The new Forest Code – a missed opportunity for Romania’s forests

Bucharest, 19 January 2025 – Agent Green denounces the serious shortcomings of the new Forest Code, recently adopted by Romania’s Parliament and published in the Official Gazette no. 7 of 9 January 2025. “Instead of bringing structural changes to protect forests and stop abuses, the new legislative framework perpetuates systemic problems, encourages the degradation of forest ecosystems, biodiversity loss and worsening climate change,” says Gabriel Păun, president of Agent Green, the recent UN “Champion of the Earth” award winner.

Here you can find the complete analysis of the new Forest Code:

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The main problems identified by the specialists led by Cătălin Turiga, a forestry engineer at Agent Green, are:

1. Absence of serious reforms and worsening dysfunctions. The new Forest Code does not separate regulatory, management and commercial activities, which all remain under the same unprotective umbrella. This overlap of responsibilities perpetuates conflicts of interest and weakens the entire forestry system.
2. The national forest estate (FFN), under increasing pressure. Romania is gradually losing substantial forest areas because permissive regulations facilitate their removal from the national forest estate (FFN). Land with forest vegetation outside the FFN, although meeting the definition of forest, is not officially recognized, exposing over 500,000 ha of forests with timber worth at least 15 billion euros to uncontrolled deforestation.
3. The national afforestation programme drastically reduced. The afforestation target has been reduced 33-fold: from 2 million ha by 2035 (initial plan) to just 60,000 ha by 2030, a decision that increases the risk of aridification and undermines efforts to tackle climate change and restore affected ecosystems.
4. Regulations that favour abuses, such as:

• Clear-cutting disguised as ecological reconstruction.
• Construction and facilities in park forests, including night lighting or the planting of invasive exotic species.
• Construction of logging roads without proper design and environmental assessments, increasing the risk of soil and forest degradation.

5. Weakened controls and strict regulations. The changes mean that approval from the forest guard is no longer required for works near the forest edge for projects of national or local interest. Timber marking also continues to depend on a rudimentary instrument, the forestry marking hammer, which has been involved in numerous cases of falsification. This marking hammer can mean both a presumption of guilt against honest foresters and the perfect alibi for thieves.
6. The integrity of forestry staff remains problematic. Forestry staff remain among the main actors involved in modern timber theft through manipulation of official documents. Increasing their salaries by 25%, without deep reform and integrity assessments, is not a real solution.
7. Citizens’ free access to forests is an ambiguous victory. Although access is theoretically guaranteed, forest managers can “temporarily” restrict access to large areas, citing reasons such as fire risk, logging or hunting. Such restrictions can be extended abusively throughout the year, preventing free public access.

Matters of extreme concern in the new Forest Code

• Reduction of FFN areas for various projects: permanent removal of land from the estate for construction such as cemeteries, places of worship or subsurface extraction, without compensation mechanisms.
• Promotion of commercial hunting: Romsilva retains the right to establish fenced hunting complexes, veritable “extermination camps” for wildlife.
• Dangerous definitions of ecological reconstruction, allowing clear-cutting in mixed forests of high conservation value under the false pretext of natural restoration.

Positive aspects of the new Forest Code

Agent Green welcomes the introduction of a few useful measures but considers them insufficient and far from compensating for the enormous negative impact of the new Forest Code.

• Modern monitoring technologies: real-time access to timber traceability data for authorities.
• Limiting clear-cutting in protected areas: exceptions are limited to short-rotation stands such as poplar and willow. This is a victory for Agent Green following the complaint to the European Commission that led to infringement proceedings beginning in February 2020, which will continue until all the problems raised by the organization are resolved.
• Regulation of conflicts of interest: the definition of a conflict of interest for forestry staff is extended to include relatives up to the second degree.

Agent Green’s demands

To protect Romania’s forest and prevent its accelerated and irreversible degradation, Agent Green proposes:

1. Changing the architecture of the forestry system by clearly separating administrative, commercial, regulatory and control functions among different entities.
2. Establishing a national programme to afforest 40% of the country’s area.
3. Adapting forestry to climate change through strict protection of 10% of the national forest estate, in line with the EU biodiversity strategy.
4. Practising close-to-nature forestry in the remaining 90% of Romania’s forest: banning clear-cutting, progressive cuts and salvage cuts. Permanently retaining at least 70% of the native standing timber volume on every forested hectare in Romania.
5. Creating a legislative framework that guarantees genuinely free public access to forests and combats abuses by managers.
6. Full digitalization of traceability processes and the monitoring of illegal logging.
7. Periodic assessment of forestry staff integrity and strict penalties for abuses.

More details in Agent Green’s vision for Romania’s forest.

“I am concerned and disappointed to see that the Romanian state sees only the money from cubic metres of timber in the forest and ignores all its other functions. The new Forest Code will inevitably lead to Romania’s aridification, biodiversity loss and worsening extreme weather. I call on the government and parliament to change this dangerous course and become beneficial participants in restoring forest health,” Păun said in closing.