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Final Report: Forest Governance Issues in the RFE and Siberia
As a result of 22 field visits during two years, the following broad challenges were identified:
Corruption and bribery are prevalent. The complex sets of factors that facilitate corruption and bribery must be identified and addressed as a matter of urgency. Laws and policies are often contradictory. Clear direction must be given by government at all levels to protect forests and promote only environmentally sustainable activities. Monitoring and enforcement are weak. Authorities should work with civil society and industry to monitor forestry activities and prevent anarchic, illegal and unsustainable operations from destroying opportunities for sustainable enterprises. Civil society should be strengthened and be actively involved in the development and implementation of forest policy. As demonstrated by this project, civil society can play a key role in monitoring illegal and unsustainable forestry on the one hand and identifying environmentally and socially sustainable forestry activities that bring economic benefits to communities on the other.
Illegal and Destructive Logging in the Russian Far East and Siberia
Report by Bureau for Regional Outreach Campaigns (BROC) based on field visits in 2003 and 2004
In the southern parts of the Russian Far East and Siberia an industry in illegal wood-cutting is flourishing, partly because of the reliable support it receives from corrupt authorities and Chinese dealers. Even though the outlaws are stealing wood from legal tenants and occasional users of the forests, nobody in the area is able to crack down on their activities; according to many members of the local authorities, both Russia's civil and criminal law codes offer reliable protection to all this criminal activity and to any property acquired in the process. On the contrary, no one tries especially hard to stop the outlaws' activities, since the proceeds from the theft of the wood are redistributed among the whole population sooner or later.
Cedar logs in Roschino. Photo ©BROC
The clearest indicator that illegal wood-cutting is going on and that the proceeds are being redistributed is the level of unemployment in certain districts. According to data from the Employment Service, in the Krasnoarmeiskii raion (district) of Primorje Krai, employment stands at 14%, while throughout the krai (region) as a whole it is 3.5%. However the standard of living is much higher in the districts with a relatively high level of unemployment. In conversation with a specialist from the company IMAKOM, one of those who took part in the swoop on NGO BROC (Bureau for Regional Outreach Campaigns), reveals that for him, just as for many other residents of the district, the problem of illegal wood-cutting simply does not exist. In Soviet times, several times more forest was cut down than is cut down now. In addition, those who work for law-abiding forestry companies have the option of topping up their wages every month by cutting down protected species or forests outside of permitted areas, and no one passes up this opportunity. Therefore the competition between these workers and their counterparts from outside the area to cut wood illegally is becoming so fierce that both state and non-governmental, ecological organisations are getting involved and anti-poaching detachments are being funded. Many locals believe that illegal wood-cutting has passed its peak; partly because there is not much commercially viable forest left in relatively accessible areas and partly because of the vigorous hunt for the illegal wood-cutters.
In the village of Roshchino, conversations between BROC and the state procurement officials are wholly dominated by references to the Cedar inspection team. This team was moved two years ago from the state-run ecological monitoring services to the Association of Forestry Product Exporters (PALEKS), which was set up by the exporters at the instigation of the krai authorities. PALEKS in its turn funded Cedar so that Cedar could bring to light and take into custody illegal wood-cutting teams and their booty. However, since Cedar lacked any official authorisation to investigate people or make arrests, the companies within PALEKS became less and less willing to fund it. In particular, in the Dal'nerechenskii district, no funds were forthcoming at all, and so Cedar has moved operations into the Krasnoarmeiskii district. According to local residents, the work of Cedar is no more successful there either. When the head of the team is away, his staff, who earn 200 dollars a month, behave just like the local militia (police) or ordinary foresters: they extort money from the illegal wood-cutters and ignore huge numbers of infringements and the felling of protected varieties of tree.
The village of Limonniki has about 250 inhabitants. 10 of them work in forestry, 7 in the school, and there are 3 other salaried public sector workers, making a grand total of 20. The illegal wood business employs 16 people, in addition to which, Gennadii employs 4 in his shop and bakery, 10 in his garage, 4 administrative staff, and one carpenter. In other words, the illegal wood business keeps 35 people in permanent employment and another 10-15 are regularly hired for temporary work. Timber truck on the road in Sikhote-Alin, Krasnoarmeiski The illegal wood business started when the district authorities took away official wood-cutting areas and put 18 people out of work. The rest of the village is made up of children, pensioners, and those who earn a living working in migrant gangs of wood-cutters. All of them live off the non-wood products of the forest. They collect cedar cones, roots, berries, and catch fish. In the area surrounding the villages of Limonniki and Izmailikha as many as 50 people have bee-gardens. The roads in this part of the district are almost completely beaten up by timber trucks. The district authorities have their own men amongst the illegal wood traders and the illicit profits are shared with the district authorities. Therefore local illegal operators are able to buy the official documents relating to the forest that they are planning to fell from "their" man in the militia. The money paid stays within the local economy. If it were handed over to the state in tax, it would disappear out of the district. Equally if the policeman were to receive the requested bribe from someone else, most likely a Chinese or some other newly-arrived timber thief, the timber would still be stolen, but people from outside the district would benefit.
If a plot of land contains less than 10-20% protected cedar or lime (linden), the forester has the right simply to record this in the relevant documentation, and by so doing is allowed to perform wood-cutting. In any case, a forester officially earning 70 USD a month, will turn a blind eye to anything in return for money. Confiscated wood makes its way to wholesale depots and from there to China. At the depots, which are strictly monitored by the krai and district authorities, all timber which arrives without documentation becomes legal. The depot owner will pay officials to ensure that this timber is directed to his depot and pays part of his profit for the official documentation. The price which he has to pay per cubic metre of timber confiscated from the illegal wood traders is always negotiated with inspectors. This sum ensures that the owner will be protected against all the inspectors in the given district.
Timber truck on the road in Sikhote-Alin, Krasnoarmeiski. Photo ©BROC
Any businessman who wishes to take a plot of land on a long lease can use a variety of methods over and above approaching the krai authorities. For example, he may invite a representative of the forest management unit containing the plot or some other qualified person into the relevant forest. They select a plot and write to the Forestry Agency that is a part of the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). Many months later, the MNR gives permission for wood-cutting to be carried out on the plot. The businessman then has to gain the consent of the krai authorities and the Forestry Agency, which will issue the appropriate instructions to the management of the stand. This is a surefire method to ensure that he gets the plot he wants, but it costs money; each krai official and Forestry Agency manager charges 2 USD per cubic metre of deciduous forest and 1 USD per cubic metre of coniferous forest. If the krai officials get involved while the letter is still being written to the ministry then the charges are 4 USD and 2 USD respectively.
According to BROC, the militiamen at the district level, the members of the Highway Patrol Service, and the Tiger and Cedar inspection teams, the bribe for letting timber trucks with illegal timber on board pass ranges from 500 to 1000 roubles (17 to 34 USD) per truck depending on whether the illegal trader transports illegal timber along the same road regularly or as a one-off. An inspector in the Forestry Agency will get even more: 100 USD for three trucks. What is more, the forester and the timber merchant will typically want to get excess wood through under the same documentation in order to boost their illicit income. They come to an agreement that the actual wood-cutting area will increase in size from 10 to 30 hectares. The timber merchant will give the forester 10 USD per cubic metre obtained from the 20 'excess' hectares, this being the rate at which this so-called 'tax' is levied throughout the district. It is not advisable for the businessman to deceive the forester, because he brands the trees which lie within the additional plot and knows as a result how many cubic metres of timber it contains. When the timber reaches the customs point the quality of the wood is often understated as Grade 3 rather than Grade 1 and the size of the shipment is understated significantly. Practically all exporters do this, in return for which the customs officials receive a bribe and thereby divert money from the exchequer.
According to local journalists from Amur oblast (region), the illegal timber trade was under the protection of the local militia until 2003. Any illegal timber impounded by Department against Economic Crimes is sequestered and resold by firms which work on behalf of militia officials. Until the year 2000, large plots of wooded land in the oblast were let on 49 year leases to Chechens, Armenians and Chinese. At 1992 rates the bribe extracted was 140 roubles per cubic metre. The two largest timber companies in the oblast are Zeiskii Timber Enterprise and Tyndales stock company. Tyndales' staff is largely made up of Koreans and on the Baikal-Amur railway there are villages inhabited solely by Koreans where Russian laws do not operate. Repeated attempts to point out to the governor of the oblast that it is vital to keep timber processing within the territory legal have been met with incomprehension.
From time immemorial the people of the north of Amur oblast have survived thanks to reindeer-breeding, timber processing and hunting. At the present the hunters are just about surviving (a Grade 1 sable is worth 1200 roubles, a Grade 4 - 600) but the situation is much worse for the reindeer breeders. In one local state farm there are at most 400 reindeers, as compared with 5,000 15 years ago. The monthly salary in the farm is 500 roubles (17.85 USD). The local hunters are outraged when timber men appear in their hunting-grounds and the wildlife disappears into other districts. For example, to the north of Is, which is a station on the Baikal-Amur railway and borders Khabarovskii krai, Chinese workers are processing timber for the Sever-Invest stock company. According to members of local NGO Ulukitkan, in the northern regions Chinese and North Koreans are killing dogs, red-bellied musk deer and other wild animals, all on an unlicensed basis. There are also rumours that they are importing large consignments of heroin from the People's Republic of China. There are often skirmishes between the Koreans, the Chinese and the Russians, which can involve shooting. Timber trucks depart across the ice from the international port of Poiarkovo on the river Amur every two days, in groups of 10 lorries, bearing Chinese or Russian number plates.
The largest quantity of illegal wood-cutting in its purest form goes on in the Svobodnenskii and Shimanovskii districts. This is partly because it is forbidden to fell pine trees, which are in great demand in China. The teams of illegal loggers use similar methods to those used in Primorje krai district: they despatch motorcycle scouts, then woodcutters, and then take the timber to the nearest reception point by night. They also commit acts of deliberate arson, so that pine can be felled as part of ostensibly sanitary felling operations. There are two large wholesale rail shipment depots in Belogorsk. Advertising boards saying "Timber Reception Point" are visible throughout the town. According to BROC, timber trucks carry logs (two thirds of which are larch, one third of which is birch) along the Belogorsk-Norsk-Fevral'sk route towards both the Baikal-Amur railway and towards Belogorsk and the Trans-Siberian railway. Every 15-20 kilometres they find large tyre prints from trucks or trucks themselves, some of them Chinese. The inhabitants of the village of Norsk take a very dim view of the wood-cutting along the Baikal-Amur railway. They all say that the director of the Norsk forest management unit allows anyone who is prepared to pay to cut timber. In a meeting he explained that across the whole oblast, it is permissible to allocate a quota of 1,200,000 cubic metres of timber to foreign citizens (Chinese and Koreans) for them to cut. Both the director and the public prosecutor have identified cases of theft of small amounts of wood and its transfer to Chinese inspectors in the village. Most of the wood-cutting and export of wood from the district happens between the end of December and the end of March/beginning of April, because that is when the wet roads are passable (frozen).
North Koreans have been working in Amur oblast since the middle of the 1970s. They work for Tyndales in the Norsk, Tyndinsk and Urushinsk forest management units (FMU), where wood-cutting is carried out on a large scale. Their work is more thorough than that of their Russian and Chinese counterparts. Their large-scale wood-cutting operations in the hills along the Baikal-Amur railway are starting to have knock-on effects. Within the Norsk FMU the companies Sever-Invest and A-Viking have attracted roughly 100 Chinese timber workers each to work for them in teams. The Chinese get into illegal timber trading and incite locals to steal wood too, at low prices and in small volumes. During inspections of their wood-cutting areas the Chinese avoid speaking Russian, cheek the foresters and inspectors and generally behave with extreme insolence. Their way of doing business is similar: they charge the maximum price for larch and fir in October/November, when it cannot be processed because the roads are impassable, but in December/January the price falls sharply.
Log trail in Udege Legend. Photo©BROC
In 2001 all timber tractors and trucks in Amur, including the Chinese ones, were registered and given numbers. This meant that firms amalgamated and became, on average, more law-abiding. Beyond Turan, where there are no roads, there are more than 200,000 hectares of virgin forest. However in 2004 two newly-strengthened firms based in Khabarovsk laid claim to the unclaimed lands bordering Khabarovskii krai and are already prospecting forest reserves. When a local lessee does not have the technical wherewithal to carry out timber cutting or processing himself, he will hire contractors, from the Primorje area, from Khabarovsk or the Ukraine, and pay them 4-5 USD per cubic metre of larch to cut the wood under his supervision. There is a high rate of injuries suffered at work as many of the wood-cutters lack the right skills. There are many damaged trees on the plots and the remnants of the wood-cutting process are burnt in massive fires on site.
In Novobureisk alone, a flying detachment counted 10 unloading sites, 2 of them Chinese, where timber is unloaded without any of the necessary documentation, for cash, at any time. On one of them stands a Chinese power-saw bench. Wild brigades steal timber not far from the roads. The Chinese buy larch for 300 roubles per cubic metre. Most of the lessees and timber workers are newly arrived from elsewhere: for example, in Talakan there are Ukrainians. In the plantation there are 37 lessees, of which only 7 actually process wood, mainly for the Russian domestic market. A worker in a local plantation said that it is strictly forbidden to state the actual number of forest fires and that as a result the area affected is understated in the records by at least a multiple of 3. It is also forbidden to say that a fire lasted for more than 3 days. In the records the fires are broken down into smaller fires, which were ostensibly successfully put out.
Khabarovsk krai's Minister for Natural Resources also attests to the widespread use of arson to obtain wood illegally. Mobile, well-equipped teams of wood-cutters go deep into the taiga, including into protected areas, choose the best trees, sell them to the Chinese, and then set the scene of the crime on fire to cover their tracks. The opposite ploy is also used, whereby forest is set alight, and then FMUs accept timber from the burnt area as though it were part of a sanitary wood-cutting exercise. As a result of this turnover in timber, Krasnoyarsk krai loses 6 million USD per annum, more if the results of fires are included. In the local newspaper, 'Zaria', the Deputy Head of the State Internal Affairs Directorate for Krasnoyarsk Krai, Aleksandr Gorov stated that approximately 80% of timber processors carry out their work illegally. In his words, the State Road Police Inspectorate audited timber processors in the krai in a special operation and found that there were about 100. Disappointingly, there were 894 timber trucks without the official paperwork. The State Forest Agency carries out an average of 17,000 compliance checks every year on people using the forests in all sorts of different ways, finds 4,000 infringements, and carries out 350-400 raids by interdepartmental operational groups. To monitor the activities of major timber producers in areas of high timber production, aerial photographs are taken of an area measuring approximately 20,000 hectares each.
Working together, local FMUs, the local authorities and the Internal Affairs departments of Krasnoyarsk krai set up 80 forestry control points (30 of them permanent) in 2002 to monitor movements of timber by road. They also set up 92 operational teams, which uncover up to 50% of the infringements of forest regulations detected annually. All this is paid for by the FMUs themselves. However, these measures have not achieved the desired results, as may be seen from the ever-increasing infringements of forest regulations. In 1995 the State Forest Service (Agency since 2004) registered 179 infringements; in 2004 the figure became 447, resulting in losses worth 93.9 million roubles (3.35 million USD). The average amount of illegal wood cut was 135.6 cubic metres. Comparing the amount of wood known to have been felled illegally (101,300 cubic metres) with the total amount felled in the Irkutsk oblast' in 2002 (17.2 million cubic metres), the scale of timber theft may seem insignificant (0.6%). However, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Unhealthy forest has no commercial value, therefore in order to survive, the heads of FMUs are forced to cut down healthy forest. The situation is the same even in the national parks, where commercial felling is forbidden, but felling continues along the shoreline of Lake Baikal and the Tunkinkii valley (see the next chapter) in the guise of sanitary felling. The revenue obtained by the illegal wood traders is much higher than the salary of a forester. Therefore the foresters allow felling to be carried out on plots and the overall size of the forests to be reduced in a wholly unsustainable manner.
Strictly speaking the forest is felled not just for sale, but also to meet to the needs of the population and municipal institutions. However in Irkutsk oblast there have been cases where heads of the local authorities have illegally assigned commercial organisations a plot or plots for their use. The rate for stumpage fee was 16 roubles (57 cents) per cubic metre in 2002. At the same time, the market price per cubic metre varied from 40 to 60 USD cash (1119-1678 roubles). This meant that the expenditure caused by non-payment of tax was almost halved. It is clear from these figures that while illegal felling is not big money to the criminal fraternity, selling it illegally is. According to the deputy governor of Irkutsk oblast, Larisa Abrozkaia, 49% of all timber exports are illegal. To stop illegal wood-cutting and infringements of export regulations, the local authorities have set up a Forest Exchange in Irkutsk. However there is no evidence that it is working. The oblast authorities have done nothing to combat the illegal timber trade other than to set up a forest militia, which is only able to fish out transgressors. The rest of the authorities' activities have been confined to talking about introducing triple or quadruple levels of monitoring the trade in wood at all its various stages, increasing the length of customs inspections, and creating a computerised database to verify whether documents are genuine or not.
According to the Chita Oblast Forestry Service, 1.4399 million cubic metres of wood were felled in 2003. It registered 883 infringements of forest regulations, the average volume of wood felled in which was 46,400 cubic metres. Another 30,700 cubic metres was felled by persons unknown. Since 1999 round wood has formed the basis of the export trade, the only partner in which is China. People registered in other regions of the Russian Federation have made declarations of goods in every customs-house in the oblast. In a similar way, exporters registered in Chita oblast often undergo customs registration in the zone of other customs agencies.