World Bank gets itchy fingers in Russia

After a two-year delay, the World Bank is finally ready to release its Russian Federation Forest Policy Review to the public. Pending publication of this report, the Bank has held off financing forestry projects in the vast old-growth forests of Siberia and the Far East. But with Russia╣s cash-starved economy, an eager national forest service and a potentially willing lender, this situation may soon change.

Two potential Bank-financed forestry projects have recently come to the attention of forest activists. Last fall, a US Forest Service memo circulated among the agency seeking personnel with Russian language skills and experience planning large salvage sales. At the request of the World Bank, a team of specialists was to go to central Siberia to help the Russian Federal Forest Service prepare a funding proposal for a massive salvage operation to control a Siberian silkworm infestation across 850,000 hectares. The memo mentioned salvage of a mind-boggling 625-750 million board feet of timber. The project has yet to materialize, and the team never even went to Russia. However, $5 million in Bank funds from an environmental management project in Russia were reallocated for to spray biological control agents in an attempt to control the silkworm infestation.

Little is known about a second World Bank project. Apparently, an environmental studies class at the University of California Santa Cruz is being used by a consulting firm for a World Bank project that intends to dredge logs submerged years ago when they floated them down streams. Whether on not either of these projects becomes a reality, it is clear that Russia and the World Bank are intent on collaborating on forestry projects.

Albania borrows millions to jump-start forestry sector

Last year, Albania signed a loan agreement with the World Bank and Italy to borrow $21.6 million over the next six years to stimulate its ailing forestry sector. The project is concerned with retraining and restructuring the Albanian forest service to more effectively exploit forests within a market economy and includes transformation of this government agency into a │Forest Corporation.▓ Funding is also provided for 53 forest management plans over 160,000 hectares, road maintenance in these 53 areas, pre-commercial thinning and minimal reforestation. One positive component of the project funds an action plan to prevent illegal logging, a serious problem in the country, but this plan is tied to lifting Albania╣s ban on timber exports as soon as 1998. Only two percent of the project budget addresses protected areas, even though the 1995 environmental assessment of the project clearly outlined the creation of 27 new protected forest areas, many of which contain old growth. The Albania loan comes amidst mounting World Bank activity in the forestry sector of central and eastern Europe in recent years.

Croatian loan signed, is Bosnia-Hercegovina next?

In November 1996, the World Bank signed another forestry loan, this time with the government of Croatia for $42 million. Although ostensibly designed to reforest coastal areas destroyed by the war and to provide the Croatian forest service with equipment and infrastructure to fight forest fires, the project raises questions over possible salvage operations, reforestation by plantation, and the use of exotic trees. It also reveals continued misunderstanding of the ecological role of forest fires, which plagues fire-dependent forests in every corner of the globe.

In neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina, the World Bank has circulated a proposal for an emergency project to fund logging and reduce Bosnia╣s dependence on imported construction materials for post-war reconstruction. The Bank would supply $8 million of the $35 million project budget. So far, it appears that there are no takers to fill the substantial financing gap and the Bank may have already dropped plans for the project.

Poland sets sights on 2006 Winter Olympics

Poland has recently signaled its intentions to make a bid to host the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in the resort town of Zakopane on the border of the Tatra National Park, a relatively small, undeveloped mountain range in southern Poland. Polish environmentalists have already opposed the proposal because the development would despoil some of Poland╣s few remaining wild areas. In the meantime, the Polish government is already setting development plans in motion, both to demonstrate their seriousness to the International Olympic Committee and to get their foot into the Tatras and stifle opposition from environmentalists. Plans are currently going forward to double the capacity of a cable railway in the Tatras.

For more information, contact Tom Fullum at the Ecology Center, 1519 Cooper St., Missoula, MT 59802; (406) 728-5733; e-mail: tfullum@wildrockies.org.