By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — "Greenpeace and our 'greens' have become toys in the hands of powerful forces blocking the implementation of economic reforms ..." That was how Karelia, the government newspaper of the Karelian Republic in north-west Russia, declaimed during April against attempts by environmentalists to stop clear-felling in one of the last extensive regions of old growth forest in Europe.
Since May 1995, when Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin signed an order opening the way for the logging of forests along the Russian-Finnish border, Karelia has become one of modern-day Russia's main environmental battlegrounds.
The protagonists in the fight include environmentalists from Russia, Finland and many other countries, multinational forestry corporations and officials of the environmentally benighted Karelian government.
The tide of battle may now be turning in favour of the forests. On June 13, the Finnish forestry company UPM-Kymmene announced that it would join a moratorium on logging in Karelian old growth forests.
This follows an earlier victory last October, when a Europe-wide campaign forced the Finnish-based multinational ENSO, one of the world's largest paper producers, to declare a one-year halt from January 1 to logging operations in Karelia and neighbouring Murmansk province.
But virgin forests in Karelia are still being cut. During May, Greenpeace Russia and the Biodiversity Conservation Centre presented video material showing the Finnish firm Vainionpaa logging old growth forests in the projected Kalevala national park.
Only three significant tracts of old growth forest now exist in Europe. Apart from the Karelian forest, the others are in the mountains of the Swedish-Norwegian border and in the Komi Republic in the North Urals region of Russia.
The survival into the 1990s of old growth forests in Karelia was an unintended benefit of the Cold War; until a few years ago, access to the border zone was tightly restricted.
Never subjected to systematic logging, these forests harbour a much greater diversity of plant and animal life than adjacent forest regions. They are considered a vital habitat for brown bears, wolves, Karelian deer and beavers.
Environmentalists have urged that the surviving virgin forests of the region be incorporated into a "Fennoscandia Green Belt", to be submitted for UNESCO World Heritage listing. But so far, the forests on the Karelian-Finnish border lack even a comprehensive conservation plan.
"Until this unique territory is given national park status", Greenpeace Russia forest campaign coordinator Sergey Tsyplenkov pointed out during May, "the Russian legislation does not forbid logging, and we can only speak about the moral aspect of the problem".
The plans for the green belt have been given lip service by the federal and Karelian governments. But the real attitude of many officials of the Karelian government, in particular, is that the time to declare a national park is after the forests have been cut up and sold.
Resource-poor apart from its forests, Karelia reportedly derives 60% of its local revenues from the forestry industry. With the coming of "reform", local officials looked forward to a bonanza as the republic was thrown open to international forestry interests.
The foreign corporations, especially Finnish ones, were quick to arrive. A key attraction was timber at dumping prices.
"Vainionpaa pays $5-12 a cubic metre, though timber should be sold for at least $20", a Greenpeace fact sheet states.
The international firms have made only minimal investments, and the benefits of their presence for most of the population have been slight. According to Greenpeace, most of the profits made by the newcomers from Karelia's forest resources have come from value-added processing in Finland and western Europe.
Karelian government officials, however, have waxed fat. One reason cited by the firm ENSO for suspending its operations in Karelia, along with environmental factors, was the corruptness of the local authorities.
Now that the environmental campaign has started to bite, and large international companies are under pressure to justify their operations in Karelia, the local officials are faced with their worst nightmare: having the trough whipped from beneath their snouts. Their squeals have resounded through federal ministerial offices in Moscow.
In an April 22 letter to deputy prime minister Alfred Koch, Karelian administration chief Viktor Stepanov charged that environmentalists were engaging in "unlawful activities" and were creating an "extremely critical situation" in the Karelian economy by trying to persuade foreign companies to stop logging "so-called old growth forests" and to cease importing timber from these areas.
Stepanov urged the federal authorities to "take adequate measures to halt the improper activities of non-government environmental organisations in Karelia and throughout Russia".
On June 5 a group of environmental organisations hit back with an open letter to Stepanov challenging the Karelian leader to provide "unfabricated evidence" of the alleged law-breaking. It went on:
"European countries will not buy timber from old-growth forests, especially after your open threats against environmental organisations."
Pointing out that they do not object to responsible logging, Russian environmentalists have refuted the claim that Karelia's economic survival depends on cutting virgin forests.
"Old growth forests make up no more than 10% of Karelian forests, and represent an insignificant part of the Karelian harvesting area", Greenpeace observed in a press release.
Environmentalists note that the Karelian government has also raised serious obstacles to carrying out one of the pressing tasks facing both environmentalists and the forestry industry: making a detailed inventory of old growth forests in Karelia, to determine which areas can be responsibly logged and which cannot.
A working group to carry out this inventory was supposed to have been formed by the end of January, but the Karelian authorities have resisted collaborating with environmental and scientific organisations.
Meanwhile, the sawdust continues to fly. If pressure from the environmental movement has forced some of the larger international forestry companies to retreat, the same is not necessarily true of smaller operators. The firm Vainionpaa is notorious in Finland as a rogue outfit, with a weakness for practices such as denuding territories of their prime sawlogs while leaving less profitable pulp wood on the site.
The Karelian government has granted Vainionpaa permission to cut 4000 cubic metres — about 20 hectares — in the projected Kalevala national park.
"Another 20,000 cubic metres are being planned, which will take another 100 hectares", ecologist Dmitry Aksenov of the Biodiversity Conservation Centre stated during May.
"We've heard from sources close to the Karelian government that there are plans to cut the whole 2000 hectares of precious forest inside the park", Aksenov continued. "If logging is carried out on this scale, there'll be no need to establish the national park, because the Kalevala old growth forests will have been destroyed."
On May 7 environmentalists with banners reading, "Don't log old growth forests in Karelia" blockaded Vainionpaa's sawmill in the Finnish town of Haukipudas. Other protest actions are likely in countries of western Europe.
"It looks like only international attention can restrain the timber merchants and Karelian officials", Greenpeace Russia's Sergey Tsyplenkov concluded.