ON FOREST MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENT IN RUSSIA

Abstract

A survey of numerous official documents and publications reveals a severe crisis of forest management in Russia. Forest management paradigm, defined by the Forest Code ideologues, will lead inevitably to the Russian forest fund degradation. Meanwhile, forestry is the productive industry, which follows the market rules. For this reason, forest management in Russia should be reconstructed. A principle of forestry revival will be impartial ecological and market economic assessment of forest resources, which would be instrumental in transition of the subsidized scheme of forest management financing to a system that would provide rational forestry and profit. In this regard, market transition of forest use is crucial to establish payments for standing timber based on rental income. This will guarantee the financing of reforestation as well as assignments to the budget at the different levels. Chief reorganization objective of forest management in Russia is outlined as follows: ensuring economic efficiency of the forest sector; sustainable use of forest resources and reforestation; forest conservation for the next generations.