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Map of Logging
Map of Logging
Map of Logging
The MAP is a project that promotes responsible and transparent forest management in Romania. It encourages Romanians to report forest cuts and make public any cases of irresponsibility or corruption in managing one of our national best natural resources – wood.
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What social issue was your project trying to solve?
The MAP is a project that promotes responsible and transparent forest management in Romania. It encourages Romanians to report forest cuts and make public any cases of irresponsibility or corruption in managing one of our national best natural resources – wood.
The MAP is built in as a community service available at no cost to the general public, media, authorities and forest engineers. The tool is available on www.harta.plantamfaptebune.ro and provides a general view of the forest cuts in Romania, at any given time. While the MAP does not provide an exhaustive view on the issue at a national level, one should consider its consistency is based on the fact that the content is generated by people who act as responsible citizens.
On the longer term, its purpose is to determine the legal authorities to officially use digital technologies (i.e. Geographic Information Systems) thus enhancing efficacy. As a potential result, the authorities, forest owners and general public will know precisely the coverage, consistency and constituency of forests. Furthermore, any forest treatments will be established based on the richness of the available details.
How is the project solving it?
Currently, the map hosts 1,284 forest cut reports, from all counties in the country (two counties hold the top positions: Argeş with 178 reports and Suceava with 161 reports). Figures can be checked on the application.
Once every 6 months we organize field trips with volunteers and authorities to check some of the reports on the map. We have done this in one county so far, Arges, the county with the most forest cut reports in Romania.
18 forest cuts detected on field where selected to be reported with an official letter to the authorities. The institutions replied in a month’s time and presented us with a total of 30 criminal cases, out of which 11 were opened after our field test. One of the criminal records has a prejudice estimated at approximately €100,000 and was selected to be monitored closely by the environmental NGO involved in the project (We plant good deeds in Romania). Results of this criminal investigation will be used for all further actions done in the project and in the public campaigns of other members of the civil society.
What is the current status of your project?
The application is still online, and will remain so for the next 5 to 7 years. We are currently planning similar field tests in 5 other counties, based on the reports we receive online and also the civil society we can mobilize offline. The next field trips are estimated to take place in June.
Are there any offline components of your project?
The field trips presented before. Their objective is to check on site the reports online. Since Google Maps does not update often the satellite images taken in areas outside cities, these field tests are mandatory to ensure that our reports are still valid or the situation has changed (trees regenerate in several years, Google Maps images can go back as much as 8 years in some regions of our country). As such we mobilize volunteers and authorities to go on site and investigate the forest cut reports we receive on our application.
How are you planning to develop the project?
We plan to expand the field trips to more counties in order to check more reports received in the online application. In order to do this we want to attract funding to organize these actions. Once we have covered at least half of the country (which is now covered with the majority of our forests) we will use the data collected to raise the awareness of the authorities and the citizens regarding responsible forest management and the appropriate tools to build it.
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Any comments about the human resources?
More people from the local communities are needed to organize and / or participate in field trips in their counties. The challenge so far is that people do not want to upset the local "business" as they fear for their safety.