Russia's Forest Sector After The Years of Reforms: More Laws, but Less Order?

Abstract

The article discusses the impact of the growing intensity of normative activity in the forestry complex of Russia on the efficiency of the industry. Estimates show that over the last decade and a half, various ministries and departments have adopted at least 400 normative documents regulating various spheres of forest relations. Meanwhile, even without analyzing the statistics, it is clear that such a vigorous normative activity hardly leads to prosperity of the national forestry complex, and certainly does little to help solve the most important problems of forestry, which is especially evident against the background of steadily growing from year to year forest fires and the accompanying damage. We propose a way to reconstruct a long time series volume of logging from official statistics on the export of wood, which was available before 2009. By the example of Siberian regions according to the data for 2005–2020 year regression models panel data are built, providing evidence in favor of the fact that the intensity of rule-making has a negative impact on the amount of timber harvest. It is proposed to fundamentally revise the approaches to the regulation of the forest industry, abandoning the adoption of redundant regulations in favor of government complicity in solving the problems of Russian forests, which have accumulated for many decades.