Berezovka, Kazakhstan, a small village located on the periphery of the Karachaganak Oil and Gas Condensate Field, provides a clear example of the typical environmental and social exploitation occurring in the Caspian region at the hands of western oil companies and corrupt local officials. What is not typical about Berezovka is that the citizens are challenging the oil consortium active at the Field (British Gas, Chevron, ENI/Agip and LUKoil), the World Bank, and the local and national government of Kazakhstan, which has repeatedly turned the other way when the civil and human rights of the villagers have been violated.  Because of toxic exposure in their community, which is causing serious environmental and health damage among the residents, the Berezovka Initiative Group—a committed group of villagers—is demanding compensation and relocation to a safe and environmentally clean location of their choosing. 

The Berezovka Initiative Group reached out to Crude Accountability, an international environmental justice organization, for help in 2002. Since then, Crude Accountability has been providing training, information and campaign support to the villagers, including training on the Bucket Brigade methodology for air monitoring.  

Independent Bucket Brigade monitoring conducted by the villagers from September 2004 to August 2005 registered over twenty-five toxic substances in the air, including hydrogen sulfide, methylene chloride, carbon disulfide, toluene and acrylonitrile. The Bucket Brigade air monitoring proves what the villagers had long suspected—that activities at the Field are contaminating the environment and contributing to the villagers’ health problems.   

The initial Bucket Brigade results have brought much-needed attention to the devastating environmental situation in Berezovka.  Notably, the courageous Kazakhstani newspaper, The Uralsk Weekly, published an article titled “They’ve Recorded It! It’s Proven!”, characterizing the monitoring data as “irrefutable evidence of a foreign company’s participation in the destruction of the villagers’ way of life and the poisoning of their health”.  The data has also attracted the attention of government leaders, including a Parliamentary Deputy who called for investigation into the environmental health problems in Berezovka. 

The struggle for environmental justice in Berezovka continues and many obstacles remain, but the villagers are now armed with the first independent data about the air they breathe. Crude Accountability and the Berezovka Initiative Group continue to fight for relocation of the village using a combination of monitoring, human rights and legal strategies. 

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