Forest Changes and Carbon Budgets in the Black Sea Region

Abstract

The temperate forests in the Black Sea region contain some of the last remaining intact forests between southern Europe and West Asia. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought great political and institutional changes to the region that have already impacted these forests, which have experienced long land use and management histories. In this chapter, we review and synthesize research on forest changes and carbon budgets that are associated with decentralization in the Black Sea countries, focusing specifically on Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, and Ukraine. Our analysis shows that each of these countries followed a different path in forest management, somewhat mimicking their own history of transition from centrally controlled to market-based economies. In Romania and Bulgaria, a period of economic hardship and weakened institutions resulted in large-scale forest changes, but the net effect of these and other historic forest disturbance events has allowed Bulgaria and Romania to remain a terrestrial carbon sink. Although increases in logging could result in net carbon emissions, great potential exists for carbon sequestration as a result of forest expansion on degraded and abandoned farmland, particularly in Romania. Georgia continues to struggle with establishing and enforcing forest management with a suitable mix of private and public uses to meet the growing demand, particularly for energy. To this end, the future of Georgia’s forests and its carbon implications remain uncertain and will mostly depend on its relationships with Russia and its ability to exploit its status as an energy corridor. Ukraine also continues to struggle with establishing suitable forest administration and ownership with high rates of illegal logging. However, natural forest regrowth on large tracts of abandoned farmland can sequester unprecedented amounts of carbon, and large-scale afforestation programs can greatly aid this process. These findings suggest that all these countries could play an important role in the terrestrial carbon budgets of the Black Sea region. This outcome is partly connected to the land use legacy of the Soviet Union: large areas of relatively young and regrowing forests, a result of high forest harvesting rates during the latter half of the 20th century, have tremendous carbon sequestration potential in each country that is reviewed here. At the same time, the effects of this legacy are quickly replaced with land use and forest management decisions that are made today.