RUSSIA is known to be one of the few countries in the world with vast remaining intact forest landscapes (IFLs). These are large areas of connected habitat, free from man-made disturbance that are crucial for mitigating climate change, maintaining water supplies and protecting biodiversity.

However, IFLs are diminishing in Russia; over 1.5 million ha are being lost every year due to human activities, including logging, man-made forest fires, road construction and mining.

In response to this, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), WWF Russia, Greenpeace Russia and seven FSC-certified companies joined forces with the local government in an initiative to grant one of the region’s most significant intact forest landscapes full government protection.

On 1 October 2019, the government agreed to create the Dvinsko-Pinezhsky State Natural Complex Reserve, protecting over 300,000 ha of intact northern taiga and preserving a distinctive range of unbroken habitats for important terrestrial wildlife populations.

The reserve includes a unique array of intact northern taiga between the Northern Dvina and Pinega rivers in Russia. These forests are extremely valuable because they have not been affected by human activities and have remained in a natural state for thousands of years.

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"Intact forests are part of the planet’s natural climate regulation by keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, and at the same time they are rich in rare flora and fauna,” says FSC director general, Kim Carstensen.

The territory is inhabited by more than 60 species of rare animals and plants listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation and the Red Book of the Arkhangelsk region.

Despite the high natural value of these parts of the wild taiga, they have not been officially protected to this day and have been leased out to logging companies. However, companies in the area that are FSC-certified are obliged to comply with high requirements of environmental responsibility. They must engage stakeholders, including environmental organisations and scientists, and protect important environmental values in their leased area. Therefore, FSC-certified companies in the region have undertaken additional environmental obligations, including a moratorium on logging within the boundaries of the protected area that has now been established.

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Currently, FSC certification is the only practical tool in Russia to protect intact forest areas that do not have the status of a protected area. A productive dialogue between environmental organisations and businesses to preserve the unique northern taiga was only possible because of voluntary forest certification.

“It is obvious that without FSC these forests would have been cut down. The decision to create the reserve is also an obvious step towards coordinating the mechanism of management of particularly valuable natural areas within the framework of FSC certification throughout Russia," says Nikolay Shmatkov, director of FSC-Russia.

“All of this was done while taking the local community’s best interest into consideration. Small things like permitting fishing and hunting shows that protecting the landscape will not pose a threat to the local community and ensures that its members will maintain and possibly generate new revenue streams” says Andrey Shegolev, WWF-Russia’s forest programme director.

In August 2019, Titan Group of Companies, WWF-Russia and FSC-Russia signed an agreement to move beyond the achievement of the Dvinsko-Pinezhsky Reserve. The new agreement related to the conservation of intact forest landscapes in the entire lease area of the Titan Group of Companies in the Arkhangelsk region. Titan Group became one of the first logging companies in Russia, which, together with WWF-Russia, carried out the zoning and allocation of particularly valuable intact forest areas on its entire lease, which amounts to 5.7 million ha.

Thanks to the agreement, by 2028 about 30 per cent of all intact areas in the lease of the company is intended to receive protection status by the government of the Arkhangelsk region. The Forest Stewardship Council will continue its active participation in this process.

In Russia, more than 47 million ha of forest are currently certified under the FSC scheme. This is about 25 per cent of all forests leased for logging purposes. In terms of FSC-certified forests, Russia ranks second in the world after Canada. Russian FSC-certified companies within the framework of voluntary agreements conserve about a million hectares of intact forest landscapes, and conservation measures affecting 8.5 million ha of forests with high conservation value have been introduced.

Thanks to FSC, the creation of several protected areas has already been initiated, including Onega Pomorie National Park and Uftyugo-Ileshsky Nature Reserve.