Meeting of the Barents Region Experts in Uppsala (Sweden)

Silver Taiga director Yuri Pautov and the member of the Working Group on Environment of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region (BEAR), the Chairman of the nature protection subgroup Tatiana Tyupenko (Syktyvkar State University) took part in the meeting of BEAR experts in the town of Uppsala.

The meeting was devoted to the preparation of the Strategy on virgin forest landscapes, which should be done to the IX meeting of the ministers for environment of the BEAR countries, planned for November 2015 in Moscow. Experts from Finland, Sweden, Norway and the northern regions of Russia, dealing with the issues of biodiversity and virgin forest massifs conservation, exchanged the information according to the subject of the meeting.

All the participants of the meeting were interested in the presentation made by Yuri Pautov about the role of forest certification according to FSC system in conservation of virgin forest areas in Russia. This is because only in the Russian national FSC standard the conservation of virgin forest areas is written in a separate line.

The experts discussed the draft of the Strategy, developed and presented by Przemyslaw Majewski, the first Silver Taiga director, which is working in Sweden now. Finally, the common position was elaborated, which is represented in the agreed upon document. The draft of this document will be sent to the federal and regional authorities for further agreement and preparation of the regional strategies on virgin forest landscapes of the BEAR countries.