The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine is currently considering a draft resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine prepared by the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture, which would legalize large-scale deforestation.
This was warned by activists from the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG) on their social media pages.
According to their information, the Ministry of Economy proposes, as an "experiment," to allow "the removal of green vegetation on agricultural land for the purpose of enabling the use of such land for its intended purpose." Activists explain that behind these bureaucratic terms lies the simple legalization of a deforestation scheme: a forest in the land cadastre suddenly becomes a "field," after which it is cleared.
The UNCG warns that this resolution contradicts Ukraine's European integration commitments, since the EU Regulation on deforestation (EUDR) clearly states that the actual status of a territory (the physical presence of forest) is more important than the cadastral status of a plot.
This draft governmental resolution also conflicts with the Forest Code of Ukraine and a decision of the Supreme Court, which stipulate that self-seeded forests are also considered forests.
“We do not understand how this can be happening in a country that is simultaneously implementing the European regulation on combating deforestation and everywhere proclaims the need to increase forest areas. In a country where hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests have been destroyed by Russian aggression? But this is the reality…”, the activists concluded.
They demand that all provisions promoting deforestation be excluded from the draft resolution.
Recently, EcoPolitic reported on the problem of the lack of complete and reliable information regarding illegal logging – the information is quite fragmented. The situation could be improved with a unified format of public reporting, but government bodies are in no hurry to implement it, instead shifting responsibility onto each other.
