Areas for Further Research
There have been major movements in the past decade, away from 1950s thinking about the role and contribution of forestry in development, in some cases even from older colonial policies. Nevertheless, there will be a need for continuing policy reform as the future unfolds. But who should drive it and in what directions? The whole process of formulating Forest Policy could become more democratic, more broadly-based and multi-sectoral. The policy formulation process may take longer, hut the result will probably be more realistic, effective and workable.
Common underlying policy issues throughout the region include:
a) the integration of national forestry sectors into the world market economy created problems where there were not already clearly defined and enforceable property rights over forests and forest lands. Where State ownership has been claimed but was not enforceable for technical or administrative reasons, land-use conflicts arose, which underlie some deforestation. Perhaps no-one (loggers, squatters, indigenous people or Forestry Agency) really has secure enforceable property rights and managerial responsibility, which prevents long-term stewardship of forests. If forestry agencies do not have the resources to use and protect the territory they claim, perhaps they should hand over lower priority areas and concentrate on managing a smaller area very well, or even setting the guidelines and limits for private sector activities.b) the divergence between excessive logging of forests (for commercial gain to both private and government sectors) and protection and sustainable management of forests for the longer-term public good. As the owner of National/state/public forests, some governments have acted as if commercial benefits are top priority - social benefits of watershed protection and the importance attached by indigenous peoples seem to be consistently underestimated. Log allocation and pricing, and industrialization subsidies have benefited private individuals at the expense of government revenues and the forest environments.
c) "Forestry" has been seen as administration of large government estates as a raw material source for large-scale private processing industries. In practice, there has been less time and effort for:
· managing social, environmental and off-site impacts, which should also be high priority;
· involving local people in the management of government, private or communal forests; or
· mediating with agriculture or environment agencies over land-use allocation.
Much could be learnt from the experience of the Philippines (see box) as there are strong reasons to expect this pattern will be repeated elsewhere in the Asia Pacific Region.
The preceding sections have argued that if policies and strategies are not soundly based, it will prove very difficult to implement them successfully. Moreover, if there is not broad public and political support, it will be very difficult to implement them successfully, even if the policies themselves are well-intentioned and well-reasoned.
Formulating, implementing and monitoring forestry policy is a dynamic process - subjected to extraneous and often unpredictable international and inter-sectoral events, as well as by local experiences in practice. Policy formulation and forestry sector planning can not be done only in the back rooms of the Ministry. Strengthening national capacity for forestry policy formulation and implementation, means more than technical and planning skills. While such people can certainly contribute analysis into the process, an urgent need now might be for a capacity to manage the consultative process that defines and formulates policy, gathers information and understanding, and indirectly provides public support for implementation.
The future is complex, as well as uncertain. Governments cannot know everything, but they need to monitor what is happening, seek reasons and explore alternatives - nothing taken for granted just because it is the status quo. Effective policy implementation cannot be separated from "management for results" and continuous monitoring. This requires all staff to be performance- and results-oriented, and internal management procedures must provide an appropriate incentive structure. The difficulties in attracting high-calibre staff, particularly with multi-disciplinary expertise, when salaries and/or status are relatively low, are well known. Yet some Forestry Departments fail to deploy their existing staff effectively, and to use all the talents and skills these people have. Pressures for change are likely to continue to grow.
"Good" results are impossible, if the whole policy framework is distorted. The present problems are more than just technical matters or a shortage of funds or of trained manpower, although of course these are important. To get the policies right requires improved understanding of how people and institutions behave. Many foresters, and bureaucracies in general, are accustomed to operating in a "command and control" mode, as if all parties involved will do what they are told, or exactly what the planners expect. Yet many of the parties involved are not under government control - and so planners need to better understand the incentives and disincentives people will voluntarily respond to. This also helps clarify the possible implications of the policies and measures proposed, as a check on unintended adverse effects.
Policies tend to be long-lived, but the socio-economic context can change quite rapidly for example in regard to NTFP demands, migration to or from forests, or local organizations to manage or protect forests. Occasionally policies are devised for situations which no longer exist. The type of forest and forest produce that people need, continually evolves and it is possible, to the extent that the market economy spreads, that remaining viable farmers may even prefer commercial timber trees than fuelwood and fodder species. We need to constantly monitor the direction of policies, as well as their effectiveness and results.
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Historical Sketch of Forest Policy Changes in The Philippines In 1908, 80% of the country was under dense forest of valuable species, under state ownership. The denial of local involvement in forestry damaged traditional management practices and lost some important traditional ecological wisdom. Being the first country into large-scale log exports, to earn much-needed foreign exchange, the Philippines created enormous market opportunities at a time when there were few traditional or modern controls. The major emphasis was on regulation rather than incentives (and disincentives) to achieve voluntary compliance. Huge concessions were granted to the private sector at very low rents and stumpages, while the government assisted with infrastructure and forest inventories. Despite the introduction later of long-term (25 year) tenures, in practice tenure was still insecure because of political uncertainty (so operators still behaved in very short-sighted ways). The "command and control" approach extended to industrialization. Mandatory construction of mills by all concessionaires led to over-capacity, token mills, and generally a gross waste of scarce economic resources. This has been superseded by tax incentives and amendments to foreign investment laws. Only certain stakeholders dominated - mainly industrial users. Within that group, the owners and the customers counted much more than the workers, the suppliers and local communities. The public at large, the traditional forest dwellers, and the migrants-settlers-squatters were typically ignored and received little benefit. Did government policies and enforcement fail to keep these people out of the forests, or did other government policies encourage or force them to go up into the forests? Now a radical departure is underway: · devolution of control, responsibility and authority, decentralized decision-making; · recognition of indigenous knowledge of management and use of forests: · community-based forest management often for non-timber outputs, and generally using simple labour-intensive techniques: and · increased emphasis on collection of the revenues due to the State from commercial logging. |
Similarly, policies have been suggested to ease the transition from shifting to (more sustainable) sedentary agriculture, yet the transition could be right out of agriculture!27 It would be very naive to assume all these people will become settled farmers, especially with intensification and mechanization of agriculture. Trends in input costs and output prices will largely determine how many people can and do remain as farmers in future. It is quite likely throughout Asia, especially in the economies with relatively high economic growth and slower population growth, that the future number and percentage of farmers (or even rural population in total) will he much less than today.
27 "Shifting Agriculture" has been used to cover a great range of different activities. Traditional or indigenous systems include: nomads; those who rotate their houses and gardens around defined territories; and those whose villages are fixed, but whose gardens rotate. Alternatively, temporary slash and burn agriculture is often practised by newcomers - squatters or lowland migrants, often with support from influential persons, to produce cash crops.
To stop forest conversion and achieve conservation, it is not necessary to stop logging, or to stop logging in all new areas, but rather to reform the policies that presently make forest colonization attractive. This might include the pull factors or the push factors. The evidence from the rapid economic growth of Asian tiger economies is that as employment and income prospects outside the agriculture sector improve, fewer people want to undertake the dangerous, illegal, difficult and often unprofitable activities of temporary agriculture in forest lands. However, if the new land use is very profitable (e.g. growing cocoa, coffee, cinnamon, rubber, fruit trees) and the potential capital gains from "capturing" some real estate from the government forests are high, it might be very difficult to slow the rate of forest conversion.
Forests will be permitted to remain when the people deciding the forests' fate conclude that the continued existence of forests is more beneficial than their removal. If not, forests are cleared. Some natural forests remain because they are not worth exploiting as they lack commercially valuable species, are remote or inaccessible. In other words, it would cost more to exploit them than their current commercial value. People living in such remote (uneconomic) forest areas may be permitted to enjoy the many traditional, non-commercial benefits of forests, but may be denied access to many modern goods and services by the very inaccessibility that protects their forest.
Protection Forestry, Industrial Forestry and Social Forestry have all been tried throughout the region - each has generated some successes and some failures. All have a valid role in specific conditions. The challenge now is to analyse the policy measures that led to the results and to learn from that.
Radical reforms of forestry institutions (as in Philippines, India and Nepal) are imminent elsewhere. Forestry agencies' assigned responsibilities are changing. New ways are being developed to deal with:
· setting the framework and guidelines for production, but much less active commercial involvement;· protecting natural forests; and
· recovering for the public the full economic benefits from the careful management and use of those forests.
The Convention on Biological Diversity calls for further research on the equitable distribution of benefits & costs of forest conservation. This is a pre-requisite to devising suitable international or intra-national compensatory schemes. But it also depends on the results of other research in documenting and measuring the physical relationships, e.g. measuring watershed outputs, soil erosion losses, quantifying biodiversity or the physical extent of carbon sequestration, which is still far from complete.
Any steps envisaged to slow the pace of tropical deforestation would benefit from much more information about trends in future supplies of both industrial and non-industrial products, the locations of forests, and the changing nature of societies' demands upon forests. The corollary to stopping further clearance of forests, is the restoration of already degraded forests. Most aspects of decision making by households and groups about reforestation, whether on degraded lands or productive lands, mirror studies on why deforestation occurs. The main difference with degraded lands is that there may be technical obstacles to overcome first, and that the likelihood of people choosing to plant trees on difficult sites is probably lower, because the potential benefits from all kinds of goods and services may be less.
