“Green Carrots?” Distribution of Presidential Grants for Environmental Initiatives in 2017-23 As an Element of Regional Environmental Politics in Russia

This article aims to identify factors associated with distribution of Presidential grants for environmental initiatives in 2017-23 in Russia. The main argument is a presence of specific political logic in supporting regional eco-initiatives in the authoritarian context. While previous studies considered environmental conflicts, as a rule, on the part of eco-activists, in this paper we focus on studying the strategy of the authorities. For this purpose, we propose using the concept of ‘regional environmental politics’. Assuming that the key point for the authorities is an attempt to reduce eco-protest activity, we argue that the authorities seek to use not only the "stick", meaning forceful strategies for combating protests, but also the "carrot", or strategies for co-opting eco-activists. In this model, the distribution of grants to support environmental initiatives is considered as a reaction to environmental conflicts. We test two main hypotheses about the logic of project support: a reaction to the frequency of eco-protests, and a reaction to inequality, which contributes to protest sentiments in general. We rely on several sources of empirical data. First, we use data on the distribution of Presidential grants to eco-NGOs. Second, we use a large-scale database on eco-protests. Fixed-effects models show that the distribution of presidential grants follows eco-protests logic. In addition, the distribution of grants is affected by low inequality, which in Russia is typically characteristic of poor regions. We also illustrate our arguments on the example of the Sverdlovsk region, revealing non-coincidence of regional environmental agenda and profiles of supported projects. One may interpret it as a government’s attempt to affect environmental agenda by shifting attention to other problems. It shows how cooptation strategies are used in the non-democratic context.