A restart, or hitting reset, is a well-known step in many fields, and often a highly desirable one, giving you the chance to reassess a process or activity completely and start again from scratch. Ten days ago the Constitutional Court in its judgment found that one of the clauses in the Cabinet of Ministers regulations adopted two years ago, which had allowed owners to manage their forests more efficiently, must be annulled in its original wording. In my view, this is a historic decision, one that ought to bring about a complete restart in our approach to future land-use policy, with environmental protection areas strictly separated from commercial territories and the two sides interfering rather less in each other's patch.

I am neither a lawyer nor a civil servant. I am a businessman. That allows me to interpret the Constitutional Court's judgment in fairly simple terms: a poorly drafted piece of legislation is being annulled because no proper assessment of the potential environmental risks was carried out while it was being prepared. So at bottom this is not about whether the management principles are right or wrong, but about a legal defect, which we are now resetting to zero while instructing officials to build the whole thing again. And in the process we lose time, opportunities and competitiveness.

Of course, neither the lawyers nor the officials could have acted according to any other script. That is their responsibility. But my responsibility as a businessman is a different one. I take decisions not only on the basis of rational judgement, but also intuitively and emotionally. Yes, often taking risks, but with one overriding aim: to make the company as productive as possible, to raise employees' pay, to share with society in the form of taxes and to accumulate capital for long-term investment. Plenty of people in business have that same aim — we do, after all, live in a capitalist economy, which is the foundation of Western society's prosperity.

What I can see emotionally at the moment is that, because of legal errors, a legal precedent is being set that opens the way for narrow interests to keep challenging owners' freedom to decide how to manage Latvia's fertile land more efficiently. Going back to the previous target diameters for final felling is much the same as banning the growing of new potatoes from tomorrow — surely we ought to wait for the autumn, when one delicious tuber on the plate will do instead of five. And besides, others must be given every chance to feast along the way. Colorado beetles, for instance, which will be delighted by the luxuriant foliage at the end of the summer. Biodiversity!

Thirty years ago, when all the interest groups sat down at one table and the first decisions were taken on incorporating new environmental aspects into forestry, there was confidence that the cooperation would work and that both sides understood each other's interests. For example, the retention trees we now take for granted were, at that time, agreed to be left in the felling area because hauling firewood assortments out of the forest was making a loss for owners. That kind of win-win approach existed because the dialogue was still open and those taking part in the discussions believed in a shared goal — a Latvia that had to be built anew together. Sadly, now that the level of national prosperity created by business has come to be taken so much for granted and the generations have changed, people are cheerfully gnawing away at the roots of the oak that produces the acorns. Just as in Aesop's fable.

That is why I agree with everyone who says the Constitutional Court's judgment is historic and utterly decisive. It shows clearly that the moment really has come to hit reset and stop believing in the utopia that environmental and commercial functions can be combined in one and the same territory. That road has exhausted itself and should be abandoned as an absurdity, because the two sides are no longer capable of pragmatic dialogue, or deliberately do not want it, as the farce of the working group drafting the FSC national standard demonstrated so well.

It is a good thing Europe understands this, which is why the Green Deal has handed us an excellent framework of land-use priorities to work within from now on: 10% strictly protected territories, where humans are to be regarded as an invasive species; 20% of territory where we will carry on pretending to look for common ground between the environment and economic activity; and 70% commercial land, where we must be free to act as productively as possible in order to bring in a harvest and secure prosperity for society. The discussion about environmental issues there, meanwhile, should rest on an understanding of maintaining the water cycle, preserving soil fertility and preventing chemical pollution. It is precisely towards this model that I urge officials, lawyers and the public to move as land-use policy is shaped from here on. In just the same way as we understand perfectly well, and accept absolutely, the difference between a natural meadow and a rye field where our bread grows. The forest sector's cycle and value chain are longer, but the outcome matters just as much — we put the money in people's wallets that buys that bread.

Finally, I would also like to draw attention to the absurd short-term chaos and losses that this triumphal march of bureaucracy, and the changes made to the regulatory environment with retroactive effect, have already begun to inflict on companies in the sector and — especially — on forest owners. Situations in which the money for a felling area that has been sold but not yet harvested has already been received and spent on important life goals can turn into individual tragedies. The Cabinet of Ministers must therefore find a solution as quickly as possible to protect private individuals from being left defenceless against demands they cannot meet under civil-law contracts.

This article was written on 9 April 2024 and expanded on 11 April. The first, unexpanded version was published on the Delfi news portal on Saturday, 13 April 2024