Monitoring the fate of forests after the Rio earth summit
Monitoring the fate of forests after the Rio earth summit
By Susan Archibald
One indirect result of the Rio summit was the establishment in
1993 of the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor,
Indonesia. CIFOR monitors strategic development in forest
research throughout the tropics. Over the next two months the
United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development will report
to the Security Council on the progress that has been made since
the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. CIFOR's Director General, Dr.
Jeff Sayer who will advise on the draft recommendations to the UN
in a New York meeting next week shares his ideas.
Q: Five years have passed since the Rio summit. What has
happened to the world's forests in that time?
A: I am sorry to say that we can't point to any dramatic
change in the situation since Rio. Forests still continue to be
degraded and cleared at an unsustainable and unacceptable rate.
The problem is that there are limits to what the heads of state
meeting can do to halt the process of forest destruction. The
underlying causes of deforestation are very complex and many are
deeply rooted in the broader problems of the developing world in
the tropics. We can't expect to have sustainable forest
management until we have legal systems that function properly,
and we probably can't expect to conserve forests while we still
have more than a billion people, mainly in tropical countries and
many living from the forests, going to bed hungry every night.
Many people also think that progress in achieving more
democratic governance would make an enormous difference in
securing better use of natural resources. So a lot of skeptics
are justified in saying that while bureaucrats and politicians
talk about forest conservation the people in the forest continue
to cut them down. But personally I think progress has been made.
Many countries have taken initiatives to improve the management
of their forests.
Q: What has changed in Indonesia over the last five years?
A: I think the ministry has made a big effort to encourage
concessionaires to obey the regulations. There are still problems
but there are also lots of areas where the standard of forestry
practice in the field has considerably improved. The threat of
shifting cultivators invading forest lands may also have declined
over this time. As industrial employment becomes available there
are fewer people forced to face the hardship of practicing slash
and burn agriculture in remote areas. Another major innovation
has been the huge investment in industrial timber plantations,
mainly for the pulp industry. These have not been without their
problems and the establishment of plantations has sometimes
occurred at the expense of natural forest, but it will eventually
mean that more timber can be produced from a smaller area
relieving some of the pressure on natural forests.
Q: But some people say these industrial plantations are not
sustainable, what is CIFOR's view on this?
A: Indonesian companies who are establishing these plantations
are quite new to this sort of forestry. They are still learning
their trade. There is no fundamental reason why these plantations
should not be sustainable, although at CIFOR we think big
companies will need to invest much more heavily in research if
they are going to achieve the sorts of yields required to make
their operations viable. There is also serious risk of disease
and problems with maintaining the yields of these forests over
time. CIFOR has major international research projects addressing
these issues and we hope that we can provide some of the answers
for Indonesian producers.
Q: Conservationists often feel that plantations and forests
logged for timber will not be good for wildlife. What about
meeting Indonesia's commitments under the biodiversity
convention?
A: Forests logged to a high standard still retain a lot of
their biodiversity. CIFOR and its research partners have been
researching reduced impact logging techniques and if these are
adopted on a broad scale then the production forest could play an
important role in conserving biodiversity. But it is still
necessary to have large areas which are protected against human
disturbance, so it is a matter of urgency to improve the standard
of management of national parks and nature reserves in Indonesia.
The Indonesian government has many projects tackling this
issue but most of them haven't been operating long enough for us
to be able to judge their impact. It is still proving difficult
to solve the social and economic problems of reconciling the
protection of parks and reserves with the needs of the
communities that live around them. Ultimately you need tough
regulations to protect high priority areas. And this requires a
high level of commitment from the government.
Q: There seem to have been endless international meetings to
discuss forests in the five years since Rio. Do these meetings
really contribute to solving the problems?
A: I have to participate in a lot of these meetings and I
sometimes wonder just how useful they are. Sometimes you feel as
though you are not really getting anywhere. But these meetings do
keep forest conservation on the political agenda and I think that
over the last five years they have resulted in a much better
understanding of the real issues. The Inter-governmental Panel on
Forests has commissioned a number of technical studies on
important international forest conservation issues and the
results of these studies have fed into the political process. One
benefit is much less polarization of attitudes on forest issues
today.
Even the most radical NGO's recognize that you can't conserve
forests if you don't address the needs of the hundreds of
millions of poor people who live in or around the forests.
Similarly even the most hard headed businessman recognizes that,
as we move into the 21st century, we can't ignore issues of
social equity and environmental sustainability. So I believe that
the discussions since Rio have done a lot to bring the two
parties together. CIFOR's view is that you can't solve the
problems of the world's forests by putting a fence around them
and putting them off limits to any human activity. The solution
has to retain its environmental and biodiversity values.
Q: But surely the private sector will always put its profit
motives first?
A: Yes it is inevitable. But increasingly consumers want to
see products labeled as to their origin and will buy accordingly.
So for at least a small part of the market, eco-labeling of
products should provide a motivation for the private sector to
improve its performance. But ultimately you have to have good
quality enforcement of regulations so that the only profitable
way for the private sector to operate is a sustainable way. We at
CIFOR definitely see risks in the increasing control of the
forestry sector by multi-national corporations who are free to
operate anywhere in the world where conditions suit them. But we
are also cautiously optimistic about the private sector beginning
to play a much more positive role. We think that shareholders
will want to be assured that their companies are not just
stripping assets and that the operations are sustainable
economically. This means that they have to be sustainable
environmentally.
Q: What would you like to see happen as a result of the
discussions in New York over the next few weeks?
A: Together with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the
International Union of Forest Research Organizations, CIFOR will
table a paper at the Inter-governmental Panel on Forests meeting
in New York next week urging the panel to give more attention to
the issue of strengthening forest research. When the world has
been confronted with other major problems, such as climate change
and AIDS, it has responded by establishing major well-funded
international research programs to study the underlying problems.
In forestry we are still struggling with hopelessly inadequate
information and in many of the 40 or 50 countries where CIFOR
collaborates, the national research systems are underfunded and
understaffed. We need to put the same sort of effort into
forestry research that we put into agricultural research to
achieve the Green Revolution 20 years ago.
We have major well-funded international programs studying the
problems of climate change and we need something similar for
forests. This will not be just conventional forestry research. We
need a new culture of forestry research looking at the
fundamental underlying problems of sustainable forestry.
And to solve these problems you need to mobilize not just
foresters but social scientists, ecologists and political
scientists.
Q: What will the world's forest look like in 50 years time if
the UNCED processes succeed?
A: CIFOR believes it has been a mistake to focus conservation
efforts on conserving as much forest as possible. We need to have
scientific answers to the questions of how much forest we need in
order to conserve the world's biodiversity and provide all the
environmental services, as well as the industrial products,
forests provide.
So it is not a question of how much forest but rather of the
quality of forest and where it is located. We need to have quite
large extents of totally protected forests in those areas which
are most important for biodiversity. We also need to have large
areas of forest for environmental services, but in most cases
these can safely be exploited for timber and many non-timber
forest products without major danger to the environment.
And we are going to see a major increase in industrial
plantations to produce timber and pulpwood to supply most of the
fiber needs of the world's growing economies. So even though the
actual amount of forest that is retained is important, overall we
are more concerned with quality and location.
Q: And what do you think about the prospects for an
International Convention on Forests?
A: My own prediction is that the UN General Assembly will
decide that there should be a continuation of international
negotiations on forest issues and that within a few years these
will lead to some form of international legally binding code
addressing forest issues.
I think it would be a mistake to believe that problems will be
solved the day we sign an agreement. But I do think that it is
essential the international discussions initiated over the last
few years be maintained, and if an agreement can be reached which
establishes broadly accepted ground rules for forest management
throughout the world, then this would certainly be a major step
forward.
But an agreement is not an end in itself -- it is just part of
the continuing process of moving towards managing the forests of
the earth as a global resource and recognizing that their
importance goes far beyond the immediate localities where they
grow.