The Moscow Times reports that ecological experts are warning that Transneft’s proposed Far East pipeline presents a serious threat to the integrity of Lake Baikal.

Some 80 percent of the 50-member commission of ecological experts created to investigate the project voted earlier this week against the Transneft-proposed route because it ran too close to the world’s largest freshwater lake and hence endangered it, Gennady Chegasov, a member of the commission, said at a news conference Thursday.

Chegasov, along with environmentalists in Russia and abroad, argues that the construction of the pipeline in the highly seismic area of Baikal’s basin risks an ecological disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Under the proposed route, one stretch of the pipeline would run just 800 meters away from the shoreline of Baikal, a unique reservoir containing some 20 percent of the planet’s surface fresh water and accommodating some 3,000 endemic species.

I am in complete agreement with the scientists in this case. For me, however, this is not primarily an environmental issue but more importantly a social and geostrategic matter. Russia is, economically, a developing nation; she has a tremendous but decaying industrial base as a legacy of Soviet times, which she has not had enough liquidity or economic dynamicism to overhaul. Because of their relative decay and lack of expendable financial resources, Russian businesses (like those in any other developing state) cannot be expected to consider the environment an overriding factor in major decisions. That is a luxury afforded to the rich, and only once Russia becomes a wealthy nation should the standards of Western environmentalism apply.

In this case, however, there are pressing geostrategic and social reasons to make the preservation of Lake Baikal a state priority. The essential fact is that clean fresh-water is a dwindling and very precious resource. Water, in the future, will become as important as oil in many regions of the world; not only is it critical economically, but it is the sine qua non of human life. Lake Baikal, as the article reports, contains approximately one-fifth of the fresh water on the surface of the Earth. As water supplies elsewhere tighten due to overuse, pollution, and population expansion, Baikal and other massive fresh water lakes like it will increase substantially in value. Russia will find the lake quite valuable both for provisioning Russian citizens with potable water and use as a geopolitical lever akin to oil and natural gas. It is imperative for Moscow to maintain the lake’s integrity in order to effectively exploit Baikal as a resource in the future. In this case, the company argues that it will cost $2 billion to reroute the pipeline. The future benefits of Baikal are well worth that price.

Unfortunately, however, like the scientists who have brought this issue public, I’m not optimistic about the chances of their concerns being heeded. Moscow has a poor environmental track-recorded, highlighted by the Aral Sea fiasco whereby Soviet planners were responsible for one of the greatest environmental disasters in modern history. In this case, vested interests are heavily aligned in favor of the cheaper (but environmentally unsound) pipeline route. Russia, furthermore, is not a wealthy country; in the eyes of the government, the environmental risks are probably well-worth the cost savings.

Perhaps Moscow will get lucky and the lake will remain uncontaminated; it would not be wise for the Russian government to take that chance.