The Romanian forest remains host to a full range of European forest
biodiversity, including top predators that are either extinct or rare
in other parts of their former range. Approximately 60 percent of all
European brown bears and 40 percent of wolves and lynx occur in Romania.
So says the Environmental Assessment Report of the Romanian Forest Development
Program, a World Bank project now under preparation.
But acknowledgement of the forests unique environmental value has
not stopped the Bank from boring full-speed ahead with its support for
the project.
According to the Bank, the declared objective of the project is to
increase the contribution to the national economy from the sustainable
management of Romanian forest resources.
The project has three main components. First, it devotes $11 million
to support the newly established forestry inspectorates and establish
a forest monitoring system. Second, it allocates $3.4 million to help
the ongoing forest restitution process, through which land is being returned
to its pre-communist era owners. Finally, it provides a $26.5 million
capital injection into the National Forest Administration (NFA), the public
company managing state forests. The NFA monies will support a pilot
project of the reconstruction of roughly 500 kilometers of forestry
roads, as well as the construction of approximately a hundred kilometers
of new roads in state-owned forests. Along with European funding, NFA
officials intend to use these and future World Bank loans to construct
in total more than 1,000 kilometers of new forestry roads in coming years.
The World Bank rates the projects as posing a high degree of environmental
risk designating it environmental Category A, the top category,
but Bank documents say the project has the potential for a significant
and beneficial environmental impact.
The staff responsible for the project preparation say the current forest
restitution process risks serious environmental degradation without proper
advisory and law enforcement services in place. They also argue that the
forest road-building component will benefit the environment by shortening
skidding distances, the distance over which tree trunks are dragged on
non-paved tracks and thus cause soil erosion. They explain that road building
will be done according to a best practice guideline which helps to avoid
harmful environmental consequences of the construction.
A coalition of Romanian environmentalists has formed to oppose the project,
charging that Bank safeguards will do little to alleviate damage, and
that road-building will intensify deforestation. In January 2002, the
environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) published a document
criticizing the project titled Comments on the Romanian Forestry
Development Program. At stake, they believe, is the future of Romanias
forests, and maybe even those of the entire region.
Corruption and Construction
Above all, say the NGOs in a letter to the board and president of the
World Bank, the extreme and thorough corruption of Romanian government
agencies precludes any forest protection safeguards from succeeding.
Once, the Romanian National Forest Administration (NFA) had significant
organizational capacity with excellent specialists, detailed management
plans and sufficient funds, they write. Now, the picture is
completely different. Since 1990, the system has been very chaotic and
corrupted. According to the media, NFA is one of the most corrupted authorities
in Romania. As long as the problem of corruption is not properly addressed,
the project has hardly any chance of success. The most effective way to
increase income from the forestry sector would be to combat the corruption,
not to increase harvesting.
Romania is ranked 69 out of 91 countries on Transparency Internationals
corruption perceptions index, with lower rankings signaling a higher level
of corruption. The country receives a 2.8 score out of 10 on Transparency
Internationals corruption perceptions index.
A 2001 World Bank survey of corruption in Romania reaches similar conclusions,
providing details of pervasive bribery. Thirty-eight percent of
public officials reported that they had been offered a gift or money during
the previous year, the report finds. Twenty-eight percent
and 42 percent of enterprises and households, respectively, reported that
they either were made to feel that a bribe was necessary or directly offered
bribes or atentie (attention) to various public officials
during the previous 12 months.
The World Bank now estimates that illegal logging totals 5 percent to
20 percent of all timber cutting in Romania. A 1999 working paper concluded,
It became a mass phenomenon and very often forestry guards were
threatened, beaten or even killed. None of the criminals were ever caught.
Yet, forestry guards were not allowed to have arms. Illegal logging was
tolerated by the NFA, and later on it was allegedly promoted by the same
authority.
However, the available Bank documentation for the Forest Development
Program does not address the corruption plaguing the forestry sector,
except for a concern that money from the project should not be siphoned
off.
The regulators who are supposed to enforce logging regulations receive
far too little support to change tree-cutting practices, say Romanian
environmentalists. Even with the support of the World Bank loan for equipment
and for undertaking a high-tech forest inventory, the Forestry Inspectorates
will be understaffed, underpaid and unlikely to perform well, the environmentalists
say.
They also worry that the Forest Department, in which the Forestry Inspectorates
are located, was moved during the project preparation period from the
environmental ministry to the Ministry of Agriculture. Now the ministry
oriented to using the forests to generate revenues controls the institution
which is supposed to protect forests and the rule of law, even if it is
in conflict with economic interests. Wolves in charge of the sheep,
one Bank staff admitted privately.
The most significant NGO concern with the project itself is the forest-road
component, which is the dominant part of the project. Environmentalists
view roads as the biggest enemies of forests, since they make once-remote
trees accessible to loggers. If Romanian authorities construct a forestry
road network as dense as in Austria, say the Romanian environmentalists,
then Romania will have forest biodiversity as poor as Austria.
The Bank says the loan will only be used to repair damaged roads and
to extend existing roads in production forests. But environmentalists
say these investments will simply increase the efficiency of forest destruction,
and have nothing to do with the alleged goal of shortening skidding distances.
The Banks capital injection will also free up NFAs road construction
budget to build roads in other areas, potentially including virgin forest.
Romanian environmentalists say the Bank has failed to address these and
other basic environmental issues. They dismiss the Banks 350-page
environmental impact assessment as a shoddy piece of work. The document
provides no information on the exact location of the planned roads, no
assessment of biodiversity impacts, and barely mentions that these roads
will spur the logging of mature forests.
The assessment only examines the impacts of two roads out of 74. It suggests
road-specific environmental assessments take place only after the project
is approved and the road list is final. Environmentalists believe this
approach turns the whole assessment into a rubberstamping exercise, since
the project will not be able to be revised in light of the environmental
impact assessments findings.
The environmental assessment calls for an approval process which is very
focused, streamlined and reduced in scope relative to World Bank
standard operating procedure. Streamlined review is not supposed to be
available for Category A environmentally threatening projects.
Rubber Stamp Worries
Despite the concerns, the Bank is seeking to rush the project to approval,
without slowing to follow Bank procedures, consult locally or even make
key documents available to Romanians.
During project preparation, the Bank consulted only three NGOs. Of the
17 groups that have criticized the environmental impact assessment, not
a single one even knew about the project during its planning phase.
In November 2001, when NGOs tried to obtain the Romanian version of the
study, the external affairs office of the World Banks local office
in Romania wrote that, the translation is on-going and going fairly
slow as it is a difficult, long document.
In December, Romanian authorities promised NGOs a place on the Project
Monitoring Committee and full transparency in exchange for ceasing their
criticism. They declined the offer, vowing instead to continue raising
questions about a project threatening a vital Romanian resource.
As a Christmas present, CEE Bankwatch, working in collaboration with
Romanian NGOs on the project, received an official protest from the Romanian
Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, expressing his view that statements
about the project, posted on Bankwatchs website, were incorrect
and inappropriate.
In January, environmentalists prepared a consolidated document with detailed
comments outlining concerns about the project.
Meanwhile, for unclear reasons, the project has been repeatedly delayed
giving opponents hope that the dangerous initiative may still be
derailed.
In March 2002, the Bank assigned a new task manager to the project. In
March 2002, in Brassov, Romania, NGOs, Bank representatives and Romanian
authorities met to discuss the project. This time, Romanian authorities
made available the draft Project Appraisal Document the first document
available which contains accurate information about the project
providing a basis for meaningful dialogue.
The Project Appraisal Document reveals that foreign companies would be
able to bid for road building contracts along with Romanian companies.
The project support for road construction is supposed to transfer best
practices in forestry road building to Romanian companies, leading some
to ask how this knowledge transfer will occur if local companies do not
get contracts.
The Bank staff followed up the meeting with a detailed note, explaining
that they do not want to commission a new Environmental Assessment. Instead,
they intend only to make improvements to remedy serious flaws so that
the document can comply with relevant Bank procedures. These improvements,
however, would come after World Bank board approval of the project.
This proposal leaves environmentalists worried that the Banks approach
will be to tinker with the existing flawed documents, then rubber stamp
them and rush headlong into a project that may decimate Romanias
forests.
Compounding the problem, similar forestry projects are under preparation
in Georgia and in Bulgaria, giving rise to fears that the Bank may do
to Eastern European forests what it did to the Amazon, with countless
hectares of virgin forest sacrificed as a result.
Joszef Feiler is policy coordinator for CEE Bankwatch
Network and international coordinator of Friends of the Earth-Hungary.
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