On March 3, 2025, a meeting of the Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management of the Verkhovna Rada took place related to the state of implementation of the law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Forest Conservation” dated 20.06.2022 No. 2321-IX, in particular regarding amendments to part two of Article 107 of the Forest Code of Ukraine.
The application of this article of the Forest Code provides that forest damages, caused by human impact, where the perpetrators could not be identified, shall be compensated by the local self-governing bodies, within their territory. During the meeting local self-governing bodies stood up with a strong voice to lift this responsibility, while the usual state authorities responsible for law enforcement on illegal activities, intent to keep this current legislation in place.
In his brief intervention, Vitaliy Storozhuk, National Project Coordinator of the SFI-Project, emphasized that despite the imperfection of the established legal mechanism, it is commonly used, e.g. for the preservation of self-seeding forests. He drew attention to the fact that current law enforcement practices are applied for many years also to unidentified damages in state forest enterprises. Therefore, territorial communities might not expect a rapid change of this legislation.
In a more general context, efforts at the community level together with state authorities are required to identify perpetrators who caused forest damages, e.g. carried out illegal logging. This practice corresponds to the German approach, where the perpetrators are hold guilty by state authorities responsible for law enforcement.
Taking into account the significant demand for the formation of new approaches to law enforcement in this forest policy area, the SFI project plans consultancy activities on this topic, among others with regard to the issue of conservation of self-seeding forests and forestry in communal forests, with the involvement of national and international project experts.
