Russia owns one-fifth of the world’s forest-covered area but has never been the leader of the global forest sector nor in gross output or relative productivity. The issues of the Russian forest sector have attracted research attention, but for many topics, this is still a green field on the map of sectoral studies. We developed a novel approach to understand the primary causes of the inefficiency of the Russian forest policy through the qualitative assessment of completeness and reliability of forest sector-related data. The main output of this paper is a thorough overview of the available sources of data with an assessment of their quality, completeness and reliability. We show that the Russian official forest sector statistics provide only basic indicators for very short periods with few observations being incomplete and inconsistent. Besides a critical analysis of the official statistics, we also discover some known, but still underemployed, resources of information on the Russian forest sector: textual information of official public bodies and companies, accounting records, remote-sensing data, etc. Finally, we discuss the possible ways to improve the data procurement of the forest sector in Russia to support future decision-making. We are convinced that a prerequisite for the implementation of effective forest policy in Russia is a significant expansion and improvement of the volume and quality of statistics on the dynamics of Russian forests and forest economy. Integration of existing and new data sources is necessary to achieve synergistic effects, both in terms of deepening the understanding of key business processes in the industry and in the sense of solving strategic tasks of its development.

Outbreaks of pests are considered one of the most destructive types of natural forest disorders. In recent years the severity of such outbreaks has rapidly increased due to the process of global warming, which affects the rate of reproduction of pests and the range of their natural distribution. Economic consequences of these types of disturbances are of particular importance. Though many studies have been conducted in the field of tree phytophages ecology, the issues of estimating economic damage and the formation of mechanisms for its minimization have been poorly studied. This article presents a review of studies on the problem of the harmful effects of forest pests classified by their localization. The area of study includes mainly boreal forests located in a number of European countries, the USA, Canada and Russia. Our study reviews the range of instruments applied to prevent disturbances mentioned above and mitigate corresponding negative consequences. Despite the fact that there are theoretical approaches to the analysis of the economic consequences of forest damage by pests, they still cannot find practical application

The article considers the prospects of the domestic timber industry in the context of sanctions restrictions. Based on the data on average annual trade flows for 2018—2020, the potential damage from trade restrictions is assessed. Particular attention is paid to the fifth package of EU sanctions, which contains the most severe restrictions on trade with Russia for a wide range of forest commodities. The potential loss of income for the Russian timber industry from the ban on exports to the EU is estimated at 3.5 billion dollars. The ban on imports from the EU countries may also be sensitive for the industry, but it should not be regarded as fatal. The possibilities of partial replacement of the deficit of products for a considerable list of goods are shown. At the same time, the violation of free trade in forest products because of sanctions becomes a new turn in the spiral of the global crisis, which began in the pandemic COVID-19. Consequently, the damage to countries imposing sanctions on Russia is also significant. The most affected will be the largest RF trading partners in Europe — Finland and Germany, as well as the Baltic States. A sharp increase in logging in the EU against the background of the energy crisis creates an additional opportunity for the Russian timber complex. The reciprocal nature of economic losses, as well as multiple examples of circumventing sanctions in other industries, suggest that the most likely scenario will be attempts to maintain trade relations while formally implementing the imposed restrictions.

In Siberia, most boreal forests are located in an area with relatively moist forest soils, which makes logging activities possible exclusively during the frost period with a permanent snow cover and stable sub-zero temperatures. As the global climate is experiencing a trend towards warming, it is reasonable to suppose that the duration of the logging season might shorten over time, influencing the economic potential of Siberian forests. To test this hypothesis, we created a concept for calculating the duration of the logging season, taking into account the economic and climatic peculiarities of doing forest business in these territories. Using the long-run daily-observed climatic data, we calculated the duration of the logging season for eight representative stations in Krasnoyarsk Krai (Yeniseysk, Boguchany, Achinsk, and Minusinsk) and Irkutsk Oblast (Bratsk, Kirensk, Tulun, and Yerbogachen) in 1966–2018. We found strong evidence of logging season duration shortening for almost all considered stations, with an uneven effect on the start and end boundaries of the season. Climate warming has almost no effect on the start date of the season in winter, but it significantly shifts the boundaries of the season end in spring. Using the autoregressive-integrated-moving average modeling (ARIMA) models, we demonstrated that, in the near future, the trends of the gradual shortening of the logging season will hold for the most part of the considered stations. The most pronounced effect is observed for the Achinsk station, where the logging season will shorten from 148.4 ± 17.3 days during the historical sample (1966–2018) to 136.2 ± 30 days in 2028, which reflects global warming trend patterns. From an economic perspective, a shorter duration of the logging season means fewer wood stocks available for cutting, which would impact the ability of companies to enact their logging plans and lead them to suffer losses in the future. To avoid losses, Siberian forest firms will have to adapt to these changes by redefining their economic strategies in terms of intensifying logging operations.

This study explored the regional differences in the forest industry and management via a Multiple Factor Analysis approach. The dataset used comprises all Russian regions and 34 variables that comprehensively describe the situation in the sector. Based on the Multiple Factor Analysis, the variables contributing most to the spatial heterogeneity in Russian forestry were divided into industrial and forestry factors. The regions leading in the development of the timber industry are mainly located in the Northwestern and Southeastern parts of Russia. They show similarities in high logging volumes, investment attractiveness, and competitiveness in foreign markets. However, a divergence was found between the Northwestern regions and the Siberian and the Far East territories in terms of forest management factors. The Western part of Russia benefits from the density of the population and infrastructure, and proximity to the national financial centers and European markets. By comparison, Asian Russia suffers from labor shortages caused by negative demographic trends and the negative consequences of climate change, resulting in an increase in forest losses and a lack of control, finance, and transport accessibility due to the vast territory. To alleviate regional inequalities, we propose the introduction of private ownership of forests, support for investment projects, and human capital development.

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Цель работы -библиографический анализ исследований в области экономики лесного комплекса России, представленных в российских и международных базах данных научной литературы. Методической базой исследования являются современные подходы библиометрического анализа, основанные на применении статистических методов анализа и визуализации данных. На основе тематических выборок из баз данных Научной электронной библиотеки eLIBRARY.ru, баз данных Scopus и Web of Science проведена систематизация публикаций, выполненных за период 1995-2020 гг., построены соответствующие описательные статистики и динамические ряды. Выделены наиболее цитируемые публикации по каждой из баз данных, приведена их краткая характеристика, в том числе с точки зрения узкотематической направленности, применения современных исследовательских методов. По результатам анализа сделан вывод о том, что сегмент российских исследований в области экономики лесного комплекса мало связан с международным научным рынком, что в целом соответствует выводам, которые были ранее получены для более крупных предметных областей. Большую часть публикаций на международном рынке выпускают представители крупных зарубежных исследовательских центров. Тем не менее благодаря усилиям отдельных российских журналов по вхождению в международные базы данных, а также стремлениям некоторых коллективов производить качественные исследования, конкурентоспособные на мировом рынке, количество российских исследований, индексированных в международных базах данных, растет. Предложено следовать стратегии развития кадрового потенциала, направленного на воспитание нового поколения исследователей, способных сразу интегрироваться в мировое научное сообщество.

Agriculture is one of the economic sectors primarily affected by climate change. This impact is very uneven, especially for countries with large territories. This paper examines the contribution of climate change to the improvement in agricultural productivity in Russia over the past two decades. Several ensembles of fixed effects regressions on yields and gross harvests of grain, fruits, and berries, potato, and vegetables were evaluated for a sample of 77 Russian regions over the 2002–2019 period. In contrast to similar studies of the climate impact on Russian agriculture, we considered a larger set of variables, including both Russian and global climate trends, technological factors, and producer prices. Russian weather trends such as winter softening and increase in summer heat have a significant but opposite effect on yields. An interesting finding is a significant and mostly positive influence of global climatic variables, such as the CO2 concentration, El Niño and La Niña events on both harvests and yields. Although technological factors are the main drivers of growth in Russian agricultural performance over the past 20 years, we found a strong positive effect on yield and gross harvest only for mineral fertilizers. The influence of the other variables is mixed, which is mainly due to data quality and aggregation errors.