Ukraine and EU to cooperate on forest conservation initiatives
Photo:facebook.com/forestUKR
Ukraine and the European Union have agreed to unite initiatives to preserve and expand forests.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine informed, according to AgroPortal.ua.
The Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, Ruslan Strilets, and Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, paid a working visit to a seed breeding center in the Zhytomyr region. The Ukrainian minister said Ukraine fully supports the EU's forest restoration initiative.
" The Ukrainian initiative on forest restoration is fully in line with the new EU Forest Strategy for 2030, which envisages planting 3 billion trees by 2030," – Strilets said.
The minister also emphasized that the Ukrainian initiative corresponds to the UN Strategic Plan for Forests for 2017-2030. It should be noted that one of the goals of the plan is to increase the area of forests by 3%.
In his turn, Sinkevičius noted that the forest management practices of Ukraine are exemplary for Europe. Ukraine continues to plant forests in the de-occupied territories where they were burned to the ground by the invaders, as well as to implement the pre-war afforestation program.
For reference:
Earlier, the Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, Ruslan Strilets, reported on Facebook that during the year of the full-scale war, the occupiers caused damage to Ukraine's environment in the amount of about 1.9 trillion hryvnias. During this time, more than 2,300 crimes against nature were documented. According to Strilets, almost 500,000 hectares of forest are still occupied or are in the war zone, while 2.4 million hectares of forests have already been cleared and need restoration.
