image: Nataliia Lisitcyna and Dmitry Lisitsyn
Credit: N/A
The remote island of Sakhalin off Russia’s far eastern shore is rich in natural resources and biodiversity, with spawning grounds for salmon, feeding areas for grey whales, and a mixed landscape of tundra and forests. It is also home to significant oil and gas reserves. Over the decades commercial activities including mining, oil and gas extraction, industrial fishing, salmon hatchery production, and deforestation from unchecked logging have threatened its ecosystems.
As a lawyer for Sakhalin Environmental Watch (SEW), Nataliia Lisitcyna and her partner, Dmitry Lisitsyn, who founded the nonprofit, have spent decades protecting the island by pressing for legal restraints on harmful oil, gas and mining activities. Their efforts led to the successful introduction of a zero-discharge standard for drilling waste in Russian seas, the halting of a harmful gold mining project, cancellation of an oil pipelines project that threatened natural ecosystems, and the passage of legislation to prevent and reduce oil spills from tankers.
The two are now bringing their formidable experience in conservation work to the Yale School of the Environment. Nataliia will be joining YSE as an associate research scholar in October and as a McCluskey Fellow beginning April 1, 2025. Dmitry will be an executive fellow.
"We are thrilled to have two world-renowned professional environmental advocates from the Russian Far East come to Yale. Their work on ocean and forest conservation in the Russian Far East in general and on Sakhalin Island has been internationally recognized,” said Mark Ashton, Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology and senior associate dean of The Forest School. "Having our students exposed to real world practitioners of conservation who have worked under very difficult circumstances will be a humbling learning experience for our students.”
During her 20 years as primary attorney for SEW, Nataliia won several precedent-setting court cases and the annulment of decisions by the Russian Federation and Sakhalin authorities. These legal victories have helped protect rare plants habitats and urban forests, prevent pollution of Indigenous lands, end pollution of spawning rivers from gold mining discharges, and enable the release of 10 orca and 87 beluga whales that had been captured by the aquarium and entertainment industry.
"Nataliia's pioneering legal initiatives open a window to widespread efforts by Russian nature defenders, many of them the age of our students at Yale and similarly attuned to global environmental challenges, to foster a long-lasting environmental movement in their nation and beyond," said Fred Strebeigh, senior lecturer emeritus at YSE, who has written about the work of Russian environmentalists for publications including The New York Times.
Nataliia’s entry into environmental work came via accounting when she applied for a position at SEW and met Dmitry, who hired her immediately. There wasn’t much accounting work to fill her hours at the organization though, so she started helping out with its environmental protection initiatives. She later earned a jurisprudence degree at Modern University for the Humanities in Russia and completed several advanced training programs including atmospheric air protection and environmental auditing. Nataliia, who grew up in Uzbekistan before moving to Sakhalin, has also provided legal support to Russia’s World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace Russia, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and the Marine Mammal Council. She also is currently author of the Nature in Law blog, which focuses on how to enforce environmental protection legislation in Russia.
“Nataliia’s legal skills and persistence have been crucial to the Russian conservation community far beyond her home region of Sakhalin,” said Margaret Williams ’93 MESc, senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. “From protecting endangered species, to designating new protected areas to forcing corporations to meet global environmental standards, Nataliia has been at the center of numerous pivotal victories for nature and people alike.”
Dmitry’s interest in nature stems from his childhood growing up in Motygino, a small, forested village in Siberia where his father was a geologist.
“The wilds of nature were always a symbol of freedom and beauty for me,” he said. “It was never a question for me of what I wanted to do. I always knew I wanted to defend nature.”
He studied geology at State Tomsk University and Tomsk Polytechnic University and after moving from Siberia to Sakhalin Island in 1989, he founded and became chair of SEW. His many successful environmental efforts, including the establishment of the Vostochny Wildlife Refuge in Sakhalin, earned him The Goldman Environmental Prize in 2011.
At Yale, the pair will host and organize workshops, seminars, and symposiums, and continue work on their research and environmental publications. Nataliia also will work with Yale Law School’s Environmental Protection Clinic.
“I look forward to continuing my research at Yale. I am interested in how forest lands are utilized for various purposes, how the agency coordinates with local communities, how land reclamation is conducted on areas where forests once thrived, and the legal norms that regulate these processes,” she said.
“This is a great privilege for us and a great opportunity to gather more data, knowledge, and skills in order to be of help to our country and provide help to other countries and the environmental movement,” Dmitry added.