“Green Guardians”: Attitudes of Russian Conservatives to Environmental Problems

Social Sciences. 2024. Vol. 55. No. 2. P. 22–48.

Scherbak A. N., Zubarev N., Semushkina E. S.

Translator: Filippov Y.

This article examines the attitudes of contemporary Russian conservatives toward “the green agenda.” Although the topic of ecology was originally considered a priority of left-wing parties and movements, in recent years right-wing European politicians have been increasingly discussing and using environmental issues to boost their popularity. While the left-wing green agenda largely focused on global issues, such as climate change, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and energy transition, right-wing populists, denying the importance of the declared environmental policy, proposed focusing on local problems – preserving local nature and national control over natural resources. This trend can now be observed in Russia: domestic politicians actively discuss the green agenda, offering their evaluations and ways to solve environmental problems. This article pursues a twofold aim. First, to show that the Western and Russian conservative discourses have more similarities than differences, the Russian green political discourse tracing its roots both to the Russian environmental movement and to European populists. Secondly, we investigate whether the views of conservatives influence environmental policies in Russia. To this end, we studied data on presidential environmental grants supported for 2018-2022. A total of more than 4,000 applications were analyzed. The results show that the majority of projects have a local character. Patriotic organizations are getting more involved in environmental issues, with several environmental organizations deliberately starting to use patriotic rhetoric. The results seem to indicate traces of conservative attitudes in environmental policy.
 

Keywords: conservatism, right-wing populism, Ecology, Russian ideology, eco-activism, presidential grants, the green agenda