ECo-I in Russia

The majority of the Izhorian ethnic group live in the Leningrad Region, with over 100 members residing in the Kingisepp district. For several years Nord Stream 2 has supported the Izhora Museum in the Vistino rural settlement in its educational programmes and cultural events to preserve their indigenous language, traditions, and ethnic culture. In 2019, the company supported the construction of the Izhora Crafts and Language Centre, and in 2020 supported the publication of a bilingual children’s book in Russian and Izhorian.

In 2009, the Izhorian language was designated as “under significant risk of extinction” by the UNESCO World Atlas of Endangered Languages. The centre provides visitors with opportunities to learn about traditional Izhorian culture and language, as well as master pottery skills. The inauguration took place in March 2020 with the participation of the Leningrad Region’s Governor Alexander Drozdenko, who in honour of the event joined the pottery class and made a traditional sea clay plate. Annually, the centre has the capacity to engage about 110 trainees to work on a potter's wheel and accommodate up to 400 visitors for lectures and workshops. When visiting the centre, children can read a copy of the first and only modern children’s book in both Russian and Izhorian, authored by a local Izhorian potter. “A Way to Magic” tells the story of an Izhorian boy who visits a pottery workshop and learns about the traditional art. The book was distributed among the schools and kindergardens in the Vistino, Ust-Luga and Kuzemkino rural settlements. 

A passage from the book reads: “And if you don't believe me, go to the pottery workshop and see everything with your own eyes.” Or, in Izhorian: “A ku että uzo, tulkkaa pattuurin perttii ja näettä kaikkia omil silmiil.”

Nord Stream 2 strives to be a good neighbour to residents and contribute to public life in the Kingisepp District’s communities through local events and festivities, providing educational components and encouraging community cohesion. 

The goal of this community development programme is to bring people together and promote social cohesion, development and education in areas of public concern, as well as ECo-I topics such as environmental awareness, waste management, culture, sports and health. The company also supports various festivities around national and local holidays. During Fathers’ Day celebrations in Kingisepp, for example, the “Ecolab” was set up to engage families around pro-environmental practices, local traditions, and culture. Our contributions not only receive positive feedback from the locals, they also raise awareness of our ECo-I issues to positively influence behavioural pattern in the entire region.

To ensure the programme’s sustainability, Nord Stream 2 set out to build strong partnerships with experts from regional NGOs and ensure a smooth transfer of knowledge. Part of the company’s community investment strategy has also been to help develop a self-sustaining network of community leaders. As a result, active community members have been engaged in the organisation of festivity events and had the opportunity to participate in a two-day training on successful event planning in August 2020.

To promote social infrastructure development in the Bolshoe Kuzemkino village, the company supported an initiative called “Building Together,” designing and constructing a remarkable playground with the active engagement of the local population.

Bolshoe Kuzemkino is home to about two-thirds of the rural population near the project area. But the village lacks essential infrastructure that would create an appealing place for the community to gather and strengthen cross-generational ties.

To determine a local vision for the future of their settlement, Nord Stream 2 organised a series of engagement activities, during which a playground in Kuzemkino was identified as one of the main areas of interest. Together with the local community, the programme’s implementation partner, Chekharda architectural bureau, designed the playground. Construction started in December 2019 and, in February 2020, the site was opened so that the children of Kuzemkino could help make the final touches. 

Nord Stream 2 has received a lot of positive feedback from the local community on the completion of the programme’s first stage since the official opening ceremony in February 2020. Locals are proud of the new playground, which attracts a great number of children from Kuzemkino and the neighbouring villages.

The company continues to pursue further development of social infrastructure in Kuzemkino with the involvement of the local community and stakeholders. A second stage of the programme began in summer 2020 and is aimed at the development of design and concept, as well as construction of a multi-functional community sports and leisure centre in the village.

To empower communities and enhance their quality of life, Nord Stream 2 launched the small grants programme “Power of Initiative > Our Region. Our Responsibility” in September 2020. This made Kingisepp the first district in the Leningrad region with a dedicated programme to support initiatives from local groups and non-profits.

It is based on the notion that environmental and social issues can be best addressed through actions that are designed, implemented, and owned by the communities that benefit from them. The programme was conceived to build community leadership and mobilise grassroots actions to tackle issues of local importance, while addressing key ECo-I topics and objectives. Small, community-driven projects are supported through grants, training and capacity-building.

Run in annual cycles, the programme awards grants of up to €580 for community groups and €3,500 for non-profit or publicly funded institutions addressing a range of issues. These include environmental protection, youth initiatives, sports, health and safety, improvement to public spaces, support for vulnerable groups, and promoting culture.

The programme is administrated on behalf of Nord Stream 2 by the “Dobry Gorod Petersburg” charity foundation, an NGO with considerable experience in running grant awards. In addition to conducting the project evaluation and selection processes, they consult and train applicants on how to structure their actions.

Nord Stream 2 supported the “My Land” education programme from 2019 to mid-2020, in cooperation with the Leningrad Region branch of the Russian Geographical Society, one of the oldest geographical societies in the world. The programme was aimed at raising young people’s awareness of the unique natural and cultural heritage of the Kingisepp district and the Outer Islands of the Gulf of Finland through workshops, scientific and creative contests, and field expeditions.

In 2019, approximately 2,000 schoolchildren from the Kingisepp district explored elements of their local history, culture, and environment through 36 workshops focusing on archaeology, history, geology, and other topics. Schoolchildren took part in the creative research competition “We Know and Love Our Land” and an expedition to the Outer Islands of the Gulf of Finland, where they discovered ceramics and hearth elements from the Bronze Age.

The same year, the “My Land” conference was held at the Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was also dedicated to the study of nature and the cultural and historical heritage of the Kingisepp district, as well as archaeological expeditions by schoolchildren, who took part in real scientific research projects. The final stage of the programme in 2020 entailed publication of the programme photo album and an open-air exhibition.

Within the context of COVID-19 restrictions, Nord Stream 2 partnered with a Kingisepp-based NGO to implement interactive online social media campaigns, supporting the traditional May festivities within local communities in the district. 

Helping to recreate a festive mood and speak about the traditional values associated with the holidays, the campaigns sought to engage with locals on topics at the heart of Nord Stream 2’s ECo-I strategy: environmental sustainability, supporting vulnerable groups, and community development.

The first campaign was an online contest called “Make it clear, I am responsible!”, which encouraged participants to describe their everyday practices that help protect the environment. Launched at the beginning of May, ahead of the peak tourism season, it increased public awareness and engagement with people’s experience of taking personal responsibility for the environment.

Another campaign, “Generations Dialogue”, with a focus on social and family values, inspired a dialogue between young and old by sharing the life stories of 35 elders from Kuzemkino and Ust-Luga. Collected and compiled in a booklet, these stories are available both online and in print. Community elders and their families expressed deep gratitude to Nord Stream 2 for the preservation of these legacies.

Both campaigns achieved noticeable social media coverage and generated positive comments within the community, which appreciated the engagement amid the challenges of the pandemic.

From 2018 to 2020, Nord Stream 2 supported the Clean Beach volunteer campaign along the coast and forests of the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve, collecting a record haul of waste in the history of the project.

The Clean Beach campaign is an international initiative that has been run by the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission since 2014. It seeks to encourage volunteer actions to clean coastlines and raise environmental awareness of the wider litter problem around the Baltic Sea and surrounding freshwaters.

In 2018, the company’s support enabled the involvement of the Leningrad region for this initiative in the Kingisepp district for the first time. In 2019 and 2020, the clean-up campaigns were organised in the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve as part of the HELCOM’s litter programme. Over the last three years the campaigns have brought together over 500 volunteers along with Nord Stream 2 employees, cleaning up to 75 hectares of the reserve's coastline and forest. Among the waste items collected were car parts, old television sets, household furniture and general litter, a third of which was sent for recycling.

To encourage a sustainability mindset, the company also focused on education and raising public awareness about pollution and threats to the biodiversity of the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve during the campaigns.

The initiative has drawn significant public attention to the problem of waste in the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve thanks to the collection of a record 15 tonnes of garbage between 2018 and 2020.

Invasive species such as Sosnovsky’s hogweed (giant hogweed) colonise vast areas rapidly and suppress local vegetation. Not only does it threaten biodiversity, but the plant is also dangerous to people’s health. Combined with sunlight, its sap causes severe burns. Nord Stream 2 included the containment of hogweed in its Biodiversity Action Plan for the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve and initiated an eradication programme, coupled with an information campaign to increase awareness of this plant.

In 2018, Nord Steam 2 contracted the N.I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR) to perform an inventory of the invasive species inside the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve and assess the threat these species pose to its biodiversity. The institute identified, among others, the presence of Sosnovsky's hogweed at several locations throughout the reserve. The scientists believe that its seeds are spreading into the reserve due to increased visitor access from districts surrounding this protected territory. 

In 2019, Nord Stream 2 initiated a hogweed eradication campaign in the reserve and adjacent areas under the supervision of the VIR experts, who developed a method to eradicate the plant safely and manually, without the use of chemicals. As part of this programme, an information campaign on hogweed has been carried out in nearby settlements, targeting children in particular. A total of 150 hectares was cleared in 2019, and the same area was revisited in 2020 to address the plant’s tendency to grow back, albeit in lesser amounts.

The Kurgalsky Nature Reserve is a protected area that is subject to mixed use and a number of threats to its rich biodiversity. Nord Stream 2 has been supporting the reserve’s administration to develop a long-term management plan for the area. 

The development of the Kurgalsky Management Plan proposal is part of Nord Stream 2’s Biodiversity Action Plan: a roadmap that spans 30 years and seeks to deliver a “net gain” for biodiversity in the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve.

The visioning study that was prepared as a first step focuses on four key areas: 

• Analysis of the reserve’s current state, threats to its biodiversity and objectives of the Management Plan for the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve;
• Measures to prevent violations of the special protection regime;
• Biodiversity enhancement through rehabilitation of the affected natural complexes, preventing biological threats, and improving habitat management;
• Measures to reduce the footprint of uncontrolled tourism. 

The visioning study was compiled by Strelka KB, a leading company in spatial development strategies in Russia, together with key experts and scientific institutions from the St. Petersburg and Leningrad regions, as well as international consultants. Core concepts of the document were presented at public and expert community consultations in St. Petersburg and the Kingisepp district in February 2020, and through a digital engagement event in summer 2020. The feedback collected and analysed by the St. Petersburg State University’s Centre for Sociological Studies has been used to finalise the proposal for the Kurgalsky Management Plan. The finalised proposal will be submitted to the Committee of Natural Resources of the Leningrad region, the competent authority for the reserve, for their consideration and implementation.

Ringed seals in the Gulf of Finland are critically endangered, with a residual population estimated at around just 100 individuals. Understanding their behaviour is essential to promoting conservation, and Nord Stream 2 supports various activities to improve the status of ringed seals and their relatives in the Gulf of Finland. 

The Baltic ringed seals of the Gulf of Finland, a subpopulation of the Baltic ringed seal, have been declining in numbers since the middle of the 20^th century due to several factors, including climate change. Nord Stream 2 has supported studies on their behavioural patterns since 2017 to help scientists pinpoint the causes of the population decline and formulate conservation measures.

During the three years of study, a total of 18 ringed seals, approximately 18 percent of the entire population of the Gulf of Finland, were equipped with telemetry tags. These have an on-board GPS location system that provides geographical coordinates in real time.

Thanks to the studies, key habitats for the ringed seals were identified and the importance of the Kurgalsky reef and the adjacent archipelago area was confirmed as a core distribution region. This valuable data will serve as input for further conservation efforts.

Nord Stream 2 also supports the Baltic Ringed Seals Friends Fund, a foundation that works on the rehabilitation of seal pups that are prematurely separated from their mothers. In 2020 alone, the fund rescued 29 seal pups: seven Baltic ringed seals, six Ladoga Lake ringed seals and 16 grey seals.

Fires are one of the biggest threats to the biodiversity of the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve. Nord Stream 2 has been actively supporting the forestry unit of the Kingisepp district to minimise the potential for these fires to spread.

During the dry season, forest and peat fires have devastating effects on the natural ecosystems of the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve. In 2008, for example, an extensive peat fire destroyed hundreds of hectares in the Kader bog. To prevent the uncontrolled spreading of fires, the forestry department monitors the entire Kurgalsky Nature Reserve to rapidly identify fires as they develop. It also creates and maintains a network of firebreaks to contain any fires within small parts of the territory.

Nord Stream 2 has financed the purchase of a CCTV camera to extend the coverage of the existing monitoring network to the southern part of the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve. In addition, the company financed the maintenance of approximately 80 kilometres of firebreaks in 2018.

Awareness and education, especially for young people, are key to environmental conservation. Recognising plants, animals and their habitats, knowing the importance of managing garbage, and understanding the danger of invasive species and fires are fundamental tools for the sustainable coexistence of people and nature. 

The “My Kurgalsky” programme consisted of a series of classes at kindergartens and schools, field visits, garbage cleaning campaigns and contests to inform children on the values of the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve and raise their awareness of behaviours and activities that can jeopardise the ecology of the protected area.

Within the framework of the programme, 11 events were organised in 2019, engaging up to 3,500 people who cleaned 23 hectares of the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve of garbage. In total, some 13 tonnes of waste were collected.

The project arose as part of Nord Stream 2’s commitment to enhance biodiversity values in the Kurgalsky Nature Reserve. The company identified a clear need for public education as one of the strategic tools to influence their behaviour when visiting the reserve.