Russia’s worst fires in years have burnt through more than 3.5 million hectares of forests, with the blazes near the Arctic Circle exacerbating climate change and releasing megatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
That is according to data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), which shows that most fires are burning in the Sakha Republic in Russia’s Far North. This comes after MSN News reports that the Arctic is the new “ground zero” for climate change, with the Sakha Republic reporting much higher temperatures and drier conditions than usual—perfect environmental conditions for wildfires to ignite.
“Fire emissions in the Arctic have been at fairly typical levels for the last three summers, but we have observed the recent fires developing following warmer and drier conditions, similar to the widespread wildfires in 2019 and 2020,” said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at CAMS.
“This is the third time since 2019 that we have observed significant Arctic wildfires, and it has shown that this region of the Arctic has experienced the largest increase in extreme wildfires over the last two decades.”
Climate change is now exacerbating shortages across Russia…
Wood Central understands that the Sakha Republic, one of Russia’s furthest and most remote regions, relies heavily on timber as well as gold, silver, diamond processing and coal.
In April, Wood Central revealed that Russia—still one of the world’s largest producers of forest products despite sanctions—is facing a growing gap between timber production and log supply – with production growing 5% (for the first quarter of 2024), at the same time logging nose-dived 26%.
That is according to Lesprom’s “Russian Lumber Industry Insights,” which reported that Russian sawmills are now bleeding thanks to a critical shortage in raw materials and are struggling to meet rising demand from major export markets.
The problem for Russia is that, at the same time that climate change is burning through large swaths of boreal forests, Western sanctions have, in effect, prevented logging companies from investing in new equipment at the same time that Europe’s largest producers exited the country on mass, creating large gaps in the Russian supply chain.
This has seen Russia and Belarus turn to China, South Korea, and the Middle East, deemed “friendly countries,” for a much-needed cash injection to improve equipment, boost logging, and increase timber production.
The “log squeeze” is not just a problem for Russia and Belarus, with Wood Central reporting that the global scramble for logs will intensify in the coming decade, with China (which now takes more than 85% of Russian timber), the largest forest economy impacted by the change.
- To learn more about the global scramble for logs and its impact on the global timber supply chain, click on Wood Central’s special feature.
