The 2006 Forest Code of the Russian Federation: an evaluation of environmental legislation in Russia

This article provides an assessment of environmental policy-making in contemporary Russia, using the case of the 2006 Forest Code of the Russian Federation to evaluate the state’s ability to design, implement and enforce effective environmental legislation. The Forest Code provides a particularly interesting and valuable insight into some of the key problems facing environmental policymaking and the policy-making process more generally in Russia today, including issues such as state capacity, interdepartmental conflict, the quality of law, and the difficulties associated with the implementation of law. Each stage of the policymaking process in relation to the Forest Code will be examined, from the initial development and drafting, passage through parliament and final implementation. The case of the Forest Code reveals the inability of the state to design and draft effective legislation, its lack of commitment to environmental issues and its weak capacity in terms of imposing its preferences on the legislative process. The state has also been unable to implement and enforce this law successfully. As a result, it is very difficult to detect any real improvements in the management and protection of forests as a result of the 2006 Code. The Forest Code itself is an important piece of legislation, dealing with all aspects of the use, management and protection of the Russian Federation’s vast forest resources. It is therefore of great environmental, economic and political significance. Russia contains 22% of the world’s forests, and 26% of the world’s last remaining forests untouched by logging. 2 Their role in climate stabilisation, the absorption of carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere and as a home to many rare and endangered species of plants and animals cannot be overestimated. 3 At 1 All the translations into English from the original Russian are my own unless otherwise specified. The United States Library of Congress system has been adopted for the transliteration of Russian, with the exception of those words that have a common spelling in English. 2 J. Howard, ‘Saving Russia’s Forests: The Finnish–Russian Development Program on Sustainable