The Republic of Karelia in Russia and North Karelia in Finland have similar natural and climate features. Therefore, it could be assumed that forestry business effectiveness would also be nearly the same in both areas – but in fact, forestry business is developed better in Finland. There are several constraints in the forestry business of the Republic of Karelia, for example legislation and human resources, but the crucial problem lies in the forest road network. For instance, the density of forest roads in Finland is about 10 km per hectare, while the same indicator in the Republic of Karelia is 1,5 to 3 km per hectare. This advantage however causes other challenges in Finland, for example maintenance of forest roads, which demands extensive amount of resources. The disadvantage of poorly developed forest road network in Republic of Karelia demands immense amount of resources as well, but for construction.
The main outputs the project will produce are as follows;
1. Demo programme for optimizing road network planning and maintenance is created
2. Manual with recommendations for cost efficient approach for planning and Master Plan for maintenance is created and published
3. Task-level work models for excavator work are created; excavator pilots trained, evaluated and tutored at worksite
The cross-border cooperation is necessary to facilitate the forestry business in cross-border areas and to introduce common technology for forest road network planning. This must be done in order to improve logistics for forestry companies working in the cross-border area and thus raise their competitiveness owing to cost efficiency.
Duration of the project: 01.10.2020 – 31.12.2021
Lead partner: Business Joensuu (Finland)
Partners:
Arbonaut Ltd (Finland)
Lesnoe bureau Partner LLC (Russia)
Forest Holding Company Karellesprom (Russia)
Finnish Forest Centre (Finland)
North Karelia Municipal Education and Training Consortium, Riveria (Finland)
