Russian Old-Growth Logging Moratorium Extended
8/22/99
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Title: Russian Old-Growth Logging Moratorium Extended
Source: Environment News Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: April 7, 1999
Byline: Ekaterina Chistyakova
MOSCOW, Russia, April 7, 1999 (ENS) - The largest foreign logging
companies working in Russia, the Finland based UPM-Kummene and Stora
Enso have confirmed their moratorium on taking wood from old-growth
forests. Stora Enso started operations at the end of 1998 as a result
of a merger between Finlands Enso and Swedens STORA.
A temporary moratorium agreed in 1996 was extended and reconfirmed
after the working meeting of representatives Stora Enso and
UPM-Kummene with representatives of the Forest Club of Russian
environmental groups and other non-governmental organizations held
last month in St. Petersburg.
The main issue discussed was a moratorium on logging in mildly
disturbed virgin forests of Russia's North. Environmentalists
submitted layouts of large areas of mildly disturbed forests in
Karelia on the Russian-Finnish border, the Murmansk, Vologda and
Arkhangelsk Regions, as well as in the Komi Republic.
A direct dialogue between the Finnish logging dealers and the Russian
public started in January 1996, after five years of confrontation
around the Karelia's unique green belt. It took the confronting
parties two and a half years to change their attitudes from a mutual
mistrust to a constructive cooperation.
The dialogue on the territories at issue is based on the north-western
region's old forest maps made by the Forest Club. This work, in spite
of various difficulties, has been carried out since 1995, and the maps
have been continuously updated. They are in great demand among western
lumbermen. Russian lumber dealers are beginning to use them too.
In December 1998, the Svetogorsk Pulp and Paper Mill, one of Russia's
largest manufacturers of paper products, located in the Leningrad
Region not far from the Finnish border, declared that the non-use of
wood from mildly disturbed forests would be an important issue in its
policy. It is the first declaration of this kind in the world
practice.
In carrying out this policy, the main sources of information for the
company are updated maps of the last areas of mildly disturbed forests
in the Russia's European North made by the Wildlife Protection Center
of the Moscow based Socio-Ecological Union and the international
environment group Greenpeace.
To identify mildly disturbed forests to be preserved, the Forest Club
used Russian remote sensing pictures and organized a special field
inspection to verify the data obtained by satellite.
A map was made showing all preserved regions of mildly disturbed
forests with a total area of more than 20,000 hectares (49,420 acres).
Reyno Kotti, deputy head in the Forest Department of the Svetogorsk
Pulp and Paper Mill said, "Our liability not to use wood from mildly
disturbed forests would be impracticable without the information
presented on the Forest Club's maps. Now we can be specific in showing
our suppliers the territories they should preserve."
The moratorium on logging in old-growth forests is a result of a
campaign by Russian green groups making their information available to
consumers. Having learned the environmental value of the Karelian wood
products, Germany, Holland and Great Britain refused to buy timber
from old forests. In October 1995, under market pressure, ENSO dealing
with 20 percent of all wood produced in Karelia, declared a moratorium
on production of wood on disputable territories and suspended the
contracts involving these areas.
The most uncompromising party in the conflict, the government of
Karelia, as distinct from western lumber dealers, is not quite open
for the dialogue. Russian greens still have problems in making an
inventory of old-growth forests in Karelia on pretexts varying from
the secrecy of the Russian-Finnish boundary strip to a simple denial
of access to the territory in question.
But the western consumers will buy the Karelian wood only when they
are convinced that the relevant ecological certificate is not just a
piece of paper.
c [20]Environment News Service (ENS) 1999