Kyrgyz Greens Warn of Deforestation Risks

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, March 11, 2008 (ENS) - Environmentalists in Kyrgyzstan are raising the alarm over the speed with which this Central Asian country is losing its forests.

In the last 50 years, the former Soviet republic has lost more than half its forests, and experts are warning that if logging continues at the current rate, the whole Central Asian region will suffer from a scarcity of water, health problems and more frequent natural disasters.

The stark warnings come from the Kyrgyz government's own Agency for Environmental Protection and Forestry, in data published in early February.

Ecologists say forests in Kyrgyzstan play a key role in the ecosystem of Central Asia.

Among other things, they help cleanse the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, one of the principal factors triggering the greenhouse effect that produces global warming.

They also prevent soil erosion and are vital in helping to retain water in a generally arid part of the world.

This walnut forest in southern Kyrgyzstan is the largest natural growth walnut forest in the world. (Photo courtesy Radio Free Europe)

As forests shrink, the rate at which glaciers melt - the main source of water in Central Asia - appears to be accelerating.

The environmental agency says only 4.3 percent of the mountainous country's territory is now forested. But 50 years ago the agency estimates between six and eight percent of Kyrgyzstan was covered in trees, although no precise surveys were done back then.

The agency's director, Arstanbek Davletkeldiev, said a new project was started this year to compile more accurate information. With international help, the agency is conducting an inventory of all plantations in the country, including natural forests and city parks.

"After this, we will know for sure how many forests we still have," Davletkeldiev said.

Experts say the rate of deforestation was worst in the 1940s and 1950s, when people cut down timber for heating and cooking to cope with the bleak conditions during and after the Second World War.

But over the last 15 years, deforestation has increased as a result of the economic crisis and fall in living standards that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Although we have never had a commercial logging industry, the forests have been badly damaged since independence," noted Davletkeldiev.

The agency director said poor legislation and corruption had hindered the agency in its battle to save what remained.

In recent years, the agency has brought more than 200 lawsuits against illegal loggers but only one case has actually reached the courts.

"It's difficult to wean people off stealing," complained Davletkeldiev. "Everyone is involved, from local government officials to our own specialists, the police, the traffic cops who escort lorries carrying illicit timber, and sometimes other law enforcement officers."

Moreover, with only 800 foresters, the agency is short of staff, and does not have nearly enough vehicles to patrol in what are often remote locations.

According to official figures, 50,000 to 55,000 cubic metres of timber were felled annually prior to 2006, and illegal deforestation was estimated to account for roughly the same volume.

Since 2006, when a three-year moratorium was imposed on cutting down valuable tree species in virgin forest, legal logging has been reduced to 15,000 cubic metres a year.

Encouragingly, illegal deforestation has also declined since then, Davletkeldiev said, raising hopes for the survival of the country's remaining woods.

Kyrgyz foresters and local officials plan a greener future. (Photo by I. Kouplevatskaya courtesy FAO)

His agency is investing more in nurseries, which means more saplings can be planted out to replace the lost trees.

But in spite of these rays of hope, green groups say the deforestation problem remains acute.

According to Ilya Domashov, deputy chairman of the Biom environmental movement, the surviving forests are deteriorating due to poor management.

"Many of the forests in our country are in such a bad state that they are unable to perform their ecological functions," said Domashov. "Forests are degrading from the inside."

The loss of forested areas increases the danger of a range of natural disasters, such as floods, landslides and droughts.

At the same time, the disappearance of trees means a reduction in biological diversity as plants and animals begin dying out. This, too, can affect the health of the surrounding human population.

Tatyana Volkova, an ecological expert, sees little future for forests as long as people remain so poor that they have to rely on timber for heating and cooking.

She said she was "horrified" by what she had seen in the southern Jalalabad region, where deep gashes in hillsides caused by logging "could at any moment become landslides threatening human settlements."

Experts say the government is not doing enough to preserve the forests. They want tougher laws, a greater focus on environmental matters, and efforts to uphold standards set out in the environmental conventions to which Kyrgyzstan is a signatory.

Other recommendations include an expansion in the area of land designated as nature reserves, and more work to explain to local communities why preserving the forests is in their own interests.

"People have to start understanding that destroying forests is like cutting down the branch they are sitting on," said Volkova.

{This article originally appeared in Reporting Central Asia, produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting}

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