Forest Club model projects and sites

The Fifth Boreal Forests of the World Conference

"The Russian forest sector is a Titanic sinking to the bottom with millions of tons of lumber and a system of governance that took decades to form," said Aleksei Grigoriev at the opening session of the Fifth International Conference of the Taiga Rescue Network (TRN), "Living with the Taiga: Boreal Forests in the 21st Century." The conference, which is being held in the Moscow suburb of Zvenigorod between September 18-22, focuses on the most troublesome social aspects of the coexistence of humanity and the taiga that worry world community.

The conference has gathered more than 250 people from various countries, from environmental activists to scientists to tribal leaders. The general concern that unites most of them is preserving boreal forests in the presence of human activity, the source of life of their children and grandchildren.

In recent years, forests have become an object of attention not just for biologists and foresters. After all, the forest is resource that could save the earth from the global warming and climate change. It is forests that absorb carbon dioxide gas, which is the basic cause of Greenhouse effect.

"We want to prove that people can gain not only from destroying the forest. More specifically, that gain is not measured only in money, but in everything that we receive from the forest, including clean air and water. We searched for positive examples of how to rationally carry out sustainable forestry, and found them here, in Russia," said Dmitri Akesnov, one of the organizers of the conference and a member of the Forest Team of the Social-Ecological Union.

According to the organizers, putting together a completely optimistic conference was impossible. With the liquidation of the nature protection structures in Russia-including the Federal Forest Service (FFS)-hopes for the definite introduction of ecologically sound forest use have almost completely disappeared.

The causes of the ruthless destruction of forests vary from uncontrolled cuttings by corporations for enormous profits to the selective sanitary cuttings foresters conduct due to the poeverty and disorganization of forestry in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The one result? The forest is diappearing.

Russia already lost practically all of the oak stands in European Russia, while the unique Ussuriskaya taiga and the relatively undisturbed forests of the north are under the threat of extinction.

This is the reason why greens (and no longer only greens!) are sounding the alarm. Today there are various reforestation programs, but forests grow slowly and do not replace the things that disappear with that which is called the real taiga-the trees that are hundreds of years old, the unique flowers, grasses, and animals-that community that arose over the ages.

"Sure, we manage to win official protection for certain territories. Alone, however, protection will not save. Everything that happens around the forest is likewise very important to the forest itself and its inhabitants. That's what ecology is: everything is tied to everything," say the conference attenders.

In the meantime, the majority of Russian foresters cannot see the forest for the trees, looking at it simply as a pile of timber. It looks as though those who will represent the former forest league in the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and answer for the protection of the Russian forest worry only about how to cut it down faster so as not to "lose a potential resource." Though the representatives of the Forest Service used to offer to at least outward signs of respect, offical representatives of the "reconstructed" MNR have completely ignored today's international conference. Four years ago, when the same conference was held in the Finnish border town of Kuusamo, official foresters still came and actively participated in the discussion, even as the scandal around the Karelian forests became increasingly tense.

The annual TRN conference is a marker, and looking back at each one, it becomes clear how much the Russian and international greens have managed to accomplish through their joint efforts. A row of unique forested lands in Karelia are now protected. It is now possible to teach forest giants, such as ENSO-Stora and UPM Kummene to carry on a dialogue with society and fulfil society's demands. The concept of "old growth forests"-that is those that were not planted by people and which are extremely valuable for several reasons -is now respected. Earlier, forestry workers would act as though they did not understand at all.

Back to the first Conference Announcement Page

Back to Workshops and Conferences Page