The forest environmental frontier in Russia: Between sustainable forest management discourses and ‘wood mining’ practice

Abstract

With 20% of the world’s forests, Russia has global potential in bioeconomy development, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. However, unsustainable forest management based on ‘wood mining’ reduces this potential. Based on document analysis, participant observations and interviews, this article shows how non-state actors—environmental NGOs and forest companies—address forest resource depletion and primary forest loss in Russia. We analyse two key interrelated forest discourses driven by non-state actors in Russia: (1) intensive forest management in secondary forests as a pathway towards sustained yield and primary forest conservation; (2) intact forest landscapes as a priority in primary forest conservation. We illustrate how these discourses have been integrated into policy debates, institutions and practices and discuss their relation to relevant global discourses. The article concludes that despite successful cases in conserving intact forest landscapes, there is still a frontier between sustainable forest management discourses and forestry practice in Russia.

Forest environmental frontiers around the globe: Old patterns and new trends in forest governance

“…Second, another key forest environmental frontier of global nature is characterized by the clashing world views and policy paradigms of nature/biodiversity conservation and forest use actors (Dobrynin et al 2021;Kanowski and Edwards 2021;Pokorny et al 2021;Sotirov et al 2021;Schultz et al 2021). Specifically, controversies between environmental/conservation and forest use (and in some regions broader land use) policy actors are characterizing the forest environmental frontier in many, if not all, world regions and are the dominant conflict pattern in several of them.…”

“…When the forest area reaches a context-dependent minimum, and re-afforestation begins to occur, the nature of the forest environmental frontier changes slowly, but still conflicts related to land use rights and livelihoods remain critical (De Jong et al 2021). The increasing share of managed forests in the restored forest landscape with usually more affluent societies and higher population densities is then connected to the dominance of the conservation versus forest use frontier, which is the central pattern along forest environmental frontiers in most industrialized countries and regions in the Global North (Australia, Europe, Japan, USA), including in large countries such as Russia (Kanowski and Edwards 2021;Sotirov et al 2021;Takahashi et al 2021;Schultz et al 2021;Dobrynin et al 2021).…”

“…Problematic patterns of equity or environmental outcomes are partially observed for subsequent policies to conserve or restore the lost forest cover (De Jong et al 2021;Brockhaus et al 2021;Ramcilovic-Suominen et al 2021). Subsequently, fierce controversies between conservation and commercial forest use interests unfold where at least partially forest use interests seem to prevail ''on the ground'' (Kanowski and Edwards 2021;Dobrynin et al 2021). Finally, climate change may be considered as an utmost frontier that will put all forests at risk.…”

“…Despite Russia covering around one fifth of the world's forests, the literature on Russian forest environmental conflicts is sparse. Dobrynin et al (2021) approach this gap by examining the discourses that non-state and state actors use to conceptualize forests and actors' belief that forests should be managed to address both economic interests and conservation values, including climate change. This is opposed to the widespread practices of 'wood mining' in Russia (i.e., the clear-cut harvesting often seen with primary forests).…”

Replacing Fossil Carbon in the Production of Ferroalloys with a Focus on Bio-Based Carbon: A Review

“…The use of bio-based carbon in metallurgical applications does not only have a positive impact on the environment due to the non-polluting nature and the renewability, but it can also lead to several social and economic benefits, like rural industrialization, transfer of capital from industrial to rural areas, savings of foreign exchanges and job creation [5,6]. On the other hand, non-sustainable forest management is contributing to deforestation, loss of biodiversity, forest degradation and increases the chance of droughts and floods [7][8][9]. Therefore, it is necessary to meet the demand for bio-based carbon by harvesting sustainable sources of biomass or currently unused vegetative waste.…”