Competent information policy makes Russian cities more environmentally advanced

Ecology is important for cities today, not only in relations with the environment, but also in the information space. A competent strategy for promoting nature protection topics can not only solve educational problems, but also encourage enterprises and authorities to change their attitude towards ecology. This is important both for relatively small towns like Nizhny Tagil and for megacities like Chelyabinsk.

Let’s imagine a conditional city N. A city is like a city, with its problems and its achievements. Factories operate in it, transport runs on it, people live in it … All together, as elsewhere, they influence the surrounding nature. And now let’s imagine three scenarios, how the information component around this rather familiar city life can change it.

The first scenario can often be found in our Russian open spaces. Let’s call it “horror-horror”. Under him, the media (traditional and new) begin to shake the negative around environmental problems. Factories are presented as an absolute stinking evil, the authorities are endowed with features of lack of will, inaction and criminal connivance, scientists are mediocre, unable to offer a solution to environmental problems … What is the result of such an information strategy? The exodus of the population, the pessimization of public initiatives, the lack of desire on the part of industrialists and the authorities to change anything, because any of their actions runs into a wave of negativity and mistrust…

The second scenario is fundamentally different from the first. Let’s call it “pink glasses”. Everything is varnished in it – the factories seem completely harmless, transport does not cause problems, everything in this city N, judging by the reports, is fragrant and smells. What will be the result of such oil in the information space? Impunity for polluters, unprincipled government, lack of public initiative and, as a result, the same exodus of the population, which hears one thing, but sees something radically different around.

But there is also a third scenario. Let’s call it “eco-realism”. Here the problems are not hushed up, but each criticism encourages the search for proposals for their solution. Industrialists and authorities are not demonized, but they do not become hard-to-reach either. Society is being pushed to protect the environment.

Today, we can find the implementation of the third scenario in the city of Chelyabinsk. This millionaire city has an interesting set of conditions. Stunning Ural nature with forests and many reservoirs, a climate that allows you to appreciate the creakiness of frosts descending from the mountains in winter, and the bliss of a beach holiday in summer. A developed industry that provides local residents with good jobs, and budgets with good tax revenues, but, of course, has an impact on the environment. In Chelyabinsk, ecology has always been a value, and the information policy around it has always been more than hot.

“On the one hand, we are seeing a request from society to figure out what environmental problems we have,” says Marina Dymova, head of the environmental education department of the Ministry of Ecology of the Chelyabinsk Region. “On the other hand, there is a clear position of the authorities to explain to people what is happening with the environment, what is being done to ensure that the situation changes for the better.”

The educational approach in covering environmental issues has gradually created a high demand for expert opinion in Chelyabinsk. Unprofessional comments of “environmentalists” from the street gradually ceased to suit the residents of the city. Scientists, ecologists and practitioners have become authorities and instigators in the media agenda.

“Chelyabinsk enterprises have begun to invest billions of rubles in environmental modernization,” says Rashid Ismailov, chairman of the Russian Ecological Society. “Now is the moment when businesses need to learn how to talk about their environmental achievements. We push them to understand that their target audience is ordinary people who need not the abbreviation of reports, but a direct conversation. And certain progress in Chelyabinsk has taken place in this direction as well.”