Forestry Development Project

closed

The development objective of the Forestry Development Project for Belarus is to enhance silvicultural management and reforestation and afforestation, increase the use of felling residues, and improve the public good contribution from forests in targeted forest areas. The project comprises of three components. The first component, improvement of silviculture and the sustainability of forest management will invest in modern harvesting machinery for young and middle-aged stands in terms of harvesters (a cutting head that can fell, trim, and cross cut trees, which is mounted on an articulated boom on a low impact tractor), forwarders (low impact machines, which pick up and carry the felled production to a site where it can be either stacked or loaded onto a truck), and chippers to utilize wood waste from felling operations. It consists of following three sub-components: (i) increased intensity of silvicultural activities by thinning of young and middle-aged stands; (ii) development of the use of woody biomass from logging residues; and (iii) improvement of forest nurseries for afforestation and reforestation. The second component, improvement of forest fire prevention, monitoring, detection, and suppression consists of following three sub-components: (i) enhancement of capacity to respond to fire incidents; (ii) strengthening of fire detection and monitoring measures; and (iii) improvement of fire suppression efforts. The third component, capacity building for sustainable forest management consists of following five sub-components: (i) facilitation of an enabling environment; (ii) strengthening of the forest management information system and forest management planning capacity; (iii) use of advanced forest management technologies through the provision of training; (iv) design and implementation of a monitoring system of radiological conditions; and (v) provision of support for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the project.