Garbage disposal at sea and storage of pollutants and waste materials on the ice are not permitted.
During the transition from the Soviet system to the present Russian system, Russia was left with various environmental problems and with deficient environmental norms, regulations and control procedures. Particularly under the economic conditions Russia has faced throughout the 1990s, no effective remedies have been developed with respect to the deficient systems and regulations for environmental issues, including ship-caused pollution in the NSR. For the moment, Russia seems to be somewhat behind in the legislation on environment compared with the laws of other countries (WP-128). However, in 1996, the same year as the promulgation of the Revised Environment Protection Law, a reorganization of Russian government agencies was carried out according to the Edict 1177 ("on the Composition of Executive Bodies"). This reform greatly improved the government mechanisms related to the enactment and oversight of basic environmental protection legislation. Presently, however, management of environmental protection at the regional level is still fragmented among the federal government and the various regional authorities. Similarly, the lines of responsibility and jurisdiction between the federal and regional governments are not always clear.
4.5.6 Conclusion
The main results of INSROP are the identification of VECs and the compilation and read-in of their approximate distributions into INSROP GIS, as well as the sharing of information with Russia regarding evaluation procedures of environmental assessment and related issues. Most cases in which impact hypotheses were applied were found to fall into category C, indicating that stationary and regular monitoring is vital to the selected VECs for their validation, when the NSR gets in active operation. At current NSR shipping levels, the impact from pollutants carried into the Arctic Ocean through rivers, currents and air mass from the northern European landmass is far more serious than that of NSR shipping. It is practically difficult to judge the real origin of pollution at the Arctic Ocean by the contaminants or disturbances, whether being provided by the NSR operation, or being brought by various activities on the European landmass.
4.6 Geographic Information System
4.6.1 Introduction
A Geographic Information System is a visual database system composed of digitized map information on a computer. In current car-navigation systems, driving routes are displayed on an on-screen map; the route and direction to a destination is selected from the database and delivered to a driver by the speaker. The system represents a form of GIS, since the system uses database to display geographical data. GIS for professional uses, however, are much more sophisticated and offer greater flexibility, utilizing common software on personal computers or workstations. Development of the NSR GIS was one of the primary subjects of INSROP, where considerable efforts to compile the Russian data on the NSR and improve workability of the system have borne fruit. The system is called INSROP GIS, and its objectives are as follows.
[1] To construct a highly accessible database of geographical information of the Arctic region that can provide a foundation for long-term planning and rational decision-making for development of the region and for selection of the routes in the NSR
[2] To enable rational decision-making based on a sound evaluation of all relevant issues of a case by making use of visible map and photo information in the GIS
[3] To render geographical data on the NSR and Arctic Ocean visible and easy to search and analyze, presenting INSROP data to the user in a systematic fashion
