The results of a diagnostic exercise, which took place in four pilot regions of Russia in early 2012 with funding from the United Kingdom government, are now available online, both in English and Russian, complete with artfully-presented data and analysis. Based on this initial exercise, Russia’s aggregated forest governance score would be 65%-- a passing grade according to the report's authors: “Taking into account the most challenging recent years of forest reforms in the Russian Federation, this result may be deemed fairly good.”

Besides identifying key forest governance issues in the four regions (Voronezh and Arkhangelsk Oblasts, Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk Krays), the workshop participants made recommendations on how to improve the diagnostic tool and adapt the FAO-PROFOR Framework for further use both at the federal and regional levels.

• The working paper (PDF in English / Russian) presents information about the tools, efforts and results of the Forest Governance Diagnostics Project in Russia implemented by a team of consultants to the World Bank. The document is intended to inform civil society, parties to forest relations and other stakeholder groups about the strengths of forest governance in the Russian Federation and issues calling for priority attention and improvement. Next steps will be coordinated and refined under the second phase of the ENPI FLEG program.
• The background note (PDF in English / Russian) on forests and forest governance is full of interesting data about Russia’s forests which represent a quarter of the world’s intact forests and store close to 50 billion tons of carbon.

It’s a nice complement to the Russian Federation Forest Sector Outlook to 2030 report launched by FAO during World Forest Week. At the launch, we met up with Elena Kulikova, Forest Program Director at WWF- Russia, one of the authors of the report. She talked positively about official government efforts to improve forest governance but emphasized that the scale of illegal logging is vastly underestimated. She also spoke about the progress of forest certification in Russia: FSC certification now represents about a quarter of production forests under lease (30 million hectares). The next step will be to convince Russian consumers to choose certified wood products.

See also The Future of Russia’s Forests (from FAO):