Sustainable forest management

The state has owned and managed forests in Russia for almost two centuries. During this time a powerful bureaucratic apparatus (employing about 250 thousand people) has developed and no country in the world can compete with Russia in the numbers of various forest officials. The country has sophisticated forest legislation, so complicated and intricate that even forest industry employees can hardly work with it (no wonder, all active forest laws and industrial regulations are written on about 10,000 typewritten pages).

Russian forest industry also takes the first place in many aspects. The forest industry enterprises employ about 800 thousand people. Each year they log some 150 million cubic meters of timber and in the 1960's this figure was twice as big. Only six countries (USA, China, India, Indonesia, Canada and Brazil) outlog Russia (some 30 years ago Russia was the leader). What gives Russia these enormous logging amounts?

In efficiency of timber use Russia lags far behind. One cubic meter of timber in Russia gives products worth ten time less than, say, in Scandinavian countries. From each cubic meter of timber forest sector employees receive salaries 20 times lower than in other countries. In other words, to produce a unit of finished product Russian forest industry logs 10 times more timber than in neighboring Finland.

Types of cuttings applied in Russian forestry are also far from being perfect, at least from the standpoint of environmental protection. Over 80% of timber in Russia is logged in clear cuttings and in most forests clear cuttings are permitted in large areas (over 50 ha). These logging practices cause largest possible damage to the environment and in large areas ancient forests are replaced with birch and aspen forests. The total annual clear cutting area in Russia is 20 times bigger than the territory of Moscow. Logging carried out in the last 100 years have largely exhausted accessible and most productive forests in Russia, which results in that many forest industry companies are facing shortages of accessible high quality timber.

The outcome is quite obvious: poor forest settlements of jobless people, salaries that at best are enough to provide water and bread, out-of-date machinery and back-breaking labor conditions of forest industry employees. And more: constant lack of funds on forest protection and conservation resulting in regular forest fires, piles of litter along forest roads, illegal logging, no funds on normal reforestation and young forest maintenance.

It is rather difficult to improve the existing situation. First of all, it is necessary to understand that logging should not be growing (this what "forest generals" from the Natural Resources Ministry want). It should efficiently use what is cut. More cutting is already impossible in Russia: economically accessible forests have been largely exhausted, while cutting remote northern and Siberian forests will only result in more losses. And it is a must that considerable investments should go to restoration and maintenance of valuable forests. Otherwise, in 10 to 20 years Russian forest industry will die. Russia should reject exports of round timber (this is where Russia is taking the first place) as this type of export brings profits only to those countries that process this timber afterwards. Not all agree to the above, though: round timber exports "feed" lots of officials as most unregistered incomes come from this type of exports (in round timber exports it is very difficult to determine precisely the quality and price of exported timber at the customs).