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Strategic Recommendations
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8. Strategic recommendations
The following constitute proposals for improving the environmental situation in Dnipro Basin forests, enhancing their environmental functions, and conserving landscape and biodiversity.
Forest Policy and Legislation
1. The forest industry legislative framework should be revised and amended to include provisions of the necessity to conserve and develop biological and landscape diversity. To this end, we propose the following: to draft and incorporate provisions on the conservation and restoration of biological and landscape diversity and on the application of sustainable forestry management and use principles; to amplify the regional “Regulations for organizing and developing forest industry” and other documents on forestry management in the Russian part of the basin with provisions on restoring forest biological and landscape diversity, on preserving forest environmental and resource potential and on creating conditions for the conservation of flora and fauna populations; to develop legislation instruments regulating the norms of anthropogenic load (pressure) on the forest landscapes of different types, as well as the norms and regimes of recreational forest use, etc.
2. The process of introducing forest certification on the national (Belarus and Ukraine) and regional (Russia) levels should be accelerated. Forestry management authorities, in cooperation with environmental NGOs and international organizations, should develop and implement a forest certification training program for the industry personnel, including the publication of required training and awareness raising materials. The system of public ecological audit of the forestry management in the Dnipro Basin forests should be further developed.
3. In developing the national long-time governmental policies of forest conservation and forest use, special attention should be paid to the cooperation with the private sector, non-governmental organizations, academic and research institutions, local population and local governments.
4. In developing the riparian countries’ forest policies, the principle of synergy of environmental conventions (biodiversity, Ramsar, frame convention on climate change, on fighting desertification/land degradation, Arhuss conventions) should be applied.
5. The principles of ministerial process of the European forest conservation declared in the documents of the European Forest Ministers’ meetings in Strasbourg, Helsinki and Lisbon should be implemented more consistently and systematically.
Forestry Management and Use Practices
6. A regional (basin-wide) program or a set of coordinated national programs of using ineffectively drained lands and/or lands disturbed with peat land development, and of mitigating the adverse impact of a large-scale land drainage in the Dnipro Basin should be developed and realized.
7. A target sectoral program of afforestation of abandoned peat mines and lands removed from agricultural use should be developed and implemented.
8. Management of the forests transferred from agricultural enterprises and those in their use should be ensured, and a target program of sustainable use of such forests should be developed.
9. An interstate basin-wide program of expanding forest areas should be developed and realized.
10. An interstate basin-wide target program (or a set of coordinated national programs) of increasing environmental efficiency of forest industry should be developed and implemented.
11. Systems of forest area development should be designed with due regard to the needs of conserving biological and landscape diversity (based on the principles of landscape development, key biotopes, environmental corridors, wider use of mixed forests, stimulating natural restoration, etc).
12. Stock of protective plantations in the Dnipro Basin (particularly in the forest-steppe and steppe zones) should be taken in order to assess their condition and to design activities aimed at their conservation and enhancement of their functions and role in biological and landscape diversity conservation; an interstate program of protective afforestation should be developed.
13. Pilot projects with coordinated aims, content and location should be initiated in the three countries in the field of sustainable forestry management and use. Later on, a basin-wide network of sample forests for a model forestry management should be formed on the basis of the model forest ideology. By way of implementing the Memorandum of Understanding between the Federal Forest Service of the Russian Federation and the Forest Service of Environment Canada (1994) within the Model Forest Program, a model forest should be created on the basis of Briansk forest massif (range).
14. Environmentally acceptable forest harvesting technologies (assortment technology, selective felling, use of wheeled logging equipment) should be used more broadly and intensively.
15. A concept of hunting management based on the principles of landscape organization and sustainable development of forest areas should be developed and tested in model hunting forestries.
16. Theoretical principles and methodological recommendations on the use, protection and restoration of small ravine forests in the steppe zone (Ukraine) and of flood-land forests (all countries) in the Dnipro Basin should be worked out.
17. A program of improving recreational use of forests, particularly those in the suburban zones, based on their condition assessment, on substantiated norms of recreational load and on functional zoning of recreational forests should be designed with the account of these norms, networks of environmental routes and paths, etc. Environmentally friendly forms of forest tourism and recreation should be broadly advertised.
Environmental Protection Practices
18. Forest areas should be expanded as part of the environmental reserves by establishing specially protected areas (reserve areas, preserves, national parks, natural landmarks, etc). Forests and forest districts belonging to the natural and cultural heritage should be identified, their environmental status should be determined and appropriate methods of forestry management selected.
19. The state power bodies in charge of the environmental protection and use of natural resources, in cooperation with research and academic institutions, should compile an inventory of habitats of plant and animal species subject to protection in accordance with the international and national environmental legislation (Red Books and so on), design measures for their preservation and notify land users of their respective obligations. They should also organize training programs for forest industry employees and provide forest industry enterprises with the necessary methodological and reference materials.
20. A national Green Book of rare and endangered plant communities of the Republic of Belarus and a regional one of the Russian Federation should be compiled by analogy with the Green Book published in Ukraine.
21. Vulnerable forest ecosystems of the Dnipro Basin should be identified, their international cadastre should be formed and recommendations on their protection and use regimes should be developed.
Research, Monitoring and Education
22. Based on the existing national and regional (in the Russian Federation) forest monitoring systems, as integrated basin-wide system should be set up in order to ensure control of the biodiversity condition and state of forest biological resources.
23. A coordinated (or joint) research program aimed at the assessment of forestry management and use on flora, fauna and landscape diversity should be developed as well as a series of activities to reduce and end their adverse impact. Environmental and economic consequences of the extreme natural and anthropological factors that caused mass destruction of fir forests, big forest fires, massive pine infection with pine fungus and oak forest drying, and the impact of these factors on the Dnipro Basin biological and landscape diversity should be thoroughly assessed.
24. A unified scheme of the Dnipro Basin landscape differentiation should be devised, and the basin landscape, forestry, hunting, recreational and environmental zoning should be carried out.
25. Curricula of universities, colleges and other educational institutions training forest professionals should be amended to reflect the material on conserving and enhancing flora, fauna, landscape and water resources diversity in forest industry, forest use and development.
