In December, the results of the annual Russian Award for assessing sustainable impact in the economy, environment and society called «Change Management. Visionaries» were announced. The awards go to the best projects in various nominations.
The Foundation’s project «Baikal Without Fishnets» took the 3d place in the category «Environment, NGOs». We are glad that for the second year in a row our projects are being highly recognised by the jury and are given awards. We extend special thanks to the organizers of the competition — the Project +1 — for stimulating positive changes in the society through annual monitoring and rewarding the best projects in Russia.
«The Baikal without fishnets» project is a comprehensive project aimed at obtaining reliable data on the pollution of sunken fishing nets of the Baikal shoreline.
During 2021-2022, the team of the project has:
- conducted 6 independent expeditions, covering almost the entire perimeter of Lake Baikal;
- extracted of more than 1,340 kg of sunken fishing nets, which were sent to incineration/landfill, besides the only large fishing net, which is used as a decoration now at one of the hotels;
- created a map of fishnet pollution of the lake;
- engaged 30 people — environmental inspectors, scientists and representatives of civil society;
- conducted laboratory analyzes of more than 60 samples of water to determine water chemical content; 4 samples of sunken fishing nets and 7 water samples for cyanotoxins;
- organized an inter-regional round table discussion «Pollution of water bodies with sunken fishing nets: causes, consequences, and solutions» with participation of 16 experts. We made a summary of the discussion.
Such a comprehensive project would not have been done without joint efforts of several organizations. We thank our project partners: the Irkutsk regional environmental public organization «Depth of Responsibility» and the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as our donors, friends and everyone who participated in the «Baikal without fishnets» project.
In 2023, we plan to continue our work on the project and prepare a generalized Resolution on the problem of pollution of water bodies with sunken fishing gear.