Russia: Initiatives

    


The Russian Forest News, in English, offers an insider's view on the current debates on the new Russian Forest Code, the conditions of the Russian forests, and perspectives for investment in the wood processing sector. Updated several times a week.

Multi-stakeholder Partnership in Karelia to Support CertificationIn Russia, WRI has partnered with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and a regional environmental NGO, SPOK, to convene a multi-stakeholder partnership to map areas at risk for poor and illegal practices.

Beginning in the Republic of Karelia, in northern European Russia, the partnership has set out to initiate a process that aims to help forest industry and investors manage risk all across Russia and leverage market incentives for improvement of forestry practices.

The kick-off meeting for the pilot project took place in Petrozavodsk, the capital of the Republic of Karelia, on April 19, 2007. A Working Group was formed which includes the forest industry (Segezha, Swedwood, IKEA, Stora Enso, UPM Kymmene, Metsäliitto, VAPO, and others), certifiers (NEPCon), environmental groups (SPOK, Greenpeace Russia, WWF Russia, Transparent World, and others), regional authorities (Ministry for Industry and Natural Resources, State Forest Committee of Karelia, Karelian State Forest Inventory Enterprise), and scientists (Karelian Forest Research Institute, University of Petrozavodsk).

In the meeting resolution, all participants agreed that

1) the absence of accurate information about risks for illegal and controversial logging has a negative effect on the forest sector; and that
2) decisions made by purchasers, producers, and investors that are not based on accurate information may have negative social and economic consequences for forest-dependent regions, such as Karelia.

Based on these shared principles, the partnership set out to achieve two goals: to make a risk map for Karelia, and to develop a method that can be replicated in other regions of Russia and, possibly, abroad.

The project's strategy is to develop and test indicators of the risk of encountering illegal/controversial wood; and to create a map of low-risk and high-risk areas in Karelia. The project will be led by a multi-stakeholder Project Council which has been elected by the Working Group, with WRI as an ex officio member. The local secretariat in Karelia is led by Dr. Alexander Markovskiy, who is also the director of SPOK.

Draft maps, which will be endorsed by FSC Russia, are scheduled for review by the end of 2007. The maps will help FSC and other certification systems, such as PEFC, protect their labels from irresponsibly harvested wood, and consumers from buying illegally logged products.

Carbon assessment for RussiaThis report represents the culmination of a joint effort by Russian and American scientists, nongovernmental organizations, and U.S. organizations to assess the forest carbon situation in Russia and to make the data available to researchers and policy makers. It was drafted in English on the basis of a longer technical report tentatively titled "Carbon Budget and Climate Mitigation Potential for the Russian Forest and Land Use Sector," which was translated from Russian. Both reports will be published in English and Russian versions - this report as a WRI report and the longer technical report by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The importance of the Russian forest estate to the global carbon cycle is widely recognized. Russian forests are estimated to contain 776 million hectares of forestland, or nearly 23% of the total forestland in the world, providing one of the largest land-based carbon storage.

Historically, policy makers and scientists outside of Russia have had little access to data and information on the forest resources of Russia. The State Forest Fund Account (SFFA) collects and assembles forestry data since the 1960s and makes it available to the Russian speaking community from the Ministry of Natural Resources.

In light of discussions to adopt carbon credits and trading systems, it is important to verify the credibility of the Russian national forestry data. The report compares SFFA data to independent information from the Nothern Eurasia Ecosystem map based on data from the VEGETATION system on-board the French Satellite, SPOT. Then, bottom-up and top-down analyses are used to assess the current size of the Russian carbon sink, potential sequestration in the future, and options for mitigation projects in Russia to contribute to solving the global warming problem.

The estimates in this report indicate that above-ground forest biomass contains approximately 35.1 Billion Tones Carbon Equivalents.

Global Forest Watch is currently working with its Russian colleagues to write a carbon assessment of land use and land use change in Russian and English. The goal is to make information available on the carbon budget of the Russian land-use sector. This report will be presented in an easy-to-understand format for anyone not intimately acquainted with the Russian land-use sector and the way that data is produced. 

Supporting Russian Forestry Education

With generous support of IKEA, GFW is working with a local Siberian NGO Siberian Environmental Center (SEC) to establish forestry education in Russian high schools. There are three main directions of this work: 1) Creating a network of tree nurseries associated with high schools in deforested regions in Russia; 2) Producing educational materials for forestry education in Russian high schools; 3) Establishing forestry education in schools in Southern Siberia and Northern European Russia – regions that have extensive forests.

In the spring of 2006, SEC conducted a three-day workshop that involved 70 school children and 10 teachers. The workshop gave an opportunity for children from various schools to present their activities on forest fire prevention and tree planting. A youth movement called "The Forest Keeper" has been established. Another tree planting camp was organized in the summer of 2006, bringing over 60 students from different regions in Siberia. Children attended classes in forest ecology, forest and nature protection, etc. participated in games to develop communication and leadership skills.

For more information on these projects, please contact:

Dr. Lars Laestadius	Volha Roshchanka
larsl@wri.org	volha@wri.org
1-202-729-7633	1-202-729-7734