“The new forestry development project will help to modernize several aspects of forestry sector operations, and protect and enhance the quality of the forest resources. For instance, it will provide direct support to 25,000 employees of 88 forest enterprises by generating better jobs in the rural forested areas that require skilled and semi-skilled workers. The enhanced efficiency in forest enterprises is expected to bring benefits to the wood processing and wood energy sectors further downstream,” said Mr. Young Chul Kim, World Bank Country Manager for Belarus.
“By 2020, four million hectares of forests outside the protected areas will be managed in a manner friendlier to biodiversity,” noted Mr. Andrew Mitchell, World Bank Project Team Leader. “Investments in goods and machinery will support further development and intensification of silviculture, including the purchase of 74 modern forest harvesters, needed for younger-aged thinning operations, and 52 forwarders. Six new heavy-duty chippers will help to utilize wood waste and woody biomass from felling and logging operations, which currently are simply left in the forest to rot, wasting the calorific value therein and creating a fire hazard.”
The project will also facilitate modernization of forest nurseries to produce container-grown seedlings of improved quality, installation of video and communications equipment for monitoring, surveillance and detection of fires, introduction of fire-fighting equipment to help extinguish the fires once started, as well as the development of a web-based interface to allow sharing of information, including geo-information. It is estimated that the measures on prevention, improved detection and more timely and effective response to forest fires is expected to reduce future losses by 30%.