The timber industry, and especially its trade with China, is a significant contributor to Russia’s economy. The wildfires that spread through Russian forests in the summer of 2010 brought concerns about Russian forest management to the forefront for businesspeople and policymakers. Here, U.S. Embassy Policy Specialist program fellow Stephanie Hitztaler describes her field research examining the impact of Russia’s forest code on the timber industry, the environment, and small businesses.
“There are very few people who are speaking the truth about what is happening in the forest sector…Everything [connected to forest and nature protection] is unraveling.” Spoken by a forest expert and activist in Moscow, these words reflect a deepening concern over the fate of the Russian forests. Beginning with Putin’s assent to power in 2000, the Russian forest sector has undergone fundamental restructuring, the latest of which is specified in the country’s new Forest Code enacted in 2007.
Last year, I received an IREX Embassy Policy Specialist (EPS) fellowship to investigate this code and its effects on the forests and those who work in them. I divided my fellowship time between Moscow and the Kamchatka Peninsula (Russian Far East) to understand how the code operates at both the national and regional levels.
In Moscow I learned that the hallmarks of the new code include decentralization of the forest sector, meaning that regional governments have been given greater autonomy in managing forests; and shifting of management responsibilities from the government (Forest Service) to forest leasers. Although the code stops short of privatizing forestlands, these measures are viewed as clear steps in this direction.
To gain a better understanding of these measures, I spoke at length with forest administrators, rangers, and leasers in Kamchatka. I discovered that decentralization has in fact led to increased bureaucratization, resulting in a new system that is less efficient and flexible than its predecessor. For instance, one business owner in Kamchatka who deals with non-timber forest products (for example, berries and mushrooms) explained how he must negotiate a bewildering maze of paperwork to arrange and maintain leases.
In addition, the increased responsibility placed on leasers to manage forests, which includes fighting fires and reforesting logged areas, has further thwarted local businesses by sharply raising their operating costs. As a result, some of these businesses have been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. Thus, while the new code has generally made forest leasing and management more cumbersome, it has been particularly detrimental to small, local players who might otherwise be in a better position than large national and global companies to promote sustainable development at the community level.
On a brighter note, going to Kamchatka gave me a unique opportunity to reflect on changes I have observed in this region over a decade. When I first arrived in Kamchatka in 2001 as a graduate student, I was greeted by signs of abandonment and decay that told of the severe socio-economic crisis that struck this region during the early post-Soviet period. Today, however, there is a wave of renovation and construction underway. A sense of pride and signs of growing prosperity are mirrored in the in golden onion-shaped domes of the new Russian Orthodox Church in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (Kamchatka’s capital city) that catch fire in the early rays of spring. Today, new technologies are pervading even the most remote areas, linking once isolated communities to the wider world. Soviet-era factories and abandoned buildings still dot city and village landscapes, yet clearly a new time has come.
Stephanie Hitztaler is an independent researcher. She traveled to Russia in 2011 as a participant of the U.S. Embassy Policy Specialist [12] program. You can read her full research brief on forest policy in Russia here [13].