Radio România Internațional

Tag: forests

  • March 21, 2024 UPDATE

    March 21, 2024 UPDATE

    Forestry – The Romanian government approved the new Forestry Code on Thursday. As a result, clear cutting will be prohibited in almost half of the country’s forest area, as announced by the Minister of Environment, Water and Forests, Mircea Fechet. He added that the law allows the state to intervene and reforest the lands that have been deforested and abandoned by the owners. At the same time, the document gives private or state forest owners the right to alternative security solutions: specialized structures and security provided by own means, specifying that forest security is mandatory by law. Also, the right of access to the SUMAL 2 computer system is suspended whenever there are situations related to the theft of wood. The executive also approved a major investment in the infrastructure of the healthcare system: the construction of a new medical compound in which the Fundeni Clinical Institute from Bucharest should operate, in order to expand and improve the treatment conditions for patients. The building will have 21 modern operating rooms, intensive care units for multidisciplinary surgery and transplant surgery. Also on Thursday, the Romanian Government signed the contract regarding the construction of the Regional Emergency Hospital in Craiova (south). The medical unit will serve the entire Oltenia region and will be able to treat 800 people a day, as stated by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. Funds were also allocated for the refurbishment of the Berceni-Pipera highway, the busiest subway route in Bucharest.

     

    Recovery and Resilience – Romania has a little over two years left to achieve all the objectives assumed through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan – NRRP, the financial support package in the form of grants and loans, mainly intended to eliminate the problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The warning was launched in Bucharest by European Commission officials for the implementation of the NRRP. During the assessment conference of the state of implementation of the NRRP in Romania, the officials warned that failure to meet the milestones could put the country in a position to return the money received. The Romanian officials have given assurances that the Plan as a whole is in progress compared to last year.

     

    Summit – The heads of state and government from the European Union gathered in Brussels together with experts, for a summit aimed at giving a new impetus to the production of energy from nuclear sources. This field came back to the attention of Europe, with the war in Ukraine, and also due to the need to reduce the emissions of the classic industry. Nuclear energy is clean and not volatile, as is the case with wind or photovoltaic energy, where production depends on the weather, and Romania is one of the spearheads in terms of new technologies. The Romanian President Klaus Iohannis stated that Romania is determined to develop its nuclear energy program and is collaborating with the US to implement the small modular reactor technology. Iohannis emphasized that Bucharest wants to become a regional leader for nuclear operations, expertise, and also for the supply chain in the field. The trend of returning to energy from nuclear sources is not to the liking of environmental NGOs, which organized protests in Brussels, in parallel with the meeting of European leaders, and demand the concentration of investments strictly on renewable sources. In the capital of Belgium, the Romanian president also participates in the European Council meeting and the extended Euro Summit.

     

    Film – Films from the selections from Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Venice, Toronto and Annecy can be found on the poster of the 28th edition of the French Film Festival in Romania, which takes place from March 21 to 31, in Bucharest and another 12 cities across the country. More than 100 film screenings will take place in cinemas and alternative cultural spaces, the organizers informed. They decided that the festival should be opened, in Bucharest, by the comedy ‘Une Annee Difficile’/’A difficult year’, made by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, the authors of the film ‘Intouchables’ – one of the biggest box office successes in France. (LS)

  • Climate change impacts Romania

    Climate change impacts Romania

    2022 was the
    third warmest year in recorded history, with an average temperature of 11.7
    degrees Celsius and a 1.55-degree difference against the average temperature measured
    between 1981 and 2010, a survey of the National Meteorological Administration
    shows.

     

    The warmest five years between 1900 and 2022
    were: 2019, 2020, 2022, 2015 and 2007, and the period between 2012 and 2022 proved
    to be the warmest 11 years in a row, which confirms the tendency of weather
    warming in Romania as well.

     

    Furthermore, this year saw the warmest
    January day in recorded history when 22.5 degrees Celsius were reported in
    southern Romania.

     

    So, statistics prove what we all
    have seen for many years now that climate change affects the entire planet. And
    we can no longer speak about a local or national problem says Environment
    Minister, Barna Tanczos. This opinion is also shared by climatologist Roxana
    Bojariu, who in the following minutes will be explaining how Romania’s weather
    has changed in the past two decades.

     

    Roxana
    Bojariu: It didn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.
    We have witnessed the global warming for quite some time now, but the problem
    is that this is an accelerating process. It has been doing so in the past years
    but unfortunately the process continues and is getting worse as more greenhouse
    gases are accumulating in the atmosphere. We are feeling this here in Romania
    as well. And even if we had warm winters and periods with temperatures higher
    than usual before, the weather this year was very strange for the cold season
    and that was not only in Romania but in the entire Europe. So, if we draw the
    line and compare the temperatures in the northern hemisphere, we’ll clearly see
    they are higher than usual, which confirms the idea of accelerated climate
    change. And this isn’t visible only in winter. If you remember last summer
    proved to be the hottest in Europe in recorded history and the drought
    affecting the continent was the severest in the past 500 years.

     

    Last year’s drought also affected Romania but
    the Environment Ministry has given assurances they have resources to fight
    climate change. According to him, the section Forests and Biodiversity
    Protection, part of the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience, includes a
    total budget of roughly 1.2 billion euros, which can be used to increase the
    surface of forests. Barna Tanczos has underlined that forests are the most
    resilient when it comes to climate change effects. He recalled that the
    National Forestry Strategy was endorsed last autumn with a view to setting
    mandatory norms on afforestation and reforestation as well as on forests and
    forested surfaces located in areas that are vulnerable to climate change.

     

    At the same time, owners of forests
    and plots of land are being given incentives to preserve and capitalize on the
    true potential of these surfaces. They will benefit from 456 Euros per year per
    hectare for 20 years, in order to turn these areas into real forests. The
    forestry carbon reward is a measure through which we stimulate the
    transformation of as many plots of land as possible into future forests,
    Minister Tanczos explains. Roxana Bojariu tells us more about the future of the
    climate change and what we should expect next.

     

    Roxana
    Bojariu: The weather is not going to remain like that of course and even in the
    optimistic scenario when we have succeeded in limiting the rise of the global
    temperature to 1.5 Celsius under the Paris Agreement, we are still going to see
    higher temperatures. However, they will not be as high as in the worst case
    scenarios, where we haven’t managed to impose a limit. And this means not only
    a uniform warming in space and time but also extreme phenomena like those we
    have already witnessed. Suchlike phenomena will be affecting Romania as well, and
    the situation will worsen with the growing greenhouse gas emissions. Every
    tenth degree in the global average translates into hotter heatwaves and Romania
    will be in for more intense, more frequent and more persistent heatwaves. These
    will also cause wildfires although not like those affecting the Mediterranean
    countries, Greece, southern France or Portugal.

     

    The statistics of the meteorological
    alerts between 2017 and 2022 in Romania highlight the intensity, frequency and wider
    area covered by the dangerous phenomena with an impact over the social-economic
    activity. In 2022 alone, 130 weather alerts were issued, out of which five were
    Code Red. Roughly three thousand Nowcasting alerts were issued out of which 95 Code
    Red. At the same time, the 2021-2022 drought was a longer one, which
    intensified from one month to the other and eventually affected almost all the
    country’s agricultural regions.

     

  • Environmental reconstruction in the Făgăraş Mountains

    Environmental reconstruction in the Făgăraş Mountains

    The project’s target this spring amounts
    to 100 hectares and benefits from financial support from the European
    Commission through its LIFE programme. 435 thousand seedlings are being planted
    in four environmental reconstruction areas: at Groapele, a region affected by
    massive logging and arsons, Dobroneagu, Valea Dambovitei and Leresti. The
    seedlings of local species either come from Carpathia nurseries or are
    purchased from local producers. Here is Mihai Zota, conservationist director
    with the aforementioned foundation.


    Mihai
    Zota: I can tell you there is a
    long way from planting these seedlings to a real forest, particularly in our
    case as we are trying to rebuild the natural forest environments, which existed
    in this area but have been cut down. It was a certain trend back in the
    communist era, but also after it, to replace forests of beech and sycamore with
    spruce as spruce was believed to be a species which takes to the soil faster
    and its timber can be used in constructions. We are now doing some history
    research in an attempt to identify the real forests that were covering these
    areas in ancient times and try to rebuild them accordingly. This aspect is very
    important to us because we believe that nature knew better than us, people,
    which are the right type of trees to cover a certain area, as this process
    happened in millions of years. And whenever man intervenes, nature fights back
    and we are witnessing all sorts of unwanted phenomena, like the appearance of
    huge swarms of insects, windsnaps, windthrows etc.


    Mr. Zota is actually referring here to an
    environmental reconstruction instead of reforestation because the process of
    creating a new forest entails many more activities besides the actual planting
    of trees.


    Mihai
    Zota: We are conducting tests
    on various hectares in all these areas in an attempt to identify how many
    natural seedlings we are having on the ground. Seedlings appear naturally after
    any logging, but they are not enough to make the forest regenerate by itself. We
    always find seedlings from various species after deforestation. Afterwards we
    are making comparisons between what was the forest like many years ago and then
    we drew our conclusions what species to plant so that we rebuild the forest
    like it was back then. We are not trying to outclass the engineering skills of
    mother nature but we are making some predictions because research shows that in
    the next 50 years, forests are likely to go up at least 100 meters, covering
    more land uphill. And if we are now seeing beech trees at 14 hundred meters up
    in the Fagaras mountains, in 50 years we are going to see it at altitudes of 16
    hundred meters. So, we are trying to take into account these phenomena,
    influenced by global warming of course. After we have identified the
    composition and the number of seedlings we are going to need, we do our work in
    two big stages, in spring and autumn. Why we need two stages? Because we have
    noticed, that due to climate changes, the period of time we can plant these
    seedlings has shortened.


    The seedlings used in this project come
    from two nurseries and greenhouses and they have been grown naturally in good
    conditions, without chemical additives used. So, the process of building a
    forest from scratch isn’t simple at all and needs maintenance works for at
    least seven years. Without the proper monitoring and constant maintenance, such
    barren areas are difficult to be built into real forests. Besides all its
    environmental functions, a forest like this can sustain an entire social
    system. 120 daily workers and scores of forestry employees are presently being
    involved with suchlike reforestation projects.




    (bill)

  • August 23, 2022

    August 23, 2022

    Remembrance. The Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism and Communism is the best opportunity to pay tribute
    to all those who experienced the horrors of totalitarian regimes and to
    reiterate our firm commitment to reject extremism, intolerance and hatred,
    said president Klaus Iohannis in a statement. He recalled that on 23rd
    August 1939, the entire world, not just Central and Eastern Europe, was
    condemned to a cruel future, adding that the Ribbentrop-Molotov
    Pact was a criminal conspiracy in the wake of which entire generations were
    exposed to the toxic and barbarian effects of totalitarian ideologies with grave long-term consequences. Iohannis also spoke of King Michael I’s decision
    to break off Romania’s alliance with Hitler’s Germany on 23rd August
    1944 and to join the United Nations, a decision which contributed to shortening
    the war. 23rd August was established by the European Parliament in
    2008 as a day of remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian
    regimes.




    Drought.
    The Mediterranean regions remain threatened by abnormal drought until November,
    when close to normal conditions are expected in most of the EU, said the
    European Commission. The areas worst hit by the lack of precipitation are
    central and southern Portugal, the whole of Spain, the south of France,
    Hungary, Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Linked by scientists to global
    warming, these exceptionally hot and dry weather conditions have significantly
    reduced the yield of summer crops, according to experts quoted by France Presse.
    The corn, sun flower and soy harvests are worst hit.




    Export.
    In the first five months of the year, Romania exported grain and grain-based
    products worth 2.155 billion euros, up 77% compared with the previous period
    last year, according to figures published by the National Institute for
    Statistics. The largest amount of exports was recorded in March. Between
    January and May, however, Romania also imported grain and grain-based products worth
    683.5 million euros.








    Forests. The National Forest Strategy for 2030
    which was unveiled on Monday at an event hosted by the Transylvania
    University in Braşov lays emphasis on making owners themselves more responsible
    and involved and proposes a new approach to checks and restrictions, said the
    environment minister Tanczos Barna. He underlined that this new strategy was
    drafted in the last two years with the help of forestry experts, NGOs, institutions
    and other persons interested in this field and said this is a historic step
    for Romanian forests. Expanding forested areas is one of the most important
    elements of the strategy. Romania is the first country to present its forest
    strategy after the publication of a similar document at European Union level.




    Tennis.
    Romania’s Sorana Cîrstea on Monday evening defeated Marcela Zacarias of Mexico
    to reach the round of last 16 at the WTA 250 tennis tournament in Cleveland, in
    the US, worth over 250,000 dollars in prize money. Cîrstea will next be playing
    Poland’s Magda Linette. Another Romanian player Irina Begu also reached the
    last 16, who will next be facing Sofia Kenin of the US. (CM)

  • A Petition for the Reforestation of Romania

    A Petition for the Reforestation of Romania

    Experts have
    repeatedly voiced concern about the desertification process, which is presently
    gaining momentum in Romania’s southern regions. Hundreds of hectares are
    annually turning here into sand dunes and in the following 50 years the fertile
    farm land here could become, in a worst case scenario, completely barren.
    Scarce precipitations and the hot weather in the past years are among the
    causes of this process and according to experts, to prevent it, we need protection
    forest curtains in many areas.






    According to representatives
    of Greenpeace Romania, who have launched a petition for the reforestation of
    Romania’s southern regions, we need green forest barriers to protect us from
    drought, flooding, storms and pollution. Greenpeace has cautioned that in the
    following 30 years over 40% of Romania’s territory will turn into a dryland
    affecting over 11 million Romanians for whom drought is to become the new
    normal. Here is more from forest and wildlife
    campaigner Ciprian Galusca


    Cipria Galusca: The
    ecosystems we have in the southern plains are scarce; we don’t actually have forests
    or other types of vegetation here except for crops. As few as they are, these frail
    ecosystems are soon going to suffer from the lack of precipitations and hot
    weather. This mixture of hot weather and scarce raining has a devastating
    effect, creating drought, drylands, improper conditions for life and will
    eventually take its toll on the human communities in the region as well.




    Weathermen issued no less than 132 red
    warnings for hot weather last summer, the highest number in history. And we
    actually have little time to prepare a response. It is not enough to protect
    the forests we still have in the mountains, which have constantly been plagued
    by illegal logging in the past years. What we need is a national network of
    forests to protect cities, the most vulnerable communities and farmland, the
    Greenpeace campaigners have explained.




    Ciprian Galusca: 60% of the precipitations that
    we have in a certain area comes from big airwaves, water that evaporates from oceans
    and seas, the world climate in short. But we owe 40% of the precipitation to the
    vegetation in a certain area or the lack thereof. Things are quite clear and
    simple here; without forests we cannot keep water into the soil, so forests are
    extremely important in our attempt to create and keep the right humidity
    vegetation needs to survive. For this reason, we believe that forests in Romania’s
    plain areas are of crucial importance in the process of preventing
    desertification. However, the idea of forest curtains in these dry areas is not
    a Greenpeace idea. This project is older; it was first presented and
    implemented in Romania between the two world wars after authorities had figured
    out that the country’s south was to be exposed to wind and sun and that crops
    and communities here needed protection. Unfortunately, the communist authorities
    that followed had a different agricultural policy and cut down the trees, a
    situation that carried on in the 1990s, and we eventually ended up with no
    forest curtains in Romania’s southern regions.






    The climate
    change is already upon us with a vengeance and in the absence of forests,
    Romania’s southern plains are drying up. In the past decade alone, Romania paid
    330 million euros in damages to the farmers affected by drought, which is not a
    solution either for the state or their welfare, as Ciprian Galusca pointed out.






    Last year, wells
    in villages dried up right at the beginning of summer and in late August we
    started counting the dry lakes. Only 6% of Romania’s plains benefit from shady
    areas, while the country’s major cities are heavily affected by succeeding heat
    waves and pollution. It is high time we reconstruct the natural barrier offered
    by forests, a solution lost to ignorance, greed and mismanagement.




    Through the
    petition that we mentioned before, Greenpeace wants to put pressure on politicians
    so that they may take the right measures for the reforestation of the national
    network of these green barriers. The organisation has called on people to sign
    the petition to support this endeavor, which will allow for the creation of a
    working group to issue the needed legislation by the end of the year. Funds aren’t
    scarce in this area because the European Union boasts a series of ambitious
    environment programmes.




    (bill)

  • June 16, 2020 UPDATE

    June 16, 2020 UPDATE

    COVID-19 – The
    government in Bucharest extended by another 30 days the state of alert, at the
    same time easing some lockdown restrictions. Church services will resume inside
    the churches with the observance of physical distancing and the mandatory
    wearing of masks. Certain border crossing points will also reopen. Liberal
    Prime Minister Ludovic Orban has explained that most experts believe the state
    of alert is necessary given the present epidemiological context. The
    government’s decision must be approved by Parliament and the largest opposition
    force, the Social-Democratic Party, have announced their intention not to
    endorse an extension longer than 15 days. The Social-Democrats also believe the
    relaxation measures proposed by the government are not enough. Romania has so
    far reported 22,415 infections and a number of fatalities that has gone up to
    1,437. Over 16 thousand patients have been cured. 34 hundred Romanians have
    been confirmed infected abroad and 114 of them died.




    FESTIVAL – The first weekend of the International Theatre
    Festival in Sibiu, central Romania, which has this year been staged exclusively
    online due to the COVID pandemic has registered an impressive audience. The
    festival’s shows and other events posted on its Facebook or webpage at
    sibfest.ro have registered roughly 181 thousand visitors. The event continues
    until June 21 with prestigious dance, music, opera and street performances,
    circus and special conferences, all broadcast online. The festival’s present
    edition unfolds under the motto ‘The Power to Believe’. The International
    Theatre Festival in Sibiu is the first big performing arts festival in Central
    and Eastern Europe.




    WEATHER – Romania is still facing extreme weather phenomena
    in most of its territory, where meteorologists are expecting heavy downpours
    and thunderstorms for the entire week. Scores of towns and villages have been
    affected by the weather in 20 Romanian counties. Firefighters have been
    deployed to pump water out of hundreds of households and public institutions or
    to remove the fallen trees from the streets. Traffic has been temporarily
    disrupted on national and county roads.




    NATO – The Romanian Navy has handed over the command of
    Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group Two, a press release issued by the
    Navy Chief of Staff on Tuesday announced. By assuming the command of the
    aforementioned military force, Romania proved its capabilities as a security
    provider for the defence of the allies as this navy force has made a major
    contribution to maintaining the alliance’s battle and immediate response
    capabilities in crisis situations as well as to the promotion of NATO’s images
    and values. In the past six months, the group has carried out missions in the
    Black Sea, the Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea involving the participation of
    military vessels from Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Romania and Turkey.








    FORESTS – The Senate on Tuesday passed the law on creating the
    Directorate for Investigating Environment-related Crimes. The scope of
    environment-related crime demands the specialization of prosecuting bodies in
    this field and the allocation of resources for the creation of an institution
    with specific and clear competences, the initiators of the draft law explain,
    saying that in the last 5 years over 20 million cubic meters of forests have
    disappeared illegally, causing a prejudice of hundreds of millions of Euro
    every year. All Parliamentary groups have voted in favor of the project, with
    the exception of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians.




    BORDER – According to the Romanian authorities, 65,200
    Romanian and foreign nationals transited Romania’s border checkpoints on
    Monday. The traffic has increased by 60% as compared to the month of May.
    Romania’s border with Hungary proved to be the busiest, as it has been crossed
    by roughly 43,800 people. According to the same sources, the number of people
    who entered Romania has doubled as compared to the previous state-of-alert
    period.


    (Translated
    by D. Bilt & V. Palcu)













  • New forestry regulations

    New forestry regulations

    Romania was once seen as a country with a great
    forestry potential. Today, however, its surface area covered by forests is
    below the European average. The reason is mainly the return of forests that
    were abusively seized by the Communist regime and irresponsible logging carried
    out in the past 25 years.




    According to Greenpeace, Romania’s forests are being
    cut at a rate of three hectares per hour.
    In the past 10 years, over 280,000 hectares have been deforested and
    degraded, out of a total of 6 million hectares of forest. The study conducted
    by Greenpeace has revealed that almost half of the deforested areas are in
    protected areas. What is extremely worrying is that Romania’s virgin forests,
    considered among the largest in Europe, have also been affected.




    Against this background, the Ministry of the
    Environment, Waters and Forests and the Romsilva Forestry Authority – the
    largest provider of raw material – have been called on to take urgent measures
    to save Romania’s forests. In 2015 and early this year, the dramatic situation
    of the Romanian forests led to street protests in Bucharest and across the country,
    with thousands of people protesting against the bad management of the country’s
    forests. Civil society representatives called, among other things, for an
    examination of the contracts signed with three Austrian wood-processing
    companies, which run in Romania over one billion Euro worth of business every
    year. Because of bad legislation, many irregularities have been committed,
    which have in turn led to the mere blocking of transactions on the wood market.




    A first measure aimed at remedying the situation was
    announced by the Environment Ministry on Wednesday. The ministry decided to
    clarify the way in which the reference and starting prices for timber sold in public tenders are established. In Romania, the price of timber sold by the state has
    become higher than in other European countries, and that has caused many
    problems, both for the 4,400 exploitation companies and the 7,000 wood
    processing companies in the country. Although the Romanian Government has
    already taken some measures to address the situation, it is very likely that
    the issue will keep raising questions and fierce debates in Romanian society.

    (Translated by: M. Ignatescu)