Forest policy: One step forward
Law: The meeting-point of ecology and economics
Conifer predators
Protecting Mediterranean natural areas
Reconstructing forests
Fuelwood in Central America: Two new books
Amazonian woods
DOES OVERPOPULATION CAUSE DEFORESTATION? our reviewer says no; others say yes
Forest policy. F.C. Hummel, ed. The Hague, Nijhoff/Junk. 1984. Price: £40.00 stg or US$60.00.
Reviewed by Jack Westoby
This is not the book we have all been waiting for. It is, nevertheless, a very good book, crammed with common sense and well-digested experience. There are few professional foresters who will not gain at least some new insights from it. Most students will learn from it that forest policy has ramifications that reach well beyond the courses they have been taught. And la, readers will begin to understand some of the complexities that confront those charged with devising and implementing forest policy.
The book's principal shortcoming is one the authors freely admit in their introduction. Though all the contributors have international experience, only two have substantial direct knowledge of forestry problems in Third World countries. Thus, the book rests mainly on European experience and addresses itself primarily to European problems. This does not mean that Third World foresters have little to learn from it. On the contrary, they can learn much. But it does mean that some forestry issues of prime importance to many Third World countries today are insufficiently developed.
There are other criticisms that can be leveled. English is not the first language of several of the contributors, but the editor, perhaps in deference to the susceptibilities of his colleagues, has been far too gentle in wielding his blue pencil. The consequence is that many passages remain obscure.
Adrian van Maaren, who contributes the first chapter, "Forests and forestry in national life", has perhaps suffered most from this over respectful editing. This is a pity because, in spite of some obscure passages, Dr van Maaren's common sense, keen observation and dry wit shine from every page. He touches on many aspects of forest policy that are often overlooked. And if, in concluding his chapter, he maintains that forest policy is a policy for the forestry sector, a definition this reviewer rejects as too restrictive - since forestry policy should treat all areas where forests, woodlands and trees can affect human welfare - he is certainly not alone in taking this narrow view.
Tim Peck's chapter, "The world perspective", succinctly sets forth the world context, and is a model of lucidity. Mr Peck has the happy but rare quality of truly knowing his statistics, with their strengths and their weaknesses. This means that he knows how to ride his statistics exactly as far as they will safely take him, and no farther. In reviewing the history of timber resources and requirements studies, Mr Peck has many intelligent things to say about the utility and techniques of forecasting. On occasion, however, he inadvertently gives the impression that early studies in this genre were more naive than perhaps they were in fact.
In a chapter entitled "The production functions", Otto Eckmullner and Andras Madas touch on a wide variety of topics, from the role of forest products in the world economy to planning techniques in the centrally planned economies. One of their tables, based on the UN yearbook of industrial statistics, shows changes in world industrial activity by sectors, but the authors fail to point out and comment on the most striking feature of this table: that over the decade cited, wood and paper products had a slower rise in productivity than any other sector. This chapter includes a brief and quite inadequate discussion of the-reasons for the failure of many forest industries in developing countries. On the other hand, the short history of how planning has evolved in recent times in the centrally planned economies is most useful.
Andras Madas also authors the chapter called "The service functions". Here he sidesteps neither the problem of unmarked values nor the problem of non-identity of cost-bearers and beneficiaries. On the carbon cycle, Dr Madas has perhaps accepted too uncritically the views of some conservationist polemicists. The issue is certainly an important one, but until the several groups at present researching this subject come closer to a consensus, we will not know for certain whether forests are, on balance, a sink or a source of carbon. This chapter also includes a discussion of urban forestry.
Fred Hummel's chapter, "Institutions and administration", is a pleasure to read. A former UK forestry commissioner and subsequently head of the EEC's department of forestry, Dr Hummel writes with the cool detachment of one who has seen it all (in Europe, at any rate): good and bad, success and failure, genuine innovations and bogus reorganizations. He knows that there are no easy answers. Students will do well to ponder his sage comments on taxation; incentives, research and structure. His observations on education and training, surprisingly, are much less penetrating.
A useful chapter by Eero Kalkkinen lists the various international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, concerned directly or indirectly with forestry, forest industry and trade. Here a historical account, however brief, of the evolution of these organizations would have been more informative than a mere catalogue and summary of their present scope. Space might thus have been found to trace the pre-natal history of the imminent addition to the international family, the International Tropical Timber Organization. The protracted pregnancy and birth pangs of this organization constitute a most instructive story. The final section of this chapter treats of problems and achievements. However, the discussion of problems (including failures of development assistance) is very superficial: the subject warrants a much more profound treatment than it has been accorded here.
The book's chief flaw - its concentration on European conditions and problems has been compounded by the decision to treat a number of issues in a miscellaneous chapter, confided to Drs Eckmullner and van Maaren. These issues are forest protection; the biomass concept; wood and energy; tropical moist forest; farm forestry; agroforestry; and rural community development. Some, though not all, of these topics are dealt with very well. Many go right to the heart of the forest/people issues confronting nearly 100 Third World countries. Their relegation to a rag-bag chapter not only understates their importance; it robs other chapters of essential background, so that the discussion therein is divorced from themes that should have conditioned the discourse. Hence, some implicit assumptions in other chapters (for example, that a forest service should be of a certain type and structure, that forestry education and training should follow certain lines) are never seriously challenged. The fact is (and I suspect that several of the contributors would acknowledge this) that today there are a number of countries where the potential of forestry and forest-based activities for raising rural welfare is unlikely to be realized unless the forest service as it at present exists is either dissolved or thoroughly reconstituted. It is the greatest of pities that, although the book is studded with passages that demonstrate an awareness of critical forestry issues in the Third World today, that awareness - partly as a consequence of the way in which the book has been organized - never fully illumines the discussion of policy and its implementation. If and when this book runs into a second edition - and the reviewer fervently hopes that it will - its value will be greatly enhanced if its contents are reorganized to meet this criticism.
By the time a second edition is needed, the authors will also have had time to rid themselves of the misapprehension that recurs again and again (and is still, alas, shared by many foresters): that tropical deforestation and desertification arise from overpopulation, and condoms and IUDs can reverse deforestation. It is odd that none of the contributors has taken to heart J.P. Lanly's observation: "The problem of deforestation, as it is now developing in tropical countries, should be seen in a historical perspective by looking back sufficiently far in the history of each country." It is the authors' failure to delve into history that has led them to constantly revert to their facile but false explanation paraded throughout the book.
The authors seem to have forgotten that vast areas of tropical forest were destroyed in centuries past, in places and at times when there was little if any population; indeed populations - slaves, and later indentured labour - had to be brought in to accomplish the deforestation. The assault on the tropical moist forest did not start, as Dr van Maaren avers, with this century. Brazil's northeast and most of the Caribbean were deforested in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In all three tropical regions, deforestation accelerated in the nineteenth century, with the spread of imperialism and the expanding world market. Throughout the tropics it was export-oriented agriculture that pushed the forest back. Agriculture required, and engendered, a growing population to assure a plentiful supply of docile labour. It occupied the best lands: the river bottoms, the gentle slopes.
Dr van Maaren is wrong, moreover, in supposing that medical advances have caused the numbers of shifting cultivators to explode, bringing about a shortening of the fallow period and destruction of the forests. Traditional shifting cultivators, mainly tribal groups and ethnic minorities, practicing an agriculture apparently technologically primitive but ecologically sustainable, have almost always been left alone until someone else wanted either their land, or what grew on it or what lay beneath it, or their labour. The health revolution rarely reached them. Increased pressure on the land came about when large areas of forest were no longer open to them. It is when shifting cultivation is squeezed that forest destruction comes about.
But much more important than the traditional shifting cultivator as an agent (though again, not the cause) of forest destruction are the shifted cultivators: rural people who have been deprived of their land or employment or both by large-scale export-oriented agriculture, including ranching. These rural landless, whose numbers are increasing everywhere, have no option but to invade the remaining tropical forest in an endeavour to scratch a living from soils that are both unfamiliar and fragile. The cause of tropical deforestation lies behind them, on the land from which they have been driven: millions of hectares of relatively good land, owned by a wealthy few, producing the wrong crops for the wrong people at a low level of productivity. So long as the highly skewed distribution of land, wealth and power that characterizes most tropical forested countries endures, the battle to save the tropical forests will inevitably be a losing one. To argue that overpopulation is the cause of tropical deforestation is to argue that spots cause measles.
In some quarters this is beginning to be understood. There is, for example, grudging and partial recognition in the recent block-buster publication of the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment (Technologies for sustaining tropical agriculture), a recognition not accompanied by any willingness to examine the political implications. On the other hand, John Spears (World Bank) and Edward S. Ayensu (Smithsonian Institute) recently stated categorically: "Strong political commitment by national governments to pursue policies of land reform that would lead to more equitable land ownership would, in the short term, do more to relieve pressure on forest lands than any other single policy intervention or any conceivable level of investment in forest resources development.''
Although Forest policy, in its first edition at least, may not be the book we have all been waiting for, it comes nearer to so being than most of the books and writings on forest policy in recent years. To read this book, even with all its present faults, is to sit in a seminar with a group of intelligent observers with wide experience of the forestry scene. One can disagree strongly with this one or that, but one cannot fail to benefit. It is a thousand pities, therefore, that more care was not taken in the physical production of the book. Several chapters simply teem with misprints, and the punctuation at times verges on the bizarre. A retail price of $60 really ought to guarantee a cleaner text.
Jack Westoby is the former Director of
Programme Coordination and
Operations of FAO's Forestry
Department
DEFINING FOREST LAND variation from country to country
Forêt et environnement en droit comparé et international. M. Prieur, ed. Limoges, Presses universitaires de France. 1983. 310 p.
This collection brings together the proceedings of an international seminar organized in Limoges by the Limoges International Centre for Comparative Environmental Law with the support of FAO. Twenty authors from different countries have made contributions, and their joint efforts provide a review of current legal systems for forest and environmental protection in selected European, African and North American countries.
If there is a criticism to be made of this work, it is that it excludes both Asia, with its huge, dense, humid forests, and North America, where some of the world's most renowned national parks are situated. The first part of the hook could also be criticized because, under the title "The ecology of the great forest systems", it includes three unconvincing studies dealing with temperate, inter-tropical and boreal forests. However, it does serve as an introduction by presenting the framework in which the different countries studied have elaborated their forest legal systems.
The authors try, first, to come to an understanding of the term "forest''. In Spain, for example, the corresponding word monte describes any wooded area, hut it also includes areas that could he forested in the future hut are at present bush-land, as well as national prairie land and even mountainous agricultural land. In Italy, where there is no definition of "wood'' and "forest'' as such, it is the intended purpose of the land - which must be "cultivated'' with trees in order to he "forest'' - that counts.
The African legal systems are reflections of their colonial origin English-language texts do not formally define forest, and it seems that a forest need not necessarily he a population of trees. Texts derived from the Latin legal tradition, which are intended to he more precise, often assume extreme definitions, as in Gabon, where forest is considered as "zones which do or do not comprise a layer of vegetation''. Argentina and Brazil, which troth follow the US example, tend to confuse the idea of forest land with that of a national park.
No matter what the ideal definition of the term may be, different countries have all thought it necessary to draw up a forestry code to protect their heritage, to safeguard their rights and define those of private forest owners, to regulate exploitation and, finally, to allow their citizens to benefit from the advantages, material and psychological, of the forest lands.
Each country studied has, depending on its political structure, delegated the management of its forested areas to a selected authority, whether it be the ministry of agriculture or, as in the case of highly decentralized administrations, the region (Italy) or the canton (Switzerland), which defines forestry policy and is responsible for surveying forest resources.
In most European countries the forests are divided into national forests or parks, public forests, forests owned by collectives, and private forests - although these categories are not all well defined. For instance, very few people can identify the ownership of forest land in Switzerland, because the civil law allows everyone free access to others' forests and pastures. Certain private forests in Italy benefit from special regulations which do not allow ownership to be transferred. Such is the case of the Regole d'Ampezzo in the Alps, where the legal status dates from customs established back in the eighth and ninth centuries. These are rights of property held in common by several persons, which cannot be sold and can only be transferred by inheritance to the owners' sons.
In Africa, there is traditionally no private property. By custom, people could hunt, take their sustenance and farm the land wherever they liked; but the earth belonged to ancestors or mythical owners. Hence, until colonial times, there were no legal systems. European colonization imposed its laws upon local customs and made natural spaces the property of the general public. After independence, these natural spaces came under the ownership of the new nations and peasants had common user rights.
In South America, obligatory reservations were established throughout Brazilian national territory with the aim of making all owners share initiatives to preserve the forests. However, the lack of precise boundaries indicating preservation zones and private ownership resulted, through sales manipulation, in a reduction in lot sizes. Paradoxically, Brazilian forest laws, which are so concerned with the preservation of forest resources allow owners of mixed forests to convert them to homogeneous forests by uprooting replaceable species and disregarding the ecological balance between the flora and fauna of the region.
By far the most interesting parts of the book are those that deal with user rights, in particular the articles of C. du Saussay and Mohamed Ali Mekouar. (See du Saussay's article. "The evolution of forestry legislation for rural communities'' in Unasylva, Vol. 35, No. 142.)
Such user rights, which have practically disappeared in the West, remain firmly rooted in the African tradition and persist up to the present time. They are the result of "man's ingrained inclination...to regard it as a legitimate legal right to take what Nature has to offer'' and demonstrate "the most direct and certain way of putting the forest at the disposal of the rural population''. In almost all legislation, forest user rights are confined to the self-subsistence of the tenants. They are given free but also entail some responsibility. In Senegal, "user rights impose on the tenants the duty to share in the maintenance of the forests". Very often they are the cause of conflicts because of competition for different activities on the same land, such as agriculture, grazing and the harvesting of forest products.
In Morocco, agriculture and stock-raising are often combined in forest lands. Agriculture on lands deforested for this purpose is common practice, although legally prohibited. Pasturage in forest land is very widespread and covers about one-third of the available forest land.
Legislation, while recognizing the importance of customary rights, is at the same time used to set forth provisions for the protection of the forests. Offenses against forest regulations are punished by penalties that range from fines to prison sentences. Senegalese law devotes almost the whole of its regulatory section to reducing the abuse of forest land, often disregarding the traditions and needs of populations for whom wood is a high-priority need. In Morocco, forest laws also bristle with punitive measures. In Uruguay, on the other hand, the law has no provisions for infringement on the forest.
Protective measures are not all of a prohibitive character. Incentives like tax exemption encourage tree-planting and reforestation. In Spain the montes protectores, in Brazil the "forests of permanent conservation", and in Senegal the encouragement of "shared forestry" are examples of efforts to safeguard the forest heritage and the environment.
The collection ends with three interesting articles dealing with international forest protection. One studies the legal aspects of the "assessment of impacts on the environment'' as seen by FAO and emphasizes the importance of planning and establishing integrated forest strategies. Another analyses the role of the forest in the world conservation strategy, in the maintenance of essential ecological processes and as a reservoir for plant and animal species. It stresses that "international action...must remain the foundation and an indispensable complement to national measures''.
The last in the collection sees the forest as an endowment of the world's heritage and asserts that it is not impossible to conceive that "the concept of a common human heritage and the principle of sovereign rights are not incompatible''.
Fay Banoun, Rome
FOREST AND COASTLINE a need to preserve nature/areas
Les insectes ravageurs des cônes et graines de conifères en France. Alain Roques. Paris, Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA). 1983. Numerous colour photographs. 134 p.
The economic impact of insect damage to conifer seeds and cones is a source of increasing concern for foresters. Indeed, in an attempt to improve the genetic quality of the seeds utilized to restock forests, seed-gathering has been restricted to a certain number of selected nursery stocks and seed orchards.
On one hand, this means that infestation is concentrated in smaller areas. On the other hand, however, the policy causes a proliferation of insects because the strategy of concentration and the system of utilizing nursery-raised plants are chosen precisely to produce abundant fruit. This offers a more favourable environment for insect infestation.
For ten years, INRA's researches have been aimed at a more thorough analysis of the predators that ravage conifers. INRA has always been willing to share the results of its research with other countries affected. Consequently, this book provides a detailed description of the predatory insects associated with each plant or tree species.
Each chapter begins with a diagram that clarifies the insect's relationship with the host plant, and provides a second diagram designed to provide easier identification of the predator, starting from the damages observed. Finally, the insects themselves are studied in the chronological order in which they infest the vegetation. The appropriate reference file-card data for each predator are supplied.
More than 100 colour plates accompany the text, and these enhance the descriptions of troth the insects and the damage they inflict. The result of such a presentation is that the information is clearly imprinted in the reader's memory. A glossary at the end of the text provides definitions of certain entomological terms. There is an index of the insect species considered and one for the various plant or tree species they infest.
The book is addressed primarily to the serious forester, hut anyone interested in entomology will also find it helpful and instructive.
Que faire des espaces naturels méditerranéens? Report by J.P. Richard Guichard. C. Seguret and Y Prats. Nice, Editions Serre. 148 p.
This report was commissioned by France's interministerial mission for the protection and management of Mediterranean natural areas. It also includes, besides the people cited as authors, contributions from several participants in a round-table discussion organized by the mission. Among the questions raised at the deliberations, the most urgent focused on Mediterranean natural areas that have been destroyed by unbridled urbanization, forest fires and desertification.
The authors stress the difficulties in delineating policies for preserving the integrity of natural areas while respecting the interests of nearby established communities, since the character of the areas is frequently the result of very complex social pressures. They also explore the future of such areas and the means to protect them against the threats posed by tax problems.
The book is in three parts. The first describes a study of the transformation that has actually taken place, and includes a critical analysis that places serious blame upon public authorities. The second is a report on a round-table discussion held on 2 and 3 September 1982 in Aix-en-Provence and organized by the national association for the development of research and teaching on regional management. The book concludes with reflections on proposed solutions, but leaves the door open to future debate.
La reconstitution de la forêt tropicale humide: sud-ouest de la Côte-d'Ivoire. F. Kahn. Paris, Office of Overseas Scientific and Technical Research (ORSTOM). 1982. Illustrations, sketches, maps. 150 p.
A rice field, abandoned after being cultivated for one year by itinerant farmers, is an ideal living laboratory for studying a forest's natural reconstruction. Such is the framework selected by F. Kahn to conduct his investigation. His studies were carried out in the Ivory Coast, where deforestation has reached alarming proportions, notably in the southwest, where extensive colonization has occurred over the past several years.
Beginning with a search for abandoned sites, Kahn finds 17 plots, of which 14 are ten years old or older. His observations, recorded in this book, are the result of studying these sites. He analyses the three stages through which vegetation progresses during the first ten years after cultivation has been abandoned: the essentially graminaceous herbaceous stage, the subligneous stage and the pioneer shrub stage. There is also a fourth stage, which establishes the secondary pre-climax forest. Finally, Kahn describes the principal agents of reconstruction and some of the factors that may thwart it.
The second part of the book, based on the preceding analysis, formulates proposals for managing the stages of forest reconstruction. Kahn recommends the institution of a system of protected forest zones, of cultivated al-errs and of vast tracts earmarked for the reconstruction of forest ecosystems. The author maintains that this would mean elaborating a process of reconstruction silviculture. Ensuring forest regeneration, however, does not imply that economic aspects al-e to he overlooked. Rather, one of the priority objectives of management would he the profitability of areas mobilized for reconstruction.
Situación leñera en los países centroamericanos. Paul Dukin. Turrialba (Costa Rica), Tropical Agricultural Research and Training Centre (CATIE). 1984.
About 80 percent of the population in Central America depends upon fuelwood for household fuel. This wood comes from broad-leaved and coniferous forests, mangroves and shrubby trees. The forests also provide timber for construction, and are being felled to allow for the expansion of agricultural activity. This extensive use, because of increased population and agricultural expansion, is now leading to serious deforestation in Central American countries.
CATIE, recognizing the problem, decided to make a detailed study of the fuelwood situation in Central America as part of a 1979 agreement signed with the United States Agency for International Development (AID).
The first part of this book describes the conceptual framework, meaning the present land use and population density, and the methodology employed, which is based on computerized geographical information. Indicated also are data sources and the scope and limitations of the study.
The fuelwood situation in each Central American country is described in detail in the second part. Each country's fuelwood situation, based on population density and land use, is determined, classified and interpreted by means of tables.
Areas climáticas análogas para especies productoras de leña en los países centroamericanos. Paul Dukin. Turrialba (Costa Rica), Tropical Agricultural Research and Training Centre (CATIE). 1984.
One of the objectives of the Fuelwood and Alternative Sources of Energy Project, based on the 1979 agreement signed between CATIE and AID, is the development of techniques for reforestation with fuelwood species suited to the environmental characteristics of each country. This book attempts to define which areas in these countries have similar climatic characteristics in order to facilitate the transfer of information and technology on handling fuelwood species adapted to a particular region to other climatically similar regions.
The concepts and methodology used are clearly established in the first part of the report. Thus the system of ecological analogies is based on Holdridge's classification of "living areas' (Ecología basada en zonas de vida. San José. Costa Rica, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture. 1979). These al-e determined by the climatic parameters of biotemperature and average rainfall. Consideration should also be given to the behaviour of the species in the various types of dry season.
The second part applies these concepts and the methodology to each country individually. It covers the living areas, the duration of the dry season and the similar climatic areas, and is copiously illustrated.
The bibliography and a series of maps of Central American countries, illustrating the results described in the report, complete this study. It will he a very useful guide in selecting areas for reforestation, not only with fuelwood species hut also with timber and fruit-tree species.
Atlas d'identification des bois de l'Amazonie et des regions voisines. P. Detienne and P. Jacquet. Nogent-sur-Marne (France), Centre technique forestier tropical (CTFT). 1983. Numerous illustrations. 640 p.
This is the second work in a CTFT series that commenced with an atlas of Guyanese woods in 1982. The new volume extends the investigation to the entire tropical Amazon region. One of the motives in pursuing this research was a desire to identify definitively this extensive arboreal flora.
The authors set three objectives:
· to enrich the state of anatomical knowledge;
· to name the species currently being exploited;
· to indicate which species will be circulating on world markets in the near future.
The system used by the authors to identify woods is one they have used before: macroscopic and microscopic descriptions of the wood, genus by genus. The book also indicates the peculiarities of the different species and supplies a punched-card coding for each species. The volume is liberally illustrated.
One-third of the work is devoted to an impressive atlas which contains over 1600 photographs of wood cross sections, arranged alphabetically according to botanical family and genus. One final word: the book is bound in russet leather and has a very elegant appearance.
