The State Duma Committee on Ecology, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection held a meeting of the expert council to consider the draft law on the protection of Lake Baikal. It was adopted in the first reading in July 2023 and caused a resonance in society.
The draft law, in particular, provides for clear sanitary felling of forests in the central ecological zone of the Baikal Natural Territory (BNT).
This is allowed until December 31, 2030, for the construction of infrastructure facilities, roads, the creation of fire breaks,catering and household service outlets.
This and some other norms have been criticized by representatives of the environmental community. In connection with this, amendments were prepared for the second reading of the draft law, which were discussed at a meeting of the expert council.
As the head of the Duma Committee on Ecology, Dmitry Kobylkin, said, now instead of clear felling of forests in the central ecological zone, it is proposed to provide for the possibility of transferring forest lands to lands of other categories in the event of the construction, reconstruction, and major repairs of only those facilities that are included in a special appendix to the draft law. The possibility of such a transfer is limited to December 31, 2030, after which the norm will not be in effect.
Moreover, the transfer of land is possible only if there is a positive conclusion of the state environmental expertise and on the basis of an act of the federal executive authority. When transferring land, it is established that forest restoration must be carried out on an area five times larger than the area of the land plot that was transferred to another category.
The transfer of forest lands to other categories is allowed for the creation of burial places and fire breaks until December 31, 2030, according to the appendix to the draft law with a list of settlements. On plots transferred for fire breaks, it is prohibited to place capital and temporary objects.
As Kobylkin noted, at the suggestion of the representatives of the RAS, clear felling of forests is allowed in the event of clearing dead trees on forest lands, provided that selective felling does not ensure the replacement of dead stands.
It was noted at the meeting of the expert council that the need to adopt this draft law is long overdue - it is required to ensure the rights of the population of the Baikal territories.
As Kobylkin said at the meeting, there are 158 settlements in the central ecological zone of the BNT, where more than 120 thousand people live (in Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region).
At the same time, 73% of these settlements are not covered by a centralized sewerage system, and 36% do not have fire breaks.
The issues of mudflow protection, the construction of treatment facilities and cemeteries also require solutions.Residents of the Baikal territories have long been asking to deal with their problems - about five thousand signatures have come in support of the draft law.
Those present at the meeting agreed that these pressing problems require solutions, however, the amendments to the draft law proposed for the second reading caused concern among a number of participants in the discussion.
Thus, the executive secretary of the Coordinating Council for Environmental Well-being and the Development of Practices of Non-Financial Public Reporting under the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Tatyana Chestina, spoke about the risks to the Baikal ecosystem that the members of this council see.
“Having carefully examined the version currently submitted for discussion, the experts of the Coordinating Council came to the conclusion that in this version the draft law even more, than the version adopted in the first reading, weakens the legal protection of Lake Baikal,” she noted.
In particular, public concern was caused by the norm allowing clear sanitary felling of dead stands. “We believe that this creates high risks that the forest can be made dead by arson and other methods. Clear sanitary felling is one of the most criminalized types of felling,” Chestina said.
Also, members of the coordinating council see the risks of uncontrolled growth of the boundaries of settlements in the Baikal region and the destruction of forests for development.
According to Chestina, the main conclusion of the experts is that the draft law cannot be adopted in this form, it is necessary to continue its revision and conduct an expert examination of the document before the second reading by the Public Chamber.
In turn, State Secretary - Deputy Head of the Ministry of Natural Resources Svetlana Radchenko said at a meeting in the Duma that the ministry shares the concern about most of the risks that were voiced during the discussion.
In particular, she said, the norm allowing clear felling of dead forests requires revision.
In addition, in her opinion, it is necessary to prohibit the change of the purposes of already permitted land use for specific tasks, so that instead of the declared cemetery, cottage settlements do not appear on the plots.
The representative of the department also voiced a number of other comments on the preliminary version of the draft law proposed for the second reading.
Dmitry Kobylkin, in turn, said that the acceptance of amendments to the second reading of the draft law will continue until July 1, and there is still time to work out the incoming proposals.
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