Agent Green’s proposed priorities for the new environment minister

To: Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests

For the attention of: Minister Mircea Fechet

Dear Minister,

Agent Green proposes that you publicly commit to the following priority courses of action for biodiversity protection, given the situation in Romania, the challenges posed by the globally declared climate emergency and the targets Romania has undertaken within the EU:

I. Protected natural areas

1. 100% strict protection in national and natural parks; a complete ban on logging in reserves, natural monuments and national parks through the initiation of an emergency ordinance.
2. Ban any intervention in compartments/forests that are potentially virgin and semi-virgin.
3. Strict protection/a moratorium for the old-growth forests identified in the Primofaro study (8% of Romania’s forest = approximately 2.5% of Romania’s total area). Include these forests in the 10% non-intervention target.
4. Environmental assessment for any intervention in Natura 2000 sites.
5. Abandon clear-cutting and shelterwood cutting in Natura 2000 sites. Practise close-to-nature forestry in this type of protected area, maintaining canopy cover at a minimum of 0.7. Slovenia is an example of a country successfully practising this model.
6. Free access to Romania’s forests and the establishment of a commission to approve tourist trails; protect marked tourist trails from logging, along with the forests around them and tourist resorts. Issue legislation regulating restrictions and create a database of all marked tourist trails and resorts in Romania together with the Ministry of Tourism.
7. Construct facilities such as refuges, cabins, etc. only after undergoing the appropriate assessment procedure under Emergency Ordinance 57/2007 and Order 19/2010 on the implementation methodology.
8. Ban the use of pesticides, fertilisers and genetically modified organisms (including gene-edited organisms) in all categories of protected natural areas and within 1 km of them.
9. Publish the Inspire boundaries of protected areas on the ANPM and SUMAL platforms for viewing and download. Issue written instructions to all subordinate institutions to apply the boundaries under Emergency Ordinance 49/2016 by correctly implementing this law.
10. All protected areas of national and European importance (including national and natural parks) should be managed only by ANANP, with funding from the state budget and EU funds. NGOs and municipalities may undertake projects for management components. For this purpose, an appropriate staffing structure must be established, with experts who provide guarantees of integrity and have no conflicts of interest, together with sufficient funding. At present, ANANP’s management of these areas is deficient.
11. Digitise the preparation of management plans and the monitoring and guarding system. (The SINCRON model.)
12. The Romanian Gendarmerie should guard natural and national parks and Natura 2000 sites through video systems and specialised teams, while IGSU should handle firefighting, with helicopters provided.
13. Implement the biodiversity strategy (10% strict protection and 30% areas) through a transparent, participatory process, giving priority to protecting the forests identified in Primofaro. Ensure a legal protection regime similar to that for land already included in protected natural areas for the areas that will count towards the targets of 10% strict protection and 30% Natura 2000 site area, through legislation adopted by Romania’s Parliament. Under European law, protection must apply from the date the inclusion of land in these targets is proposed. Accordingly, the land must be individually identified through legislation issued by the Ministry of Environment, stating the proposed boundaries and the legal protection regime corresponding to the natural area to be established there.
14. As part of the transparent, participatory process of identifying the 10% strict protection area, identify all virgin and quasi-virgin forests by checking the records of all compartments aged at least 110 years, with canopy cover of 0.6 or more and no main fellings in the last 2 decades (those with sanitary or accidental fellings will be checked). Following the selection of compartments from records, specialists in ecology, biology and forestry should verify them in the field against the criteria of Ministerial Order 3397/2012, following the good-practice guide: http://www.mmediu.ro/articol/ghidul-de-bune-practici-privind-intocmirea-si-verificarea-studiilor-de-identificare-a-padurilor-virgine-cvasivirgine/3237
15. Rewrite the protected areas law to reform the national protected areas system through a transparent, participatory process. Regulate in law the UNESCO ancient forest sites in the Carpathians and other regions, and their buffer zones.
16. Establish a compensation programme under Emergency Ordinance 57/2007 and European rules for localities within protected natural areas and those bordering parks.
17. Ensure a coherent database with information on protected species and habitats, distribution ranges and management plans at national, Community and international levels. This need arises from Romania’s European obligations and received a negative assessment in the latest Environmental Implementation Review (EIR). Currently, all Natura 2000 standard forms are published in one enormous PDF (2939 pages for SCI and 1346 for SPA), which is very hard to use. There are no public interactive maps where people can find the relevant information either.
18. Protect nationally and European-protected species that constitute game through protected natural areas’ management plans so that these meet each species’ conservation objectives. Integrate the hunting ground management plan into the protected natural area’s management plan and entrust it to the authority/legal entity responsible for managing that area.
19. Implement species conservation action plans, for example Ministerial Order 625/2018 concerning Ursus Arctos (Brown bear), given that no implementation acts exist to date, which could lead to a new infringement procedure against Romania.
20. Adopt management plans for all protected natural areas. At present, only half of these areas have adopted management plans; some have expired and have not been renewed.
21. Penalise legal-entity managers that fail to adopt protected natural areas’ management plans and regulations within the legal deadlines by terminating management contracts and sanctioning the protected areas’ directors and the president of ANANP. Leaving these objectives without penalties in the given circumstances endangers compliance with these areas’ conservation objectives.
22. Adopt specific conservation measures for protected natural areas designated as special areas of conservation by Government Decision 625/2022. The lack of specific conservation measures will lead to a new infringement procedure against Romania. We stress that conservation objectives described in management plans are not the same as the conservation objectives of special areas of conservation.
23. Set a deadline for completing environmental assessments of forest management plans overlapping protected natural areas covered by Emergency Ordinance 177/2022 amending and supplementing Law no. 46/2008 – the Forest Code and establishing forestry measures. Currently, there is only a deadline for initiating environmental assessment procedures; according to our research, none of the forest districts has submitted a notification to the APM for this purpose.
24. Adopt a procedure for identifying and restoring degraded habitats and establish criminal penalties for acts causing habitat degradation, regardless of the material damage caused.
25. Ensure that effective studies of impacts on water bodies are carried out with public consultation. Currently, there are no public consultations, and recent changes to the water law permit construction on or connected with water without a water management endorsement. This may degrade habitats and affect species when the works are in protected natural areas, or reduce water-body quality, effects impossible to remedy once the damaging structures have been built.

II. Administrative reform

1. Reform Romsilva by removing its protected areas management segment, transferring those areas to ANANP or other independent or state structures, and abolishing forest districts for forests included in Natura 2000 sites, which will be managed by the protected area’s management structure;
2. Amend the timber marketing regulation to reduce Romsilva’s role as a dominant company in the timber market. Remove its auction-organising powers until the future marketing structure is established;
3. Make the National Environmental Guard’s and Forest Guard’s inspections more effective through equipment, procedures and integrity measures for inspectors. Professionalise these structures, whose staff should have technical skills in environmental protection and biodiversity.
4. Reform the Romanian Waters Company. Retain only its management and monitoring powers. Its control and inspection department must move to the Environmental Guard, avoiding the passing of reports of legal violations between structures and the delay or outright failure to conduct any investigation, as happens today.
5. Digitise the water monitoring system and ensure public access to its data.
6. Withdraw inspection, control and verification powers concerning the forestry regime from all forest districts (state, private, rapps, incds), assigning them exclusively to the National Forest Guard.
7. Amend the status of forestry personnel to raise minimum vocational training standards for entry into the system for staff occupying forest ranger and district chief positions. (Currently we leave the forest in the hands of people with 10 years of schooling without a baccalaureate + 6 months of vocational school.) Organise vocational studies and certification.
8. Set a maximum interim leadership period for all Romsilva structures of 4 months, without extension for the same individuals, until its reorganisation is completed. Interim appointees must meet the requirements of Article 14 of the Forest Code.
9. Publish all complete state and private forest management plans on the Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests website, with ALL available data, especially forest management maps and compartment descriptions.
10. Reopen the public consultation on the Forest Code with a longer consultation period (3 months). A period of only 4-5 days cannot be retained for the final form of such a complex piece of legislation with over 100 articles.
11. Establish rules to prevent conflicts of interest among people certified to conduct environmental assessments. Introduce a legal rule prohibiting the same people from conducting the environmental assessment and preparing the plan or project being assessed. Also remove the direct relationship between the project beneficiary and the environmental assessor: the assessor should be appointed and engaged through an independent structure, with direct payments between beneficiary and assessor prohibited. Otherwise, the person hired will never draw conclusions against the person paying for their services, affecting the quality of assessment reports and having negative consequences for environmental factors and citizens’ well-being.

III. SUMAL

1. Develop SUMAL with new modules covering other specific activities too: regeneration, hunting management, forest guarding and protection, certification and non-timber products.
2. Introduce into the public application the following data provided for in:

• All transport endorsements, available indefinitely (rather than only for the last 3 days), from the launch of Forest Inspector in 2016
• Routes of vehicles carrying timber, available in real time
• All up-to-date APVs (timber valuation documents) and correct GPS coordinates
• Satellite alerts for gaps in the forest without an APV, or gaps larger than those specified in the APV
• All forest management maps and data updated, including for local administrative units’ and private forests (currently missing)
• The latest version of the virgin forest catalogue
• The Inspire boundaries of all protected areas published in the application
• The internal zoning of national and natural parks uploaded to the application, as in the 2016 application
• Current Sentinel satellite images
• The option to select several layers simultaneously in the application, rather than just one
• Optimise the application so that data from the selected layer also loads nationally without requiring the detailed zoom level currently needed

IV. Compliance with environmental rules in urban development

1. Introduce an obligation to maintain at least 26 m² of green space per resident in urban settlements.
2. Protect all peri-urban forests and issue legislation to this end through a transparent, participatory process. These forests’ functions must be exclusively recreation, biodiversity protection and reducing pollution in urban areas.
3. Set minimum distances between new industrial facilities emitting toxic gases into the air and localities and residential areas.
4. Increase the forested area around all urban settlements by planting abandoned or degraded agricultural land.

Thank you for your attention, Minister. Please respond in writing, point by point, to all the proposed issues.

Yours respectfully,

Gabriel PĂUN

President of Agent Green