FAO high in forestry assistance
New African forestry convention
People of the forest: old and new
Village afforestation in India
The difficulties of some Indonesian sawmills
Pulp and paper situation in china
Iraq moves toward self-sufficiency in paper and board
Protecting Indonesia's home market
Forest industry publications catalogue
FAO ranks first in forestry technical assistance, second in integrated development projects (including forestry), and third in total monetary value of forestry assistance among all national and international bodies.
This is the conclusion of a newly released report by the US Agency for International Development (AID) entitled Forestry activities and deforestation problems in developing countries. Sweden ranks first in total forestry assistance, according to the report, followed by the World Bank, FAO and the United States. In integrated forestry projects, the World Bank leads followed by FAO and the Federal Republic of Germany.
The report summarizes recent, current and proposed forestry activities in developing countries by donor agencies. It assesses their ecological impact, appraises donor constraints, inventories obstacles and opportunities, and provides selected examples of both successes and failures. Although pointing to increased forest management commitments by agencies such as the World Bank, the report states that harvesting and utilization activities still outweigh planning and management operations.
Authors of the report include K.A. Christopherson the University of Idaho and four members of the US Forest Service: J.I. Zerbe, J.L. Whitmore, H.E. Wahlgren and J.F. Laundrie.
Nine African countries have agreed on the articles of a convention designed to improve the management of tropical forests and ecosystems in the African region. The convention was immediately ratified by the governments of Cameroon, Gabon and Zaire, with other endorsements expected very soon.
One immediate result of the convention will be the establishment of a regional Centre for Scientific Information and Documentation on Tropical Ecology in Yaounde, Cameroon. The idea for such a centre was first proposed at Unesco's MAB (Man and the Biosphere) regional meeting in 1975 at Kinshasa, Zaire.
An estimated six million squatters in Brazil are living on recently cleared forest lands. They are typical of many people in tropical areas who migrate to cleared land once occupied by trees.
The problem with newly cleared tropical forest land is that soils are generally *agile and of poor quality. To sustain the soil it is necessary to grow a sufficient variety of crops in rotation, something about which shifting cultivators have little knowledge. The Lua people in Thailand, by contrast, maintain soil productivity by growing up to 120 different plant and crop varieties. The Kayopo Amerindians of Brazil operate a highly organized 15-year planting cycle.
Peoples such as the Luas and the Kayopos are "forest peoples" whose agricultural methods are instinctively conservation oriented. One leading Indian forester has called for a cooperative system by which forest people could exchange their knowledge of forestry and forest agriculture for manufactured goods.
A growing problem, however, is that many forest peoples are in danger of extinction. The cause, often, is logging. Said one timber man in Indonesia, "The first thing we knew about the presence of native peoples was when they started shooting arrows at our bulldozers." Among the forest peoples currently facing extinction are the pygmies of central Africa, the "tribals" of India, the Amerindians in Amazonia and the Negrito tribes of Southeast Asia.
IUCN BULLETIN
The 1970 floods in the Alaknanda River region of northern India has led to a government ban on tree felling in the 200-km² area. Logging in the hilly area had created conditions where flooding and landsliding were almost inevitable.
The ban was the result of efforts by one local institution, the Dasholi Gram Swarajwa Sangh, which started a conservation movement. The same institution went on to begin a programme of extensive afforestation when it realized that a simple ban on logging would not be enough.
What followed was a long, slow education process among local villagers, particularly in Garurganga (Balakuchi) and in the Gocshwar area. Initially apathetic about afforestation efforts, the villagers gradually became enthusiastic. They began constructing wells and pits to protect new saplings in addition to planting trees. Since India, despite a century of scientific forestry, still has no afforestation guidelines, the villagers had to teach themselves what to do on a trial-and-error basis-which they did.
Since 1968 multinational timber corporations have been logging in the timber-rich Mahakarn River watershed of the Indonesian island of Kalimantan at a steadily increasing rate, a practice very much encouraged by the Indonesian Government. Indonesian laws do require, [however, that these timber companies create local industries in, return for the wealth they extract. The town of Samarinda near the mouth of the Mahakam River has thus come to be the centre for sawmills and other forestry industry installations in east: Kalimantan.
But despite their seemingly ideal location near a large timber base, the sawmills in Samarinda are having difficulties. An article by Soebagyo Dulkifli entitled "A glance at the difficulties of sawmills in Samarinda" in the June 1980 edition of duta Rimba the monthly magazine of Perum Perhutani, an Indonesian forest state corporation, describes these problems. They are of two kinds: a shortage of logs, and the logs that are available are of low quality. The reason for this, according to the author, is that prices for exported logs are significantly higher than the prices of domestic logs, which are fixed by the Government every two and a half months.
Chinese paper production has increased by a factor of 40 since the founding of the People's Republic of China, according to the Government, as reported by Pulp & Paper International magazine. Starting with a small, primitive industry, the country made substantial progress between 1949 and 1966. Planning and production were interrupted between 1966 and 1976, largely because of the effects of the Cultural Revolution. Now, however, the industry is once again expanding.
Two major problems remain. One is that fibre supply is limited. The other is that the pulp and paper industry is not a high priority industry, meaning that it does not qualify for the capital funds necessary for modernization and expansion.
To solve its fibre shortage, China is reforesting at a brisk pace with fast-growing species: pines similar to southern yellow pines in south China and larch types in the north. Market pulp is being imported from New Zealand, North America and Japan while newsprint is being imported from Australia. But about half of the industry's supply comes from non-wood fibres such as reed, bagasse, straw and other vegetable fibres. Recycling is more difficult in China than in many other countries and collection and transport of previously used paper must operate over large geographic areas.
A new pulp and paper mill at Misan marks a further step in Iraq's drive to become self-sufficient in paper and board production. Together with the two mills built at Basrah in 1971 and 1978, the new Misan complex will fulfil a large percentage of the country's needs.
Since the Misan mill is located 180 km northwest of Bashar in a non industrialized area close to the Iran border, the new mill has had to be self-sufficient. It therefore has its own power station, workshop, laboratory, garage and spare parts inventory.
The mill's raw materials, in addition to reeds obtained from the adjacent Tigris River banks, will be large quantities of bagasse shipped in from the nearby Amarah sugar-cane fields.
The mill, which cost US$275 million, was built by a consortium of companies headed by Sulzer Brothers of Switzerland. The installation will have a 39 000 ton/yr unbleached pulp mill and a paper mill with a yearly capacity of 62000 tons of sack kraft and duplex board.
Indonesia is one of the world's leading wood exporters, and its situation continues to improve. Last year, despite a drop of 5 percent in volume, hardwood exports rose 70 percent.
One result of Indonesia's exporting success has been to impede development of local markets, since prices abroad are higher than prices at home. Now the Government has issued a decree forcing companies to sell more wood on the home market or at least to process it further than is at present clone. Companies operating in Indonesia more than seven years, for example, must now sell 60 percent of the logs on the domestic market.
Other provisions of the decree will result in favouring those companies which have already installed or are willing to build sawmills and other wood-processing plants in Indonesia. Most of the wood is tropical hardwood, but sawmill waste from hardwood processing is also expected to give a small boost to developing Indonesia's pulp and paper industry.
Miller Freeman Publications of San Francisco has recently issued a small catalogue describing its publications in the field of forest industries. Included are books, directories, magazines and a newsletter.
Among the 27 books listed are volumes one and two of Sawmill techniques of Southeast Asia, the first costing US$25.00 and the second $30.00. Volume one includes the proceedings of the first Southeast Asia Sawmill Seminar, held in Singapore in 1975. Volume two covers the second seminar in this series, held in Manila in 1977.
Two directories are listed, one of the forest products industry in 1980 ($75) and the other a world directory of wood-based panel producers ($55). The newsletter is Dean Sherman's Forestry Industry Affairs Letter and Miller Freeman's two periodicals are Forest Industries anal World Wood.
To obtain the catalogue and other information write to: Miller Freeman Publications, Book Department, 500 Howard Street, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.
