The Novozybkov Project

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South section of Novozybkov Photo: VIOLA

Living Earth's participation in the Novozybkov Project was initiated in 2003 at a retreat with Joanna Macy. Joanna had conducted workshops in 1993 in Novozybkov, a Russian city downwind of Chernobyl. The Novozybkov Project raises funds to provide radiation monitors and education to the people of Novozybkov, which was heavily drenched with radioactive fallout when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melted down in 1986.

Background

In 1986, when the radiation-laden clouds from Chernobyl were seeded to protect the larger population centers of Moscow, their toxic rains fell most heavily on the light industrial and agricultural area of Novozybkov. Many people were forced to evacuate and move away from the region where their families had lived for generations. Cancers and related conditions have affected almost the entire population and continue to create a legacy of pain, loss, hardship, and grief.

The deciduous forests surrounding Novozybkov, where regional culture evolved over generations, are saturated with radiation and have been declared permanently off-limits by the government--toxic essentially forever, at levels up to 100 times that of background levels. One village of 900 families at the time of the disaster, is now home to just four remaining elderly residents, who subsist by growing kitchen gardens and gathering mushrooms and berries from the surrounding woods.

The radiation levels shift and change in relation to environmental factors, such as the presence of other environmental pollutants and chemical toxins, winds and dust, and rains. Toxicity also shifts with changing weather, seasons, and other conditions; different structures as well as open spaces hold unstable levels of radioactivity. Soil, crops, cattle fodder, firewood, and building materials are all contaminated in varying degrees, and new, unstudied diseases are emerging, the product of radiation combined with other toxins.

Today the population in the Novozybkov region is slowly growing, as economic and political conditions drive people from other regions into areas where housing is cheap. It has been less than twenty years since the disaster at Chernobyl, but its devastating nuclear legacy will continue to unfold for generations.

The Program

The goal of Living Earth's Novozybkov Project is to support people in the radiation zone in making informed decisions regarding where they can safely live, work, plant gardens, and send their children to school. Radiation monitors and educational materials for the people of Novozybkov are being provided through VIOLA, an environmental organization in the regional capitol of Bryansk. The monitors and information empower families and individuals to make thoughtful decisions and regain some modicum of control of their lives as they cope with the short- and long-term impacts of nuclear radiation. Read a report by VIOLA about their program and activities.

The radiation monitor program is one small, direct way to help the people of Novozybkov, to support them as they face the profound dangers being created by the industries, economics, and politics of contemporary society.