 Welcome to In The Studio. I'm your host today, Alex Silva. And my guest is Angelina Davidova. Is that correct? Absolutely. She's an environmental journalist and a Humphrey fellow here at UC Davis visiting from Russia. Is that correct? Absolutely, yes. All right. So where in Russia are you from? I come from St. Petersburg, Russia. And I usually make this joke that I was born in a city and I was born in a country which don't exist anymore. So when I was born, the city used to be called Leningrad. Oh, right, right, right. And the country used to be called the Soviet Union. Now it's St. Petersburg and Russia. And you are an environmental journalist, correct? That's your primary occupation. How did you get involved in that? Right, that's another very interesting story. And I started as a journalist back in 1999. I used to write about economy and business. And I did that for a number of years. And then I thought, well, maybe I did something in journalism and I want to explore other sectors of the world. So I went out and I started working for a number of international NGOs doing cooperation in the areas of civil society development, media exchange programs, and similar programs. And then through those NGOs, I entered the sector of environment and climate change. It actually came to me in form of a sales ship. This is the project which originated in Germany. And there was a German sales ship which would go along the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. And in every large port, so that would be in Germany, in Poland, in Lithuania, in Latvia, and Estonia, and in Russia, and in Russia that was in St. Petersburg, there would be a festival for environmental awareness. Really? And that was the main organizer of that festival in St. Petersburg. The festival was called Moving Baltic Sea. And the idea was to bring in environmental awareness through movies, through photo, through theater, through photography, and teach young photographers how to work with environmental topics, speak about environmental topics, try and find out and tell the public about the consequences of climate change in the Baltic Sea area. So I did that project. And I thought, wow, looks exciting. Maybe it's something I want to learn more about. And this is how it happened. It was 11 years ago now. And this is how I entered the environmental topic. And this is also through that project, I also became an observer with the United Nations Climate Negotiations. And I started doing more and more environmental projects. But then I realized, oh my god, I miss journalism. I really want to write about it. I want to tell people about it. So in a couple of years, I went back into journalism. And I started writing about this topic. Sort of full circle back around to the. Yes, in a way, yeah. So what would you say the state of environmental issues awareness is in Russia today? I mean, obviously, you just mentioned there's festivals and things. Do you think that it's a hot topic, or everyone is generally aware? Or is it still sort of not well known? From my experience, it's becoming more of an important topic as we leave. As I started writing about it, it was maybe a very marginal topic. People would be like, yeah, but we first need to start leaving better, accumulate a bit more wealth, so economic issues and social issues would come in the forefront. And then maybe we'll think about environmental issues a bit later. But then as the years went by, I realized that the topic is becoming more and more important. For the general public, for politicians, for companies, for pretty much everyone. So now, environmental topics are very high up in the agenda in Russia. And so nowadays, whenever I tell anyone, look, I'm an environmental journalist, people now just willing to tell me about the problems they know of. They don't go, what's that? No, no, they don't go, or they don't go like, ah, I do write about Greenpeace, people who climb on trees or something like that. And nowadays, everyone is so worried about it that they just tell you their stories. Like, ah, do you know there's this river, and I think there's an illegal discharge going into it, so it became much more polluted than a year ago. Or do you know there's this park and that they're about to cut down the trees, so maybe can you write about it and help us? So the stories are just coming to you now? Yes, a lot of the stories, yeah. That's great. What would you say is the current sort of hot topic in Russia? I mean, besides global warming is like this big general thing we always talk about, but something more, oops, sorry, specific. I would say if you just out on a street in Moscow or any other Russian city, and if you just stop a person, and ask him or her what do you think is the problem number one, they would probably tell you waste, like waste recycling. Up until recently, Russia had almost no recycling, so most of the household waste would go to landfills, and would just be kept there for years. Now there's an ongoing reform of waste management, and there are efforts to develop recycling and develop also separate selection of various fractions of waste, like the one we have here in Davis. Right, separating out the things. Exactly, yeah. And so waste is very high up in the agenda. So waste would be number one. Then air quality would be number two. Air quality. Yeah, people are very much worried about, what is the debris? Where can they get information about it? Can they trust this information? Can they check this information? What can they do to bring air pollution down? Because most of Russia is urbanized, and more than 70% of people live in high density urban areas. And in some cities, like Moscow or St. Petersburg, the main source of air pollution would be cars. Cars, yeah. People buy a lot of cars, and there are a lot of traffic jams. I think in all these international ratings of the worst traffic situations, Moscow is certainly within the first 10. So they can compete with LA for traffic. Yes, and I've experienced LA traffic, I have to tell you. But there are also some other regions of the country where there is still coal generation, which brings in, yes, for power and for heating, which brings in a lot of air pollution from that sector, or where there are still some production facilities, aluminum or other metals or steel, which can also bring in air pollution in that form. So air pollution is very high up. Then, topic number three, I would say anything connected with green areas and trees, also mostly in urban context. People fight for parks like mad. Really? Yes, they realize parks is what makes them healthy, what makes their kids healthy, what keeps our air clean. Yes, quality of life, health, our future. And since cities continue to grow, there are more and more people moving in from decent areas and rural areas to the cities. So there's a lot of construction going on, construction of houses, construction of infrastructure, highways, and it's very often that you would want to sacrifice a park, which might not be such a good idea. So there are a lot of campaigns for parks. So topics related to green zones, green areas, parks, overall urban development and new construction. Okay, that's surprising because I think probably most Americans think of Russia as a very more rural area, but you're saying it's becoming very urbanized and more dense. It's very unevenly populated. It has this huge territory, what everyone is aware about, but first of all, two thirds of population live in European part of Russia, which is before the Ural Mountain. Which like if the whole Russia is like this, then you would have the Ural Mountains probably around here. Everybody else is all spread out. Yeah, spread out. And then there's a thin layer of Siberian cities in the south of Siberia. Like most of Siberia would be pretty much empty. And also because of the economic situation and the job situations, more and more people move into larger areas. And overall, cities are very dense. They're much more denser than the US cities. Really? They have high-rise housing and by high-rise, I mean like 20, 30 storied houses. Most people live in the apartment blocks. Like I grew up in an apartment block. I live in an apartment back here. So it's very dense. So essentially, it's the similar pattern that's happened in other countries where the urbanization is really a big driver of environmental concern. Yeah. Which we've seen that happen in China as well. Everyone coming out of the countryside to live in the city. Exactly, yeah. So you're a Humphrey Fellow, which I mentioned earlier. Can you tell us a little bit about what that means? And a Humphrey Fellowship is an international fellowship at UC Davis. But how did you find out about that and become involved? And what are you doing with that? Right. Well, Humphrey Program is an amazing program. I have to tell you if I couldn't do any advertising for it, I would. And it's a professional development program, non-academic one. And every year, it brings around 130 people from all over the world into the US. And all these people are being distributed across 12 campuses. And one of the receiving campuses is UC Davis. It's the only campus in the west side of the country. I think there's one in Arizona, right? There's one in Arizona and one in UC Davis. Most of the campuses are around the east coast. And the idea of the program is to bring mid-career professionals specializing in a number of areas. So all those fellows who specialize in environmental or climate or agricultural areas, they would either come to UC Davis or to Cornell University. Which is how you wound up at UC Davis versus another one? Yeah, exactly. And you spent 10, 11, 12 months here learning about the area of your interest. You can take any courses at the university you're interested in. You can take professional development courses. You have a whole program set up for you from negotiation skills to learning about conflict resolution, leadership potential, development. So we also have all these extra seminars for us. We have an amazing program of field visits. Like we go and learn how Environmental Protection Agency works in Sacramento. Air Resources Board. We visited Davis wastewater treatment plant. We visited Davis Water, Davis Woodland Water Plant. Treatment plant, yeah. Exactly. We also went to the landfill in Davis. We went to see the aftermath of the campfire. So we went to see. We went to Chico and we went to Paradise. We went to see. Oh, my God, we've seen so many things. It's like we had so many of these amazing field trips. So it's about this. But then it's also about us giving back. So we as Humphrey Fellows, we are very much involved within the university, but not only also within the city. And we encourage to give talks, to give presentations, to work with students, like to help them professionally develop, share our knowledge. So everyone of us would give a number of lectures, presentations, speak at seminars, do also presentations for the public, and share our knowledge about our countries and about the world. OK. So this is a really big. Sorry. Sorry, yeah. And you're almost finished with this, right? You're coming to the end. So what's next? Now that you've gone through this year-long program, basically, what are you going to do for the fall? I mean, what are your plans? I'm going to work to Russia in a couple of weeks. And in early July, I will be organizing a number of environmental sections at the Moscow Urban Forum, which is the largest conference on urban development in Russia. And for that conference, I'm bringing a number of speakers from California. Oh, they're going to go with you to Russia to talk? OK. Well, not with me, but later than I go. And one of them is Sean Rosenmos. She's from the San Francisco Department of Environment. And she was one of the speakers on our program. And she did such an amazing presentation, speaking about environmental challenges in San Francisco, environmental policies. What does it do? How do they reach out to communities, to people to promote more environmentally sustainable behavior of people on their everyday level, that I thought, I've got to bring her to Russia. And this is what I'm doing, and I'm very happy. And there are a number of other people I'm also bringing to that forum. Then another conference coming up is in early September. That's the Moscow Climate Change Forum, also within the urban context. And for that forum, I've also recommended a number of speakers from California, the ones I met on our program and through my further travels in California. And I very much hope it works out. So you're continuing the exchange back and forth. That's great. Well, that's what you mentioned. The part of the program was to create these type of dialogues. That's fantastic. Angelina, thank you very much for being with us today, here and in the studio. If you'd like to find out more about the Humphrey Fellowship program, I think there'll be a link on the screen there. And thank you very much. Thank you, Alex. Thank you for having me.