More of the Same: COVID-19 and Centripetal Tendencies in Russian Environmental Policymaking

Like most countries globally, COVID-19 has had a demonstrable health, economic, and environmental impact on Russia. The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible ramifications for environmental quality in Russia during and following the coronavirus pandemic. Our hypothesis builds on the framework of Elinor Ostrom on polycentrism, as we argue that the pandemic and subsequent lockdown has revealed the diversity of environmental issues in Russia and the need to move towards a more polycentric, de-centralized approach to environmental protection. We provide evidence for this point using a novel econometric strategy: given the tight centralization of environmental policymaking, we proxy for de facto decentralization using the amount of influence a regional governor has at the Kremlin. Using timely data on pollution in major Russian cities both before and during the pandemic, our econometric analysis shows that pollution in a particular Russian region is negatively related to the amount of influence a Russian governor has in the Kremlin. Thus, the more powerful a governor is in their ability to set their own course, the better results they have in environmental quality. Conversely, governors who are very reliant on the center see much worse environmental outcomes, measured in terms of CO and NO2 emissions, during the pandemic. We conclude that Russia’s environmental policy needs a fundamental rethink – and extensive decentralization – in a post-COVID-19 world.