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Table of content:
FORESTS WAITING FOR THEIR FORTUNE TO DETERMINE
Former Russian Forest Service submitted its annual report to the Ministry of
Nature Resources. At the beginnng of February Ministry came up with the
evaluation paper. Conclusions they made after the report observation is that
one of the main tasks for Russian forestry now to harvest more timber.
Another idea of the Ministry is to reorganize the forest units -leskhozes
system.
Every region in Russian has several forest leskhoz - forestry unit (brahches
of former Forest Service) that are responsible for protection and management
of forest plots. All of them used to be owned by state. Wood processors now
are mostly private in the country, but forests are still under the state
property.
According to the Ministry this system must be changed in the nearest future.
No one knows what exactly these changes be like but it is clear that after
the collapse of former nature protection system forest management and
protection will be switched to forest exploitation - the great timber
extraction time is coming.
Russian greens have always defended the interests of forests as a living
organism and local communities depending on forests. Ecologically sound
system of forest stewardship should include a mixture of forests, woodlands,
agricultural fields, and gathering or hunting grounds. Such systems should
be based on biological diversity and should benefit from its conservation.
In opposition to green view is an old forestry tradition of centralised
control that attempts to create large, simplified wooded landscapes. Or to
clearcut big areas. It looks like this tradition will be kept untouched.
KARELIAN EXPERIMENTS: CAN’T SEE THE TREES FOR THE WOOD
Russian state forest protection bodies, departments of Ministry of Nature
Resources will pass their powers to the regional ones.
From now state forest guards will be responsible only for federal protected
areas. Such reforms have already begun in Karelia, local forest
enterprises will get desired powers to manage forest areas.
It might cause new serious problems with oldgrowth forests conservation and
creation of new protected areas because regional timber businessmen are not
willing to give up.
To hinder a new round of arguments around oldgrowth forests Karelian
authorities continue with their campaign against the greens.
On the pages of "Lesnaya Gazeta" (main newspaper about Russian forests,
official tribune of the former Forest Service) Russian greens are accused of
degradation of regional economy and unemployment. All the argumentation is
very old and well known, but it still works.
Karelian officials don’t have any sence of international market trends. Even
after they lose some western partners they didn’t do anything to change
traditional forest management to more environment friendly and economically
sustainable one.
REFORMS TO STRENGTHEN CORRUPTION IN FOREST SECTOR?
Former Director of Russian Forest Service Vladimir Shubin publicized his
view on the current situation in Russian forestry. He gave an interview to
"Lesnaya Gazeta" (main Russian official newspaper on forests).
He disagrees with new idea of Russian government to increase in half annual
ammounts of harvested woods. Mikhail Kas’yanov, Head of Russian Government
issued an order to harvest more wood and send it to processing facilities
which stand idle very often. Such a decision of Russian Government gives an
opportunity to private business to make money from the price differense
because private forest processing sector will get timber by very low
"state"prices. According to Shubin this order is designed to help forest
procesing companies to make quick money and to share it with state bodies.
VOLGA REGION: SO WHO LIVES ON FOREST?
Director of Regional Forest Department of Nizhniy Novgorod Vladimir Parakhin
complained at the first work session of the Department that people of the
region keep loosing their jobs because of nature conservation. Social
programs getting more expensive.
But at the same time the export of raw wood last year brought 175 millions
of dollars of income to the region, - he mentioned. If the situation doesn’t
change soon, it will be not enough to get profit and cover all costs
including social expenses.
Local greens see the problem of high poverty level in a different way.
Regional Governor have always wanted to intoroduce wood processing in
Nizhniy Novgorod but regional forest department does nothing for it.
And as a result in some places there has been no wood left to log but
protected areas.
People getting very poor. Local community members can’t take jobs outside
the community. The loggers' settlements are usually isolated from the other
world. And they were not designed for long-term living, so after timber was
over at the site people didn’t have any other surce of living. They have no
state support being victims of the governmental resource policy.
Now those people heavliy depend on non-timber forest products they pick in
surroundings. They gather mushrooms and cranberries in swamps.
CIS NEWS: GEORGIA
Forest officials prentend they don’t know about illegal timber export from
Georgia. The problems of wood plunder in the small Caucasian country getting
very serious. Department of Forestry alleges that there were no illegal
timber transportation from Georgia since 1996. Center of Strategic Researhes
and Development published the results of their studies of Georgian forest
sector. In 1996-1999 Prosecutor office brought 9384 criminal cases of
illegal export against The Forestry Department. And the court examined only
3295 of them. Such situation with the "resource policy" will lead Georgia to
the ecological and economical crises because this small country owns very
few resources.
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