Forest Club model projects and sites

Issue 10, Mar. 1999

In recent years among top managers of forestry talking about sustainable and non-exhausting silvaculture become prevalent. The amount of acts and deeds showing the changing towards sustainable forestry is real great. There is participation in Montreal and Helsinki processes and documentation of statutes of non-exhausting forestry... etc. But one minor detail is absent. Nobody of Russian citizens can influence on forest policy. No case of concern in knowing of public opinion about forest policy and future of Russian forests has come to our notice. The causes of this reluctance are unknown (but for the fact that forestry officers do not depend on the public nether morally nor materially).

One may speak a lot about sustainable forestry and some western and Russian politics who had never been to taiga may be convinced by this argumentation but not the people living in "forest" regions of Russia. They can easily see that considerable part of cut timber is left to decay, the cuttings erode until they are covered with birch and aspen. This does not correspond to the data shown in the reports. The authorities should know the public opinion about the system of forest management and its disadvantages.

In 1998 Greenpeace of Russia attempted to improve the situation. The canvass was made in 22 regions of forest zone of Russia. The questions are about their attitude towards different problems in actual forestry. It was questioned 1282 respondents. They were interviewed on streets, in transport and at the workplace. This questionnaire cannot be considered wholesome sociological study because the sample of respondents is not absolutely random. We see it as preliminary opinion poll. But it gave us significant results, that may be used in forming forest policy of nature conservation and other organizations.

The distribution of respondents is shown in the table 1.

Table 1.  Regional distribution of the pollees, %
St. Petersburg and the Leningrad distr.	8,7
Perm distr.	8,2
Chelyabinsk distr.	7,0
Krasnoyarsk distr.	5,8
Novosibirsk distr.	5,5
Irkutsk distr.	5,2
Moscow and Moscow distr.	5,1
Kurgansk distr.	4,7
Buryatiya Republik	4,5
Amurskaya distr.	4,4
Sverdlovsk distr.	4,2
Bashkiriya Republik	4,0
Khabarovsk distr.	4,0
Other regions	28,7

The respondents were offered an questionnaire containing 8 multiple-choice questions about different social and ecological aspects of actual forestry in Russia. The following questions are of most interest:

1. What is your opinion about the source of the actual crisis in forest industry?
   

   
    Fig. 1. Distribution of the answers for the question about the sources of the crisis in Russia's forest industry

   1 - the absence of state support and coordination of forest complex (52%);
   2 - unwise tax policy (35%);
   3 - depletion of forest resources in accessible regions (33%);
   4 - corruption of all levels of Russian forest service (28%);
   5 - displacement of Russian harvesters by foreign ones (23%);
   6 - destruction of market due to USSR disappearing (19%);
   7 - nature conservation activity (1%);
   8 - another cause - 4%; (The most frequent variant was incompetence of the authorities);
   9 - no answer (4%).

The distribution of answer variants should make changes in Federal Forestry Service administration' opinion. The degree of confidence to forest service proved to be not very high in forest regions of Russia. A third part of respondents think that the forest resources are depleted despite of all assurance of Forestry Service that forests are half-used. the activity of nature conservation organizations is considered to be the cause of the crisis only by 1% of respondents though they are often accused in it by administration of forest service or forest harvesting complex.

Generally, even considering the main problems in the whole country, an appreciable attention is paid to the faults of forest management and the state of forest fund.

2. What do you consider to be the most important ecological problem in actual forestry?

   
    Fig. 2. Distribution of the answers for the question about the most important environmtnal problems of the forest industry

   1 - too great areas of final felling (53%)
   2 - insufficient amount and quality of forest restoration activity (52%)
   3 - forest fires (44%)
   4 - disappearing of forests along rivers and lakes (44%)
   5 - choking of rivers by drown timber (22%)
   6 - allocation of forest lands for cottages, roads, strip-pits, etc in the regions with high density of population (22%)
   7 - another cause (2%)
   8 - no answer (1%)
   

These answers show that though this year there was extremely high rate of fires and special attention to this theme in mass media the respondents pay much attention to the problem of disappearing of great areas of forests because of wide-ranging clearcuts and effectless forest restoration measures.

Though the forests in water conservation zones are thought to be most protected areas their state is worriting the half of respondents.

3. What is our opinion about foreign companies activity on Russian territory?

   1 - their activity still is not appreciable (7%)
   2 - their activity advance success of Russian forest sector (2%)
   3 - foreign companies displace russian (39%)
   4 - foreign companies often violate laws and these violations cause ecological problems (39%)
   5 - their activity cause reduction of work places (34%)
   6 - another answer ( main variants were "they'd rather to get out of here" and "they are leading the way of working") - 5%
   7 - no answer (15%)
   

4. Do you think it is necessary to create new nature protected areas (NPA) in Russia?

   
    Fig. 3. Distribution of the answers for the question about whether new NPAs are necessaty

   1 - New NPA of federal level that will be independent from arbitrary of officials are necessary. Their regime should be severe varanted by international agreements. NPA of regional level also should be created (58%).
   2 - NPA of regional level should be the main type and federal NPA could be created in the special occasions (23%)
   3 - NPA of regional level are sufficient (7%)
   4 - There is no necessity in new NPA, current legislation provide sufficient protection for the nature (2%)
   5 - Another answer (1%)
   6 - No answer (8%)
   

The majority of respondents consider the nature conservation to be an important activity. This can be very useful information for Russian forestry service that for the resent time had rejected a lot of projects of protected areas and seem not to care for PA network expansion.

5. What is your opinion about last big taiga forest massifs in European Russia? Should it be conserved?

   Only single answer variant could be chosen. The answers were distibuted in the following way:

   1 - Yes, even if it cause losses to budget (63%)
   2 - Yes, only if it does not cause losses to budget (15%)
   3 - Yes, only if local ethnic minorities depend upon taiga (4%)
   4 - Yes, some patches of it must be conserved as examples of wild nature (9%)
   5 - No (1%)
   6 - Another answer (2%)
   7 - No answer (5%)
   

Similar situation is with current taiga of Siberia and Far East. The differences in answers of respondents in European Russia and Siberia are insignificant.

The results have shown that people in forest regions of Russia are concerned about problems in forest sector of Russia and are not satisfied with it current state. May be if Rosleskhoz consider one of the main its goals to achieve sustainable forestry it have to take the opinion of Russian population into consideration.