SOCHI, Russia (AFP) — With just over 1,000 days left before the Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia is pulling out all the stops to get ready in a drive activists say is leaving a devastating toll on the environment.

Some 70 per cent of Olympic construction is finished in the Black Sea city and the surrounding mountains, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has championed the holding of the Games.

But locals and environmentalists say the large scale development is steamrolling ahead at too high a price to a fragile environment.

Olympic organisers have argued that their goal is to make the Sochi games “green” and that measures such as tree plantings are more than adequate compensation for the building development. Read more

Source: Jamaica Observer