{"id":20631,"date":"2019-02-01T10:36:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T10:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/?p=20631"},"modified":"2021-12-01T13:50:51","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T12:50:51","slug":"what-is-happening-to-100-million-hectares-of-forests-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/20631\/what-is-happening-to-100-million-hectares-of-forests-in-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"What is happening to 100 million hectares of forests in Russia?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Right now, vast swathes of Russia are covered in \u201cillegal\u201d forests. 10% of all the forest in Russia (that\u2019s an area about twice the size of Spain) lies in areas formerly <\/span>or currently <\/span>designated as agricultural land.  <\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"Russian
A view of the forest in Russia
\u00a9 Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Part of these are old forests, which remained on farm lands and were unaccounted for after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rest are new forests which have started to grow on abandoned agricultural lands.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Bizarrely, Russian legislation demands that the owners of these lands keep them free from forests. They risk paying huge penalties and can even lose their private land to the State.  Most of them are completely forgotten, and have no clear status. This means that they\u2019re often logged without restraint or simply burned, releasing CO2 and black carbon into the atmosphere.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

That\u2019s all about to change, as a result of a campaign by Greenpeace Russi<\/span>a to protect and restore th<\/span>ese forests by changing the federal Forest Code to acknowledge the existence of forests on agricultural lands.<\/span> The changes made so far only cover a small (but important!) part of federal legislation. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

If we can regulate these 100 million hectares of \u201cillegal\u201d forests in a smart way, they could be a <\/span>big part of nature conservation and restoration<\/span>. Just by changing this one bit of legislation, it would be a huge win for <\/span>biodiversity<\/span> in Russia: more <\/span>trees <\/span>could be planted, sequestering carbon, and aiding the fight against climate change.  We could turn previously empty land into a huge carbon sink. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"Young
Young “illegal” forest on agricultural lands
\u00a9 Yulia Petrenko\/Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Over 50,000 people in Russia have already signed a petition asking President Putin to change the legislation which prevents this from happening. We presented it to him at the <\/span>Presidential Council on Human Rights<\/span> last year. <\/span>The actual application of this particular change will depend on implementing regulations which are still to be defined, and we need to make sure that it is good enough.  <\/span><\/p>\n\n

Russian forests are crucial to our climate and biodiversity. Half of the Great Northern Forest, the green crown of our planet is situated in Russia. You can help us to save this amazing forest by joining us <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Anna Kosnikovskaya is a campaigner with Greenpeace Russia<\/em><\/p>\n

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If we can regulate these 100 million hectares of \u201cillegal\u201d forests in a smart way, they could be a big part of nature conservation and restoration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":20636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[84],"p4-page-type":[59],"class_list":["post-20631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nature","tag-forests","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20631"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51257,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20631\/revisions\/51257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20631"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=20631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}