The environmental problems form part of the general and political culture and things will remain stagnant for a long time if there are no environmental policies. At the same time, the steps taken now in the forest sector will be met with suspicion by the people because there is a general perception that something is wrong in the national forest sector, the head of the Ecologist Movement of Moldova Alecu Renita stated in the public debate “What do several thousand hectares of forests prepared for cutting mean for the deforested Republic of Moldova?”, which was staged by IPN News Agency in partnership with Radio Moldova.
According to Renita, the people’s perceptions derive from the way they forests had been managed during the last 15 years. “We would like this problem of interest, not only national, but also regional-continental to be on the agenda of the Ministry of Environment, the Government, and civil society,” stated the Ecologist Movement’s head.
He also said that there is a direct connection between the government and the management of wooded areas. They specify a certain cutting area on paper, but the volume of collected wood is actually much higher. “It should be clear that the volume of wood that is cut in reality means millions of lei that are not indicated in the financial accounts. We, the ecologists, transform it in hectares to see how much more they cut from Moldova’s territory and the picture is thus different,” stated Alecu Renita.
He noted that the current scheme to rob the national forest sector started to be applied after 2001. “The fact that this model wasn’t eliminated after 2010 is the most painful issue. I expected that this system will be done away with. This huge collective of over 5,000 foresters after 2001 got used to seeing no forest, but only money,” he said.
Alecu Renita considers that the model of managing the national forest sector needs to be modified. “We must make no mistakes during the next ten years or our forests will witness a disaster. We must remove this forest management scheme that is kept because it brings illegal money. On the other hand, we must be able to build a system that would guarantee that the forest sector will have prospects and will restore the main function of forests – the ecological one,” he stated.
The March 2 debate forms part of a series of public debates organized by IPN News Agency in co-production with Radio Moldova, with support from the German foundation “Hanns Seidel”.
