A cascade of victories for forests secured by Agent Green in the highest courts
A cascade of victories for forests secured by Agent Green in the highest courts
Final court rulings are repeatedly breached by the authorities themselves
Bucharest, 18 November 2020 — This autumn, Agent Green secured at least 3 unprecedented final rulings for the protection of Romania’s forests at the Bucharest Court of Appeal and the High Court of Cassation and Justice. Following these rulings, planned logging across more than 34,000 hectares of forest in protected natural areas was suspended and, in some cases, definitively annulled. Moreover, forest management plans can no longer be kept secret by the authorities.
“The victories make us happy and certainly represent a step forward. The fact that the losing defendants are the Environment Ministry itself and Romsilva saddens us and confirms to us at this moment that the Romanian State is a leader of the Forest Mafia,” said Gabriel Păun, president of Agent Green.
In Agent Green’s case against the Ministry of the Environment at the Bucharest Court of Appeal concerning the disclosure of forest management plans, the environmental organization created a national precedent. Information on all of Romania’s forests, kept secret by the Government and Romsilva over the last 30 years, must now be published. The court dismissed the ministry’s appeal as unfounded and requires the institution to publish the forest management plans. These documents contain information about every patch of forest in Romania and the logging plans the State or private owners have for it. Information includes, for example, the volume of timber in the forest, tree species, the average age of stands, what types of cutting are planned and the volume of timber approved for felling over the next 10 years. “From today, anyone can ask the ministry or the forest district in their area of interest for the forest management plan to find information about the forest. Once obtained, these documents can be used to see whether the forest is cared for properly or abusively, and to act when timber felled and considered legal is in fact destructive logging that must be stopped before the damage is done. The plans are approved by ministerial order, and a minister caught approving a destructive plan can and must be held accountable,” added Cătălina Rădulescu, Agent Green’s lawyer.
Bucharest Court of Appeal decision:
https://portal.just.ro/2/SitePages/dosar.aspx?id_inst=2&id_dosar=300000000825133
In the remarkable case brought by Agent Green against the Environment Ministry and Romsilva, Baia de Aramă Forest District, the organization suspended logging over almost 20,000 hectares overlapping with Domogled – Valea Cernei National Park and the Nordul Gorjului de Vest Natura 2000 site. The defendants appealed and lost, then pursued an extraordinary appeal, which they also lost through the final ruling of the ICCJ. The decision can be consulted here:
Meanwhile, Romsilva continued removing old-growth trees from these areas until Agent Green repeatedly demanded that the Forest Guard intervene.
Shortly afterwards, logging was also suspended in Padeș, the neighbouring state forest district, across 14,612.36 hectares. The Bucharest Court of Appeal decision in Agent Green’s case against Romsilva and the Ministry of the Environment can be consulted here:
https://portal.just.ro/2/SitePages/Dosar.aspx?id_dosar=200000000369592&id_inst=2&fbclid
Nevertheless, Romsilva illegally put several old-growth forests in this district, with an average age of 170 years, up for auction. A total of 9792 cubic metres of timber is to be removed from monumental trees within this district, which overlaps with Domogled – Valea Cernei National Park and the Nordul Gorjului de Vest Natura 2000 protected area. Romsilva’s auction, scheduled for 26 November, can be consulted here:
https://licitatii.rosilva.ro/picior2017/licitatiedetalii/35253a50-1363-11eb-b978-000c29d8c26b.htm
“It is becoming increasingly clear to us that Romsilva is in a real frenzy in Romania’s last old forests. On the one hand, they have little left to cut because most of Romania’s forests are too young to be felled; on the other, they fear that precisely these old forests, valuable for biodiversity and the climate, could become strictly protected. So they press ahead with logging without even caring about the highest court,” Păun accuses.
Last but not least, in the case won last Friday at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, Agent Green secured not only the suspension but also the annulment of the acts providing for the logging of 20 virgin forest compartments in the wildest parts of Domogled – Valea Cernei National Park and Platoul Mehedinți Geopark, forests with recorded average ages of between 100 and 180 years that are part of the UNESCO buffer zone.
Although they form part of the 8747 hectares identified by the organization as potential virgin forests for inclusion in the National Catalogue of Virgin Forests, the authorities put the compartments up for auction and appealed following the suspension at the same time last year.
Gabriel Păun, president of Agent Green, says: “The authorities’ efforts to destroy these virgin forests are shameful. We are talking about areas of exceptional biodiversity value, with monumental trees even more than 300 years old, which form part of the UNESCO buffer zone.”
A total of 708 compartments covering 8747 hectares of forest were identified by the environmental organization for transfer to a strict protection regime, a procedure requiring the authorities to halt logging and auctions until a decision following field and document checks. Under Ministerial Order 2525/2016, the Forest Guard must verify the documents and inspect on the ground all areas reported by any party, then publish them on its website for studies towards inclusion in the National Catalogue of Virgin Forests.
Legend: Yellow — the 20 compartments; bright green — UNESCO forests; pale green — forests with a high degree of naturalness, identified by the PRIMOFARO study, which must urgently be protected to support the UNESCO site’s ecological integrity and connectivity
Cătălina Rădulescu, Agent Green lawyer*: “The authorities’ insistence on ensuring they would fragment key habitats for Romania’s emblematic species, which have disappeared from most European states, surprised us this time. Without checking the compartments on the ground, although reports indicated they were virgin forests, they put the forest up for auction illegally. Even the court failed to persuade them to leave the trees standing through its initial decision, and they chose to invest time and resources in a final hope of exploiting the wildest areas in this part of the country.”*
These forests are identical to and neighbouring those listed as UNESCO World Heritage, but were completely ignored when the protected sites were designated. In Domogled-Valea Cernei National Park, the authorities chose to include the pastures in the alpine zone of the Cernei and Godeanu Mountains in the strict protection zone rather than the virgin beech forests below it.
The protected UNESCO site “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe” protects Europe’s most valuable beech forests, including three forest complexes in Domogled-Valea Cernei National Park, the Ciucevele Cernei, Iauna-Craiova and Coronini-Bedina components*. Maintaining the protected area’s ecological integrity and connectivity is fundamental to biodiversity.*
Agent Green considers that the Ministry of the Environment must amend Ministerial Order 3397/2012 on the criteria and indicators for virgin forests by fully incorporating the Good Practice Guide for identifying virgin and quasi-virgin forests, which currently has no legal status. The forest identification procedure must be clear, complete, in nature’s interests, include mandatory field verification and leave no room for interpretations that could negatively affect the validation of Europe’s last virgin forests. Inexplicably, although issued by the same institution, the two procedures do not coincide and even contradict each other in certain respects.
The organization also considers that the Ministry of the Environment must check the fulfilment of official duties at Vâlcea Forest Guard, responsible for the areas concerned by the cases won by Agent Green, for its abusive interpretation of virgin forest criteria and for discrediting the institution in which it operates by initiating an unfounded appeal.
To date, none of the 708 compartments handled by Agent Green has been validated for specialist studies and inclusion in the National Catalogue of Virgin Forests. Environmental activists express concern over this, given that 80% of virgin forests for which studies have actually been prepared have not been included in the National Catalogue*.*
Contact:
Catalina Rădulescu, Agent Green lawyer, info@agentgreen.org, Telephone 0740 161 116
Gabriel Păun, president of Agent Green, office@agentgreen.org
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