State Duma adopted the law on roundwood trade control

On Friday, 20 December, the State Duma adopted a law amending the Forest code. The amendments are connected with the introduction of forest declarations and information system which will track roundwood trade. The document is available at the official legal portal of Russia.

According to Rosleskhoz (Federal Forestry Agency), the adoption of the law will “solve almost completely the problem of illegal logging, liquidate grey schemes of selling raw wood, and allow to streamline the wood inventory not only in the harvesting stage, but also later on the market of forest products.”

At the first meeting of the Forest Industry Expert Council on 19 April 2013 attended by WhatWood, timber industry players criticized the draft law, saying that it would burden the fair forest users and simultaneously will not create any serious obstacles for illegal loggers.

In response, the head of forest management and regeneration at the Federal Forestry Agency Alexander Mariev quoted successful cases in 12 regions of Russia, where similar laws were already in effect: the volume of illegal logging there has declined.

Later in an interview to WhatWood, Expert Council member and professor of St. Petersburg Forest University Vladimir Petrov noted that combating illegal harvesting “should take place in the woods, and not outside of it”, so it is necessary to restore the forest guard system in full.

Head of the forest department of Greenpeace Russia Alexey Yaroshenko in an interview to Kommersant expressed similar point of view: in his opinion, a large part of illegally cut forests are legalised before reaching the roads where it can be tracked.

The information system should become public, so that it can perform its task, said the director of conservation policy of WWF Russia Evgeny Shvarts; WWF forestry policy project coordinator Nikolay Shmatkov notes that the law will reduce the grey timber trade, but will not affect the “black” trade.

According to the law, roundwood inventory should be performed by logging companies and forest area workers, while marking of wood must be made by exporters.

Any transportation of wood will be done exclusively with the accompanying document. In order to purchase wood one has to file a declaration via the web portal of public services.

The automated system for wood inventory will be a key element in preventing illegal logging and enlarging transparency of the timber market and will allow to trace the origin of all wood flows, the Forestry Agency believes. Special control will be imposed for valuable species (oak, beech, and ash).

For provision of false data, violation of rules of wood inventory and marking and transportation without documents, fines will be imposed.

The law will step into force in several stages over two years. The first provisions of the law will take effect from 1 February 2014.