The Minister of Environment Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strelets and the European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkavičius agreed to combine initiatives to preserve and multiply forests.
The Ukrainian initiative to regenerate forests fully complies with the new EU forest strategy and the UN Strategic Plan, the Ministry of Environment reports on Facebook.
It is noted that Strelets and Sinkavichus together visited the breeding and seed center in Zhytomyr Oblast, which was built after the start of the full-scale invasion 15 km from Belarus.
The press service said that they inspected the modern system of three-level video surveillance of forest areas. The European Commissioner was also shown intermediate results and plans for reforming forestry.
Sinkavichus emphasized that Ukraine's forestry practices during active hostilities are indicative for Europe. After all, Ukraine continues to plant forests on the de-occupied and burned territories, as well as to implement the pre-war afforestation program.
Strelets noted that joint work on the preservation and expansion of forests once again proves that Ukraine is part of the EU.
"The Ukrainian forest regeneration initiative fully complies with the new EU forest strategy until 2030, which calls for planting 3 billion trees by 2030, as well as the UN Strategic Plan for Forests for 2017-2030, one of the goals of which is to increase the area of forests by 3%," he said.
Sinkavichus also emphasized that Russia's armed aggression cannot be an obstacle to "building bridges" between Ukraine and the EU, on the contrary, it motivates to unite even more.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved amendments to the Forest Reproduction Rules, which will regulate the preservation of self-seeded forests, meadows and pastures within the framework of the law "On the preservation of forests".
As EcoPolitic previously reported, the National Commission for UNESCO was offered to consider the possibility of introducing a new serial transnational object "Primitive forests and ancient coniferous upper mountain forests of the Carpathians" to the UNESCO World Heritage List.
