JACK C. WESTOBY
Statement made by the deputy director of Forestry and Forest Products Division, FAO, to a meeting of the United Nations ECOSOC Committee on the Application of Science and Technology to Development, held in Rome, from 17 to 28 October 1966.
THIS IS AN account of the range of activities conducted by the Forestry and Forest Products Division; some indication of the ways in which it is endeavoring to apply science and technology to the acceleration of the development process; and an indication of the kinds of problems it is encountering.
Within the United Nations family, the Food and Agriculture Organization is the agency responsible for forestry and for forest industries. This responsibility was, in fact, written into the Charter when the Organization was founded. There are special reasons for this, which have to do with the nature of the forest resource itself. The forest is characterized by the complexity and variability of the production function. According to its composition and the way in which it is managed, it is capable of producing pulpwood for industry from fast-growing plantations after six or eight years of growth, or veneer logs harvested from 200- to 300-year-old trees from the natural forest. In the forest there is physical identity of the factory and the product, so that the act of cropping at once harvests an accumulation of growth and destroys part of the forest's capital (the wood factory). Another characteristic lies in the large areas upon which forestry is practiced, making close supervision difficult and the progress of production equally difficult to observe. Historically. the dissociation between those responsible for the forests and those responsible for industries based upon the forests has led, on the one hand, to widespread devastation and depletion of the forests often with dire consequences and, on the other hand, to misinvestment in forest industries. This is why FAO has been concerned with forest industries from its foundation, and why over the years it has developed what is now a very extensive program in forest industries. Of the 50 or so Special Fund projects for which the Division is now responsible, close on 40 are concerned with forest industry development, directly or indirectly.
The demand for forest products is today rising rapidly. At the same time the pattern of that demand is changing, bringing with it changes in industrial requirements from the forest. A consequence of these changes is that the regional resource/requirements balances are also undergoing changes. Thus Europe, which in 1950 had a positive timber balance of 4 million cubic meters, found itself in deficit to the tune of 21 million cubic meters by 1960. This deficit had risen to 33 million cubic meters by 1965, and is estimated to reach 70 million cubic meters by 1975. At the same time, certain other developed regions of the world are acquiring timber deficits. Moreover, the trends which have been noted are likely to persist into the later decades of this century. In short, changes now under way are leading progressively to a new international division of labor in the world forest and timber economy. Already, many of the developing countries can no longer rely on old, established sources of supply. One of FAO's aims is therefore to develop forestry and forest industry in the developing countries in order that they may be able to meet their rising requirements. It is estimated that these areas will require investments in forest industries by 1975 amounting to U.S. $8,500 million. Another is to lay the basis for new and expanding trade flows from the developing to the developed countries which will soon be needed, and which will become a feature of the world forest and timber economy in the future. FAO sees the encouragement of these trends as being a service to both the developing and the developed countries.
Experts in development theory agree on the importance of building up trade flows of manufactured and semimanufactured goods from the developing to the developed countries. In most industry sectors this is an arduous task for the developing countries. The forestry sector is different.
1. Because of the rising deficits in some of the developed areas.2. Because many developing countries are favorably situated from the standpoint of raw material. In tropical woods, and products made from them, they have the monopoly. And many developing countries are so favored by soil and climate that they can grow coniferous fiber at from five to ten times the rate per hectare and year possible in the advanced areas of the world where forest industries are at present concentrated.
3. Developing countries have growing domestic markets for forest products which can serve as a base and springboard for export promotion.
But this is not all. There are many other reasons why investment in forestry and forest industries is attractive to the developing countries. The forest industries, which include sawmilling, plywood manufacture, fibreboard, particle board, blackboard, veneer, pulp and paper, are diverse in range, economic size, factor input, capital requirements, and in some instances in technological flexibility. Most of the products of forest industries are intermediate goods, and penetrate into every corner of the economy. This means that forest industry development has a multiplier contribution to make to overall economic growth. In addition, forest industries tend to be resource-based, and the resource is usually distant from current urban concentrations. Thus, the establishment of forest industries creates new pools of development, with the possibility of enriching and diversifying rural life and benefiting the farm economy. Finally, investments in forest industries can justify or valorize needed basic investment in infrastructure, roads, rail, power, water, harbor and port facilities.
The considerations outlined here are now becoming widely understood. This is why government requests for FAO's services in assisting forest and forest industry development have multiplied rapidly in the last two to three years, and why these aspects of FAO's work will continue to grow.
But there are problems. It is convenient to group them into three categories, corresponding to the production phases:
1. growing the wood;
2. getting the wood from the stump to the mill;
3. processing the wood into finished products.
GROWING THE WOOD
There is no doubt that the hardest nut to crack is how to valorize the heterogeneous tropical hardwood forests, in which only a limited number of species at present find commercial outlets. At one time hopes were pinned on a sort of technological scissors movement: progress in the wood-processing industries which would broaden the raw material base of these industries; and progress in silviculture which would make it possible economically to transform the forest into a more useful composition. In wood processing there has been considerable progress, but not enough. On the silvicultural side, costs are still for the most part prohibitive. Further progress in utilization can be expected, particularly as more forest industries are established in the developing countries, since the existence of local industries tends to enlarge the range of wood material used, in contrast to the rather exigent requirements of processing plants situated overseas. But the main tendency nowadays is to replace, or supplement, limited areas of mixed tropical forests by man-made forests, which can offer greater volumes of homogeneous raw material for processing within a smaller radius.
Man-made forests seem destined to play a growing role in satisfying the world's wood requirements. Nevertheless, means must be found of reducing the cost of transforming or of clearing and replacing mixed tropical forests. It was reported recently that $10 million worth of chemicals had been used to defoliate 300,000 hectares of jungle in the Republic of Viet-Nam. From the cost/return standpoint, this is useless in solving the problem. But the chemical defoliants may have a part to play in tackling this problem of the tropical forests. It is nigh time that systematic investigations were undertaken.
Development needs require better and quicker resource data. Here the new technology is already helping, but it could help much more. Aerial survey and the use of color photography are familiar techniques. But radar-sensing from aircraft and from earth satellites could provide the means of accumulating resource information with speed, detail and comprehensiveness that would constitute a real breakthrough. This is particularly important for some tropical forests where persistent cloud cover limits the effectiveness of present-day techniques.
The revolution in data processing has reached forestry and in the developed countries this is already bringing about a revolution in forest management. With the possibility of storing more data, and of sorting it for different purposes quickly and cheaply, inventory data are called upon now for current management decisions. This revolution has to be carried quickly into the developing countries, where it is needed for adequate project evaluation. Few forest departments or agencies can afford the necessary facilities. In some cases central facilities are available which forest departments can use. A most valuable form of aid would be the granting of such facilities by the developed to the developing countries. This has already begun and should be extended. A corollary is that inventories should be designed from the outset to use the currently available technology.
GETTING WOOD FROM STOMP TO MILL
The cost of harvesting and transport is the biggest element in the cost of raw material at the wood processing plant. In the majority of cases, this is the biggest obstacle to establishing viable plants in the developing countries. In Scandinavia, North America and the U.S.S.R. there have been tremendous developments in harvesting machinery in the last decades. As yet, there has been little or no work in developing machinery specifically adapted to conditions in the forests of many developing countries.
But it is in transport that technology is advancing most rapidly. Two aspects on which work is going ahead could possibly be of great importance to the developing countries. One is balloon logging, which might make economic the coniferous forests of many developing countries where topography is difficult, the other is the transportation of wood chips by pipeline, which could help to surmount some present location limitations. FAO is following both these developments. There are new trends in maritime transport, toward specialized vessels adapted to particular cargoes and, quite recently, the building of articulated vessels. A new trade, for example, has developed in wood chips in bulk. Such trends are of particular importance for FAO since more and more of the world's wood requirements are going to be satisfied through international trade, and since a growing part of this trade should come from the developing countries. But there are other transport trends to be watched. The next generation of civil aircraft may well have the effect of making air transport competitive with road, sea and rail for bulk commodities over long distances. This could well lead to radically revised ideas about mill location and about the establishment of new man-made forests. One can visualize shuttle-service aircraft flying between mills in developing countries and market centers in the developed countries. My personal view is that this phase of the production process, harvesting and transport, offers the most exciting possibilities.
WOOD PROCESSING
Here the problem is, generally speaking, that so far the developing countries have had to make do with the technologies thrown up through industrial development in the advanced countries; there has been little effort to devise technologies specifically adapted to the circumstances of the developing countries. Take pulp and paper. In most branches of this industry scale economies are very pronounced, and the trend is toward ever-larger mills. With the buoyant market for their products in the developed world, equipment manufacturers have not concerned themselves with devising economic small- and medium-scale plants. Nor have research institutes devoted much attention to this problem.
Many developing countries lack conventional fiber resources, and their principal hopes rest on agricultural residues, including bagasse, or on bamboo. Most grades of paper can be made from these materials, and many viable plants are operating. But there is a particular problem in relation to newsprint from bagasse. Three rival processes are available, but none has been tried out on a really commercial scale. Some developing countries are anxious to make newsprint from bagasse but cannot afford to be made test cases for an investment amounting to $20-50 million. Or take the question of glues and resins, a high cost component in the manufacture of plywood and particle board. If these have to be imported, a large part of the import-saving stemming from the establishment of local industries disappears. But many developing countries do not as yet have the chemical industries which can provide them with cheap synthetic resins. There is need, therefore, for adequate resins which can be developed locally from animal or vegetable materials.
Perhaps enough has been said to illustrate the type of problem with which FAO is faced. But in conclusion some mention should be made about food. Within the next few years there may be a new breakthrough, and the forests may be contributing to the solution of the food problem in new and direct ways. Fodder yeast for animal feed is nothing new. But it is now produced on a large scale in the U.S.S.R. Once the economics of producing fodder yeast from the by-products of the wood-processing industries are solved this may play an important role elsewhere. It is now possible to convert conifer needles to animal feed. Further work in this field is being stimulated and conceivably the process may eventually be adapted to processing the leaves of deciduous trees. Finally, there are current experiments in Finland which have shown that cows fed on a diet of wood pulp fortified by chemicals can yield 4,000 kilograms of milk with 4 percent fat content per year. If this proves economic, it could be of importance to the developing countries where pulp and paper development is at present inhibited by small-size national markets against the scale economies of the industry. One can visualize pulp plants of an economic size, processing part of their products into paper and utilizing the balance for animal feed.
This paper has not attempted to give a detailed picture of FAO's activities but rather. to illustrate, by a few examples, some of the problems of applying science and technology in a sector which is rapidly increasing in importance because of its unique developmental impact.
|
INTERNATIONAL UNION OF FORESTRY RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS In agreement with the President of IUFRO, Professor Dr. h.c. J. Speer, the GERMAN UNION OF FORESTRY RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS (President: Professor K. Mantel) takes pleasure in announcing that the next IUFRO Congress will be held in Munich from 4 to 9 September 1967. Between 10 and 23 September, excursions are being arranged covering the entire territory of the Federal Republic, in addition to various specified excursions being arranged for certain geographic areas and particular fields of forestry. The IUFRO Congress Bureau has been set up at Amalienstrasse 52/II, Munich 13, Federal Republic of Germany. During the Congress an exhibition of books and journals will be organized, giving participants the completest possible survey of modern forestry literature. The arrangements for this exhibition have been entrusted to the University Bookshop Heinrich Frank, 8 Munich 13, Schellingstrasse 9. All publishers (including institutes and private persons publishing forestry literature on their own account) are invited to send a copy of all publications appropriate to this special exhibition, free of postage and charges to the University Bookshop Frank. Apart from the expenses for sending and returning the books (by means of international reply coupons), no further charges to exhibitors will arise. |
