Eight communities from different forest regions of Ukraine took an active part in a World Bank project under the EU4Environment programme, "Supporting Sustainable Natural Resource Management and Economic Development through Community Engagement in the Eastern Partnership Countries". Five of them examined in detail how to influence forest management through FSC certification and earn income from forests they do not own. Can others do the same?
In the Hoshcha community of Rivne Oblast, nearly three hundred hectares of forest remain unowned. These are naturally regenerating forests – stands that have regenerated on abandoned land of their own accord, scattered in small patches, unregistered in the land cadastre and still without formal status. The community has lived alongside them for years yet draws no benefit from them.
"We have these nearly three hundred hectares of naturally regenerated forests, and we have no control over them. And then there's a vacuum: should we transfer it to state ownership or not? We thought about setting up our own municipal enterprise, but we put that on hold," says community head Mykola Panchuk. "This winter we realised we couldn't cope: the unregistered forest is simply being stolen and cut down, the timber vanishes, and all we can do is try to catch those responsible."
Naturally regenerating forests covering 300 hectares are scattered across the community's territory; in total, Ukraine has more than a million hectares of such forest.
The situation in Hoshcha is not an isolated case. After decentralisation, hundreds of local communities took shape in Ukraine, but the forests remained predominantly state-owned, managed by permanent forest users – chiefly the SFE "Forests of Ukraine". A community lives beside the forest but does not own it, and is often unaware that it can still benefit from it. That is precisely the aim of the World Bank project under the EU4Environment programme, "Supporting Sustainable Natural Resource Management and Economic Development through Community Engagement in the Eastern Partnership Countries", which has been running for over a year and is implemented by the NGO ForestCom and the German consultancy Particip GmbH. Eight pilot communities from different forest zones were given a list of focus areas, from which each chose its own.
"The hands-on training opened the eyes of activists and sceptics alike to the forest as an underused, misunderstood resource the community can draw on – even though it does not own the forest itself," says project coordinator Dmytro Karabchuk. "The project showed that this forest can help them develop."
The European experience on which the project draws shows that this is more than theory. In the European Union, communities generally do not own the forest either. There, forests are mostly privately owned, yet communities earn income from them through services and cooperation: Austrian municipalities run visitor centres in biosphere reserves; Slovenian and German ones operate municipal forestry enterprises; Italian communities sell carbon credits to buyers across the EU – and Ukraine, too, has large companies keen to buy such credits – while Finnish communities build local economies around berry-picking. These are only a few examples. The difference is that in Ukraine the community's counterpart is not a private owner but a state forest user. The community therefore needs a different lever.
Three of the pilot communities show three ways to earn income from the forest without felling it or owning it.
Hoshcha is weighing a carbon project, having recognised the value of conserving its naturally regenerating forests. Mykola Panchuk admits they had not even considered it at the outset: the idea emerged within the project, once the community saw how similar schemes worked abroad. It is now revising its development programme and strategy to manage the naturally regenerating forests and afforest new areas – low-productivity land, water catchments and recreational sites. The main obstacle is time. Revenue from a carbon project begins to flow only around the sixth year, while the commitments run for forty.
Naturally regenerating forest. Photo: North-Western Interregional Directorate of Forestry and Hunting.
"It's very hard to explain projects that yield results only in five to ten years. Few people grasp this. We use our historic park as an example: someone planted it long ago, and today we enjoy the benefits," Mykola Panchuk explains. "A tree planted today cannot be thirty-five centimetres across tomorrow. The results are not visible now."
The Dovzhanska community in Zakarpattia, centred on the village of Dovhe, has chosen non-timber forest products. Its head, Viktor Symkanych, who once worked in forestry, keeps a precise tally of the resources.
"In a good season we gather around a hundred tonnes of ceps (Boletus edulis) alone each year. There are no quotas and no records; collectors buy up the entire harvest and take it away as raw material," he says. "People get some money, but that's all."
Training participants in the village of Dovhe, Zakarpattia
More than eighty per cent of the community's territory is managed by the state forestry enterprise; the community owns neither the forest nor the land beneath it. Even so, it has acted: it has petitioned the forest-management commission to register its non-timber resources and to allow forest permits to be issued for them. Here the community's own initiative counts for a great deal.
"When a community sees where it can make money, it becomes more active," says the head of the Dovzhanska community.
The Bilohorodska community near Kyiv has chosen ecotourism. For this community on the capital's outskirts, the forest matters first and foremost as a setting that draws residents. It has folded the recreational use of the forest into the "Valley of Two Rivers" tourist route it is developing along the Irpin and the Bobrytsia. Part of the community was under occupation in 2022, though the route itself was not affected by the fighting.
Carbon, non-timber products and tourism all point to one thing: the community does not own the forest, yet can still benefit from it. The FSC Forest Stewardship Standard for Ukraine makes this possible through its requirements to inform affected stakeholders and involve them in the planning and monitoring of forest management.
How this works can be seen in Bilohorodka. Its environmental department has worked closely for years with the Boyarka Forest Research Station – an FSC certificate holder whose forest lies within the community's territory. Until recently the department's head, Olha Leonova, saw this simply as a good working relationship – until, during the project, an FSC Ukraine manager explained how the mechanism actually works.
Project participants in Bilohorodka have chosen ecotourism as their focus. Photo: Olha Leonova
"I only knew FSC as a consumer: that it stands for responsible forest management, where forests are harvested and regenerated. But what it offers the community as a local authority – I had given that no thought at all. It turned out that, in this context, the forest user has to engage with the community differently: more often and more effectively. I had dealt with forest users for three years, yet never once asked whether they held these certificates," says Olha Leonova. "For me this was a valuable discovery."
According to FSC Ukraine, by the end of April 2026, 4.85 million hectares across 78 forest management units had been certified in the country. Yet, as Dmytro Karabchuk observes, most communities are unaware of this tool, even though it gives them more leverage than existing statutory mechanisms.
The project promises no quick results. Its long horizon deters local councillors; the FSC mechanism applies only where certified forest managers operate nearby; and communities' tourism figures are methodology-based estimates, not actual revenue. The war, staff shortages and a lack of funds remain real constraints.
Yet all three stories share one lesson: the forest becomes a community asset only when the community itself steps forward and takes its place at the decision-making table.
"A proactive, well-grounded stance by communities is a key factor in the effectiveness of FSC certification. Community well-being is, among other things, a matter of environmental quality, a region's investment appeal, social infrastructure, and the right to influence decisions about forests. The FSC Standard for Ukraine helps communities exercise this right – to be heard, to have access to information, and to take part in drawing up and implementing the forest management plan. And it is the duty of every local community to exercise that right: not only within the project, but for the sake of its own socio-economic well-being and future," concludes Oksana Pavlishchuk, FM Manager at FSC Ukraine.
The project is not designed to provide funding, but it does offer an understanding of how to unlock potential the community had previously overlooked. The difference between a community for which the forest remains a burden and one that turns it into a source of development lies solely in the community's own initiative. Where a community acts decisively, asserts its voice in decision-making and seeks out partners and markets, even a forest that does not belong to it begins to contribute to its development.