Jānis Ģērmanis is interviewed by Māris Liopa, director of zemeunvalsts.lv, Latvia’s portal for forestry and related industries, and Pauls Rēvelis, editor of zemeunvalsts.lv.
Before you joined the board of “Rīgas meži” by entering the competition and winning it, you had already spent a long time as a company employee. There is a lot of talk, of various kinds, about the boards of state and municipal companies. What was your path to this position?
Entering the competition was my personal choice. I believe that if a person sees a situation that needs to be improved or changed, it is not enough to sit and be angry or criticise – you have to act. I think a large share of people working in the forestry sector would agree with me that they would most happily spend every day walking through the forest and only go to the office when and if necessary.
In 2011 I started working at “Rīgas meži” as a forest ranger, and I am almost ready to call that job outstanding – you are the master of the land, you feel as responsible for the territory you manage as if it were your own, and you make a point of knowing it well enough that every decision is the best one possible. Given the nature of the work, over time I came across things that did not work, or worked badly, and I listened to residents’ opinions and positions, until I understood how to respond to all of it.
If I myself have the interest and understanding of what and how something should be developed, I act on it; if I sensed that something needed to change across the whole company, I looked at what I could do. After just under six years working as a forest ranger, I moved into the post of head of the forestry department, where there was already “less forest, more office”. A moment came when the company’s board changed, and an open competition was announced for the board positions. I remember the feeling was like standing at a crossroads – if I know and understand what needs to be done and how, that has to continue. Another, no less important question: if the company was getting new leadership, what would the working relationship be like – would we grind against each other or work well together? I personally felt comfortable knowing what I know and can do, I have a good grasp of the sector, and after briefly weighing all of the above, I entered the competition and won.
It’s plausible that your advantage was a good knowledge of the company and experience... Have “Rīgas meži”’s operating goals changed, shifting more towards recreation and biodiversity conservation, and less towards economic gains?
At its core, the company’s operating goal has not changed – to care for and sustainably manage the territories; that was already the case before. What changed was the attitude: if a task is clearly enough formulated, it has to be carried out in substance. That is the difference. You can talk and write fine words about sustainability, but actually doing what was said and written is another matter. The company works actively, thinking about how to turn into reality the tasks and expectations of the residents of Riga and the surrounding area, as their owner.
At the moment we have sufficiently clearly formulated goals and a defined task; there is clarity, and we have brought together specialists for it who really understand it and are able to deliver it.
How does the company cope with the public’s often opposing views or stances on forestry? We see and read that “Rīgas meži” fairly regularly informs the public about planned thinning and other forestry work, which is often accompanied by photographs of tree stumps taken in the field and loud outcry (often from people who lack any real scientific or practical understanding of forests) – if we recall the older story about Biķernieku forest... How do you work with that?
The wealth and diversity of opinion in and around Riga is directly linked to the large number of residents in the region. Another thing, which I won’t judge as right or wrong (it simply is what it is): an opinion or a stance is often tied to the person’s personal experience, which matters a great deal. There is an example that illustrates this beautifully – a respected lady once asked me: “Why did you have to cut down precisely this tree, when there are plenty of others around? That tree was very important to me.” When you’re asked that, there is really nothing to answer, because we don’t know why a particular tree was special to someone. Clearly, we will never be able to take into account or find out absolutely every interest, but that lady’s question made me realise that even with a professional’s knowledge and experience in the sector, we cannot always answer every question. Understandably, that is normal!
If we want to work together to raise the public’s level of knowledge, it’s important to talk not only about topics that are comfortable for us, but also about the uncomfortable ones – felling residue, brushwood collection, clear-cutting, deer enclosures, and so on. On the last one, if you remember, the worry and grumbling were widespread, yet we did not shy away from talking about it openly and regularly reporting on how the situation was developing and its results. Of course, not all the areas under our management are equally well visited or sensitive, but where we carry out work in more frequently visited areas, we prepare initial information about the planned work, ask people to get involved with their opinions, and then produce monthly updates explaining what has been done, how it was done, and what comes next. This also matters because of various factors affecting the process, for example last year we planned and started work in Imanta, where forest conditions are difficult; we were hoping for a good, frosty winter – but it didn’t come. We were unable to complete the work within the originally promised deadlines without causing significant damage to the ground cover, so this kind of regular communication proves useful: by explaining the situation in good time, we changed our plans, and we will have completed the work by this winter.
If we wanted to compare, in general terms, people living in the Riga suburbs and those in more remote rural regions, a large share of people in the Riga suburbs are connected to companies for whom sustainability issues are neither unfamiliar nor unimportant, whereas in rural areas almost every third resident has, at some point, worked in a forest or been connected with forestry, or has had close family, friends or relatives connected with it. For people living in rural municipalities, forestry (and farming) work is tied to something real and practical. That’s just how it is!
This is a good place to mention that for a knowledgeable, professional forester, the phrase “cutting down the forest” brings on a slight shudder; it simply isn’t the right way to describe it.
I completely agree that for professional forestry activity, the term “cutting down the forest” is inappropriate and incorrect.
A topical issue containing plenty of good ideas and plenty of exaggeration – the European Green Deal. How do you assess this process?
Talking about the Green Deal, I think that, like any other situation, it too has both gains and losses. At the moment the Green Deal is understandably being slowed down, because at the start the level of ambition was too high, and the process lacked sufficient backing and understanding of how to cope with it all. To put it figuratively, there was a wish to bite off a big chunk, but you also have to be able to chew it.
The most important thing, if we’re talking about Latvia, is our ability to formulate, at national level, a position that actually matters to us and that we have all agreed on. The problem – and on a Latvian scale it’s a fairly big one – is that we have not agreed, and we are unable to agree. Once agreement has been reached, defending the state’s position is far simpler.
If we talk about the prospects the Green Deal offers us, for example through sustainable development, a whole range of opportunities is created for forest owners. We manage the forest for our own benefit and also for the benefit of society, which, depending on how you look at it, can be a benefit to our region, the nation, Europe, or the international community. Many are willing to pay for that benefit. There are various solutions for this situation: for example, in the context of carbon sequestration it’s possible to work with private funding; there is talk of nature credits, such as the Net Gain principle popular in the United Kingdom, which requires every development project both to compensate for the harm the project causes to biodiversity and to create a fresh 10% net gain.
What can we learn or “take” from that? Understanding and clarity that it is possible, and necessary, to create national-scale solutions that we design ourselves, knowing what we need. I want to stress – we need to understand clearly what we need and what we want to solve! For example, if we understand that Latvia has a type of habitat that is “doing badly”, and we want to improve the situation, that is an opportunity. We must remember that as a country we also have a whole range of other important things, not biodiversity alone – people need jobs and workplaces, need wooden chairs to sit on and wooden tables to sit at. We cannot and must not hope that our raw materials will be supplied to us from Brazil. The conclusion is simple – in solving these questions, we must not end up in one ditch or the other; we have to be able to clearly understand what we are capable of and what we can afford.
From personal experience I can say that at many of the meetings I’ve had to attend, what you often hear is not concrete plans and proposed action to defend national interests, but an anxious reaction to possible fines for failing to meet one criterion or another. That’s an understandable goal in itself, but is it the right motivation for an adequate response? Perhaps we can take a different path, by understanding why we ended up there in the first place? For example, we can ask: has our nature protection system been effective enough; has it worked well enough since the restoration of independence?
That is a problem! And the root of the problem, it seems, lies in the inability to agree that you mentioned, in other words, a lack of cooperation.
Exactly! In this story, the most important thing is the agreement I already mentioned, which we need, and an understanding of how to achieve it. Of course, we need data and precise calculations; for example, if we can neither find nor afford EUR 1.5 billion to implement the National Energy and Climate Plan, then where will we conjure up the necessary money from?
I want to steer this conversation towards clarity – how much, and what, we can afford to fund from the state budget, and how much would need to come from private sources; if the issue is internationally important, it may be necessary to look for funding from foreign public sources. The good news is that the private sector is willing to pay.
Presumably, there are people who know how, and would be willing, to take this money. Are the people responsible for it at state level ready for that? If someone is willing to pay, you need someone willing to take that money.
That’s exactly the story! In Latvia, are we ready to receive payment from abroad for solving shared European problems? The recipients, first of all, would be landowners and land managers. At the same time, we cannot forget that we only have as much land as we have, and we certainly want to use part of it for economic purposes.
Our timber-processing companies have capacity that, following the disappearance of Russian and Belarusian wood, is no longer being fully used, and that problem can’t be forgotten either. Pressing circumstances give the smartest and most resourceful the chance to develop and adapt to the situation. In a way, that’s a good thing. A great example is “Latvijas Finieris”. Some good while ago I worked in the plywood industry myself (at “Sāgas grupa”, which manufactured bent, glue-laminated parts), so I know the specifics of the sector. A while back “Latvijas Finieris” gave up manufacturing bent, glue-laminated parts; the company clearly understood – something had to change, something had to be given up, in order to continue developing in another area. And that’s exactly what happened, successfully! I also want to stress that a strong, well-functioning company needs a very clear system of values. The sector, too, needs to take a clear and definite stance, stating what our attitude is towards biodiversity and towards climate issues, and what good practice is required in terms of those values.
How does “Rīgas Meži” get along with private forest and land owners?
We have nothing to divide with forest owners; the situation there is settled. Getting along with neighbours – residents – is a different matter. For many people living in settlements and villages, “Rīgas meži” is a “beautiful view outside the window”. It’s worth adding that if you read property sale listings, you notice that the note “the property borders on ‘Rīgas meži’ or ‘Latvijas valsts meži’” acts as an added value and an added guarantee that no hastily erected hangar will pop up outside the window, and no unexpected or uncontrolled activity will start up. That is a factor that raises the value of the property.
An important nuance – for both companies, a moment can come when, instead of a beautiful view, it becomes necessary to carry out timber harvesting.
That’s a different art. Of course, the forest is managed. When we get down to planned economic activity, we have developed a procedure for communicating with the public. Neighbouring landowners are one group, but people who live further away, who go for a walk or do sport at the site in question (where forestry work is planned), also tend to be interested in what we do. Discussion is an important part of managing the economic process. The clearer the information we provide, the less chance there is that we’ll end up having to explain ourselves, deal with conflict, and so on.
I want to add that if you go into a conversation convinced that, as a forestry management professional with a decade or more of experience, you’re smarter than everyone else, the conversation won’t succeed. You have to adapt and be open to the discussion, recognising that the person who comes to talk looks at the planned work from the point of view of a “forest user”. We often hear questions that seem incomprehensible to us, but in a conversation you must not behave like an all-knowing expert, because that turns the whole thing into an exchange of statements – one side announces something, the other announces something back, and no real conversation happens. We are still learning ourselves, because more than once it has happened that we’ve said: “I know better.” You have to know how to have a conversation, and to listen to suggestions. I’ll add that there are suggestions we’re happy to take into account. For example, thinning was planned in Jugla forest, where we planned to split the work into two stages; in discussion we agreed it would be better to do it all at once. There are things you can always talk about.
Of course, successful discussions don’t rule out situations where, as soon as forestry machinery appears, “sudden” questions crop up, if you can call them that.
Does it happen that people don’t understand why something isn’t tidied up “all the way”?
We’re often asked why high stumps or dead standing trees get left behind as a result of forestry work. Undeniably, that is once again the sector’s important question of public education and communication.
Forests and rubbish could almost be called a never-ending story you hear about for years on end. Is anything changing?
I would be very glad to say that improvements are visible, but that isn’t the case... If we’re ever pleased that the volume of rubbish in forests has fallen, the following year everything goes back to the old pattern. I haven’t studied it in detail, but what I’ve observed shows that people respond to various campaigns – if a month or two is announced during which old tyres can be handed in free of charge, there are no tyres in the forests. As soon as the campaign ends, the tyres come back...
Nobody, it seems, likes seeing tyres dumped in the forest, and yet, if we remember, there were loud protests against a tyre-recycling plant.
The overall picture with rubbish in forests remains consistently bad. In my view, that’s not normal, it shouldn’t be like that, and I find it hard to imagine who the people are who do this. I’m not talking about someone walking through the forest and dropping a bottle or a piece of paper – we see evidence that a flat or house has been renovated, or a garage or cellar cleared out!
We need to talk more loudly and sharply about problems of lifestyle and culture.
In similar situations, I catch myself worrying about the reliability of the service provider – if I’ve had renovation work done on my property and need to remove a larger volume of waste, I assess whether the contractor I’ve hired will actually take it where it’s supposed to go; I definitely need to be confident that everything will be done properly. The solution isn’t the cheapest, though – I rent a skip, because I’m 100% certain where its contents will end up. I’ll add that the high cost of construction-waste collection is also a problem.
There’s also a question for which a solution has been found in recent years – biological waste: branches, grass, leaves. Until now, “good practice” meant throwing it over the fence into a ditch or taking it to the forest. In recent years, municipalities have given this some thought, and sites are appearing where this kind of waste is accepted.
For a small detour from everyday topics – I’ve heard that you worked in Canada for a while. How did you end up there, and what did you do?
That was my first work experience after my studies. I studied in Norway, had the chance to choose where to work after graduating, and chose Canada. I worked at a company called Western Forest Products on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia. I worked as a research assistant, dealing with windthrow problems and assessing the success of forest regeneration, and in my free time I looked after recreation sites. I remember it snowed there in December, and almost the whole of life ground to a halt, because right there, on Vancouver Island, people aren’t used to snow. I experienced a lot of interesting things, and tried as hard as I could to get involved in every activity connected with forest management, for example we burned big piles of branches. I never asked about the contents of the fuel mixture that we poured from a big canister into smaller containers, but I remember the scene well: rain pouring down, everything soaked, I’d walk up to a big pile of branches, chuck one small container onto the pile, light it with a torch, and the branches would burn, crackling.
What I experienced in Canada shows that a person’s attitude is valued pretty much everywhere in the world. I was interested in what was going on, took an active part in conversations, didn’t shy away from work, and didn’t watch the clock. A local guy who had been taken on for a trial period didn’t manage to keep up with that.
Latvian schools, and the education system generally, would seriously need to pay attention to attitudes towards work and to work culture, as a reminder that nothing happens by itself and nothing falls out of thin air.
There’s a tendency to do little and demand a lot.
You can demand, if you give something back in return. You have to work a lot, and hard. I’ll add that even at “Rīgas meži” you can’t plan on being at work strictly from 9am to 5pm. Of course, work-life balance matters to everyone, but attitude matters just as much. If you have duties, they have to be carried out. To get the job done, you have to work hard. It does happen that questions of attitude take more than one new hire by surprise here, something we certainly can’t put down to the younger generation alone.
“Rīgas meži” is a Riga City company; is political influence felt in the day-to-day work?
As I mentioned at the start of our conversation, the company has clearly defined goals and tasks that have to be carried out in substance. That is the only influence, if you can call it that. There is no other. I feel that we’re trusted as specialists. If we look elsewhere in Europe – most cities that own forest properties subsidise forest management. “Rīgas meži” earns money. Good financial results are expected of us, and we also have defined non-financial tasks that have to be fulfilled just as successfully.
Talking about the company’s board and how it is chosen: a little more than five years ago, the current chair of the “Rīgas meži” board, Anita Skudra, said: ‘(..) a significant obstacle to obtaining a certain position has been a lack of experience as the head of a company1,’ which in effect means a fairly closed circle of people who can stand as candidates for these positions. Talking about state and municipal companies, we can see more than one “travelling board member” who seems to fit any board.
As I already mentioned, my experience is different. Incidentally, last year there was a competition for the post of third board member at “Rīgas meži”, and the person who came in did so “from outside”.
But before that, they were a board member at Latvijas Televīzija.
I’d allow that when it comes to previous experience there are certain established norms or requirements, and a certain level of experience has to be there. In state and municipal companies, whether we like it or not, there is a specific nature to the work that not everyone can live with. In short, we operate within a pretty solid framework that even someone very experienced from the business world finds it difficult to adapt to. I see that when talking to lower-level managers we’ve managed to bring in from the private business sector. A public company has several important aspects, for example dealing with procurement, which is drastically different from the private business environment.
In my opinion, it would be very important for competition in choosing the management of public companies to be as strong as possible, with as many candidates as possible applying for the posts. It doesn’t always have to be specifically about knowledge of the sector; business-oriented and management skills matter too.
If we look at this historically, more often than would be necessary we’ve quite badly “got it wrong” when choosing leaders of various organisations, not just companies.
I think working at a public company is both an opportunity and a challenge, in the truest sense of the word – it’s important that a person doesn’t break within the framework set for such companies, that they understand why that framework is necessary, and that, bearing it in mind, they achieve good results that everyone needs.
Whether we can talk about the closed circle mentioned in the question, I find it hard to judge...
If we’re talking, for example, about companies in a particular sector, the people who apply in the competition are experts in the field, and also, for instance, someone who once served on a hospital’s board or, as you mentioned, on the board of Latvijas Televīzija. Reading a candidate’s CV, we see previous experience across a whole string of state-company boards, leading us to conclude that he or she feels suited to just about any board – that is currently a serious problem for public governance in Latvia.
In my view, it’s important for company boards and supervisory councils to include people who have a grasp of the relevant specifics, because that matters to the company’s employees – its team. A board is also a team; even though it’s small, it has to be able to make strategically sound decisions, there definitely has to be a specialist on the board from the relevant sector who knows the subject inside out, yet it’s also important to have someone on the board who can look at everything from a different angle. I count myself among the former, but I’ve always valued colleagues who aren’t from the forestry sector and who, with their questions, shake me up a little too, because otherwise it’s: “Well, that’s common knowledge,” or “Who hasn’t heard of that?”
That’s understandable, but is the board of a large company a place to practise, and don’t questions like these, which could also be called a form of training for the people who already know, someone like you for instance, take up time?
I look at that differently – it makes me think about things I hadn’t thought about myself. That’s important. I also mustn’t slip into the self-assurance of thinking I know everything and do everything right. How is one supposed to work out for oneself that, on this or that question, one isn’t thinking or acting correctly? Conversations with colleagues, subordinates, and residents help with that.
On protected areas. In nature, everything grows and changes; in nature conservation in Latvia it’s hard to change anything sensibly. How’s the famous eagle owl on Granīta Street getting on?
The eagle owl has come back, because Granīta Street is close to Getliņi, which gives it an excellent food base. The bird’s nesting site changes fairly often; the situation in Jaunmārupe is similar.
“Rīgas meži”’s approach to protected areas and the restrictions that come packaged with them is simple – protecting a species or a natural value doesn’t always have to be solved by fully restricting economic activity. We’ve been working purposefully on this for quite some time; we try to demonstrate and prove it through active work, and it’s important to know exactly which species we’re talking about, what they need, and which conditions suit them best. The eagle owl we just mentioned in this conversation is a good example – working together with Latvia’s best specialists, people who really know eagle owls, we’ve prepared and put up more than 40 artificial nests in various locations, without any formal protected status being assigned. When planning work near those nests, we take this fact into account.
What you’ve said fits beautifully with the recently published article about “quiet nature conservation” in Finland2. Coming back to the eagle owl, from your account you could conclude that this solitary, quiet-loving bird has, to some extent, also become urbanised – grown used to people and city life.
Absolutely! I’m not an eagle owl expert, but what I’ve seen in the course of my work shows that clearly. There’s an even more striking example – the largest goshawk population in Northern Europe is found right here in Riga (in the city), which is also connected both to the bird’s habits and to its food base.
As soon as you’ve established the things that matter for the species in question, you can act on that information, assess it, and plan around it, and, as I already stressed, that doesn’t at all mean automatically giving up the use of the forest. We want to continue harvesting timber, while taking all the circumstances into account.
In short – nature conservation and forestry need understanding, the right attitude, and common sense, the kind that’s characteristic of, say, the Finns.
Another good example is the European roller, which is a fairly unique species for Latvia, not exactly a typical one. The roller depends heavily on open ground – it perches in a tree and feeds on what it can see on the ground. The worst thing a roller can get is dense undergrowth or young stands with poor visibility. If a roller finds an area with enough larger or smaller openings, for example small clear-cuts or glades, conditions for the bird are excellent. Once that’s clear, the situation can be managed and shaped. A separate question is whether the species needs some other kind of support, such as nest boxes or nesting sites? From a forest-management point of view, those are, in my opinion, negligible measures to carry out in order to keep harvesting timber.
An important, unresolved question: how much, and of what, do we need, when elsewhere there is so much of it? Invasive species are also a topical problem.
If, in the long term, we want to be proud of and preserve our pine forests, we need to think about how to deal with invasive species. In the forests around Riga, black cherry and Norway maple have spread very widely, and if we did nothing, the future outlook for pine wouldn’t be bright. Shading, leaf litter that raises the nutrient level in the soil, and other such conditions create problems. Pine needs light; as soon as there’s light, competition grows, which in turn increases the amount of nutrients, which increases competition even further, and so on. That isn’t good for pine.
From time to time we get asked why we’re fighting for this, why we need pine, “why not just let everything take its natural course”. I have to say there’s no 100% clear answer to that question. I myself am convinced that certain values have to be preserved and not lost.
Besides, what will replace pine if there’s none left? For example, many beautiful pines grow in Mežaparks, some of them 200–300 years old, which are already literally squeezed in among red oaks and maples, and their lower branches are starting to die off. Should we act, or...? Of course, maple, which delights many people in autumn with its pink leaves, also has a place in Mežaparks, but we need to manage things so that we have both pine and maple, without either getting in the other’s way.
Are bears active in “Rīgas meži” areas?
They are, and they’re gradually getting closer to Riga – they’ve been observed near Baldone and Ogre. I have to say, as soon as bears appeared in Latvia, they were also in our forests around Limbaži, where the full spectrum of large predators is present: bears, wolves, lynx. I agree with the view that this year’s pressing problem situations with wolves call for a decisive solution.
To close our conversation, tell us: living in Latvia, what are your feelings right now, thinking about the sector and on a human level?
For several years now I’ve been living and working with a mindset geared towards opportunity. What does that mean? In any situation you have to assess the opportunity it offers. In my view, it’s important to see that opportunity and not lose sight of it.
One of the forestry sector’s problems in relation to non-governmental organisations, which also represent the views of a part of society, is a lack of mutual trust, and that’s why many things don’t happen and don’t get carried out. If we want to resolve matters that are important for the sector, we have to take that into account, and understand what’s realistic and what isn’t. If we can’t get anywhere on diameter and felling age, then what are we even saying about the most critical issue, for example the problem of pure spruce stands in the context of bark-beetle risk? That problem has to be solved quickly and in the best possible way. Over time, “Rīgas meži” has earned the trust of non-governmental organisations, because we’ve managed to organise forest management with an eye to preserving nature and other values important to society, backing up the impact of our work with data. It’s critically important to arrive, within a foreseeable future, at the possibility of a sensible discussion.
Endless discussions about anything and everything... It will be difficult even to work on the situation (let alone resolve it), because so much is tangled together, including personal attitudes and antipathy.
The sector needs to be efficient, and more efficient, but not at any cost; that requires clear, comprehensible agreement on what and how we need to protect, how much timber needs to be harvested, and so on. That has to be pulled together and agreed on. There’s been enough sitting in trenches, not moving, and putting forward unacceptable demands. I’m proud that “Rīgas meži” can genuinely say that our timber is harvested sustainably, that we no longer rely purely on gut feeling, or on the idea that “clear-cutting is bad, selective felling is good”, but that we’re already able, right now, to determine that impact and back up our choices with data. In protecting something, nothing has to be sacrificed entirely. Protection doesn’t mean giving up timber harvesting.
1. https://www.zemeunvalsts.lv/mums-ir-jastrada-un-japelna-intervija-ar-anitu-skudru-rigas-mezu-valdes-locekli
2. https://www.zemeunvalsts.lv/petijums-atklaj-plasi-izplatitu-kluso-dabas-aizsardzibu-somijas