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Initiatives · Overview · Forests · Publications & Maps · News · GFW Russia About GFW RussiaStrategy · Results · Future Activities · Collaborators · Steering Committee · Supporters · Photo Gallery
Global Forest Watch (GFW) Russia is an informal, non-advocacy partnership of organizations that share the goal of sound forest use in Russia. GFW Russia would like to see a forest sector that has the profits, capacity and will to internalize the social and environmental costs associated with its activities. GFW Russia approaches this objective in three ways: · Through analysis and engagement, to create awareness and urgency about under-assessed problems. · Through production of educational materials, to improve decision making in the forest sector · Through assessment and transparency, to produce operational tools and guide actions of responsible forest companies. No advocacy work is allowed under the GFW Russia name, and all reports must undergo rigorous scientific review. GFW Russia was founded in 1999 in Krasnoyarsk. StrategyThe current focus of GFW Russia is to map precaution areas in the forest landscape. These are areas where high conservation values are likely to be found and special precaution should precede industrial use. GFW Russia’s initial work has been to identify and map the remaining large areas of intact forest landscapes in Russia. The focus on intactness has the following justification:
Identifying and describing the remaining intact forest landscapes is therefore an urgent but difficult task.
ResultsThe first report of GFW Russia, The Intact Forest Landscapes of Northern European Russia, was published in October of 2001 in Russian and English editions. This is the culmination of several years of increasingly sophisticated mapping work in the Russian European North, spurred by the rapid disappearance of intact forest and the need to precisely define the extent of the old-growth logging moratorium agreed between the Finnish forest industry and Russian and Finnish environmental groups. An important publication in this process that pre-dates GFW Russia is The Last of the Old-Growth Forests of Boreal Europe, published in December of 1999 by Taiga Rescue Network. The second report of GFW Russia is Atlas of Russia's Forest Landscapes, published in April of 2002 in Russian and English editions. This report extends the GFW Russia mapping approach to the forest zone of the entire Russian Federation. This is the first time that a systematic method, supported by detailed satellite images and ground verification, has been used to search the biggest forest in the world – the Russian taiga – for remaining wilderness. The maps, mostly at the scale of 1:1.5 million, are sufficiently detailed to be used by the forest industry and other land users to exercise precaution. Global Forest Watch is currently working with its Russian colleagues to write a carbon assessment of land use and land use change in Russian and English. Future ActivitiesFuture activities of GFW Russia will include follow-up work to the Atlas of Russia’s Intact Forest Landscapes. Making the Atlas was a necessary first step towards precautionary land use but the results must not stay on the shelf. Decision makers in Russia and abroad must be made aware of the results and the philosophy behind them. The general public must also be reached. Another follow-up activity is to refine the map in threatened intact forest landscapes and differentiate the conservation values, in support of zoning decisions. Future activities will also extend outside of the large intact landscapes ones already mapped. These landscapes contain important conservation values that have not yet been mapped. The forest industry urgently needs decision support information for these landscapes of active forestry, so that precaution can be exercised where needed. It must be not assumed from the Atlas that conservation values are missing in the areas outside of the remaining intact forest landscapes.
CollaboratorsGFW Russia is an informal network of Russian civil society organizations. Some 15 Russian organizations from all over the country participate through mapping, data collection, and/or fieldwork. All care about the fate of the forested landscapes of Russia; none has any direct economic interest in their management.
Steering CommitteeGFW Russia is led by a Steering Committee. Its members participate in a personal capacity but all work in organizations that are active in GFW Russia.
SupportersForest Watch Russia supporters include:
The grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has
made it possible for GFW Russia to continue its work mapping forest
landscapes with high conservation values. Additional support is sorely
needed and would be most welcome. Corporations wishing to use existing
or future precaution maps are encouraged to contact GFW Russia to
discuss mapping criteria and forms of support. GFW Russia Photo Gallery
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