Forest Club model projects and sites

Issue 15, Sept. 2000

"For felling oak, if anybody cuts at least one tree, as well as for felling in sanctuary forests, the death execution shall be applied". Peter the First, 1703.

 

In May 1798, Russian Emperor Paul I signed a decree to establish a Forest Department in Russia. In May 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree disbanding the Federal Forest Service of the Russian Federation. In the explanation to his decree on establishing the Forest Department, Paul I wrote: "To preclude all offences related to destruction of forests" (in the Russian variant, the authors used the original spelling of the 18th century). In the explanation to his decree on the abolishment of the Federal Forest Service (Rosleskhoz) Vladimir Putin wrote nothing (so, there was no need to care about spelling).

• The Public

• In the Meantime, Officials Are Doing Their Own Job…

• Regions

• What Has Been Written?

We can long argue about the quality of Rosleskhoz' work. It was not a secret that there always was a lot of pretensions of environmental organizations to the Forest Service. For example, this was Rosleskhoz' involvement in forest felling operations, which had never let it organize a true independent monitoring of the forest management. It was its reluctance to forest management not to only economically, but also socially and ecologically sustainable. This is also discrepancies between the forestry normative and technical base and environment protection legislation and international regulations. The Forest Service has failed, or, rather, has never tried to raise stumpage fees, which did not long cover all state expenses on protection, conservation, reproduction and monitoring over the use of forests. And, to end up this list of pretensions, there was a certain lack of transparency in the Forest Service's activities, which did not leave a chance for the public to get access to information on the actual condition of the Russian forests.

This list can be made even longer. The Forest Service used to work as a forest logger or lobbied the interests of the forest industry, regarding the forest as a bunch of vertically standing logs. All works of outstanding Russian foresty scientists on the nature of the living forest and on interrelations of all living things in it remained just beautiful phrases in textbooks, which no one really used in practice.

At least it was clear for environmental organizations that Russian forestry was sick and needed reformation. The only question was whether the guillotine 'Doctor' Putin prescribed to the sick was the best remedy.

Another interesting fact is that the "remedy" appeared and was applied when the condition of the sick became better. Although the complete recuperation was still far ahead, Rosleskhoz had almost admitted the necessity to abandon wood logging and to focus on forest management and forest protection. The Forest Service had undertook certain steps to increase in stumpage fees and agreed to the necessity of voluntary forest certification. Moreover, Rosleskhoz had almost admitted the necessity to preserve ancient (old growth) forests… And, suddenly, such a strong remedy came.

The Public

Reformation of federal agencies triggered a stormy reaction in the society. During the discussion, which started after the Putin's decree, one of the authors of this article has already voiced a rebellious idea to say "thank you Mr. President for that you've made us think about the fate of our forests".

In less than a month after the state environmental protection agencies had been disbanded, non-governmental organizations called for an Extraordinary Conference in Moscow where beside other people they invited heads of different ministries and agencies.

Foresters were not the only ones, which "suffered" from this reform. The same decree as of May 17 2000 liquidated the State Committee for Environment Protection (Goskomekologii). This was the reason that forced the majority of environmental organizations to abandon all their usual businesses for a while. Many of them were in favor of restoring an independent state Forest Service. However, "green" public did not have a univocal opinion regarding this matter, which to some extent was due to the attitude of foresters to environmental organizations. Of course, by that time the state machine accomplished a lot of stupid things, but any serious changes in it might entail other, much more serious troubles. So, references to a state forestry service in the resolutions and letters were not manifestations of love to the Federal Forest Service, but evidences that people understood that without the governmental control over forests Russia might lose its unique natural heritage.

After they being heard the promises of the new minister of ”forests and environmental protection” to maintain working contacts with the public, to consider most of recommendations, and etc., most of the activists had to announce to all of the country, ”Hurrah, they have noticed us and promised to treat us right… and so on and so forth.“ And weak objections, like ”come on, nobody has been never going to take you into account, it is just politics…”, have never worked. as a result, when again the time came for the public to be active, all its zealousness had been wasted on internal debates. The electronic correspondence on this issue consists of dozens and dozens of messages…

Nevertheless, non-governmental organizations established the Initiative Group to prepare an all-Russia referendum with the following questions:

1. Are you in favor of a ban on importing radioactive materials from other countries for storage, entombment or reprocessing into Russia?

2. Are you in favor of having a federal environment protection agency separate from other bodies both in charge of use and management of natural resources in Russia?

3. Are you in favor of having a legally independent state forest service in Russia?

After some nerve fraying in the Moscow Election Commission (which under a formal and not entirely legal pretext tried to refuse the Initiative Group in registration) on July 26, 62 regions of the Russian Federation launched sign-up campaigns in favor of the people's referendum.

This referendum has all chances to become the first such event in the history of Russia organized "from below", i.e. by real people's movement. The "only thing" to be done for this to happen, however, is to collect 2 million signatures all over Russia in three months, which nobody has never done before.

In the Meantime, Officials Are Doing Their Own Job…

While society was ebbing, disputing and collecting signatures under appeals and petitions, the inner life and work of the Government went their course.

The public response to the Presidential Decree finally reached the Kremlin and the White House - Headquarters of the Russian Government - and resulted in that Prime Minister Kasyanov received an order from the President to consider the issue of the State Environmentl Protection Committee (Goskomekologii) and Rosleskhoz again. As it usually happens among the red tape, the order was re-addressed further to the Ministry of Natural Resources and we know the opinion of Minister Yatskevitch. That is it - a closed circle.

Another restructuring of the forestry affected almost everybody who in any way was connected with it. "For the last few years we have had quite a bit of such reorganizations and each was followed by amendments to laws and forest management regulations. One can hardly speak of normal and civilized forest management when the rules get changed every 3 or 4 years" wrote Mr. I. Sankin, Chair of the Board of the JSC Exportles, in his appeal to the heads of forest complex enterprises.

The rules were changing very rapidly indeed. This time the Resolution #495 of the Russian Government dated July 6 2000 (“Issues of the Ministry of Natural Resources”) adopted to realize the Presidential decree, ruled "…To set the maximum number of workers of territorial departments of the Ministry of Natural Resources at 9,930 persons (excluding forest guards and house service personnel)…".

Unlike other ministries and governmental agencies, the Law (Article 53 of the Forest Code) prescribes the Forest Service a special structure of territorial departments that includes local units of the Federal Forest Service (leskhozes). There are over 1,600 leskhozes in Russia. Under the existing legislation, territorial departments of the Forest Service employ over 180,000 people. The above Resolution would mean cutting down the staff of the Service by at least 25fold. Lots of experts say that after such steps the forest sector will be in fever for months, which might threaten the normal operation of wood logging and woodworking enterprises.

Order #177 of the Ministry of Natural Resources (MPR) dated July 13 2000 (“On Territorial Departments of the Ministry of Natural Resources”) adopted in realize the Resolution of the Russian Government, rules "to prepare in one month suggestions on reorganization of territorial departments by virtue of their merging with territorial departments of the Ministry of Natural Resources operating in this particular region of the Russian Federation…”. This statement is a good evidence proving that the MPR, as well as the Russian Government, has a very vague idea of what is meant under a "territorial department of Rosleskhoz". The MPR does not have territorial departments on the district level, that's why it is unclear how it is going to merge dozens of local leskhozes (local units of the Federal Forest Service) with a territorial department of the MPR sitting in the capital of a particular region.

The recently appointed First Deputy Minister, Mr. Y. Kukuyev, whose duty is now to supervise forestry issues within the MPR, has failed to clear up this confusion. In his interview to Lesnaya Gazeta (Forest Newspaper), he claimed "we are not planning any mass staff reductions at the local level. See for yourself: the Ministry of Natural Resources has approved the total number of forestry managers at the local level in general for Russia – 9,930 employees. This is almost the same number as there used to be…"

What should this mean? Could it be possible that Mr. Kukuyev has never read the Forest Code? This is hardly so, because he was one of its authors. The Governmental Resolution mentioned above together with the total number of employees defined the budget. According to this, the state budget will support only 9,930 people. What will the other thousands of forestry workers live on? Will they have to earn their living by "profit" cuttings? Or maybe Mr. Kukuyev knows some other source of funding but does not want to make it public for a while? It looks like most of top officials, realizing that their failure and are now trying to even up the number of workers in territorial departments of the MPR (as it is said in the Governmental Resolution) and the number of civil servants in its territorial departments. There is not too much left to do – they only need the Russian Government to either accept the present state of affairs or approve an instantaneous increase of the MPR staff from 9 up to 200 thousand employees…

In the meantime the reorganization reached regional forestry departments that allegedly will disappear in the future… At the same time, forest management departments subordinate to administrations of the federal districts were established. To make it shorter, none of the majority of workers from the dissolved agencies at the present time can understand what the governance structure is going to be, who will be responsible for what and who will be appointed to what positions.

The same Order #177 suggests that management functions should be set apart from other duties of the former Rosleskhoz. Actually, there might be quite a bit of experts who would have supported such separation, but the Order says nothing about forest planting, care about young stands, fighting forest fires an so on. Separation of these functions from other activities of the MPR will require significant changes in the existing legislation, which cannot be done in a month and even in half a year. So, what does all this mean then? It means that either the MPR, trying to formally execute governmental resolutions, will bury all activities vital from the standpoint of environmental protection, or all statements of Mr. Yatskevitch (his letter #BYa-25-3828 of August 8 2000) and the MPR press service saying that "…the Ministry does not carry on any economic activities in the field of development and exploration of natural resources… so, given this fact, we fully rule out any possibility that its (the Ministry's) interests will ever conflict with its environmental protection functions", are far from being true, to put it mildly. Or maybe the MPR understands something completely different under these management functions?

Of course, the Order says only about preparation of certain suggestions and not about their immediate execution. Normally, however, suggestions of this sort should have been prepared in association with experts prior to taking decision about the merge, and not in a month after it. But who in this country acts according to reason? The intentions were as always good…

Now we have a very interesting tendency. First, the new forestry chief, Mr. Kukuyev, goes to a region and at a collegial meeting of the local Forest Department and tells to his former colleagues that everything is fine and leskhozes will remain and etc. But as soon as he leaves, this Department starts receiving instructions on reformation that can be called nothing but monstrous. In a short while several regions of the Russian Federation are busy with preparation for a complete reorganization of all leskhozes (local units of the Federal Forest Service). It remains unclear what will replace them and if there ever is any replacement at all. Decisions can be cancelled or corrected, though, which has happened several times for the last few months. Let it just be not too late.

The unclear fate of the state ecological assessment has become another, and not less important consequence of the reorganization of ministries and agencies.

By its Order #184 of 19 July 2000, MPR (the Ministry of Natural Resources) created a federal institution State Environment Impact Assessment Commission, or Ecological Expertise. Most of the environmental experts have serious doubts about such an approach and question about the relationships between the Ministry and the newly established agency. Let us have a look at an extract from Mr. Yatskevitch's letter to Mr. Carter, President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development:

"This organization will be established as a governmental institution with its own budget working by the principle of non-profit cost covering; and it will not have any other functions. Creation of this special and independent institution is aimed at enhancing the status, transparency and efficiency of environmental impact assessment, which agrees with our objective to make the system of independent ecological control within the new structure of the executive power more efficient. The Government of the Russian Federation appoints and dismisses the head of this institution. The new organization will be in charge of a network of its territorial departments (affiliates) in each member of the Russian Federation. The whole system in general will be provided with financial resources, staff and logistical support…"

And "…the Ministry …controls compliance with the procedure prescribed by the Government of Russian Federation for assessment primarily by approving the membership of expert committees and verdicts of the state environmental assessment".

In doing this, the MPR retained the strict control over environmental impact assessment even in spite of the fact that formally this institution was designed as fully independent. The very first draft reforms of environmental impact assessment system envisaged that the MPR would also appoint and dismiss the head of the State Ecological Expertise. People say that the World Bank opposed abolishment of the Expertise warning that it might not grant huge credits scheduled for the next year. It was exactly at that time that the Ministry drew its decision about 'enhancing the status' of the Expertise enabling the Government of the Russian Federation to appoint the head of the Expertise. This did not change anything in particular but everybody seemed to be pleased.

Regions

It would not be just to say that regional authorities met the reforms without a murmur. More than ten regions, in which forests make a significant part of the total income, were in strong opposition to the reorganization. Official letters signed by the governors and chairs of legislative assemblies were sent to different Moscow organizations and the president. The governors met with the president and representatives of the MPR, members of both houses of parliaments and wrote numerous appeals… So what? Nothing has happened. It looks like the Government believes that from Moscow it can better see the ways to manage forests than let us say, from Arkhangelsk, Komi or Irkutsk. All this looks even odder given the surprising declarations of the new forest governing body.

Right after he ruled to dissolve Rosleskhoz, Minister Yatskevitch visited his new subordinates. As the Itogi magazine wrote, foresters were still unable to say for sure whether they have heard all this from an active Minister or they have had a nightmare.

"…They got struck dumb with astonishment soon after the Minister uttered his first words (if, of course, it was the Minister and not a mass hallucination): 'What are you all doing here?! You say that your Service is 200 years old and for these years it has failed to create any new species!' All his rest instructions were in the same strain. Foresters learned that they did not need to fight forest fires because there were a lot of forests in the country, all of them would never burn down at once; but what the country needs is money and would be better to save it. And nobody needs any forest restoration – why restore forests anyway when only about 20% of the allowable cut is used in the country. And our duty is to cut all 100%…" ("The Constellation of Hornbeamoak", Itogi, August 2 2000).

The last part of the Minister's speech was full of arguments that agricultural pests crept from fields to forests to destroy them without mercy and so on, all at the level of a layman or rather a schoolboy… Just see who runs forestry in the country now. Well, at least, you can see what to expect from them…

What Has Been Written?

After the President signed his decree dissolving the Committee for Environment Protection and Federal Forest Service, thousands of people all over the country asked one and the same question, 'So, what is the next?' Federal officials limited their explanations to sending a wire in which they called on people to remain calm and work on.

The only hope was that mass media would give a more detailed information. So what was the media's reaction to the abolishment of Federal Forest Service? According to the publications we have, at first total confusion reigned in the camp of the country's chief forest agency. In the first few days after the dissolution the leading newspaper of forest sector, Lesnaya Gazeta, wrote just a small epitaph in the front line:

"And what foresters have to do now? First of all – do not get into panic. Of course, something is going to change in their lives. Of course having lost Rosleskhoz, they have lost a lot but maybe at the same time they have got something instead. In any case, the Ministry of Natural Resources has the right to initiate legislation, which is extremely important for foresters. Second, whatever one may say, a Ministry has a stronger voice that a Committee. Third, within one Ministry it is much easier to solve problems of redistributing personnel, equipment and financial resources to cope with particular problems, which is very important for emergency situations like forest fires, silkworm outbreaks and so on. Fourth, we can hope that the “large” Ministry will better protect social and legal interests of foresters. So, let us not to get in panic and rely on the old saying, let us wait and see", wrote Mr. G. Nadareyshvili, editor (“And the Forest Keeps Growing…“ Lesnaya Gazeta, May 27, 2000).

Searching for the positive in a new reform and hoping that the new "master" will give more money to forestry accompanied any forestry reform even most destructive. We can understand the Lesnaya Gazeta – they have to live on in peace with the new master; otherwise, they will never avoid changes in staff or ever closure of the newspaper.

The following weeks did not bring anything new regarding future activities of the Forest Service. Forest Service representatives refused to comment on the situation saying that it was not quite clear at that time. Some of the forestry departments, however, started preparing themselves for the reorganization in a very interesting way – transferring their fixed assets to the balance of forest districts. As one of the officers of the National Scientific and Research Center of Forest Resources told us, certain scientific institutions rushed to establish independent organizations.

Forester K. Petrov from the Kostroma Region expressed the opinion of the overwhelming majority of all forestry workers:

"What astonished me in this affair was that the decision to abolish Federal Forest Service was taken in secret. Nobody even remembered to ask our opinion, nobody sought for an expert advice. What do they think we are? Dirt, they can tread on? Or we matter nothing for the authorities? When it is time to fight forest fires or protect them, they recall us, but when it comes to deciding our fate, they "forget" to ask what we think of it.

Maybe, the decision-makers' intentions were good. Why did not they give us their arguments in favor of transferring Federal Forest Service's functions to the Ministry of Natural Resources in their Lesnaya Gazeta? We could then discussed them, had some debates and reached some reasonable solution in the long run. I is certainly not! So, the result was like in that saying, 'They got me married without letting me know about it…'”

Maybe, something had been changed in the work of Federal Forest Service. Why did not they simply change anything? I cannot think why they abolished the whole Service at once? Do not they understand that Russian forests will generally get nothing good from it, but suffering?” (“They Got Me Married and I never Got a Chance to Know”, Lesnaya Gazeta, June 3 2000).

Unfortunately, there are not too many people in Russia who want to discuss the destiny of forest management. Or maybe they are so good in secrecy. From our Bulletin's experience we know that only isolated individuals think of such seemingly abstract things. And even some of them have been trying to make their ideas, thoughts and views heard by their colleagues and society. First analyses of the situation started appearing in the press much later, but at first only some separate thoughts and comments were popping up on the "federal level". For instance, the same Lesnaya Gazeta published Mr. V. Nefedyev's thoughts about the reorganization and its possible consequences:

"…Maybe, the majority of experts and scientists realized that the situation required drastic changes. After it had been authorized to manage, distribute and control over the use of forest resources and under the constant budget deficit, the Federal Forest Service chose a bitten and fatal path – under the cover of forest care it was actively developing business. The indefinite status of leskhozes – basic structural units of the Federal Forestry Service – which earned 70% of their money by commercial logging, made their position ambiguous. This was one of the reasons that lead to a lower output of forest industry enterprises. This couldn't last too long…" (“Forest Management Planning Must Be Preserved”, Lesnaya Gazeta, August 19 2000).

However, these ideas were published only three months later. It is very likely that their author will open the door for others trying to analyze the ongoing changes.

Regional press also took this issue easy. A couple of dozens of short remarks and answers to them in larger interviews - that was all. Yes, the truth is that information reaches provinces slower. For example, in July most of leskhozes in Primorie (a region in the Russian Far East) had absolutely no idea of what was going on. So what can you expect from local newspapers?

Actually, the press was more concerned about the life of Goskino (State Committee for Motion Picture Matters) than about that of Goskomekologii or Rosleskhoz. There were more collective appeals and addresses, as well as declarations of support of restoring Rosleskhoz from the Council of the Federation (Upper House of the Russian Parliament), Patriarch Aleksey II and public concerned. The society was indignant and outraged; it could not understand and was appealing to common sense. Just look at the headlines: "Thoughtless Act", "Abolishment of Rosleskhoz Is a Grave Mistake", "Russian Forests Fell as a Victim of Government Perturbations again", "Fatal Stroke", "Repairs in the Fire". However, there were no any reasonable and serious arguments in favor of the Forest Service in the press. Newspapers only claimed that the Forest Service was 200 years old and we had to make everything as it used to be.

Very quickly, though, the zealousness of the heads of the abolished agencies to restore them, which was so obvious right after the President's Decree has appeared, came down to nothing. This happened at the time when top officials in Moscow were appointed to cushy positions in the new structure.

The active negative reaction of the society at the liquidation of the Goskomekologii and Rosleskhoz, bitter criticism aimed at the Ministry of Natural Resources in "green" papers (this criticism, though, looked more like assaults) made the MPR (Ministry of Natural Resources) resort to the same tactics in the "information warfare". The main tool in this war was the Prirodno-Resursniye Vedomosti Newspaper. This paper published a few articles rebutting the claims of "dishonest representatives of public organizations".

"…The abolishment of the whole institution, like the State Committee for Environmental Protection of the Russian Federation, is a completely new precedent in the modern history only because it does not imply any careful removal of state officials from a comfortable chair in one institution to an equally comfortable chair in another. Whatever the Committee representatives might say, the only conclusion is that the only way for them to fight back their chairs is to stand under the colors of environmental movement and to make pressure on the Government. They should convince everybody that without them Mother Nature will perish and only ashes will be left to descendants…" ("Keep Calm and You Will not Get Robbed…", Prirodno-Resursniye Vedomosti, #12, June 2000).

Readers of the Prirodno-Resursniye Vedomosti, a departmental newspaper, could read about "hands of the West", competitors of our resource industries who use environmentalists to press Russia from international markets. These arguments are traditional. They are the same as those used in the recent campaign against non-governmental environmental organizations launched by such newspapers as Zavtra and Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

The most interesting fact is that almost all of the "state officials" have got their chairs in the new organization; not all of them got their jobs in the main office, some of them work in corresponding departments of the federal districts. But in information wars, governmental officials have never hesitated to misinform the public. Several hundreds of new unemployed is something very conspicuous. No one would pay attention to just a few fired workers. That's why the MPR will probably reduce its "new" staff later when each newcomer proves his love to the MPR and devotion to the new "ideology".

Gradually, however, the exchange of amenities sputtered out; non-governmental organizations have the All-Russia Referendum as their main argument and the Government write their papers – everybody minds his own business. In the meantime the ideas of the new Russian forestry leadership are getting all the more clearly shaped. To be more exact, all the more information about the ongoing changes in the Ministry leaks out and the more you know about the reformers' plans and ideas, the more questions you have. At the present stage, it does not look like someone has any idea how to solve at least officially acknowledged problems related to forest use and forest management.

Here we, willy-nilly, recall that the forest is just a provisionally renewable natural resource, because from the standpoint of a human life, forest is as nonrenewable as coal or oil. It takes a very long time for the forest to grow, and any mistakable decisions in the forest sector will have long-term consequences, lasting for decades and centuries and will affect our children and grandchildren in the same way as we are reaping the fruits of mistakes made long ago.