RUSSIA: Corruption, Trade, Illegal Logging Threaten Far East Forests
Copyright 2000 InterPress Service
August 6, 2000
By Danielle Knight
KHABAROVSK, RUSSIA, Aug 6 (IPS) - Illegal logging, fuelled by corruption and timber demands from Japan, China and North and South Korea, is leading to the plundering of the Russian Far East's forests, one of the world's largest pristine forest regions, according to environmentalists.
Responding to a deep economic crisis, regional governments across Siberia and the Russian Far East are facilitating large-scale extraction and export of natural resources in order to generate short term, hard currency revenues, they say.
''Logging companies are forging documents and bribing officials to send our forests out of the country and pocket the quick cash,'' says Anatoly Lebedev, director of the Bureau for Public Oriental Campaigns, an environmental group based in Vladivostok.
Illegal practices such as logging without a license, logging in protected forest zones, taking protected tree species, and logging outside of concession boundaries are widespread, he told IPS.
Although the amount of current logging in the Russian Far East and eastern Siberia is much less than during the Soviet era, the present trend is more destructive, says Lebedev and others who met here last week.
While 40 percent of the forests remain inaccessible to logging due to the mountainous landscape and lack of infrastructure, the timber industry has heavily over-logged many accessible areas, including the Pacific Coast, the border with China, railroads, and various rivers.
In late July, about 30 Russian and international environmental organisations, including several US foundations, met at a conference outside of this city near the border with China to share their battle stories against logging and industrial development in pristine forests.
During the three-day conference, the Vladivostok-based Bureau for Regional Campaigns, Friends of the Earth-Japan, and the California-based Pacific Environment and Resources Center released a report detailing the findings of a three year investigation of logging in the Russian Far East and timber trade with Asia.
''Weak federal legislation and infighting among federal and regional government agencies have led to widespread illegal logging and Russian firms conceal profit through clever, complex methods of frauds and bribes,'' says the 50-page report.
Corruption in Russia is a widespread problem in all sectors, according to ''Plundering Russia's Far Eastern Taiga.''
The Washington-based Center for International and Strategic Studies estimates that from 25 percent to 40 percent of all businesses in Russia are corrupt and that Russia's ''shadow economy'' comprises approximately 40 percent of the reported GNP.
''Widespread disregard for rules and loss of oversight by Russian government agencies is especially rampant in the natural resources sectors, including logging,'' it says.
Almost all of the timber is destined for markets in China, Japan, and South Korea, it says. About 60 percent of the exported timber goes to Japan and 30 percent to China, with 10 percent going to North and South Korea, according to official statistics.
Demand is especially booming in China since it tightened control on domestic logging in 1998. According to the Center for International Trade in Forest Products, a think tank at the University of Washington, China could face a deficit of 200 million cubic meters of wood per year by 2025.
''China, which already gets about 42 percent of its log imports from Russia, is looking across the porous China/Russia border to satisfy this timber deficit,'' says the report.
In 1999, the Harbin International Economic and Technological Co- operation Corporation in Northeastern China received permission from the Russian government to send loggers across the border to the Khabarovsk Region to log 3 million cubic metres of timber.
''Reportedly, all of it will be exported to China,'' says the report.
In December 1997, Rimbunan Hijau, a Malaysian timber company that plans to export logs to Japan, won a 48-year lease on 305,000 hectares in the Sukpai watershed in the Khabarovsk region.
''Logging in these pristine forests will harm wilderness throughout the northern Sikhote-Alin Mountains, in part because the new logging roads now being built will extend access to the forests beyond the leased area,'' says the report.
Russian forests represent about 25 percent of the world's remaining forests and more than 57 percent of the Earth's coniferous forests, according to the report.
Most of Russia's remaining ''frontier'' or pristine and undisturbed forests are located in the Russian Far East and eastern Siberia. According to the World Bank, the diversity of species found in the Russian Far East surpasses that of any temperate forest found in the world.
Environmentalists also point out that the vast Russian Far East forests are important regulators of the global climate, holding an estimated 75 percent of the carbon stores by all the world's boreal forests. Most scientists believe the current build up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing global warming.
While the cutting continues to increase, Russia's forest communities are suffering economically, says the report. Largely because timber companies are exporting raw logs instead of investing in local processing facilities, logging villages throughout the region continue to live in poverty.
''All the profits go to outside corrupt business men and nothing is given back to the community,'' says Lebedev. ''Russia's economy will never improve until we stop corruption in our natural resources sector. ''
Russian President Vladimir Putin's decree in May that abolishes two key environmental agencies, the State Committee on Ecology and the Federal Forest Service, and transfers their functions to the Ministry of Natural Resources will only make the situation worse, say environmentalists.
Russian and international non-governmental organisations say the Ministry's goal to expand commercial activity is incompatible with the environmental protection mandate of the ecology committee and forest service.
The decree was the ''latest alarming demonstration of efforts by the industrial lobby to remove the last obstacles to uncontrolled, predatory exploitation of Russia's forest resources,'' says the report.
Environmental groups in Japan are trying to increase awareness of the impact of logging in Russia. Greenpeace International recently hijacked a boat in the Sea of Japan that was carrying timber illegally logged from the Russian Far East.
Josh Newell, co-ordinator of the Siberian Project for the Tokyo- based Friends of the Earth-Japan, says it is going to take a large effort to convince Japanese industry and the public that the timber they purchase is destructive to Russian ecosystems.
He says Japanese companies are currently marketing timber from Russia as the ''green source of timber for the 21st century.'' Company executives, Newell said, were surprised when he told them that there is wildlife, such as the Siberian tiger, in the Russian Far East.
''They just think of the region as a frozen wasteland,'' says Newell, who co-authored the report.
About 85 percent of all Russian timber exported to Japan is used in building houses. Most houses in Japan are torn down just after 30-35 years since current policies discourage giving loans to houses that are more than 30 years old, he says.
''It's a complicated problem that is also based on Japan's cultural obsession with things that are new and fresh,'' he says.