B.K. Steenberg
This article was originally written and delivered by B.K. Steenberg as an address to the second session of the FAO Committee on Forestry (COFO) in May 1974. It was Dr. Steenberg's last major policy statement before he retired as Assistant Director General in charge of FAO's Forestry Department. He is now at the Royal institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Address to the FAO Committee on Forestry
Forest services should be partners in decision-making for land use. In general, governments are tending toward short-term policies, but forestry requires long-term investment and conditions for this are now favourable. The author also points to recent significant technological innovations, considers effects of petroleum price increases and reviews tasks and problems at FAO.
One way to analyse the state of world forestry is to turn to the official annual reports of the world's forestry services. In fact, they are remarkably similar in their policy statements. They all deal with the vital question: Are the forests adequate in area, distribution and composition to satisfy the expanding and changing demands of the people for goods and services? The reply to this question is invariably in the negative.
In one report after another the head of the forest service points out that his country cannot afford to leave cut-over forests idle and unproductive, that the rate of restoration is far too slow, and that there are compelling reasons to get the land back into production and to improve the productivity of established forests. It is explicitly stated, or at least implied, that in most areas there is no practical alternative to the use of genetically improved native species or exotics.
Simultaneously, it is frequently pointed out that afforestation may involve changes that are detrimental to the landscape, that it may change legitimate land-use patterns, such as recreation and tourism, and may also destroy important biotopes. The forest service strongly supports the protection of the environment, but points out that some who are primarily concerned with aesthetics and conservation have unbalanced and perhaps even immature points of view.
One can read between the lines that the forest services seem convinced that nobody is going to put more into the forests than the money which comes out of them, and hardly ever that much, their survival thus depends on production. Production means wood, but will also include various services, many of them difficult to express in monetary terms.
The protective function of the forest, for matters such as watershed management, seems to be the focal point of most forest services. Scarcely any problem of maintaining environmental quality can be solved without a land-use policy, and we know that this is one of the most politically difficult tasks. Almost any activity is hampered by a lack of guidelines, regulations or of enforcement of land-use principles.
Forestry is perhaps the major scapegoat of this state of flux. In saying this I do not overlook the importance of land-use policy for agriculture, or the decline in environmental quality caused by the sprawling urban regions - but invasion and destruction of the forests are in the long term definitely more serious.
Although accepting the need for forest clearing for organized agriculture on land with suitable soil and water regimes, we have to stand by, helpless, during haphazard and unplanned invasions of the forests by illegal cultivators, not to mention the developed countries' often promiscuous development of vacation homes which cause degradation of forests and wild lands. We witness uncontrolled forest concessions being worked on without concern for regeneration and future land use. We see public works causing erosion and forest destruction, often because of ignorance and sometimes through negligence.
I note as a significant development the decision to make the United Kingdom Forestry Commission a partner in the British land-use planning body. Let us hope that this takes place in other countries as well. It is a necessary partnership for the public good.
There is probably no part of the earth, no major sector of the biomass, which has fewer people speaking for it than the forest. So the foresters have to speak "loud and clear."
During the last few years there have been several successful efforts to attract the interest of the public, the politicians and the administrators to this issue. FAO has held a series of seminars, and recently Australia had a national forest development conference which received wide publicity and public attention. In my opinion, now is the right time for even more concentrated and concerted efforts. Why now?
First, radical global economic changes have made governments more careful in committing their resources according to long-term plans.
Second, through various tax devices, governments are receiving a far higher income from wood than ever before. The private sector involved in forests is also earning more.
Therefore, in my opinion, this is the moment for the heads of forest services to do two things:
First, they should inform their governments that forestry is one sector which must have not only long-term planning but also the corresponding long-term commitments, and that in this respect there are few sectors of national economies comparable to forestry.
Second, they should announce that this is the time for governments and private entrepreneurs to commit money to forestry and forest industries, as current economic conditions are favourable.
For all the present interest in saving nonrenewable raw material resources for later use, it may be useful to remember that although forests are renewable raw material resources, they are so only when you renew them. Only in this way can we keep and augment these assets for harder times to come. The effective instrument for accomplishing these ends is the fiscal system. That should be understood and it should be stressed in putting the case before governments and the public. The fiscal system-taxes or tax incentives-is by far the easiest and most effective way to influence forestry. But, of course, it has to be managed for the primary benefit of forestry, which is to say for the people as a whole and not simply for special interest groups. Fiscal methods can also result in "nonforestry" practices such as clear-felling without regeneration or the perpetuation of old, over-mature stands.
Fiscal methods can result in the creation of new plantations or in bringing everything to a complete standstill. It depends on how taxation is used. But wisely used taxes and tax benefits can do wonders for forestry.
Concerning the current state of forestry, here are a few observations.
Forestry is an economically and ecologically risky business, due to its long procreation time and to the nature of its produce. Damage to forests through fungi is strongly on the increase, and the monoculture forest, as all monocultures, will need strong protection efforts. In many places insect pests are destroying forests at about the same rate as the production of wood through plantation programmes. The very severe Tussock Moth epidemics in North America in 1973 destroyed enormous forest resources. Under such serious conditions, the overall ban on chlorinated aromatics such as DDT would seem to warrant reinvestigation. FAO will put major effort into the sector of insect problems in forestry
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Forests are only renewable if you renew them. |
On research, I draw your attention to two issues, one in biochemistry and one in social forestry research, as examples of how this important aspect of forestry is proceeding.
Most of the earlier scientific studies on forests dealt with the physiology of wood production, while rather few dealt with the physiology and biochemistry of wood decay. Destruction of woody tissue proceeds at about the same rate as new production of wood. If cellulose were not subjected to decay, the world's biological big-carbon supply would rapidly become tied up in woody material. The decay is essentially carried out hydrologically and enzymatically, with fungi playing a major role. The mechanism of extra cellular cellulose decay is now fairly well understood. The simultaneous decay of lignin and cellulose has recently been shown to be due to a cellobiose quinone oxidoreductase which reacts both with the carbohydrate and the lignin. This is an important breakthrough in our understanding of the wood decay process. Its positive aspects lie in the new possibility of using woody tissues for the production of various protein products for animal and, eventually, human consumption. At FAO, foresters, animal production specialists and nutritionists are all concerned with these developments [Editor's note: see The Pekilo process, p. 15].
Concerning sociological research, one of the main preoccupations for forestry throughout the world is how to identify people's attitudes toward and demands on forest resources and then reconcile these through progressive and operational programmes and policies. It now seems that the agitated dialogue between the protection and production phalanxes is entering a more constructive stage, marked by willingness to compromise on heretofore unresolvable issues and conflicts. Foresters, trained to mobilize the forest resources, are now involved in more systematic and energetic research aimed at finding ways and means of mobilizing human resources.
This research has two objectives. First, to make the public aware of and willing to respond to specific resource management problems in forestry; second, to find technological solutions to these problems in order to benefit people directly involved in and physically dependent upon the way the forest is developed, managed and harvested. A significant trend in forest research, therefore, is the identification and quantification of attitudes and expectations of the public toward forestry.
Also important for foresters is the question of mobilizing human resources in general for the cause of forestry. Part of this problem is how to systematically persuade and involve those rural people whose daily work and life depend on forestry. Again, it is a question of identifying their expectations and justified demands.
The key to success here rests with choice of technologies and forms of production which meet as far as possible legitimate human expectations and demands. The result is seen, for instance, in logging systems and machines. Research and technology - man-made resources that they are - will determine the world's future. This certainly holds true for forestry and foresters, aware as they are of the forces and will of nature, and particularly well suited as they are to the application of research and technology.
Briefly, let us survey some recent important developments which affect significantly the field of wood conversion.
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Environmental quality requires land-use policies. |
The problem of substitutes for wood in the form of steel, aluminium and plastics will more or less vary in the future due to the new prices for oil and energy. The further development and use of plastic paper and paperboard will probably be delayed at least 10 years for all but a few specialty items. Bagasse as a substitute for wood in paper has lost position because of its increased value as fuel in sugar mills.
Perhaps one of the most significant recent events is the advance in finger-jointing of construction timber. This method has already been used for some years for more efficient and economical utilization of small-size woods, but it has been unacceptable for construction timber. Improved finger-jointing technology, including development of new glues and standardization of testing procedures, has led to finger-jointed construction timber now being authorized in the building code of at least one country (Sweden) and more will follow. As a result, yield increase is reported to be up by 15 percent. It means that smaller trees previously not suitable for construction timber will have a new value added. Thus, an extension of the raw material supply of construction timber has de facto been created. The international significance of this technological development is obvious.
During past years there has been a considerable increase in the trend toward pre-preparation of logs for saw-milling by squaring; chip and saw methods are becoming more important, as well as microcomputer-assisted techniques to maximize the yield from each log. As squared logs require less storage space one may see a development in trade of squared tropical wood as a first step toward increased production of sawn goods in tropical areas.
The world is at present experiencing a shortage of pulp and paper and, according to FAO studies, this undersupply of the market against projected demand curves is going to increase for at least the next three years. The production capacity coming on-stream during this time is known from our capacity studies. Even if existing mills use their facilities to a maximum, and the maximum feasible recovery of wastepaper is reached, there will not be enough paper to meet projected world demand. The fact that nothing is really known about price elasticity of demand in this field - that is, the relationship between price and the quantity demanded - makes economic projection difficult. Undoubtedly there will be considerable investment in the pulp and paper industry.
The FAO Pulp and Paper Advisory Committee this year expressed the opinion that there is considerable scope for new pulp and paper mills in the developing countries that have adequate raw materials. In view of this, some important breakthroughs in the relevant technology will be worth mentioning because they have a bearing on new investment decisions.
In the field of mechanical pulp production the disc-refiner method seems to have made its breakthrough after some 15 years of intensive research and development. By a combination of thermal heating and disc refining - thermo-refining - wood chips can be converted to mechanical pulp with high strength and excellent optical properties. The classical method of grinding logs on grinding stones is thus on the way out. The new technique permits the use of sawmill residue and wood chips.
In the sector of chemical pulping, new bleaching and pulping methods have achieved commercial acceptance. Gaseous oxygen and peroxides are used for bleaching in several successful industrial installations and it seems possible that within a few decades pulping with sulfur compounds will be much less common. Pollution of water and air by pulp mills is closely linked to the use of sulfur compounds. Conventional pulping methods have reached a high degree of perfection and integration, and continuous pulping systems now include also the washing stage.
Labour intensity in pulp and paper mills is still decreasing. One new mill owned by a cooperative of private forest owners in Sweden produces 900 tons of bleached pulp per day with only three workers per shift for cooking, washing, screening and bleaching operations.
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Taxes and tax benefits can do wonders for forestry. |
New paper-forming methods - multiwire systems - allow rebuilding of old paper machines into machines which are so compact that the dryer section can be considerably increased, with higher production rates resulting. The limitation to this development seems - in the short term at least - to be the availability of more pulp.
This has been only a brief and fragmentary review, but between the lines you will see other important factors in forestry and forest industries. For instance, there is a need for modernization of forestry education and training at all levels, and for more informal exchanges of information and techniques.
Now to turn to the medium-term programme of FAO. It can be outlined as follows:
1. Assistance to Member Nations in the design and implementation of development projects.2. Promotion of international action to gain recognition at world and regional level of the principles that should inspire forest services for the conservation and development of forest resources, and also to improve the effectiveness of these national forest policies.
3. Providing the 131 Member Nations of FAO with a certain number of standing publications.
Organized in this way, you will no doubt note that these three tasks require quite different work technologies. We even have to use different channels to work with the governments. But this is only one dimension of the problem confronting FAO Our main obstacle is that we are short of personnel - in fact short of everything - and our work is full of unpredictable elements. This, admittedly, is a tiresome observation. But shortage of means is tantamount to excess of purpose.
And the unpredictable is another way of expressing excess of purpose, and purposes not earlier realized.
Expressed in this way, the obvious and immediate conclusion to be drawn is the imperative need to select our priorities - which is a continuous process because of the new emphasis forced on us. An equally imperative need is for FAO to define in tangible terms either the objectives to be achieved or the functions to be performed. In reality, the problem is how to identify achievable goals and plan for them, allowing maximum scope for the unpredictable. Confronted with the need for priorities, it seems to us that it would be useful to approach this problem from the point of view of the functions or services we provide, rather than solely from the subject-matter base. This means, in essence, that we have to work with what is called "management by objectives."
Let me start with the assistance part of the programme. This is the sector which offers little scope for any prognosis of medium-term activities. The reason is that FAO's role here is essentially that of an honest broker between governments asking for assistance and donors willing to provide such assistance. Let me take the sector of raining as an example.
The method of work is essentially one of arranging seminars and training courses and the production of educational material such as manuals. This can only succeed to the extent that we can mobilize donor countries, and we have in this sector to concentrate on those donors who have special interest and experience in human resource problems. This is the method of work which we apply quite extensively in the units dealing with education and institution building and also in the sector of forest operations.
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The most important renewable resource is the human brain - it finds new solutions. |
There is absolutely no possibility in reality to separate the FAO Regular Programme activities from its so-called Field Programme. This is because of the very nature of how you give international development assistance, where you give it, the nature of the assistance, the type of donor/recipient relationship, and the need for a staff having technical knowledge together with an understanding of the conditions of the countries they are serving.
But even in other sectors of the medium-term programme you will find specific action programmes, which, although typical Regular Programme activities, have action elements making them similar to field projects. Let us take our forest gene pool programme as a typical example.
Here, the main emphasis is on the selection and utilization of high-yielding genetic varieties of tree species. The FAO Forestry Department stimulates and assists national forest services - sometimes also financially - in seed collection in areas of importance not only for that country but for world forestry. Then, under standard international procedures, provenance trials are carried out in many countries. From numerous seed orchards promising material is put at the disposal of national forest services. This programme implemented within the framework of a 10-year programme suggested by the FAO panel of experts on forest gene resources, is a good example of widespread international cooperation in a well-defined field.
One part of the FAO forestry programme deals essentially with the biggest single dilemma of international forestry of our day - the problems associated with the tropical forests.
Here you will find that our method of work - the purpose of which is to make an impact on the public and governments concerning policy issues in tropical forestry - also utilizes conferences to alert the world.
To make an impact we need research, development, technology, change in attitude - and investment. This must not be done piecemeal, but all together in a balanced network of action.
The climax of our programme is the 1975 technical conference on the tropical moist forests. We hope to have substantial extra-budgetary funds for this conference to give it the desired dimensions to have an impact. The conference will be coordinated with outside activities; for instance, the start of the United Nations Environment Programme's tropical forest cover monitoring programme.
Concerning the medium-term programme: The products of our work here are essentially publications - such as Unasylva, various yearbooks, and our world forest inventories and trade bulletins. Our method of work includes analysis of data collected by various means, preparation of reports and studies for review and discussion by FAO statutory bodies, and the production and distribution of the conclusive documents.
But the modalities of work in this sector can vary widely from one problem area to another. In some areas we have an interface with private industry on research and development and on capacity studies. We have a network of correspondents for many of these items, but the task is essentially carried out by the professional staff at headquarters.
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The scarcest nonrenewable resource is time. |
One of our tasks is to feed information on technical development to our member countries. We cannot do that continuously, if our efforts to produce such material are only intermittent.
I have refrained from mentioning the problem of the unexpected. In designing a programme for a long time ahead, we are all aware of how full of unpredictables the world is, and that we all have to try to adapt to changing needs. FAO must do this within a budgetary straitjacket and with necessarily heavy administrative routines which are partly determined by the many kinds of work it must carry out at the same time. That is as it is.
We have the feeling sometimes that not everybody is aware of that most scarce of all non-renewable natural resource-time-and that the most important renewable natural resource is the human brain, which can and does find new solutions.
FAO looks forward to the guidance and suggestions of all those concerned with the problems and progress of international forestry.
