes up one-fifth of all on Earth’s surface. The lake itself is more than 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) deep. Below the surface lies a floor of sediment approximately 6.4 kilometers (4 miles) deep; the sediment has drifted down through the lake’s waters over some twenty to thirty million years. Lake Baikal lies atop a rift where several tectonic plates meet along a little-studied geological fault. The activity of these plates has apparently widened the rift and deepened the lake over many millennia.

Lake Baikal essentially has a closed ecosystem. Several hundred rivers feed into it, but the consists entirely of the mountain area surrounding the lake, unconnected to other river systems. Baikal has only one outlet, the Angara River, which flows out from its southeast corner, past the old frontier city of Irkutsk, and ultimately to the Arctic Ocean. Because of the lake’s isolation, it is the of many species that are found nowhere else on Earth. It is a fascinating site for biological study.

Among the lake’s intriguing fauna is the silver-furred nerpa, the smallest known seal. Its closest relative, the Arctic seal, lives some 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) away. How the nerpa reached Baikal and adapted to freshwater is one of the lake’s many mysteries. Nerpas eat an oily fish also found only in Baikal, the golomyanka. This almost transparent fish gives birth to live young, then promptly sinks and dies. Algae, plankton, and similar microscopic creatures form the bottom of the lake’s food chain. These serve as prey for a tiny crustacean called epishura, which strains Baikal’s waters to a pristine clarity.

The land around Lake Baikal—consisting of taiga, or northern woodlands—shelters a variety of Siberian wildlife. Mountains ring the lake, creating spectacular scenery. Olkhon Island, located near the western shore in the midsection of the crescent-shaped lake, has a dry, almost snowless climate and contains grasslands and sand dunes. The smaller islands are seal nesting grounds. The lake surface freezes to a depth of more than 1 meter (3.28 feet) during the long Siberian winter.

Despite its remote location, the region has not been immune to technological forces. The Trans-Siberian Railroad’s builders left clear-cut areas and debris in the southern reaches, a problem repeated with the building of the Baikal-Amur Mainline paralleling the northwest shore decades later. By the early twentieth century, sable in the surrounding forests had been hunted almost to extinction. Sturgeon and sturgeon eggs, valued as luxury food items, were dangerously depleted by the 1950s.

Buryat Mongols, Indigenous inhabitants of the region, lived unobtrusively on the land, much as Native Americans lived for thousands of years in the Americas. Russian settlers, arriving either by choice or by involuntary exile, had to make a living in the isolated region. Although fisheries could sustain operations without depleting populations of marine life, they did not always do so. Meanwhile, timbering and farming methods took a major toll in erosion.

Environmental Damage

The greatest environmental damage to the Lake Baikal region came with the establishment of large-scale industry. During Joseph Stalin’s regime as the Soviet leader (1922-1953), the Soviet Union emphasized industrial production over every other goal. Stalin’s immediate successors retained this policy. A huge cellulose production plant opened at Baikalsk on the southern shore of the lake in 1966 and began spewing toxic chemicals into the lake water and murky into the air. A pulp plant at Selingiske, located on one of Lake Baikal’s major tributaries, and factory wastes and from Ulan-Ude farther upriver created another major area around the Selenga River delta. Hydroelectric dams built near Irkutsk in the 1950s brought more heavy industry and noxious by-products.

The harm wrought by these factories was unquantifiable but quite visible. In many places along the southern shore of the lake, the formerly pure water became unfit to drink. Many square miles of lake area simply died, becoming unable to support aquatic life. Elsewhere, the populations of many native species shrank drastically. In some places, newly introduced, hardier species began to replace them, with unpredictable consequences.

Efforts to Protect the Lake

Distrust of the Baikalsk manufacturing project spawned the first environmental protests in the Soviet Union. Although these did not prevent the plant’s opening, a precedent and framework was created for the future. By the time of Mikhail Gorbachev’s term as Soviet leader (1985-1991), the lake’s pollution was obvious, and the political scene had become less repressive. Gorbachev pledged to convert the Baikalsk plant to nonpolluting activities, but political turmoil and the Soviet Union’s breakup intervened, after which Lake Baikal became Russia’s responsibility.

The biggest problems for Lake Baikal in the 1990s were those of inaction caused by Russia’s political and economic problems. Antipollution laws and plans were adopted, but the money to implement them was scarce, and coordination among local political entities was difficult. Declining industrial activity caused by economic slowdown may have slowed pollution of the lake more effectively than any active measures. The Baikalsk plant was eventually closed down in 2008—not because of environmental concerns, but because it had become unprofitable. Although the owner had sworn it would not reopen, it began operating again in 2010. It closed for good in 2013.

In 1996, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) named Lake Baikal a World Heritage Site, and many Russians have embraced the lake as a national treasure deserving of protection. In the early years of the twenty-first century, plans were drawn up to lessen or reverse damage to the lake and region, and Russia began to draw on outside resources, both scientific and business-oriented, for help in this effort. Investors also began to promote the relatively clean industry of tourism at Lake Baikal.

Bibliography

Belt, Don. “Russia’s Lake Baikal: The World’s Great Lake.” National Geographic, June 1992.

"Blaming Western Sanctions, Russia Pushes 'Dangerous' Cleanup Plan for Lake Baikal." Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, 1 June 2022, www.rferl.org/a/russia-pushes-dangerous-cleanup-plan-lake-baikal/31877177.html. Accessed 19 July 2024.

Marinaite, I. I., et al. "Oil Products in Lake Baikal and Its Tributaries." Water Resources, vol. 49, June 2022, doi.org/10.1134/S0097807822030101. Accessed 19 July 2024.

Matthiessen, Peter. Baikal: Sacred Sea of Siberia. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1992.

Minoura, Koji, ed. Lake Baikal: A Mirror in Time and Space for Understanding Global Change Processes. New York: Elsevier, 2000.

Thomson, Peter. Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Venable, Sondra. Protecting Lake Baikal: Environmental Policy Making in Russia’s Transition. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM, 2008.