The world’s forests are seriously threatened due to deforestation. In the last 15 years, the forest area decreased by 1.3 million square kilometers. In order to protect human health and well-being, it is necessary to ensure cooperation between countries, institutions, people so that this trend is reversed and transition from deforestation to tree planting is ensured as soon as possible. The experts invited to IPN’s public debate “Moldovan-Romanian cooperation in forestry” discussed the cooperation relations in the forestry sector between Moldova and Romania.

Ovidiu Badea, scientific director of “Marin Drăcea” National Institute for Research and Development in Forestry of Romania, said that he was part of the first team that contacted the Republic of Moldova and crossed the Prut River for institutional and professional purposes, mainly in the field of forests and that was an extraordinary experience. He met extraordinary people, both in the forestry institutions of that time, but also among the population of the Republic of Moldova, the villages and forests he visited and places where they wanted to locate the agreed joint works.

Ovidiu Badea noted that the Romanian side wanted to create something “for the brothers from across the Prut”, to share the experience accumulated in forestry and to implement, at the request of the Moldovan side, what they were doing in Romania.

Dumitru Galupa, director of the Forest Research and Planning Institute of the Republic of Moldova, said that after the declaration of independence, everyone in the forestry sector was in the process of searching for and developing basic documents for forest management. The eyes were directed to the counterparts from Romania. There was also the aspect of the language, in which the respective documents were formulated. They enjoyed brotherly receptivity from the counterparts from across the Prut.

The Romanian side integrated Moldova into the first European program for monitoring the state of forests - the ICP Forests program that continues to this day and is an example of sustainability, of continuity of actions. This was followed by the transition to the Romanian technical norms, which is extraordinarily important for forest management. Today, it can be seen that the forests in the Republic of Moldova are managed according to the Romanian preparations and technical norms.

Victor Durbală, director of Moldsilva Agency, said that forestry is among the few sectors that have witnessed very good cooperation relations with the Romanian counterparts. Regardless of the political conjuncture or other nuances, this permanent dialogue has been maintained. Thanks to Romania, Moldova today has forestry provisions and can manage the forests correctly, according to technical norms.

Another aspect, which is mentioned less often, he says, is that all these forestry provisions were thought up with Romanian money. Thus, today Moldova has good management and technical norms guiding it. Another moment is that since the 1990s until now, specialists from the Republic of Moldova often go to Romania for an exchange of experience, which helps to ensure very good management of the forests in Moldova.

The public debate entitled “Moldovan-Romanian cooperation in forestry” was the seventeenth installment of the project “Double integration through cooperation and information. Continuity”, which is supported by the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova of the Government of Romania.