The Siberian forests of the Russian Federation are the planet’s largest “greenbelt” as they represent 22 per cent of the earth’s woodland (versus the Amazonian forest’s 16 per cent). Moreover, they are the habitat of native peoples: reindeer breeders and custodians of ancient shamanic cultures based on a symbiotic relationship with the forest, the trees, the animals and the plants growing within it. One example are the rites tied to the ritual consumption of fly agaric, the hallucinogenic mushroom that has a red head with white spots, which they consider to be the flesh of the gods and a means of communication with the spirits.
All of these environmental and human assets are now in danger of disappearing.
 
Native peoples at risk. The Russian press reports that the Moscow government plans to lease one million hectares of Siberian forest for 49 years to several Chinese state-owned enterprises that will deforest it to remove its timber.
The region involved lies between the oblasts of Tjumen and Sverdlovsk, in western Siberia.
The Khanty, Mansi, Sel’kup and Even native peoples live in this area.
“The unlimited exploitation of resources such as oil, gas, gold, diamonds and uranium has already forced the native Siberian peoples to increasingly withdraw from their lands, and many have thus found themselves forced to abandon their traditional lifestyles,” the Society for Threatened Peoples denounced. “Cultural uprooting, poverty, unemployment and disease are phenomena that particularly strike the native peoples and lower their average life expectancy by more than ten years compared to the Russian average.”
 
Not only ecological fears. This transfer would not only create a worrisome precedent, but would worsen a situation already critical due to the illegal deforesting of the Siberian forests. They have already been drastically reduced by private citizens who, in breaking the law, cut down trees in order to sell the timber to China, which is starving for wood for both building and energy use.
However, more than anything else this news in Russia awakened concerns from the political standpoint. A similar lease of national territory to a foreign country involving such a vast area and for such a long period of time in fact sparked off alarm amongst those who fear a new form of Chinese economic colonialism.