“Black day for forests. It will be possible to cut as much as the wood market can swallow/ Green wave in appropriations”

The Environmental NGO WWF Romania (World Nature Foundation) reacted on Thursday, after the Government adopted the new Forestry Code, saying that it is “a black day for forests”. Among other things, the organization says that “it will be possible to cut as much as the wood market can swallow” and that “the green light is given to appropriations from the public forest fund”.

The organization claims that the new provisions will generate more serious problems for forestry. The organization also adds that all the arguments and technical proposals it supported were ignored by the Executive.

The same thing happened with the solutions expressed by the Economic and Social Council (CES), says WWF-Romania:

The organization points out some of the most serious consequences that the new forestry code can have, according to WWF:

• An uncontrolled increase in timber exploitation is legalized. The principle of the continuity of sustainable timber harvests is practically undermined. It will be possible to cut more and cheaper, without taking into account the cumulative impact that the exploitations will generate at the level of the forest landscape, with major risks related to the conservation of forests and the development of a sustainable bioeconomy.
• It will be possible to cut as much as the wood market can “swallow”. The dream of the primary processing industry and the innovative solution of the Government to solve the problem of illegal harvesting.
• A clear reform of the system to combat illegal exploitation is not established. We are left with the same inefficient system centered on marking trees, valorizing wood by the foot and identifying unmarked stumps. It is a system that does not produce conclusive evidence in court, does not work as a deterrent, but, on the contrary, generates systemic conflicts of interest and stifles any effort on administrative efficiency.
• It does not create a clear framework for the promotion of the superior utilization of wood and the application of the principles of the cascading use of wood. There are no clear requirements to promote wood use chains with the highest added economic value, so that wood as a raw material can be used in the most valuable way, through superior processing into long-life products.
• Significant deficiencies in integrating biodiversity conservation into forest management. Conservation concepts are not defined correctly and conservation methods are incomplete and inconsistent.
• It gives the green light for appropriations from the public forest fund, which was also owned by the state before 1945. New waves of controversial rollbacks and an artificial administrative fragmentation of the national forest fund follow.

“All this, against the background of liberalization of cutting, will revive the chaos in the forests. The Romanian Parliament is from now on the last chance so that the fate of Romania’s forests, experienced in the early 2000s, will not be repeated”, says WWF-Romania.

• “For over three years, the Government has built, together with the interested factors invited to get involved, a vision for forests, which it has proudly assumed as a milestone of the PNRR. But, after not even a year, the same Government basically throws it away. An “artifice” through which Romania wastes a historic chance to lay the foundations for clear and healthy policies for forests. We say this because, once in the Parliament, it is very difficult for a number of disparate amendments to succeed in transposing the strategic directions assumed by Romania and to give the necessary coherence and predictability for a law of such importance”, says Radu Vlad, program manager of forests and regional projects at WWF-Romania (World Wide Fund for Nature).
• Read WWF’s full arguments and proposals regarding the New Forestry Code project.

In reply, the Government of Romania submits that the forest roads “will be video-surveillance, with technical monitoring/recording systems to help detect theft and illegal cutting“. At the same time, the Executive adds that they were introduced “new forestry offences: falsification of IT data of a forestry nature and falsification in IT declarations shall be punishable by 1 to 5 years of imprisonment”.

“One of the most important provisions of the new Forestry Code refers to the prohibition of clear cutting. Thus, the area where these clear cuttings are prohibited is being extended to the natural parks and all protected natural areas in Romania“, the Government of Romania also points out.

The Minister of the Environment, Mircea Fechet, said on Thursday that through the new forestry code, “clear cutting will be prohibited in almost half of the country’s forest area, the theft of wood will lead to the suspension of the right of access to SUMAL 2”.