OREANDA-NEWS. August 15, 2014. The FSC is failing to distinguish good forest management practices from the typical model of unsustainable forest exploitation widely employed in intact boreal, or taiga, forests in Russia. It is therefore failing in its mission to be a tool for forest protection, as Greenpeace reported.

When FSC certification first came to Russia’s taiga, conservation groups hoped it would help to eliminate poor forest practices and to aid greater forest protection, particularly of High Conservation Value (HCV) forests, including the most valuable intact forest landscapes (IFLs). Unfortunately, FSC is endorsing the prevalent destructive forest practices in Russia instead of trying to eliminate them. The FSC logo is consequently being misused to provide green cover for the destruction of HCV forests.

Greenpeace conducted a comprehensive satellite imagery-based analysis (2002-2013) of industrial forest practices in an area with a high concentration of companies that were either currently or formerly FSC-certified, or had applied for FSC certification.

The area is located in an interfluve – an elevated area between the valleys of adjacent watercourses – between the Northern Dvina and Pinega rivers in the Arkhangelsk region of northwest Russia. The case study area is known for the valuable intact forest landscape at its centre, the Dvinsky Forest.

Greenpeace’s analysis estimates that, at best, there is only enough coniferous forest outside the Dvinsky Forest to supply the areas’ forest industry for another 8-13 years if cut rates remain the same.

But even these forests are represented by rather fragmented pieces of coniferous forest patches scattered in an extensive matrix of secondary early successional post logging deciduous forests, and are unlikely to be of much interest to the industry. This case study shows that the industry clearly bases the current and future wood supply on resources concentrated in intact forest landscapes.

Up to 90% of logging within the concession areas included in the analysis has taken place within Dvinsky Forest. Neither the existing HCV forests – including intact forest landscape – within the concession areas, nor its most valuable parts, slated for legal protection, are excluded from currently applied cut rates to prevent them being logged. Instead of increasing the protection of HCV forests, FSC is certifying these completely unsustainable “wood mining” practices.

Greenpeace conducted a comprehensive analysis of logging trends from 2002 to 2013 in five separately operated FSC forest management (FM) certified areas in the interfluve area between the Northern Dvina and Pinega Rivers in Arkhangelsk Region, northwest Russia, including the Dvinsky Forest.

Over this period, all five companies held FSC certificates, although only one company, Northern Forest Company Ltd, currently holds a valid FSC FM certificate. The FM certificate of ICE Titan Ltd (inc. Ust-Pokshengskiy LPH) expired in 2012 after five years of validity, but the company manages FSC controlled wood (CW) under its Chain-of-Custody (CoC) certificate and is preparing to reapply for FM certification.

Solombalales UK (Boretskaya) and Solombalales UK (Konetsgorsky) had their certificates suspended in July 2012, and the FM certificate for Svertlozerskles was also terminated in July 2012.

As there is no report detailing why Svetlozerskles’ FSC certificate was terminated, in Greenpeace’s opinion it could have been due to the key issues cited in this report, as well as to the closure of the OJSC Solombala Pulp-and- Paper Mill at the beginning of 2013.