Illegal Logging for Winter Fuel in Armenia

Environmentalists in southern Armenia are concerned that wood is being cut from protected forests in order to heat homes, in the absence of other fuels.

They are calling for tougher action to stop the country’s forests being stripped of trees.

Residents of Syunik region which makes up the south of this Caucasian state say they have to acquire firewood any way they can, as they cannot obtain fuel anywhere else. Seven out of ten villages in the region now rely on firewood for heating and cooking.

Inga Zarafyan, head of environmental group Ecolur, warns that if current rates of logging continue, Armenia will lose all its forests by 2020.

She wants the authorities to ensure that all logging for firewood stops. “The government can draw up other ways to support these communities, such as reducing the rates charged for gas and electricity,” she said. 

The settlements of Darbas, Getatagh, Shenatagh and Lor do not have a gas supply for which anyone could charge them.

Nevertheless, these four villages should be better off than most – they were told a gas supply would be laid on for them as compensation when their land was taken over to make way for a gas pipeline from Iran.

Although the pipeline was built last year, the villagers have never received the promised fuel, so they continue to use wood from the forests.

Nearby forested areas belong to the state and all logging is banned, apart from one agency licensed to thin out the trees. With fuel prices at a premium, however, forestry workers are quietly selling timber on the side.

“It says everywhere that you’re not allowed to go into the forest for firewood. We’re afraid to go in even to gather chips or sawdust to put in our stoves. But every week, several vans arrive full of firewood,” Sargis Petrosyan, a resident of Darbas, told IWPR.

Robert Khachatryan, the village head in Darbas, said residents had been buying wood cut in the forest for some years now. The prices that forestry workers were asking for their illicit wares were so high that most people could not afford to buy as much as they really needed.

Officials say people living close to forests are permitted to buy modest amounts of woodchip waste from legal logging, but Darbas residents told IWPR they were unaware of this right.

Firewood is now so precious it is traded as a commodity in these villages, often in exchange for food. Yerjanik Musaelyan, head of the village of Shenatagh, said a consignment of between ten and 12 cubic metres of timber could be exchanged for a calf.

Another of the villages, Lor, has lost just over half of its orchards in the last 20 years. The fruit used to provide a living to residents, but these days it is the wood that is needed.

“People are being forced to chop down the trees in their own gardens for use in the home, so that their children won’t freeze,” village head Davit Arustamyan said.

Earlier this year, the heads of all four villages which had been promised their own gas supply wrote to the government asking for the pledge to be honoured.

The ministry of local government wrote back to say this would require two pipelines of 35 and 57 kilometres to be built, costing 2.6 million US dollars. It gave no timescale for when this might happen.

Ministry spokeswoman Zoya Barseghyan said current government planning only envisaged funding for one of the four villages concerned, Darbas. “The question of the other villages is currently unresolved,” she said.

The case highlights wider problems of deforestation in Armenia.

The environment ministry says the total forested area comes to 11 per cent of the country’s territory, but this is disputed by activists like Karine Danielyan. A former environment minister and now head of a pressure group called In the Name of Stable Human Development, Danielyan said, “According to recently published figures from NASA, the area of forest cover in Armenia is just eight per cent.”

Galust Nanyan is a freelance journalist in Armenia.