It has rightly been said that trees are at the very basis of life on this planet. They constitute key components in a healthy environment, and they are of pivotal importance to human and societal development. Their presence throughout history has enabled the growth of cultures and productivity; their absence has routinely diminished the likelihood of both. Human responses to threats or loss of trees are often passionate and emotional. While most other plants are viewed rather dispassionately and food crops are viewed as “commodities”, trees are frequently given intrinsic moral and ethical values (Bouke 2001). Forests of course also provide wood and non-wood products which constitute one of the largest, but often less publicized and publicly noted economic sectors worldwide, underpinning the economies of many nations. The role of trees and shrubs in the provision of goods for rural communities is fundamental to well-being and food security; their role in watershed management, soil stablization, rehabilitation of degraded lands, and as providers of shade, shelter and other services, is at times maybe even more fundamentally important than are their multiple productive roles. Over the past decade, the role of forests and forest ecosystems as guardians and habitats for biological diversity has been much highlighted and may be today better known to the man-on-the-street than their productive, protective and social functions.
Some 10,000 years ago, agriculture began, with the Neolithic revolution As my FAO colleague, Clive Stannard noted in a recent publication, ”we are still coasting on the Neolithic” (Stannard 2002). Over the centuries local farming communities - in repeated bursts of creativity - applied invention to the most promising of the wild plants around them, and substantially added value to them. Crop and animal domestication made settled life possible, and human populations grew exponentially. Population density led generation after generation to move over the next hill, and in so doing they spread their crops and other species useful to Man into new environments. Looking at the more recent past, the human population at the beginning of the 20th century was some 1.6 billion, by the middle of the century this had increased to 2.5 billion, and in the year 2000, world population had exceeded 6 billion. In parallel with population increase, aspirations for higher standards of living have multiplied per capita consumption of resources (Lanly and Allen 1991). Between 1960 and 1995, during which the human population almost doubled, the world economy increased 3 ½ fold. In forestry, the area of plantations increased from 18 to 44 million hectares. In 1990, 23% of the plantations in the tropics were eucalypts, 8% acacias (Carle et al. 2002).
Looking more at the recent development of human perception of forests and forestry, in the 1950s and early 1960s, the main focus was on industrial species. Development was largely perceived as industrial development. Many Forestry Departments, including the Forestry and Timber Bureau and the Forest Research Institute of Australia, were at the time administratively located in the Ministries of Primary Industries.
Accordingly, the World Symposium on Man-Made Forests-1967, organized by FAO and IUFRO in collaboration with the Government of Australia, in Canberra in 1967, stressed that forestry, no less than agriculture, must pursue the technological revolution, where production is obtained from smaller areas through greater inputs. There was a strong emphasis on economic growth and rising material well-being (FAO 1967, 1967a).
At the same time, the need to focus on the needs of increasing populations, especially in tropical countries, was highlighted in international circles, noting the need to pay attention to shelterbelts to protect crops and to the overall role of forestry in increased food production. In addition to the need to select and breed trees to produce high-yielding timber varieties, the role of forestry in establishing forest plantations on difficult sites and in expanding urban areas, was stressed by the First World Consultation on Forest Tree Breeding in Stockholm in 1963 (FAO 1964). Thus, the multiple functions of trees and forests were understood well already at that time.
In the 1970s and the 1980s there was an increased realization in the world of the fundamental need for rural development as a cornerstone for national well-being. Agroforestry species, multipurpose species for food and fodder, and not least fuelwood producing tree species, was increasingly in focus. Correspondingly, many Forestry Departments were administratively moved to become part of Ministries of Agriculture.
Genetic conservation became an acknowledged, urgent need in the wake of discussions in fora such as the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972. The need to pay attention to land use planning and the wise management of forests, was strengthened by the subsequent release by FAO of the 1980 Forest Resources Assessment (FAO 1982), which was the first truly global such assessment of state and trends. Following discussion around these issues, the 1990s, in turn, became the decade marked by increased environmental concerns; and Forestry Departments in many countries were administratively moved to become part of the Ministries of the Environment. Towards the end of the 1990s, the social dimensions of forests and forestry became more pronounced. The Third International Tree Breeding Consultation held in Canberra in 1977, strongly underlined the importance of widening economic analysis of tree improvement programmes to include estimates not only of financial, but also of net social, benefits (FAO 1977, 1979). In the 21st century, a “scientific fix” is frequently looked for, with stronger influence from, and links, between Forest Departments and Ministries of Science.
The above developments have been underpinned by perceptions of forests which have gone from “Nature is a Threat”; to, “ Man Conquers Nature”, to “Back to Nature”. As recently as in the Canberra Man-Made Forests Symposium (FAO 1967, 1967a), Jack Westoby of FAO drew attention to the important contribution which man-made forests can make in what he called, “Man’s ceaseless struggle to master his environment”. More recently, the perception of Nature against Man and Man against Nature, at least in many industrialized countries, has been followed by a re-awoken, ”Back to nature”- emphasis. Modern man shies away from change, and in the erroneous belief that nature is static, and that the present state is ideal, wishes to stop all human intervention in forests and forest ecosystems. Maybe, here, Man is actually looking for some kind of “Eternal Youth”... which, unfortunately, does not exist! This syndrome has pointedly also been called, “The nostalgia of wilderness” (Thirgood 1981).
It is interesting to note that in 1947, the Grand Old Man of tropical forestry, André Marie Aubreville, in an article published in issue number 1, volume 1, of the FAO journal Unasylva, noted wisely: “Man has set fire to the forest for the same reason that he has hunted, in order to be able to survive in the midst of a hostile nature. By destroying indiscriminately, however, he has only added to the difficulties a tropical climate imposes” (Aubreville 1947).
Honest, common sense also came through in a book which I recently read on Forestry Research in Finnish Lapland, way north of the Arctic Circle which, in an attempt to balance the extreme positions and varying perceptions opposed to each other in today’s world, noted: “Nature is a friend, but Nature is also at the same time a fierce and merciless competitor and can be a frightening foe”. Subsequent chapters in the book made serious attempts to review forest management as a tool to balance the economic, environmental, social and spiritual values of forests (Varmola and Tapaninen 2001).
The late Gene Namkoong - a pillar in modern forest tree breeding and a great thinker and philosopher- in one of his last articles. stressed that forests were, “the epitome of diversity” (Namkoong 2001). He noted that present efforts at forest management and conservation often reflected values of dominant economic powers or a preservationist counter-culture, neither of which brought any higher level of justice to the people affected or concerned. He saw it as our obligation not to abuse this complex system through ignorance, and to avoid management which would simplify forests to manufacturing factories, or attempt to restore or preserve, “a world that never existed”. He highlighted the evolutionary interdependence between forests and humans, and the need to focus on the issue of how to manage forest ecosystems, rather then whether to manage them (Namkoong 2002).
