Russian forests and climate change

The key aim of this report is to show how the forest sector can help the Russian Federation to meet its Paris Agreement targets and, at the same time, how the sector can contribute to improve the economy. This is linked to building an innovative strategy of sustainable forest management, addressing conservation as well as productivity, emphasizing the country’s aims of low carbon society, boosting the investment sector on forest products and introducing technical innovation measures of the bioeconomy, as represented  by new and emerging wood-based products.

The report provides a systematic analysis of the Russian Federation’s forest resources; their potential for carbon sequestration and contribution to the Paris Agreement targets; the impacts of climate change; and the risks associated with biotic and abiotic disturbances. Authors also present three regional case studies with varying degrees of opportunities and solutions for protecting forest resources and enhancing ecosystem services both for carbon sequestration and for wood-based products, using the framework of Climate  Smart Forestry (CSF). They also look at the climate change mitigation potential and opportunities arising from forest bioeconomy and the transformation of Russia towards a low carbon society including various innovative solutions for new wood-based products and industrial sectors.

This report synthesizes the current scientific understanding on Russian forests and climate change, and identified the opportunities as well as challenges with respect to adaptation, mitigation and bioeconomy.

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Watch videos

These short videos are in English, but have Russian subtitles available, Доступен английский язык с русскими субтитрами:

Citation

Leskinen, P., Lindner, M., Verkerk, P.J., Nabuurs, G.J., Van Brusselen, J., Kulikova, E., Hassegawa, M. and Lerink, B. (eds.). 2020. Russian forests and climate change. What Science Can Tell Us 11. European Forest Institute. https://doi.org/10.36333/wsctu11

Number of pages: 136
ISBN 978-952-7426-00-5 (pdf)