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Siberian and Russian Far East Timber for China

Legal and Illegal Pathways, Players, and Trends (Russian)

By Anatoly Lebedev - Bureau for Regional Outreach Campaigns, Forest Trends, CIFOR, DFID
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The preservation and sustainable use of Siberian and Russian Far East (RFE) forests is of global
importance for a number of reasons. These forests, which are the traditional environments of many endangered species and indigenous tribes, are now supplying timber to nearby regions and countries that have largely destroyed their own forests. The vast forests of Asian Russia act as reservoirs for one-seventh of the global carbon pool. Russia holds 75 percent of the carbon stored by all of the world’s boreal forests; thus, deforestation is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, after fossil fuel combustion, in Russia, as it is worldwide.