Europe and Central Asia Region

Almost 40% of the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region is forested, a majority of this is located in the Russian Federation, which contains some 22% of the world’s forests and more than 60% of the world’s standing softwood. Forest cover is actually slightly increasing in ECA, at an average rate of 0.1% per year. Issues of concern in ECA include the weakening of forest institutions and industries; changes in resource ownership (particularly considering restitution issues in some countries); and a general lack of expertise and training for forest management.

The ECA region experienced extremely rapid growth in investment in forests following the increase in member countries in that region in the early 1990s. Now, a number of countries have become members of the European Union, and this will likely eliminate second and third round investments by the Bank in the forests sectors of these countries. Yet, many forest projects have taken place in the 2000s, and projects in the pipeline proposed for coming years including ones in Russia and Kazakhstan. These projects have a major focus on forest sector reforms for production and conservation purposes.  In addition, the Europe and North Asia (ENA) FLEG initiative, including the Ministerial Conference in November 2005, has opened political dialogues at national and regional levels to combat the problem of illegal logging in the ECA region.

 

Table 3. Examples of projects with major forest components in ECA