Anatoly Lebedev

Informational and Consulting Support to Local Forest Communities in Framework of New Reform

Forest Inspection. Photo Sarah Kerjean.

Forest Inspection. Photo Sarah Kerjean.

Timber Business. Photo Sarah Kerjean.

Old Believers. Photo Sarah Kerjean.

Our project provides, as it was designated by our proposal, a set of activities. Inside them we plan to:

- continue negotiating with regional Forest service to get official fresh data (2010) on the forest use (logging) in Primorye and specifically in Krasnoarmeiski municipality;

- activate consulting with Forest service and it’s municipal divisions on the practice and development of firewood supply models;

- to maintain community interests in non-timber forest products use (mainly Korean pine nuts) and promote positive experience of 2 existing NTFP leases. We plan to actively support efforts of these NTFP leasers and processing firms to enter serious markets and promote any successful results in this kind of activity;

- to provide efficient NGO control of use and sales recently restricted Korean pine wood;

- to strengthen stakeholders control over FSC certified forest users on the area of activity with special focus upon Roschinski KLPH as a key campaigner against national park “Udege Legend”;

- to activate forest riding with forest inspection and operating customs to discover and stop violations in the forest use and timber trade.

We plan, via information and advocacy campaign in our magazine “Ecology and Business” and in mass media, to continue promoting sustainable complex forest use, in the process of drafting law corrections with Moscow colleagues and further campaigning under new upcoming legislation, and undertake efforts to resolve resource concerned and land tenure conflicts. We consider our NGO role as very important for Krasnoarmeiski municipality, which is lacking reasonable governance by the local and regional officials, since this governance is still based upon too complex and unclear legislation, high level of corruption and low legal respect. Another reasons of our explanatory activity there are high demand on the most economically and environmentally valuable forest resources for logging at the area, new ban on Korean pine logging and new status of the State Forest Service with State forest inspection, awaited to be created soon.

This way to reduce interest to logging activities and turn it to more sustainable models is obviously the only way to warrantee conservation of all the values in the high conservation value forests of Ussuri taiga and in the whole municipality. In this regards, we also plan to continue contacts with old believers migrants from Uruguay, help them and publish their experience in organic land use.

Read about Anatoly's previous work http://www.ruffordsmallgrants.org/rsg/projects/anatoly_lebedev or for more information contact swan1@vladivostok.ru or visit http://eco-broc.org