The new Forest Code approved by the Government: a brutal attack on national security

The new Forest Code approved by the Government: a brutal attack on national security
Agent Green asks Romania’s president to mediate urgently on this issue

Bucharest, 22 March 2024 — Agent Green is in shock after the Government yesterday approved the bill for a new Forest Code that endangers national security.

“We are talking about a real attack on Romania’s forests, which have already been fragmented, degraded and made vulnerable by abusive, massive logging over the past 20 years. Forests have already lost their resilience to climate change, although they should be the main shield to mitigate it. The Forest Code approved by the Government endangers absolutely every citizen of the country and permanently undermines key constitutional rights. It is also a profoundly anti-European move favouring transient private interests,” said Gabriel Păun, president of Agent Green.

Here are some of the arguments against the new Forest Code put forward by the environmental organisation’s specialists:

• The proposed measures will turn Romania’s native forests into plantations similar to agricultural ones. Timber production would become the forest’s main function. Other key functions — social benefits, a climate shield, biodiversity, recreation, protection of infrastructure (roads, railways, power lines, reservoirs etc.) and water sources — will be overwhelmingly reduced
• 838,000 hectares of forest (roughly the combined area of the capital and Cluj County) outside the national forest estate could be deforested (permanently cleared), as the new code relaxes their regulation
• It permits new, large-scale illegal restitutions of publicly owned forest land that has always belonged to the state
• It fragments the national forest estate
• It creates a framework for multiplying legal and illegal buildings and developments within the national forest estate
• It allows logging above the timber volume approved for a decade
• It allows certain works to continue under an expired forest management plan
• It permits the most aggressive types of felling (progressive and clear-cutting) without a management plan on forest properties smaller than 10 ha
• It allows clear-cuts larger than 3 ha in certain situations, with more than 2 years allowed for reforestation
• Competitions and activities using motorised off-road vehicles (ATVs, enduro motorcycles etc.) may take place in forests outside protected natural areas
• The long-awaited deep reform of the forestry sector will not happen
• Conflicts of interest and abuse: staff of private-company forest districts are authorised to conduct inspections, identify forestry administrative and criminal offences, stop people, check their identity and impose penalties. All these powers overlap with those of the Forest Guards
• Regulatory and inspection activities are not assigned to separate bodies, nor are management and sales activities separated
• ROMSILVA remains the favoured hybrid company holding supremacy (a monopoly) over:
  – the market for products and services specific to the national forest estate
  – management of the 22 most important protected natural areas (12 national parks and 10 natural parks)
  – the sector for breeding, using and improving equines
• No new body independent of the Environment Ministry is established to deal exclusively with the sale of forest products
• Public access to forests remains at the mercy of managers and owners
• The decision to make forest management plans transparent is left to the Environment Ministry’s discretion, although Agent Green has definitively won its case against this state institution, with the court ordering it to publish all management plans for all Romanian forests (including maps and parcel descriptions)
• Romsilva receives an unlimited right to build enclosures in state-owned public forests to breed and hunt wild animals in captivity
• Confiscation of a vehicle caught during an illegal shipment is no longer provided for.

The only partially positive aspects Agent Green has observed in the new Forest Code are:

• Compensation for private forest owners choosing more protective management methods
• Some penalties are increased and new forestry offences are added to combat certain modern theft methods
• Clear-cutting is banned in protected natural areas, but other types of felling in short production cycles are allowed, meaning trees will not be permitted to live and grow beyond a quarter of their lifespan

Agent Green calls on Romania’s president to mediate between the executive, legislature and civil society in favour of a new Forest Code that allows forests to fulfil all their functions in the long term and become the main shield for mitigating climate change.

Agent Green’s comments on the draft Forest Code when it was submitted for public consultation:

/observatiile-agent-green-cu-privire-la-noul-cod-silvic

Agent Green’s vision for Romania’s forests:

Download PDF in Romanian

Press contacts:

office@agentgreen.org

Dan-Cătălin TURIGA, Agent Green forestry engineer, +40 728 273 782, dan-catalin.turiga@agentgreen.org