Round Table Wood. State. Money. Who, to whom and how much

SOS Forestry workers
Disaster. Resuscitation. Bankruptcy
These disturbing words most often sounded during the meeting of participants of the All-Ukrainian roundtable «The forest. State. Money. Who, to whom and so much, recently held at the National University of Life and nature management with the participation of the State agency of forest Resources of Ukraine, representatives of ministries, leading scholars, the World Bank, the EU, Independent Expert partnership.
What is caused by such anxiety around the forestry of our country? Why are they so worried about the fate of the forest economy?
Not only that which becomes familiar to the plots of TV channels, who love to catch a sensational rumors about the alleged systematic destruction of our green riches.
We say “supposedly” because it is already unrefuted by the licesters: now there is no in the woods, and above all the Carpathian region, where it would shine the foxes of forested arrays. Even at this meeting it was authoritative: now each area of the previously cut forest is “populated” by young trees. Only in the current year, the participants of the event, for seven months planted and sown young seedlings in the area of 32 thousand hectares, which is 117 percent to the annual task. At the same time, the guards of the forest stopped the illicit felling of wood to the sum of 15 thousand cubic meters: pine, spruce, oak, beech.
And the anxiety and feeling of troubles are coming from the fact that the current year for the first time during the existence of our young country, the state threw its own forest industry, without highlighting its support for a penny! This has already led to a catastrophic deterioration in economic activity of the forestry enterprises of the South and eastern Ukraine, which in the eight months of this year is practically brought to bankruptcy. The refusal of budget support has caused the situation in which the workers of forest protection of south and eastern Ukraine since the beginning of the year do not receive salaries and are exempt from work. Due to lack of financing the work on creation of new protective plantings on the low-productive and degraded lands has been stopped, there was no possibility to conduct fire-prevention measures. Not to mention that the lack of proper forest protection leads to an increase in the number of self-contained runes.
Speakers emphasized the fact that the ecological system of the country due to weakening of forestry works, strengthening of water and wind erosion, degradation of agricultural lands on hundreds of thousands hectares of southern lands and Eastern oblasts. For all these there are serious losses of the state due to reduction of productivity of agricultural crops.
The participants of the Roundtable emphasized the fact that, despite the invitation to take part in the work of this authoritative collection of representatives of Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Finance and Agrarian policy , their invitation was proìgnorovane.
Participants of the roundtable took a request to the leaders of the government, Verkhovna Rada, people’s Deputies of Ukraine, specialised ministries with a request to delve into problems and urgently revise the financial policy of our forestry State.
A viewpoint of acting head of the state committee of Ukraine Christina Yushkevych:
— At the roundtable discussion, where not only the issues of the current situation concerning the management of forestry activities, in particular in the southeastern regions of Ukraine, but also the appeal to the Government and the Verkhovna Rada were violated, the number of the most acute Problems of today’s management in the forest sphere of Ukraine.
The sharp talk is caused primarily by the fact that 2016-th – the first year since the date of independence of our country, when the forestry industry of Ukraine has appeared without any financial support, is actually thrown into the fate.
I am not talking about the fact that the specificity of our industry is such that permanent support from the state is needed even by the resource, Western Forest farms. And what is already up to the eastern and southern economies, where the forest and the absence of harvesting and sale of wood, here is just a blatant need of constant attention to them and support of their activity by our state.
Paradox. Forestry of Ukraine only for the year 2015 brought to the State Treasury almost three and a half billion hryvnias. And to cover the cost for conducting economic activity of the poor on the forest farms this year did not receive a penny. South and east of Ukraine is the first of all green plantations that protect soils from erosion, from suhoans, promote high yield of agricultural crops.
Due to the fact that the funds were not allocated to support the licesters of southeastern regions, we had this year to work in survival mode when even reached such extremes as through the trade union organizations of the resource areas listed Colleagues of the non-wooded regions their two-day earnings, to give possibility of the south and the east at least somehow exist.
Yet we have lost hundreds of workers — highly professional forest specialists who have been forced to seek more paid jobs in quite other industries. And this in turn led to tangible losses in the entire forest management complex in the south and east.
Therefore, we have now vigorously acted so that at least next year to prevent the catastrophe mentioned at the Roundtable meeting.
We have developed the concept of the state target program for development of the forest industry of Ukraine, which includes the system of financing of the planned measures. We hope that in this case we will find understanding of the Government and, first of all, the Ministry of Finance, as well as the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Lately we have held useful meetings in the Budget Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament, with a number of deputies representing different regions of Ukraine. They expressed their willingness to support us and allocate the necessary funds.
Going back to the sphere of our activity in the east and south of Ukraine in 2016, I want to say that because of the problems I talked about, we failed to reproduce the protective plantations that are badly needed for agricultural production. For reference say: Agrarians figured that the polaterials are added to the yield of eight percent of the products.
If we have updated 32, 000 hectares of forest plantings, this figure could be a few times greater than the normal financing.
If we in the year 2016 vberly forests from big fires, then the necessary financial support would at all to minimize the fire hazard in the south-eastern areas. It is necessary to say that the spent funds on fire-prevention measures give the country much more resources savings than the most spent money.
Appropriate funds and the strengthening of forest protection. If we are committed to decisively do illegal felling, the significant force must be thrown into the south-eastern forested areas, because it is there that now increases the number of cases of unauthorized deforestation.
At the meeting of the Budget Committee we said that we ask for the year 2017 to allocate us for the necessary measures only 684 million hryvnia — a meager amount on the background of other national expenditures.
I think that the Round table meeting, where all these and other problems are discussed, will push for even more strengthening of forestry activities of Ukraine, to multiplication of forest riches of our state, improvement of environment.

By materials: www.golos.com.ua