Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

L A K E P E I P S I / C H U D S K O E - P S K O V S K O E , E S T O N I A A N D T H E R U S S I A N F E D E R A T I O N / 4 0 7Commercial and small-scale fishing is currently an importantsource of income, particularly as many small enterprises havebeen shut down alongside access to the Russian produce marketsince the end of the Soviet era.The northern part of the basin is the most industrial and isintrinsically linked to oil shale, the main natural resource of thearea. In 2001, the Estonian Oil Shale Ltd. mines produced11.4 million tons (Mt) of oil shale. The oil shale of the Balticbasin is one of the world’s most unique for both its compositionand high quality. Eighty percent of the oil shale mined is used toproduce energy; the remaining 20 percent is used as rawmaterial for chemical enterprises in the towns such as Kohtla-Järve (Estonia) and Slantsy (the Russian Federation).Aside from oil shale, the small deposits of construction materialsand the sands of the northern and western shores, the other basinresources (such as fish stock, forest, peat) are renewable. The mainsources of air pollution are power plants and chemical enterprises.The Russian side of the basin produces construction materials andcontains fuel and chemical industries associated with oil shalemining. Peat deposits are used for agricultural needs.Figure 17.3 shows the distribution of land use in the LakePeipsi basin.Figure 17.3: Land use in the Lake Peipsi basinWetland6%Forest40%Open waters2%Other(urban areas, roads)10%Agriculturalland42%Natural areas (forests, wetlands, lakes) cover almost 50 percent of the basin, butagricultural land use is quite important, at over 40 percent. Urbanized areas,however, cover only 10 percent of the basin.HistoryArchaeological finds show that permanent agriculturalsettlements were founded in the first millennium AD. Permanentpopulation centres of this kind existed in the vicinity of Alatskiviand Gdov on the coast of Lake Peipsi, and around Räpina on thecoast of Lake Pskovskoe. At the end of the first millennium, Slavsreached Lake Pskovskoe and the eastern coast of Lake Peipsi. Thefirst town-type settlements arose near the Pskov stronghold. Inthe fourteenth century, strongholds were also built at Gdov andVasknarva. Beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,fishing villages appeared on the coasts of the lake, and in time,the fisher population increased in the area west of Lake Peipsi aswell. In the second half of the nineteenth century and thebeginning of the twentieth century, the inhabitants of coastalvillages grew vegetables and developed many handicrafts.National minoritiesAmong the Russian populations dominating the western andnorthern shores on the Estonian side are the Old Believers. Theyfirst settled on the Estonian shore of Lake Peipsi in the eighteenthcentury to escape the reforms taking place in the RussianOrthodox Church. Since then, they have lived in a separatecommunity by the lake and do not mix with Estonians. The world’slargest concentration of them, however, is in the local municipalityof Peipsääre, situated north of the mouth of the Emajõgi River. Ofthe 1,000 inhabitants, almost 900 are Old Believers.Although the south-western shore of the lake is mainlypeopled with Estonians, the eastern and southern coasts of thelake are home to a small Estonian minority group, the Setu. Unlikethe majority of Estonians, Setu are orthodox. They have their ownregional Ugric language, used by only 1,000 native speakers insouth-eastern Estonia and on the Russian side of the border. Theylive in south-western Estonia and in the county of Pechory in thePskov region. At present the border divides their living area. Atthe birth of the Estonian Republic in 1920, the Tartu Peace Treatyattributed the entire Setu area to the Estonian Republic. After theSecond World War, this area was split between the Soviet SocialistRepublics (SSR) and the Russian Soviet Federated SocialistRepublic (RSFSR). The border problem arose during the restorationof the Republic of Estonia, and the Setu area is still halved, asituation that is endangering the Setu culture.Source: Taken from the Estonian Department of Statistics web site, 2002 (http://www.stat.ee).