Forestry on abandoned agricultural land: Future options for Russia

Farmland abandonment and its natural afforestation occur in many countries, although net cropland expansion continues globally. Some strategies focus on recultivating abandoned farmland, while others focus on alternative land uses, including silviculture, carbon sequestration, and rewilding. Russia holds the world’s largest areas of abandoned farmland overgrown with forests. However, these forests are informal and unregulated since no legal land category allows landowners to engage in forestry. Environmental NGOs and forest experts advocate for silviculture on abandoned farmland as an alternative to ‘wood mining’ in primary wild forests. In contrast, pro-agrarian policymakers and state actors resist this idea by discussing recultivation, national food security, and state land control. The future management of Russia’s abandoned farmland has potential global environmental and economic impacts, yet it remains understudied. This study aims to understand (1) what future options for forest management on abandoned farmland are plausible in Russia, how they compare to those in other countries, and (2) how experts justify the preferability and likelihood of these future options. The study is based on the Delphi approach: two rounds of anonymous expert evaluation with controlled feedback. We identified seven future management alternatives: business as usual, agricultural recultivation, carbon forest management, and four forest management options. The most preferable options include private forestry: small-scale forestry managed by private landowners and large-scale industrial forestry managed by companies. The least preferable option is the most probable: business as usual – informal and unregulated forests on unused, abandoned farmland. No option was assessed as highly preferable and highly probable. Using the Russian example, we conclude that abandoned farmland use policies may consider forestry a future management option. However, opening abandoned farmlands to forestry may encounter legal and institutional barriers and cause controversy.