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Voluntary Certification in Russia: Wishful Thinking or Reality?

FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification could become a tool powerful enough to stimulate the development of environmentally and socially responsible forest use in Russia, hut only if it is implemented in strict accordance with FSC's established Principles and Criteria. Unfortunately, there is not a single timber enterprise in our country that fully adheres to the FSC guidelines. One of the factors behind this is the set of the numerous regulations in Russian legislation that either contradict each other or cannot realistically be put into effect. Such discrepancies place Russia in violation of the first FSC Principle, which states that forest management shall respect all applicable laws of the country. And this is only the beginning. In order for FSC certification to follow a normal course of development in Russia, it is vital to resolve a host of legislative problems as well as overcome the typical violations of FSC Principles and Criteria that arise in even the best timber enterprises observing these guidelines.

Based on a recent analysis of the Russian forestry sector, Greenpeace has compiled the following list that outlines the common practices of nearly all Russian timber enterprises (including Federal Forest Service departments) that would make them ineligible for certification according to FSC guidelines.

1. The absence of an accurate and reliable system for recording loggings. There currently exists a wide discrepancy between the volume and sort of timber that has been logged and that which is indicated in the logging records. Missing records allow for the partial evasion of taxes and established fees, charged for access to forests and extracted timber, as well as logging in excess of permissible timber volumes. One blatant example of over-harvesting and under-recording was discovered by Greenpeace in the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk forest district (leskhoz) on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East (see Forest bulletin). Based on its investigation, Greenpeace revealed that logging on plots had exceeded the allowable timber volume by 40 percent.

2. Inefficient use of timber. Extremely low stumpage fees (charged for the exploitation of forest resources) and high payments dependent on an enterprise's profit, promote great inefficiency (up to 50 percent of the total volume of timber cut is lost during the logging and transport processes). These tees and payments also lead to tax evasion within timber enterprises, thus contributing to the black market in the forestry sector,

3. Orientation toward the export of raw timber. Due to the dearth of local wood processing (the Russian tax system has pushed many local enterprises out of business), the overwhelming majority of timber enterprises mostly export raw timber. Consequently, these businesses offer little to local communities in the way of new jobs or other benefits.

4. Fabrication of Documents. Official documents routinely indicate a lower than actual volume or sort of timber for export sales. Valuable coniferous sawn wood is exported under the false label of low quality pulpwood or unsorted wood; high quality timber for pulpwood and plywood leaves the border as firewood or unsorted wood. This is yet another ploy to avoid set fees and taxes. It is also highly lucrative: the money streaming in from timber sales that were never documented has fueled a powerful underground market.

5. Disregard for valuable ecosystems. The presence of rare and endangered plant and animal species as well as unique ecosystems and other valuable natural objects on forested territory is not taken into consideration by forest enterprises in Russia. Thus, logging in areas that provide habitat for species listed in the IUCN and Russian Red Data Books and also logging in highly valuable forests that are candidates for conservation has become a common practice.

6. Unsustainable forest use. The annual permissible harvest rate, officially calculated to sustain a timber enterprise over the course of only 20 to 30 years, sometimes twice exceeds the level of sustainable timber use.

7. Concentration of logging efforts in the highest quality, most productive, and accessible forests (without effective reforestation).

This type of logging has resulted in a steadily expanding portion of low-productive forests.

Of the aforementioned violations, tax evasion and logging in the habitats of rare and endangered species are particularly prominent in the vast majority of timber enterprises, accounting for more than 99 percent of the total volume of timber cut in Russia. Keeping this in mind, I forecast that FSC certification in Russia can develop along one of two paths in the coming years.

Scenario One: Timber enterprises whose forest management system most closely matches FSC Criteria will be certified only under the condition that theirfundamental violations of these criteria are corrected, In this case scenario one could be only cautiously optimistic about the potential for FSC certification in the near future: only a small percentage of all the timber enterprises in Russia will become certified.

Scenario Two: Timber enterprises whose forest management system corresponds with only several of the FSC Criteria will be certified, yet they will not be mandated to be in full compliance with these criteria before receiving a certificate. This approach will set the stage for a nearly limitless number of timber enterprises to be certified in the near future. This rendition of FSC certification, however, will hardly catalyze serious changes in Russia's forestry sector. Nonetheless, this scenario is acceptable to many participants in the FSC process in Russia, particularly those on the regional level.

FSC development in Russia depends first and foremost on how quickly national certification standards and criteria can be developed and to what extent they will require timber enterprises to be in compliance with these criteria before becoming certified.

Alexey Yaroshenko is the forest campaigner for Greenpeace, Russia.

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