4.1 Protected Areas
4.2 Wood Production and Trade
4.3 Hunting and Wildlife Trade
4.4 Forest Management - Government Policies
4.5 Transportation and Hydroenergy Infrastructure
4.6 Shifting Agriculture and Agroforestry
Environmental civil society organizations have played an active role in publicizing the extent to which forest ecosystems in Asia and the Pacific have been subject to loss and degradation, and in mitigating the factors that have precipitated the current situation. They have increasingly come to be regarded as legitimate partners of governments and, in some cases, the private sector in promoting sustainable development and the implementation of sustainable forest management. Indeed, at least since the Earth Summit in Rio, ECSOs have established themselves as a movement with considerable leverage, covering the various aspects of forest conservation and development. Their influence will continue to grow as central governments delegate more and more of their traditional functions to local levels, civil society, and the private sector.
After reviewing the environmental perspectives on the nature and roles of forests, this section will outline the perspectives of key players among ECSOs on and their responses to driving forces of forest loss and degradation in Asia and the Pacific. Protected areas are addressed first because they have represented the cornerstone of conservation approaches in the Asia-Pacific region. In order of decreasing importance to the most influential ECSOs, wood production and trade, hunting and wildlife trade, forest management and government policies, hydroenergy and transportation infrastructure, and shifting agriculture and agroforestry are addressed subsequently. Even more than in the previous section, priorities differ among ECSOs. In contrast to the order just given, southern ECSOs are primarily concerned with agriculture and water-related aspects. This reverse order represents at the same time a fundamental difference between the two sectors of ECSOS and an opportunity for recognizing the complementarity of their activities aimed at mitigating forest loss and degradation.
The establishment of protected areas has been the cornerstone of western conservation thinking and has had a tremendous influence on forest conservation in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly over the course of the last two decades. Data from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre shows that almost 3,000 protected areas (including partially forested and non-forest) cover more than 8% of the region's land area. The extent and nature of protected areas vary from country to country, ranging from more than a fifth of the national territory in strictly protected areas to little efforts at all. Environmental organizations have played a key role in the development and management of protected areas, particularly the large, international conservation organizations. A growing segment of the environmental movement, especially of regional origin and with a concomitant focus on rural development, is critical of such an approach to conservation because it curtails forest-dependent populations of crucial subsistence resources. In part of a result of such criticism, protected areas have started to move to allow for multiple-uses and the participation of local communities in their management.
Protected areas have been defined as "an area of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means" (IUCN, 1994). Their purposes can include scientific research, wilderness protection, preservation of species and genetic diversity, maintenance of environmental services, protection of specific natural and cultural features, tourism and recreation, education, sustainable use of resources from natural ecosystems, and maintenance of cultural and traditional attributes (Paine, 1997). The International Conservation Union (IUCN) has established the following categories for international comparison:
Ia Strict Nature Reserve (Strict Protection)
Ib Wilderness Area (Strict Protection)
II National Park (Ecosystem conservation and recreation)
III Natural Monument (Conservation of natural features)
IV Habitat/Species Management Area (Conservation through active management)
V Protected Landscape/Seascape (Landscape/seascape conservation and recreation)
VI Managed Resource Protected Area (Sustainable use of natural ecosystems)
A breakdown of protected areas in Asia and the Pacific on the basis of IUCN's categories looks as follows:
|
IUCN Category |
Number |
Protected Area (km2) |
% of land area protected |
|
Ia/Ib |
330 |
672,629 |
2.35 |
|
II |
788 |
636,198 |
2.22 |
|
III |
106 |
16,637 |
0.06 |
|
IV |
1,074 |
450,947 |
1.57 |
|
V |
192 |
554,347 |
1.94 |
|
VI |
445 |
154,366 |
0.54 |
|
Total |
2,935 |
2,485,127 |
8.86 |
Country variations in terms of percentage of territory in protected areas range from almost 40% in Kiribati to close to zero in Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh. They are 12.18% in Australia, 6.05% in China, 4.53% in India, 9.67% in Indonesia, 7.46% in Japan, 4.46% in Malaysia, 7.84% in Mongolia, and 2.02% in the Philippines (WCMC, 1996). According to J.R. Paine's (WCMC) review of protected areas in the Asia-Pacific region nearly all countries have adequate conservation legislation on paper, though fragmented among different line ministries or obfuscated by national law, state or provincial laws, and religious laws and local customs (Paine, 1997). Major shortcomings in implementation and monitoring persist, however, rendering a large number of protected areas fictitious. In addition, their location has been determined more by expediency, i.e. minimum land-use competition due to low population or low commercial values, than by scientific assessments of conservation values.
A move away from strictly protected parks towards multiple sustained use areas until the year 2010 is anticipated by Paine:
"It is increasingly likely that the conservation of forests in the Asia-Pacific region towards 2010 will not be based upon a rigid demarcation between protected areas and all other forms of land use. Instead, protected areas should form part of a landscape or ecosystem-wide management matrix, where the conservation of nature is the highest priority, surrounded by areas where other activities take place, up to and including sustainable commercial exploitation" (Paine, 1997).
Whether this move will reflect a genuine commitment by governments to overcome land-use conflicts that have erupted in and around protected areas, or whether it is simply coincidental that contemporary conservation thinking goes hand in hand with governments' inability to manage their strictly protected areas, will in part be answered by the extent to which land-use decision-making power is devolved to local and provincial authorities.
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Integrated Conservation and Development in Indonesia The one million hectares Kerinci Seblat National Park in western Sumatra, including habitats from lowland rainforest to montane forest for such seriously endangered species as the Sumatran rhino, elephant, tapir, and tiger. More than 270,000 people currently live within the park, where they engage in agricultural encroachment, logging, and poaching. Large-scale commercial enterprises, particularly in forestry, plantation cropping, and especially cinnamon trees pose additional threats to the viability of the park. WWF Indonesia's ICDP seeks to protect biodiversity while also enhancing the livelihood of local communities and reducing their incentive to appropriate park resources to meet their subsistence needs. It aims to stabilize park boundaries through community consensus, to organize a viable zoning plan for the park which would allow some areas to continue to function as traditional-use zones, and to resolve conflicts in frequently identified people-park disputes. WWF is seeking to build a solid base of support and awareness in the government and among local communities. Its projects focus on social forestry and promoting conservation awareness in conjunction with local radio stations and school curriculum. Source: WWF, 1997b |
Environmental organizations will continue to play a key role in advocating for the expansion of protected areas. The World Wildlife Fund, possibly the world's largest backer of this approach to conservation, aims to enlarge the global network of protected area through two international campaigns. The Forests for Life Campaign has as one of its two targets "the establishment of an ecologically representative network of protected areas, covering at least 10 per cent of each of the world's forest types by the year 2000, demonstrating a range of socially and ecologically appropriate models," the other target being the independent certification of 10 million hectares of well-managed forest by 1998 (the 10% target is also endorsed by IUCN). The Living Planet Campaign aims to conserve the Global 200, a representative list of key ecoregions established by World Wildlife Fund, including the Himalayan highlands and jungles, Mongolian ecoregions, Sichuan/Yunnan temperate forests, Sumatran lowland & North Borneo tropical forests (for a detailed list of key forested ecoregions in Asia and the Pacific, see Annex 4). Currently, there are at least 11 major countries in the region that have not yet reached the 10% target (Paine, 1997).
Local ECSOs from the Asia-Pacific region, with the exception of country offices of international conservation organizations, do not usually have the political clout and human and technical resources necessary to negotiate with governments on the establishment of protected areas and their subsequent management. However, the move towards multiple-use areas, integrated conservation and development projects with buffer zone management components, has meant that local NGOs and research organizations have increasingly been involved in a range of activities, such as awareness raising and environmental education, developing biological diversity inventories, and ecotourism. This involvement is likely to increase, whether the number of protected areas will grow or not.
The criticism that has frequently been voiced over the establishment of protected areas is also likely to recede with a move away from strictly protected areas. Such criticism has sometimes come from human rights organizations and politically oriented ECSOs. One example their targets is the one million hectare Myinmoletkat Nature Reserve in Burma, where excessive force has reportedly been used to relocate local Karen populations from the reserve area (Levy and Scott-dark, 1997). In general, the more concerned an organization is with the human well-being of the populations in and around target areas, the less likely it is to support the establishment of a protected area. When traditional tenure and usage rights of local populations are infringed upon through the establishment of national parks, as happened numerous times in the past, animosity can develop and contribute to still greater degradation. Attempts by northern ECSOs to apply western conservation models in inappropriate contexts continue to be criticized by human rights organizations and indigenous peoples organizations (see, for example, Cox and Elmqvist, 1997).
4.2.1 Timber harvesting
4.2.2 Timber processing
4.2.3 Wood products trade
4.2.4 Industrial plantation forestry
4.2.5 Fuelwood
Environmental organizations address both the demand and the supply side of wood production and trade. On the supply side, ECSOs' activities range from monitoring and publicizing timber harvesting malpractices to the development of sustainable forest management codes, while on the supply side they are engaged in, among other types of action, consumer awareness raising, the organization of buyer's groups, and advocating company boycotts. Although there is a growing number of examples of ECSOs which seek to work with governments and timber harvesters in finding ways to sustainably manage forests, the majority of environmental organizations remains strongly critical of the timber industry.
Among the various factors that affect forests, timber harvesting has without a doubt received the most attention from environmental organizations. On local, national, and international levels, ECSOs have been involved in activities ranging from the promotion of sustainable forest management to sabotage of timber harvesting operations. Contrary to much public and official perceptions, environmental organizations do not have a single voice concerning the harvesting of timber, much less one that demands its outright cessation. The legitimacy of forested countries to make use of their timber resources is in fact widely recognized. It is the manner in which it is undertaken that attracts criticism from ECSOs.
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Rubberwood Utilization The evolution of rubber tree utilization from a relatively valueless timber almost fifteen years ago to a major resource for making furniture for export and for the production of panel products is an example of what may become a more common phenomenon with increasing timber scarcities, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. The life cycle of the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) consists of 20-25 years of latex production and, subsequent to its felling, its use for fuelwood for domestic purposes, drying and smoking of sheet rubber, tobacco curing, brick making, paper making, charcoal production, and different forms of panel products. Rubber plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand currently total 6.65 million hectares, which amounts to 75% of the world total. The success of using rubberwood in Malaysia, where 80% of all furniture uses rubberwood as the base raw material, has encouraged the establishment of similar industries in India and Sri Lanka, the two original Asian rubber producers, as well as China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Source: Hong, 1995. |
The Asia-Pacific region is a major actor in world production and consumption of industrial wood products and the use of forests for commercial purposes remains an essential aspect of the economies of many countries in the region. Total industrial conifer and non-conifer roundwood production in the region was 296 million cubic meters in 1993, of which 43.7% came from North Asia, 29.7% from Insular Southeast Asia, 12.5% form Oceania/South Pacific, 10% from South Asia, and 4.2% from Continental Southeast Asia. Outlooks predict that the region will be confronted with a "timber-constrained future, in spite of incremental shifts in supply of individual countries, development of 'new' resources such as rubberwood, and the further expansion of fast growing plantations" (Waggener and Lane, 1997). It is also expected that increased use of conifer roundwood will lead to expanded production in the consumer-importer countries and that tropical hardwood production in the traditional supplier nations will slow or decline.
Many Asia-Pacific countries have gone through timber harvesting boom and bust cycles, starting in the Philippines and Thailand, then moving to Malaysia and Indonesia, and more recently to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands (Vincent and Binkley, 1992; Gillis, 1988). The main characteristic of the boom is the rapid logging of old-growth forests for log or primary processed product export, while the bust is marked by the depletion of old-growth forests (Vincent, 1995). The natural forests in these countries have greatly suffered in the process, even though timber harvesting has mostly been based on selective cutting systems.
In tropical forests, the main geographical focus of ECSOs, only a few of the thousands of tree species are in commercial demand, so that timber harvesting typically removes only two to ten trees per hectare (clearfelling on some concessions in Papua New Guinea and Malaysia are among the exceptions). Of the world's tropical countries, Asian forests are logged most intensely, at 40 m³/ha compared with 19 m³/ha in Latin America and the Caribbean and 15 m³/ha in Africa (FAO, 1993). Additional trees are cleared for the construction of tracks, roads, landings, etc.
Although deforestation does not result from selective cutting, the structure and composition of forest ecosystems are degraded. Neighbouring trees, often linked by vines, inevitably fall or are damaged. Studies in the Philippines and Sabah found that up to 40% of the residual stand was damaged, whereas in Indonesia the proportion was as high as 50% (Weidelt and Banaag, 1982; Nicholson, 1979). Additional damages result from the disruption of hydrological systems, soil erosion, compaction, and nutrient loss through careless road and track construction, the depletion of genetic resources caused by excessive removal and inadequate silvicultural regeneration treatments, as well as indirectly through hunting and encroaching cultivation.
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ECSO Quotes on timber harvesting "Australia's domestic sawn timber sector is increasingly dominated by a huge and destructive export-orientated woodchipping industry. Industrial logging destroys natural ecosystems, damages water catchments and restricts opportunities for recreation and tourism.. " Friends of the Earth Australia (FoE) "Unsustainable logging and poor forest management are causing massive soil erosion and biodiversity loss, as well as harming the economic future of many communities, especially in the Tropics. Well-intentioned boycotts of timber are not a long-term solution, as they hurt the local economies and may ultimately devalue the trees, leading to more deforestation. " SmartWood Programme, initiated by the Rainforest Alliance "Worldwide, 76% of the planet's original primary forests have already been destroyed or degraded: Still the onslaught continues, primarily through destructive logging for wood and paper production by irresponsible transnational corporations." Greenpeace "We are asking consumers to boycott products made from tropical woods, unless they are verifiably produced from ecologically and socially sound logging operations. Rainforest." Action Network (RAN) "The forest units designated to be production units (whether state or private) be handled with care, applying the best we know in how silvicultural practice and logging techniques to retain these areas in primary tropical forest species; and that, moreover, multiple-use policy giving regard to important watershed, wildlife and recreational values be adopted immediately before theses values are destroyed by single-minded emphasis on forest exploitation. " Sierra Club |
Environmental organizations' criticism of and responses to timber harvesting are varied. In general, international, developed country-based, as well as a number of outspoken ECSOs in Asia-Pacific countries concentrate relatively larger efforts on timber harvesting than local and national ECSOs in Asia and the Pacific. Their relative involvement almost perfectly mirrors that in agroforestry, reflecting not only their different constituencies, but also their different geographical focus. Among the former, such large organizations as WWF, IUCN, and RAN identify commercial timber harvesting as the "single greatest threat to forests richest in plants and animals" (WWP/IUCN, 1996). While WWF, IUCN, and WRI, among others, actively seek collaboration with the private sector and governments in mitigating the effects of timber harvesting, RAN, Greenpeace, and others choose more confrontational methods, including consumer boycotts against transnational corporations.
Some organizations engage in both cooperative and confrontational activities. Greenpeace, for example, promotes its own set of "Principles and guidelines for ecologically responsible forest use," in which it seeks to prohibit the following forest management practices: (a) bio-accumulative, toxic and/or persistent substances; (b) genetically modified organisms (GMOs); (c) clearcutting; (d) highgrading; (e) direct manipulations of soils such as ploughing, harrowing, and/or drainage of forest lands and peatlands; and (f) replacement of natural forests by tree plantations.
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Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management In their follow-up to Chapter 11 of Agenda 21 and to the Forest Principles, governments agreed to pursue 'the formulation of scientifically sound criteria and guidelines for the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests'. ECSOs have been involved in the many initiatives to different degrees. Some have developed their own sets, such as WWF and the Rainforest Alliance, while others have participated in the intergovernmental processes, The majority of processes deal with forests outside the Asia-Pacific region, however, including the Helsinki Process (European boreal, temperate, and Mediterranean-type forests), the Tarapoto Proposal (Amazon), the UNEP/FAO Expert Meetings (Dry-Zone Africa, Near East), and the FAO Expert Meeting on Central America. Multilateral processes with participation from Asia-Pacific countries include: The Montreal Process This process aims at the sustainable management of boreal forests outside Europe. Seven criteria and 67 indicators have been identified for national implementation. Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea are active members. International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) The ITTO published "ITTO Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests" in 1992 and added guidelines for tropical plantation forests and for the conservation of biological diversity in 1993. Most Asia-Pacific countries are members of ITTO and subscribe to the "Objective Year 2000" which calls for all tropical timber exports to originate from sustainably managed forests. Suva Code of Conduct (South Pacific Forum) Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Australia and New Zealand agreed to draw up a common code of conduct for logging in indigenous forests, covering all aspects of forest management, with a specific focus on methods that provide protection of culturally and spiritually significant sites and guard against negative environmental impacts. Source: FAO. 1997b |
The relative visibility of ECSOs' activities may distort their actual impact, due to the skilful use of the mass media, particularly of the fast-growing internet. A number of organizations concentrate their efforts in disseminating information on harvesting malpractices of various kinds, and on such other activities as coordinating action among networks of activists and smaller organizations. The Environmental Investigation Agency (eia), for example, recently published a report documenting the harvesting activities of 15 of the world's major timber companies considered "among the worst offenders in an industry which, according to the evidence given, is running out of control" (eia, 1996).
While environmental CSOs have an important role to play in monitoring the activities of timber harvesters, a function which governments often fail to do, insensitive or uninformed campaigning contributes to the negative reputations some ECSOs have gained, particularly among governments of forested developing countries and the private sector. Many tensions are clearly, and unfortunately, the result of inadequate communication and mutual misperceptions. Aggressive environmental organizations are sometimes criticized for lacking the technical know-how required to evaluate timber harvesting operations. Many timber harvesters, on the other side, continue to ignore or only partially adhere to the rules laid out by governments, knowing that they will not be held accountable.
The gap between ECSOs and private sector timber harvesters is remarkably wide, but easier to be bridged for some organizations than others. Research organizations, like the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO), have an easier task as their technical and human resources are more sophisticated than those of most but the largest ECSOs. Increasingly, large conservation organizations, including WWF, CI, and WRI, are seeking to engage private sector companies in sustainable forest management case studies. This trend is in part a reflection of ECSOs efforts in promoting certification schemes (to be addressed later). This type of cooperation will become more frequent over the course of the next fifteen years, but will be more difficult to initiate in Asia and the Pacific, due to the relative lack of interest by the region's consumers in 'green' products.
Whether wood is exported as raw logs or as processed timber products, including sawnwood, panels, veneer, chips, pulp and paper, has a significant impact on forests in many countries in Asia and the Pacific. The establishment of timber processing industries has been an essential aspect of national development strategies, often accompanied with negative consequences for forests. The argument that domestically added value increases incentives to manage forests sustainably has rarely held because inappropriate macroeconomic and sector-specific government interventions have usually distorted the necessary incentive systems. A problem largely confined to policy design and implementation, timber processing has not attracted as much attention from environmental organizations as other forest-related issues. Some policy advocacy ECSOs have addressed the positive and negative aspects of local processing, but most organizations have either followed the opinions of academic institutions or have not developed a specific position. Given the recent appearance of many ECSOs, this is not a surprise; however, increasing experience and the proliferation of policy-advocacy ECSOs, both national and international, coupled with sector-specific trends in the region, are likely to prompt a greater involvement in the near to medium term future.
Timber-based industrialization follows a general pattern by which ownership of forests tends to be centralized under state or national governments, stumpage fees determined administratively, rather than by the forces of supply and demand, wood-processing capacity is accelerated before comparative advantages signal opportunities, often through such protectionist measures as export restrictions on logs, import restrictions on processed products, and manipulations of the exchange rate.
In Peninsular Malaysia, for example, annual rates of increase in physical output between 1960 and 1987 averaged 6% for logs, 7% for sawnwood, and 20% for plywood (Vincent, 1992). In 1972, the government began to restrict log exports, banning them altogether by 1985, except for logs with small diameters. These restrictions immediately slowed the rate of increase in log prices to 0.8% per year between 1972 and 1985, compared to 3.2% in East Malaysia where logs continued to be exported. As a result of the shift of resource rents from the log market to primary processing industries, investment became more attractive in the latter. The number of sawmills increased at almost twice the pre-1972 rate, even though sawnwood production increases were halved, but the newly created rents enabled mills to earn profits even though they operated below capacity. At the same time, estimated effective rates of protection for sawnwood stood between 30 and 33%, and between 44 and 58% for plywood. Protectionist measures in favour of downstream wood-processing industries were announced in 1990, taking the form of export taxes on sawnwood and veneer, this move may lead to the development of large downstream industries, but their efficiency is not guaranteed. Although these government interventions were supposed to foster competitive timber processing industries that would create incentives for investment in sustainable forest management, the 1989 harvest of 12.1 cubic meters was three to four times higher than the estimated annual sustained yield from the permanent forest estate (Vincent, 1992).
A similar evolution was witnessed in Indonesia. In 1967, the government passed the Foreign Capital Investment Act, which provided generous incentives to foreign investors who arrived with heavy equipment and technical knowledge to engage in large-scale timber harvesting. Forestry rapidly became a source of export earnings, aided by the Basic Forest Act that was passed the same year. The expected establishment of a domestic processing industry failed to materialize, however, until the government passed a ban on exporting logs in the 1980s, and later high export taxes on sawnwood. As in Peninsular Malaysia, plywood manufacturing plants proliferated rapidly, leading to a large installed over-capacity in relation to the supply of raw materials, and concomitant increased pressures for overexploiting the country's forests (Sumitro, 1995).
The promotion and establishment of timber processing in Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, has been slow. A graduated log export tax was implemented at the end of 1995, and government representatives have urged timber harvesters to invest in downstream processing by the year 2000. Export logging is allowed until beyond 2000 and the World Bank, which has considerable influence on the country's macroeconomic and sector-specific policies through its structural adjustment loans, has generally taken the position that Papua New Guinea would have difficulties in competing with Indonesia and Malaysia. Most national ECSOs believe that small and medium scale domestic processing would be the preferred strategy to increase the country's small-holders incomes and conserve the environment. They have the support of Greenpeace Pacific and the International Council for Research in Agro forestry, both of which encourage Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified small scale and medium scale development for forest resources by local groups (Brunton, 1997).
More specific concerns of ECSOs relate to pollution associated with the pulp and paper industry. At a NGO consultation organized by the International institute for Environment and Development, the following concerns were raised:
· Fibre sourcing: biodiversity in temperate/boreal forests; replacement of natural forests by plantations; and increased use of non-wood fibres and waste paper.· Production: Dominance of large-scale mills and the political influence of companies; desirability of local production for local needs; reduction/elimination of chlorine use; and investigation of alternative technologies.
· Consumption: Driving forces behind paper consumption; existence of, and in some cases, exceeding of limits to sustainable consumption of paper; excessive paper quality for many of the uses; and reduction of paper consumption of rich groups/countries.
· Recycling and waste disposal: Increase in recycled content of most types of paper; emphasis on source reduction; marginalization of traditional systems by western style waste reduction and collection systems; and increase of transport in the cycle through trade in waste paper.
· Policy: Extent of (hidden) subsidies for wood compared to alternative fibre sources; need for and means of achieving certification; need for definitional clarification, for example "degraded land"; respect for diversity of situations; and social involvement as key to good policy-making. (IIED, 1996).
In 1993, 14% of the total world harvest of wood (industrial, non-industrial, and fuelwood) of 3.4 billion m3 was used for paper manufacture. "Other fibre pulp" production in Asia is projected to approach 43 million metric tons by 2010, surpassing mechanical and chemical pulp production (FAO, 1997 a). The World Wildlife Fund has recently published a report documenting the industries' environmental consequences (WWF, 1996) and Greenpeace has campaigned for more than ten years against the use of chlorine in paper production, most recently under the campaign title "Pulp Fiction". WWF, for example, states in its report:
The increasing importance of pulp and paper-making means that paper consumption now has enormous impacts on forest ecosystems. Natural forests continue to be logged for paper-making, although the industry has often tried to conceal this. Pulp is also the output from some of the world's most intensively-managed monoculture timber plantations, which have sometimes themselves been established in the place of native forests. New technology is allowing the use of poorer quality pulp fibre, opening up fresh areas for exploitation including some virtually pristine boreal forests. Plantations seldom offer the ecological or social benefits of other forests. Paper production also sometimes utilises non-timber plant material, which can itself have a number of environmental side effects. (WWF, 1996)
Paper mill effluents and emissions became the subject of intense scrutiny during the 1980s. Chlorine is the chemical primarily responsible for the formation of by-products, some of them highly toxic, which can persist in the environment for many years. In response to criticism from environmental advocates and government, the selective by-products have been reduced in most producing regions. Severe air pollution arose from older mills, but even though current technology dramatically mitigates such emissions, many mills have not been upgraded. In 1993, 600 angry villagers in Sumatra attacked a pulp factory following its leakage of chlorine gas. Indonesia, which has set ambitious targets for the development of its pulp and paper industry, plans to ban the use of chlorine.
Changing demand and supply situations in local, national, regional, and international timber products markets will exert an increased influence in Asia and the Pacific. This is not only the result of fast-growing individual country demands or supplies, but also an effect of accelerated regional economic integration, which gradually moves key trade decision-making power to supranational levels. Governments, often for political reasons, have frequently resisted such pressures. Environment-related trade issues have been on international agendas for longer than the majority of ECSOs have existed, but a growing number of organizations is addressing them in a variety of forms. Involvement occurs both on the demand side, as consumer awareness raising campaigns, advocacy for certified products, calls for import bans, and boycotts against certain tropical hardwood species or singled-out countries, and on the supply side, as policy reform advocacy, certification, support for log export ban, or monitoring of illegal trade.
Since the 1960's, trade in Asia and Pacific has been characterized by the early, dominant demand position of Japan, later of Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, and of rapidly growing China, shifting supply situations, as well as by changing trade regimes and policies; 1994 net trade figures for selected trade items are presented in Table 4.2.3.
Table 4.2.3. Net Trade in roundwood, sawnwood, wood-based panels, veneer sheets and plywood, and woodpulp for selected Asia-Pacific countries in 1994 (in 1,000 cubic meters, figures in parentheses indicate net importers)
|
Country |
Roundwood |
Sawnwood |
Wood-based panels |
Veneer sheets and plywood |
Woodpulp (1,000 mt) |
|
Japan |
(45,867) |
(10,688) |
(5,551) |
(4,741) |
(3,493) |
|
Indonesia |
1,486 |
527 |
8,579 |
8,259 |
(571) |
|
Malaysia |
8,574 |
4,591 |
3,738 |
3,582 |
(94) |
|
South Korea |
(10,785) |
(1,088) |
(1,640) |
(1,018) |
(1,859) |
|
China |
(4,818) |
(1,663) |
(3,527) |
(2,955) |
(1,462) |
|
Singapore |
43 |
(214) |
(247) |
(199) |
1 |
|
Thailand |
1,326 |
(2,313) |
95 |
(36) |
(154) |
|
Australia |
7,328 |
(1,036) |
(2) |
(76) |
(223) |
|
New Zealand |
5510 |
1,010 |
572 |
98 |
650 |
|
Papua New Guinea |
3,168 |
6 |
(2) |
(2) |
0 |
Source: FAO, 1997a.
Projected changes to 2010 vary according to product item. According to FAO's 1997 Provisional Outlook to 2010, the Asia (excluding Oceania) region will continue to be the world's leading producer and consumer of various wood products, with an anticipated trade deficit of over 60 million m3 in roundwood (compared to a trade surplus of about 18 million m3 for Oceania), 19 million m3 in sawnwood and sleepers, over 4 million m3 in wood-based panels, over 1 million m3 in veneer sheets and plywood, about 700,000 tons of mechanical wood pulp (while Oceania will lose its leading position as producer) (FAO, 1997a).
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Japan's role in the tropical timber trade Environmental organizations inside and outside Japan have repeatedly criticized Japan's tropical timber trade role in the destruction of tropical forests and human rights violations against indigenous peoples. With only 2% of the world's population, Japan imports 30% of the world's traded tropical timber, mostly for construction and furniture making. Japan is also the largest importer of woodchips from Australia's natural forests. Yet, two thirds of Japan's land area is forested, to a large extent with plantations. In 1991, only a quarter of domestic demand was satisfied from Japanese timber. ECSOs, such as the Sarawak Campaign Committee (SCC) and the Rainforest Information Centre (RIC) have criticised the short 20-25 year rebuilding cycle in the construction industry and the country's wasteful paper consumption, pressing for an end to the use of tropical timber from Sarawak and other regions. Japan's impact on tropical forests has moved from the Philippines in the 1960's to Indonesia in the 1970's and early 1980's, and later to Sabah and Sarawak. While Sarawak is still the main provider of raw logs, declining supplies have prompted a gradual relocation to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, where 60% of all raw log exports currently go to Japan. (Source: Light, 1995) |
Environmental organizations have largely focused their efforts on one type of wood: tropical hardwood. ECSOs in North America and Europe have raised consumers' consciousness of environmental and human rights consequences of the trade in tropical hardwoods, especially mahogany and teak, for a number of years. For instance, Objective 5 of IUCN/WWF's forest policy is the "use of goods and services at levels that do not damage the environment, including elimination of wasteful consumption, to attain a level of use of forest goods and services within the regenerative capacity of the forest estate" (WWF/IUCN, 1996). This is to be achieved through (a) an analysis of sustainable use of timber and non-timber forest goods and services, and the implications to the global timber and pulp industry; (b) a study of the global pulp and paper industry, its environmental effects, and responses to these problems; (c) continued work with existing initiatives, such as ITTO, Helsinki and Montreal Processes, IPF, etc.; (d) elimination of wasteful use of timber and pulp products, and proposals for more efficient systems, appropriate recycling and re-use strategies and methods for reducing waste; and (e) lobbying governments and international bodies to enact or implement legislation aimed at limiting trade in forest products to those certified as coming from sustainably managed forests (WWF/IUCN, 1996).
Timber certification and ecolabelling
One of the most active areas of involvement of ECSOs in timber trade has been in the area of certification, which is sometimes attributed solely to the non-governmental movement. The Forest Stewardship Council, founded in 1993 by a diverse group of representatives from environmental institutions, the timber trade, the forestry profession, indigenous peoples' organizations, community forestry groups and forest product certification organizations from 25 countries, seeks to develop and test the concept of certification and accreditation.
Among the certifiers who have applied for FSC accreditation are the Rainforest Alliance's Smart Wood Programme (New York, USA), the Scientific Certification Systems Forest Conservation Programme (California, USA), SGS-Forestry (Oxford, UK), and The Soil Association's Responsible Forestry Programme (Bristol, UK).
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The general FSC Principles and Criteria: 1. Compliance with laws and FSC Principles: Forest management shall respect all applicable laws of the country in which they occur, and international treaties and agreements to which the country is a signatory, and comply with all FSC Principles and Criteria. 2. Tenure and use rights and responsibilities: Long-term tenure and use rights to the land and forest resources shall be clearly defined, documented and legally established. 3. Indigenous peoples' rights: The legal or customary rights of indigenous peoples to own, use and manage their lands, territories, and resources shall be recognized and respected. 4. Community relations and workers' rights: Forest management operations shall maintain or enhance the long-term social and economic well-being of forest workers and local communities. 5. Benefits from the forest: Forest management operations shall encourage the efficient use of forest's multiple products and services to ensure economic viability and a wide range of environmental and social benefits. 6. Environmental impact: Forest management shall conserve biological diversity and its associated values, water resources, soils, and unique and fragile ecosystems and landscapes, and, by so doing, maintain the ecological functions and the integrity of the forest. 7. Management plan: A management plan - appropriate to the scale and intensity of the operations - shall be written, implemented, and kept up to date. The long-term objectives of management, and the means of achieving them, shall be clearly stated. 8. Monitoring and assessment: Monitoring shall be conducted - appropriate to the scale and intensity of forest management - to assess the condition of the forest, yields of forest products, chain of custody, management activities and their social and environmental impacts. 9. Maintenance of natural forests: Primary forests, well-developed secondary forests and sites of major environmental, social or cultural significance shall be conserved. Such areas shall not be replaced by tree plantations or other land uses. 10. Plantations: Plantations shall be planned and managed in accordance with Principles and Criteria 1-9, and Principle 10 and its Criteria. While plantations can provide an array of social and economic benefits, and can contribute to satisfying the world's needs for forest products, they should complement the management of, reduce pressures on, and promote the restoration and conservation of natural forests. Principles 1-9 were ratified by the board and members of the FSC in September 1994. Principle 10 was ratified by the board and members of the FSC in February 1996. Source: FSC, 1996. |
The Smart Wood Programme was established in 1990 by the Rainforest Alliance to slow the destruction of tropical rain-forests. As the first independent certification programme in the world, Smart Wood's goal was to further the adoption of sustainable forest practices that meet long-term environmental social and economic needs. The Smart Wood Network was set up to expand beyond tropical forests and is now a cooperative effort among regional non-profit place-based forestry organizations around the world. There three broad principles that characterize the criteria for Smart Wood certification are (1) Maintenance of environmental functions, including watershed stability and biological conservation; (2) sustained yield forestry production; and (3) positive impact on local communities. (Smart Wood does not endorse the conversion of primary forests to plantations.)
Certification in Asia and the Pacific has been slow compared to other regions in the world. Smart Wood, for examples, endorses the Java State Forestry Corporation and Cooperative Business International in Indonesia. The Forest Stewardship Council has approved the Bainings Ecoforestry Project in Papua New Guinea, three sites of RAD Enterprises, Eulala Trust (Malaita Island), and nine sites of the SWIFT Community Projects in the Solomon Islands as sustainable operations in natural forests, and Sungai Labis, Johor State, in Malaysia, and Parquet, Ceylon Ltd, RPK Management Services Ltd, and Horana Plantations Ltd in Sri Lanka as sustainable plantation operations.
While certification and labelling is clearly a trend to be watched in the future, criticism about its potential impact has also been presented, particularly regarding Asia and the Pacific, where the main markets for the two largest producers, Malaysia and Indonesia, are in Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, China, etc.) that have not shown any interest in certified wood. It is further argued that only a few market segment in a limited number of countries would be affected and that the demand for certified wood remains negligible compared to world-wide production (Kiekens, 1996).
Timber plantations in Asia and the Pacific have been established on a large scale, mainly during the second half of the twentieth century, for different reasons, including the development of local and regional economies, strengthening communities, strengthening the role of women in society, protecting vulnerable ecosystems, rehabilitating degraded environments, protecting water resources, protecting indigenous forests, and maintaining biological diversity (Turvey, 1995). These reasons correspond to the expectations of a wide range of different organizations, including ECSOs. Although some forms of plantation forestry, particularly agroforestry and land rehabilitation, can reduce deforestation rates by expanding agricultural production on non-forest lands, industrial plantations, by virtue of the different products they provide (e.g. industrial sawnwood and pulpwood), are unlikely to make a major contribution to reducing deforestation or the substitution of high-quality hardwood from natural forests with plantation grown hardwoods.
Environmental organizations have criticized the practice of replacing natural forests with plantations, the negative aspects of monoculture, the impact on biological diversity, as well as a the socio-economic consequences. Some ECSOs have worked to develop a code of sustainable plantation forestry, notably the Rainforest Alliance through its SmartWood Certification Programme, while others have advocated a moratorium on new monoculture plantations. Both types of involvement are likely to persist in the near to medium term future, but cooperative approaches will prove to be more successful in achieving sustainable plantation forestry.
Asia-Pacific countries have made different levels of efforts in establishing plantations, with China, India, Indonesia, and New Zealand at the forefront. The estimated total area of industrial plantations (excluding tree growing in agroforestry and for soil stabilization measures) in the Asia-Pacific region in 1995 was 53.75 million ha (Blanchez, 1997). The majority of this area, 33.51 million ha, was located in North Asia, followed by 8.71 million ha in South Asia, 6.1 million ha in Insular Southeast Asia, 2.78 million ha in Oceania, and 2.66 million ha in Continental Southeast Asia. By the year 2010, the region's total area is estimated to grow to 74,929 million ha, representing increases of 24.3% in North Asia, 51.2% in South Asia, 88.3% in Continental Southeast Asia, 68.0% in Insular Southeast Asia, and 74.2% in Oceania (Blanchez, 1997). The countries with the largest possible industrial plantations in 2010 are China with 27 million ha, India with 11 million ha, Japan with 10.29 million ha, and Indonesia with 8.43 million ha.
Environmental impacts of industrial plantations can include the loss of biological diversity, soil from wind or water, silting of drainage channels, and the contamination of rivers from auxiliary inputs, such as weedicide, soil cultivation, and fertilizers. When natural forest is replaced with plantations, diversity inevitably collapses. When plantations are established on previously non-forested lands, evidence has shown that diversity increases over time. Soil erosion, which is largely dependent on ground cover, varies according to species planted and maintenance of the ground cover. Eucalyptus, for example is sometimes thought to cause erosion as a consequence of its sparse understory found in dense stands (it is also known to lower water tables). Similarly, where abundant leaf litter is collected for fuel or fodder, surface protection breaks down and leads to erosion, a problem that has been observed in pulpwood plantations in Vietnam. Water contamination resulting from the runoff of auxiliary inputs has also been criticized, for example by Greenpeace which advocates a ban on the further development of monoculture plantations and on the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers.
Of equal concern to environmental organizations are the socio-economic consequences industrial plantations can have on local populations, particularly with respect to participation and tenure rights. The following quote from Chambers et al in many ways summarizes these concerns:
a lobby of environmentalists, academics and members of the press who tend to see planting trees for economic gain in capital and cash as moral sin. People's participation, according to them, should mean planting trees for the next generation, or for meeting fuelwood and fodder needs of the people, or for supplementing agricultural production. A market orientation, in their view, harms the poor, as they are vulnerable to exploitation by middlemen, have little control over markets, and are likely to sell their trees for a song long before their optimal silvicultural and economic stage is reached. People's participation is also equated with arousing collective spirit among the community, which alone will ensure that the new wealth being created through the programme reaches the poor (Chambers et al, 1989)
As was pointed out in a review of the politics of plantations, however, these views "are readily accepted as defining desirable objectives, to the extent that contrary viewpoints may easily be branded as anti-poor," and that "the representation of local people's views may not be participatory, even though the agents of representation would likely condone extensive public participation" (Sargent and Bass, 1992).
It is thought, however, that the critical stance of national and international NGOs has contributed to the development of more socially oriented plantation practices. As mentioned earlier, a large and growing number of local and national ECSOs in Asia and the Pacific are now involved in agroforestry and community and social forestry, where multiple-uses of trees may but do not have to include the production of timber.
The share of fuelwood in total wood production and harvesting varies considerably in the Asia-Pacific region, due to its diversity in forest types and levels of economic development. For 1993, fuelwood production accounted for almost 75% of 855.6 million cubic meters of total wood harvested, ranging from a low of 19.2% in Oceania-South Pacific to a high of 92.2% for the South Asia sub-region (Waggener and Lane, 1997). Fuelwood is by far the main energy source in developing countries, as in India and the Philippines, where it accounts for 91% and 90%, respectively. According to FAO projections, fuelwood production will increase by 16.2% in South Asia, 7.5% in Insular Southeast Asia, 18.3% in Oceania-South Pacific, 7.3% in Continental Southeast Asia, and 2.5% in North Asia (FAO, 1991).
The contribution to deforestation of fuelwood collection, often assumed considerable, is actually small in tropical moist forests because local rural communities gather most of their fuelwood from trees outside forests, often planted for that specific purpose (Mercer and Soussan, 1992), or from the gathering of branches. The situation is different in dry forest and montane regions where population densities are high and remaining forest cover inadequate, such as in the Philippines, Nepal, and Thailand (Grainger, 1993). Land degradation is particularly acute in small areas of woodland scattered within agricultural areas, on steep hills, along rivers, on marshy grounds and poorer soils, or in other areas not used for agriculture, both private and communally held. Where population densities are high and rural environments fragile, such as in the foothills of the Himalayas and some areas in China, land and forest degradation can be considerable (Singh et al., 1984; Smil, 1983). The use of fuelwood by urban populations can also lead to the degradation of surrounding areas, as has been documented for some cities in India (Bowonder et al., 1987).
Perspectives of environmental organizations on fuelwood collection's impact on forests are divided in ways similar to the case of agroforestry. ECSOs of the western type, particularly the large conservation organizations do not usually concentrate their efforts on the fragile areas that suffer from the impact of fuelwood gathering, focusing instead on sparsely populated, tropical moist forest regions, or the other major aspect of wood removal represented by industrial roundwood production. In some integrated development and conservation projects, sustainable fuelwood production may be an issue where large populations live in or around conservation areas. On a regional scale, these components are negligible.
Local and national development/environment organizations, on the other hand, particularly in densely populated South Asia, have engaged in fuelwood-related activities as part of their land rehabilitation and agroforestry programmes. Experience has shown, however, that unless social forestry schemes based primarily on fuelwood production are rarely successful if open-access forest resources are available and prices remain low. Conversely, fuelwood oriented programmes have achieved their goals when local communities participated actively and the different uses of trees in farming systems were accounted for (Gregersen et al., 1989).
The perspectives of ECSOs on hunting and wildlife trade have for the most part been incompatible. Northern ECSOs, while having been very active in protecting animals, have been slow in coming to terms with often legitimate claims of farmers who need to defend their livelihood resources, whereas southern ECSOs have generally sided with the rural poor, although they also oppose poaching when it negatively affects wildlife populations. As an integral part of forests in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as around the world, wildlife has a range of important functions in ecosystem maintenance and regeneration. Humans' use of wildlife for food, clothing, medicines, poisons, and cultural purposes dates back tens of thousands of years, but its extent has recently reached proportions that threaten the survival of many species. At the same time, the protection of certain species has aggravated conflicts between people and wildlife, as in the case of crop raiding by elephants or human killings by tigers. Such conflicts are likely to increase to 2010, as populations continue to grow and poaching and illegal wildlife trade will intensify ECSOs' efforts to arrest population declines of certain species.
An international convention that addresses the trade in endangered species has been in force since 1975. At the recent Tenth Conference of the Parties (COP-10) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the 138 member states discussed a number of important issues related to the status and consumption of wildlife in Asia. First, a proposal by Finland, Bulgaria, and Jordan to list all Asian and European populations of Brown bear in Appendix I was turned down. Brown bear populations in Bhutan, China, Mexico and Mongolia are currently listed in Appendix I, with all other populations listed in Appendix II. Although there is little information on the status of bears in Asia, data indicates that habitats are declining, and bear populations are threatened in India, Pakistan, the Republic of Korea, and Japan. Bear parts, particularly bile and gall bladder, are used in traditional medicine systems and are traded across borders in Asia, notably from China where some 7,000 bears are raised in farms. Range and consumer countries that are not party to CITES include Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Bhutan, and North Korea
The second proposal at COP-10 relates to consumption of ivory in one Asian country, Japan. Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe have proposed the annotated transfer of their elephant populations from Appendix I to II, because, among other reasons, they want to sell more than 150 tons of ivory to Japan. These countries argue they have more elephants than their land can support and that money from the sales would be used for conservation and development of remote areas where the animals live. Environmental organizations are somewhat divided over the issue. The WWF, for instance, rejects the resumption of the international trade in ivory, banned since 1979. because of inadequate mechanisms in importing countries, particularly Japan, to filter out illegally obtained ivory. The organization considers the South African proposal, however, given a number of restrictive measures accompany it. As it happens, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe were granted the right to sell their ivory to Japan, though at only a fraction of the intended amount.
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CITES Mechanisms CITES accords varying degrees of protection to wild animal and plant species depending on their population status and the impact international trade has on them. Regulation is implemented using a permit system which allows trade in wild plants and animals (and their parts and derivatives) to be monitored and controlled. Plants and animal species subject to regulation are included in one of the following appendices: Appendix I: includes species, sub-species or populations are threatened with extinction that are, or may be affected by trade. International commercial trade in species listed is Appendix 1 is prohibited. Under exceptional circumstances trade is permitted - for example for scientific or conservation purposes - but not without appropriate import and export permits issued by the competent government authorities in the importing and exporting countries. Appendix II: includes species, subspecies and populations, which might become threatened if trade in them is not controlled and monitored. This appendix also lists some species which are not themselves threatened, but which might be confused with those needing protection (known as "look-alike"). Trade in Appendix II species requires an export permit only, issued by the government authority in the country of origin. Permits should not be issued unless it has been determined that the specimen of the species in question was legally obtained, and export will not be detrimental to the survival of that species. If the species is exported from a country other than where it originated, a re-export permit is needed. Appendix III: contains species that are protected within individual countries, and where the country has asked other CITES parties for assistance in controlling the trade. To import specimens listed on Appendix III requires an export permit and a certificate of origin. If the import is from any other range state a certificate of origin is sufficient. How is a species listed on the Appendices? The content of these Appendices can be and are changed at each meeting of the Conference of the Parties (or COP), according to proposals put forward by the Parties to amend Appendices I and II (only Parties can put forward proposals). Proposals must be approved by two-thirds of Parties casting a vote (abstentions are not counted). Changes in listings in the Appendices that are agreed upon at the meetings of the Conference of the Parties enter into force 90 days after the meeting. |
Other endangered keystone species subject to extensive poaching and trade in the Asia-Pacific region include the tiger, the rhinoceros, and the Asian elephant. Tiger habitat once covered a territory stretching from eastern Turkey to North Korea, its forest home extending northward to Siberia and southward into Bali. In this century alone, three of the five sub-species of tiger were driven into extinction, including the Bali, Javan, and Caspian, and the remaining two are threatened by extensive poaching. As little as 5,000 may exist today. Tiger bones and other parts are used in the production of traditional medicine which is sold in the markets of China, Taiwan, and Korea, and even exported to the USA and Europe. Range states and consumer countries that are not yet Parties to CITES, include Bhutan, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and North Korea.
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Monitoring illegal wildlife trade: TRAFFIC One year after CITES entered into force, the TRAFFIC (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce) Network was set up as a joint conservation programme of IUCN and WWF. TRAFFIC'S mission is "to help ensure that wildlife trade is sustainable and in accordance with domestic and international laws and agreements, through the investigation, monitoring and reporting of such trade, particularly that which is detrimental to the survival of flora and fauna and that which is illegal." Today, TRAFFIC has a network of 17 offices on five continents, including India, Pakistan, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Australia, covering the major wildlife consumer markets of the United States, Japan, and Europe. TRAFFIC'S activities include wildlife market surveys, technical assistance to customs agents, development of national legislation, training, work with traditional Chinese medicine communities, and more TRAFFIC'S investigations and intelligence sharing have brought about the capture of poachers smugglers across the region, including in India's largest ever wildlife parts seizure in 1993 of 287 kilograms of tiger bone. Undercover work in Taiwan led to me unprecedented decision by the US Government to impose limited trade sanctions on Taiwan because of its failure to stop its illegal tiger bone and rhino horn trade. Source: WWF, 1997c |
All rhinoceros populations, with the exception of South Africa's population of white rhinos, remain highly vulnerable, with some on the very brink of extinction. For example the Sumatran rhino is thought to have declined in number from an estimated 600-700 animals in Sumatra in 1987 to less than 300 today. In 1995, as many as 22 greater one-horned rhinos were poached in the Manas Tiger Reserve in north-east India, which borders the Bhutan Manas National Park. The conservation activities of WWF in the tiger reserve have been suspended because insurgents have occupied the park. Elsewhere in India, rhino numbers are stable and in Nepal, rhino numbers have increased, but poaching is still a serious problem The world's major markets in rhino horn are South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and China.
The Asian elephant once ranged from Mesopotamia (now known as Iraq) throughout Asia, south of the Himalayas all the way to Northern China. Today, the elephant habitat ranges from dry tropical thorn forest through deciduous forest and flood plains of rivers to tropical rain forest. These include, for instance, the following biodiversity-rich regions: Eastern Himalayas in NE India, Northern Myanmar, Laos and Yunnan in Southern China Rain forests of Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah Tropical forests along the Laos, Kampuchea, Vietnam borders where new species of mammals are still being discovered. Only an estimated 29,000 to 40,000 still remain in the wild, while field studies show that there are still half a million African elephants. The largest surviving wild populations in India (20,000-24,000), in particular in the north eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya, and in the Western Ghats of Southern India. There may be 2,800-4,800 elephants still left on the island of Sumatra (Indonesia), with other major populations occurring in Myanmar (5,000-6,000), Sri Lanka (2,500-3,000), Thailand (about 2,000), Laos (2,000-3,000), Kampuchea (2,000), Vietnam (500-1,000), Peninsular Malaysia (1,000) and Borneo (500-2,000).
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Conflicts between humans and wildlife in India During 1994-95, various forest divisions including protected areas and managed forests in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa were surveyed for wildlife damage problems. In northern parts of Bihar, damage to agricultural crops is caused mainly by nilgai, while the damage problems caused by elephant, tiger, leopard and sloth bear in southern Bihar are serious. Elephant damage to human lives, property and agricultural crops is enormous. High incidence of cattle lifting by tiger has been observed on the peripheries of Palamau tiger reserve, whereas cases of human killing by tiger are sporadic here. Child lifting by wolves has taken on serious proportions in northern Hazaribagh and southern Koderma forest divisions in the previous two years. In Madhya Pradesh, wildlife damage problems are concentrated largely in and around the protected areas, where cattle depredation by tiger and leopard and crop damage by wild boar and ungulates are widespread. Serious cases of crop depredation by blackbuck have been recorded in the Great Indian bustard sanctuary in Karera. Cases of human mauling and killing by sloth bear in alarming proportions have come to light in Bilaspur, Raipur and Raigarh districts. In Orissa, elephants are widely distributed and are causing serious damage problems in terms of human loss, property destruction and crop depredation. There are sporadic cases of human casualties by sloth bear. tiger and leopard in an around protected areas. Source: Chauhan, 1994 |
The case of the Asian elephant is an example of conflicts between humans and wildlife that have led to accusations of western conservation organizations for their insensitivity towards human needs. Human fatalities and crop raiding by elephants, as well as killings of humans and cattle lifting by tigers and bears, are particularly frequent in India and Sri Lanka, where more than half of the estimated remaining population of the Asian elephant is concentrated. Western conservation organizations, starting as early as the 1960's have primarily aimed at protecting the animals by way of establishing protected areas, based on the argument that growing populations and expanding agricultural areas are to be blamed for the increase in conflicts between humans and wildlife. Only recently, in part as a response to criticism from developing country governments and ECSOs, have they begun to look for alternative ways.
For example, WWF-India has assisted in environmental awareness programmes, aimed especially at reducing conflict between wildlife and people living in and around protected areas including Bandipur, Mudumalai, and Dudhwa. Recently, WWF-India formulated an action plan for conserving the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve which also has an elephant population. The Community Biodiversity Conservation Programme has funded studies in relocated villages of the Chandaka Elephant Reserve in Orissa, and its Conservation Corps Volunteers have been studying human-elephant conflicts in north Bengal. Similar activities are taking place with local NGOs along the boundaries of Khao Yai National Park in Thailand to integrate conservation and development, in and around Way Kambas, Kerinci-Seblat, and Gunung Leuser national parks in Indonesia through public awareness activities with the media to help both government officials and the general public to better understand the problems, and around Chitwan in Bhutan, where nearly 60,000 subsistence farmers are involved in a BCN-sponsored community-based sustainable development and biological diversity conservation programme involving.
The future trend to 2010 will likely include both strategies, habitat preservation through protected areas and conflict resolution between local communities and wildlife. The latter will probably receive greater attention, resulting from the general trend away from strictly protected reserves, from increased decentralization of forest management that will give a greater voice to local populations, and from increasing occurrences of human-wildlife conflict caused by habitat loss and fragmentation-induced wildlife migrations and growing human populations.
The final area of factors affecting forests in the Asia-Pacific region addressed in this section relates to government policies, particularly those governing forest management. They are not the only ones that affect forests, as has been noted earlier, for forests are only one type of land use in the overall land-use morphology of a country. Policy analysis is not a domain civil society organizations engage in from the outset. If there exists a natural evolution of CSO involvement, policy analysis is likely to occur at a later organizational stage. In many countries, a restrictive political environment further presents barriers to CSO engagement in policy analysis and advocacy. Moreover, measuring success in policy advocacy is enormously difficult, leading newly formed organizations in need of establishing a track record of success stories to shy away from getting involved in policy analysis and advocacy. For these reason, ECSOs from industrialized countries have dominated this field. However, through partnerships with organizations in developing countries, they have made an effort to promote this important type of activity.
All previous sections have in one or the other way touched on policy issues, particularly in the areas of timber harvesting, processing and trade, but also with regards to non-timber forest products and wildlife. Reviews of forest and other policies of Asia-Pacific countries abound and the technical shortcomings are more less known and have been documented. If one accepts the argument that policies are only as good as their implementation, however, a different set of issues come into play. In fact, it has frequently been argued that sustainable forest management is more a political than a technical issue. Alan Grainger (1993), for instance, notes that "many governments do not actually publish their forest policies, and those that do rarely live up to the fine sounding words within them and about the need for sustainable management and environmental protection." The late Jack Westoby "spoke scathingly of forest policies being hatched between top foresters and politicians so that powerful commercial interests are accommodated and the policies are vague enough to be changeable as conditions warrant (Westoby, 1987, quoted in Grainger, 1993). Other observers have pointed out that clientelist and rent-seeking political systems, collusion between forest ministries and private sector interests, as well as a more general lack of commitment on the part of governments and the private sector have all contributed to the political nature of the evolution of sustainable forest management. This is not to say that in the absence of these problems sustainable forest management could be achieved overnight. Rather, it shows that the concept of sustainable forest development has been the subject of varying interpretations, none of which is likely to satisfy all parties concerned.
Environmental organizations, due to their autonomy and frequent lack of accountability to a set constituency, have often filled the useful role of watchdogs, particularly in cases where legal directives of governments or multilateral development banks were not observed. Less frequently, policy advocacy ECSOs have been consulted by governments in their attempts to reform certain aspects of forest policies. The proliferation of ECSOs inside and outside the Asia-Pacific region and their increasing experience and sophistication will likely lead to their expanded involvement in policy issues to the year 2010. Periodically noted predictions about a declining significance of ECSOs due to governments' cooperation of their agendas are not well-founded, not only because of the different interpretations of sustainable forest management, but also because of the diversity of the environmental movement itself. Some ECSOs may become more mainstream and thereby risk criticism for appealing to government and their funding, but a significant number of ECSOs hold positions that are highly unlikely to be acceded by public and private sectors.
Forest ownership and allocation
With the exception of some Pacific Island countries, forests are owned by the state in the large majority of Asian countries. Conflicts between state land management policies and local forest use systems have been a major obstacle to sustainable forest management, due largely to governments' bias towards timber production. Where forest-dependent populations cannot secure tenure for adequate periods of time, they have no incentives for managing the land sustainably. The same applies to timber harvesters whose lease rights generally expire before forests regenerate, again creating no incentives for sustainable harvesting or post-harvesting silvicultural treatments. Timber concession allocation mechanisms frequently lack transparency and forest lands are often accorded on political, rather than economic grounds. In Papua New Guinea, for instance, environmental groups recently urged the government to set up a commission of inquiry into logging, saying that they had identified some of the recent timber concessions awarded to logging companies by the National Forest Authority which were flawed either environmentally or legally, or both.
In recognition of the shortcomings of state ownership and centralized forest management, many countries in the Asia-Pacific region have initiated a process of decentralization. In India, joint forest management was started in the late 1980's; recently enacted laws in Nepal, Indonesia, and the Philippines provide resource rights to local forest area communities; in Laos and Vietnam, forest policies are just beginning to enable local residents to obtain more secure land and resource tenure; and in Thailand, a community forestry law is currently being discussed. These processes are promoted and supported by ECSOs throughout the region, but at the same time being criticized for not going far enough.
Forest management and harvesting rules
In order for forests to be harvested and management sustainably, a critical mass of baseline data is necessary for the establishment of sound management plans, including an inventory of the standing stock and of its condition and age or size composition, as well as an assessment of the soils, slopes and other factors. This data is often lacking, resulting in overestimated timber stands, unrealistic annual allowable cuts, and exaggerated replenishment rates. The design and construction of roads and the nature and extent of silvicultural treatments are additional aspects that need to be taken into account.
Most often, governments do not have the technical or human resources necessary to control and supervise harvesting operations. In many places, foresters are poorly trained, ill-equipped, underpaid, and have to depend entirely on the logging companies for their transport, accommodation and living requirements. Environmental organizations sometimes complement the roles of foresters by monitoring different aspects of forest harvesting, but ECSO staff are often as little trained for the task as are foresters.
Pricing
Forests have been undervalued throughout the region, particularly with respect to their ecological and social goods and services. Rents through royalties, license fees, and reforestation taxes are typically much less than even real cost of replacing the timber stock and restoring logged-over areas. They are typically determined administratively and do not reflect true scarcities or world market prices. Moreover, many governments in developing countries lack the capacity to effectively collect the actual rents from timber harvests through royalties and taxes. Tax systems are frequently based on export volumes or volumes entering mills, rather than on standing stocks, thereby providing no incentives to create less damage to timber stands.
Macroeconomic factors
Trade policies have already been mentioned as reasons for unsustainable forest management, whether in the form of log export bans, tariffs on processed wood product imports, or investment policies. To this are added the non-forest incentives (pricing policies, tax incentives, direct government outlays, and other subsidies), which encourage private investments in leading development sectors such as agriculture, energy, mining, industry and transportation.
In all of these areas, national and international policy advocacy environmental organizations have been active in documenting shortcomings and proposing reforms. Successes have been mixed and difficult to measure, but it can safely be argued that the current trend towards forest management decentralization is in part a result of pressure from ECSOs. In other areas, for example pricing and macroeconomic factors, ECSOs have more often tried to leverage international actors and fora. The World Resources Institute and the Environmental Defence Fund, for instance, frequently pressure the World Bank and other international financial institutions to include these aspects in their lending practices.
In the domain of policy advocacy, environmental organizations have probably been most active in the international forest policy dialogue. They act as observers and commentators on the meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF), World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD), as well as in the processes aimed at developing criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management.
Mention is made here of the debate over the feasibility of a legally binding global forest convention, a debate that has divided not only countries around the world, but also environmental organizations. The main argument of the proponents of the agreement, including Canada, China, the European Union, Indonesia and Malaysia, is that the current institutional fragmentation presents an obstacle to effective approaches to global forestry. The opponents, including India, Brazil, Australia, and the United States, as well as a coalition of leading environmental organizations (see Annex 3), maintain that a forest convention would take a lowest common denominator approach and end up formalizing a set of weak, non-binding standards; that such a convention would undermine already existing agreements dealing with forests, including the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, and threaten promising private sector initiatives, such as timber certification, and the criteria and indicators development processes; and, most importantly from the perspective of many ECSOs, that the time it would take to negotiate the convention and take substantive action would be so long that little forest would be left to save.
To meet the development objectives of their growing economies, countries in the Asia-Pacific region have over the past decades heavily invested in road building and hydroelectric projects. Although some negative environmental trade-offs are inevitable, adequate environmental and social impact assessments have often been avoided. The results, including the submersion of indigenous peoples' traditional lands, often rich in biological diversity, forest conversion, soil erosion, watershed disruptions, and damage to fish populations, have not gone unnoticed by environmentally concerned organizations. Protests against dams, for instance, have a long history in India and beyond, and road construction, especially through hitherto inaccessible forest areas, have equally been criticized. Activities of ECSOs in this field are varied as well. They range from non-violent protests to promoting environmentally sound dam building through workshops. Due to the large capital requirements of transportation and energy infrastructure, many ECSOs have found advocacy vis-a-vis co-financing development banks a successful tactic.
The region's great rivers harbour an enormous potential for the generation of electrical power. This potential has been tapped for decades, particularly in India, though often at considerable cost to forests and people. Through the 1980's and 1990's, India's river valley projects, from Tehri in the north to Silent valley in the south, and Koel Karo in the east to Sardar Sarovar in the west, have been the subject of heated debates. Dam protesters have argued that the government has invariably underestimated costs and overestimated benefits, has based their calculations on lower than expected siltation rates, thereby exaggerating the life of the reservoirs, have ignored the high costs of waterlogging and the submersion of forests and wildlife, and have paid no attention to the disruption of fish life and the spread of waterborne diseases (Gadgil and Guha, 1994). Indian NGOs have been at the forefront of this movement and have employed a range of strategies, many of which are based on Gandhian thinking.
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The Sardar Sarovar Dam on India's Narmada River The decade-long struggle against the Sardar Sarovar Dam on India's Narmada River has become a worldwide symbol of opposition of destructive development projects. The dam and its associated irrigation canals would lead to the eviction of some 320,000 people and would deprive many hundreds of thousands more of their means of livelihood. The bulk of the affected people are refusing to move from their homes, and have succeeded in stalling work on the half-built dam. Proponents claim that the dam will be the 'life-line' for a huge drought-stricken area and provide electricity and flood control. Opponents say the benefits are massively exaggerated and the full costs concealed. In 1989, a national coalition opposing the Sardar Sarovar project was formed. Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) rallied thousands to the cause, both nationally and internationally. Despite government repression against those who speak out against the dam, the NBA has continued its campaign to expose the project's many technical problems and social injustices. Source: International Rivers Network |
The same issues are brought up in protests against hydroelectric schemes throughout the region. Recent efforts have concentrated on the Mekong in Indochina. From its headwaters on the Tibetan Plateau, the world's 's tenth longest river runs south through China, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. More than 100 dams, 60 in Laos alone, have been proposed since military tensions started to ease. The Nam Theun-Hinboun hydropower project in Laos, for instance, will have severe impacts on the Nam Kading watershed, cut off the water supply of Asian elephants, tigers, and numerous other animal species and threaten a national biodiversity conservation area, according to a report by Norplan, a Norwegian engineering firm. Probe International, a Canadian NGO that educates Canadians about the environmental, social, and economic effects of Canada's aid and trade abroad predicts that:
Hydropower development in the Mekong region, if implemented as promoted by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, will produce similar problems to those of the past: private monopolies (instead of public monopolies) and poorly designed regulatory regimes which lead to excess capacity, environmental destruction, inefficient energy use, and the displacement and impoverishment of rural communities; and pricing regimes that discriminate against consumers in favour of the private sector promoters. Furthermore, we predict that with heavy subsidization from the MDBs, the bilateral aid agencies, the export credit agencies, and with extraordinary powers of expropriation, Mekong hydropower developers would be able to externalize the real costs of their schemes. (Probe International, 1997)
Another hydroelectric project that has attracted much attention is the Bakun dam in Sarawak, which, according to the International Rivers Network (IRN), illustrates many of the motivations for the world's large and growing anti-dam movement:
Bakun is being planned in an atmosphere of secrecy and corruption. Those who oppose it face government threats and scorn. The 10,000 indigenous forest dwellers to be displaced have never been consulted about having their ancestral lands flooded, or about how they will be resettled. Technical, economic and environmental feasibility studies have been withheld from the public. Those studies which have been released are contradictory and inadequate and openly biased toward the dam. Available information suggests that the project proponents are vastly exaggerating the probable electricity output of Bakun and its potential profitability. (IRN, 1997)
In 1995, 34 Malaysian and international NGOs met at a Consultation Forum on Bakun and signed a joint-declaration demanding that logging in the catchment area be halted, that all environmental impact assessments and other feasibility studies be made public, that public accountability be respected and NGOs and local communities be granted participation at key meetings, and that viable alternatives to the Bakun dam, identified in earlier studies, be given more serious consideration (Joint Statement by the 'Concerned NGOs on Bakun', 1995).
National and international ECSOs have been very effective in raising public awareness about the negative environmental and social consequences of inadequately designed and built hydroelectric projects. Such organizations as the International Rivers Network, Friends of the Earth, and Probe International, in collaboration with like-minded organization in the countries and regions of concern, have taken advantage of increased public accountability at the international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The effectiveness of ECSOs in regards to hydroelectric projects may be a reflection of the fact that, unlike in other conservation-related fields, there exists a consensus among western conservationists and developing country development/environment organizations.
However, not all ECSOs choose the same approach to hydroelectric projects. The International Conservation Union (IUCN), for instance, together with the World Bank organized a workshop titled "Large Dams - Learning From the Past, Looking at the Future" in April 1997. The more than 35 experts from international organisations, governments, private businesses, non-governmental organisations, and people affected by large dams recommended the creation of a high level international group to review the experience of past, current, and planned dams, and improve practice, policy, standards and participation by those affected.
The impact on forest ecosystems of the development and expansion of transportation infrastructure has rarely been addressed by ECSOs, in part because of the double-edged sword roads represent in development: on the one hand, they are necessary to provide access to resources and trade routes, but on the other hand roads can be accompanied by significant environmental deterioration, including forest conversion and habitat fragmentation. According to World Bank estimates, countries in East Asia alone will need to invest up to $607 billion in transportation projects between 1996 and 2006, many of which will have substantial environmental impacts, especially when coupled with the industrial, commercial and residential development which they will precipitate. Transportation projects frequently open up substantial new areas to the full range of human activities. They also require both land and large supplies of energy and materials for construction and operation. Environmental assessment processes are most often carried out after a project has already been well defined, and fully launched, placing the environmental considerations into conflict with economic and government operations considerations, and confining environmental considerations to reducing the worst effects of, rather than complementing, the project reviewed.
A number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region have started to take measures to mitigate the negative environmental consequences of transportation and energy projects. In India, for instance, energy sector projects are designed with a view to minimize the impact on forests of power line routings. In Indonesia, provisions for the prohibition of construction of major highways within a designated radius of protected forest areas have become incorporated into transportation sector policies (UNEP, 1996).
The expansion of permanent and shifting agriculture has commonly been considered the primary agent of deforestation in the Asia-Pacific region. Shifting agriculture in particular, has repeatedly been blamed for its negative impact on forests. More recent assessments reveal that shifting agriculture, also called 'swidden' or 'slash and burn' agriculture, can be sustainable and in certain places quite productive, but that sustainability depends primarily on fallow periods which are becoming shorter throughout the region. The renewed interest in shifting agriculture has also led to an appreciation of the issue's complexity and the need for further examination. In the search for sustainable forestry and agriculture, agroforestry, a new name for an old practice, has gained significant prominence over the past two decades and is practiced widely in Asia and the Pacific.
Environmental organizations' perspectives on agriculture and agroforestry reflect their broad diversity, ranging from advocating for human rights of indigenous peoples practicing shifting agriculture to lobbying against agricultural settlement schemes, actively promoting agroforestry or engaging in research on shifting agriculture and agroforestry systems, or even excluding farmers from protected areas. Among conservationists, the trend is towards a greater recognition of the importance of farming issues, as growing populations increase the demand for agricultural land, as forests outside protected areas continue to be cultivated by indigenous peoples and migrant farmers, and as multiple-use land management becomes more common. The Tropenbos Foundation's MOF-Tropbenbos-Kalimantan project, for example, examines the interaction between shifting cultivators and concessions in order to gain an understanding of the needs of people and the possibilities for coexistence with the forest environment within the framework of the national laws and in a way that their welfare can be improved without destruction of the forest.
Shifting agriculture is commonly defined as any agricultural system in which the fields are cleared (usually by fire) and cultivated for shorter periods than fallowed (Conklin, 1957), although more recent definitions have stressed its dynamic nature and flexibility to change in the overall range of subsistence strategies (Warner, 1991). It has historically been in ill repute with national governments and international agencies alike, regarded as an inefficient use of land and human resources as well as a major cause of soil erosion and deterioration. In her analysis of shifting cultivators and their local technical knowledge, Katherine Warner (1991) concluded:
Although integral swidden has been a sustainable agro-ecosystem in the past, it cannot serve as the model for the future of the tropics. Regeneration of the forest is crucial for the long-term productivity and sustainability of the swidden agro-ecosystem, and many swidden groups are no longer able to fallow their fields for the necessary period of time. It is not because the link between forest, soils and productivity is no longer recognized by the swiddeners, but because they are in a situation that makes the continuation of the forest fallow impossible. The primary reasons for the shortened fallow are a classification of fallow land into forest reserves or logging concessions, population growth, in-migration and the impact of cash crops.
Environmental CSOs' involvement with shifting cultivation has evolved around indigenous rights, research, and integrated conservation and development projects. Shifting cultivators are usually among the indigenous, rural poor spread thinly across the highlands. Marginalized and isolated from the centres of economic and political decision-making, they have suffered from benign neglect at best, and from forced relocation or armed aggression at worst. As such, they have been natural constituencies of human rights/environmental organizations, such as Cultural Survival, aiming to protect the rights of forest inhabitants and their natural environments.
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The Indonesian Transmigration Programme The organized relocation of people from the densely populated Inner Islands to the rain forest covered Outer Islands has been carried out since the turn of this century, aiming to relieve population pressure on Java, creating development on the Outer Islands, and more recently, to achieve national unity. During the peak period of 1979-1989, some 3.7 million people were resettled, and a total of 12,000 km2 has been used for the establishment of transmigration settlements. Most people have been resettled to Sumatra, but Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Irian Jaya will be the main targets in the future. The transmigration programme has been criticized, among other reasons, for having: · based the settlements on ecologically unsuitable farming models, resulting in unsustainable forms of land use; · located settlements on sites already inhabited by indigenous peoples, leading to land disputes; · caused environmental degradation in the form of loss of biological diversity soil erosion; and · threatened the livelihoods of local people by forcing them off their traditional lands without due compensation. Environmental and human rights organizations have been among the main critics of the transmigration programme, leading numerous campaigns to end World Bank funding to Indonesia (Source: Holde and Hvoslef, 1995: Colchester, 1994, 1986) |
A second area that lies at the interface between forests and non-forests is agroforestry, defined by the International Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) as "a collective name for all land-use systems and practices in which woody perennials are deliberately grown on the same land management unit as crops and/or animals, either in some form of spatial arrangement or in a tune sequence, and which permits significant economic and ecological interaction between the woody and non-woody components" (Steppler et al, 1987). Agroforestry has been attributed the following benefits, particularly in the uplands:
· Production of a variety of products, such as food, fuelwood, fodder, animal products, and lumber;· Diversified production provides a hedge against risks. Mixed farming systems provide a greater range of products, marketing flexibility, and insurance against the failure of a particular crop;
· Maintenance of soil fertility and reduced rates of soil erosion in comparison with intensive mono-cropping practices;
· Implementation of appropriate practices help achieve watershed management goals, combining production and environmental benefits; and
· Successful agroforestry practices can reduce the need for clearing of natural forests by producing multiple resource goods and services.
After their long exclusion from the traditional preserves of government forest departments, large number of local and national CSOs in Asia and the Pacific became involved in forestry activities, mostly the promotion of tree planting on private, non-forest, or degraded forest lands with the advent of social forestry (Singh, 1992). Today, thousands of groups, from small village groups to regional coalitions of NGOs, are active in agroforestry, social forestry, and community forestry projects, although regional variations are readily apparent. In India and the Philippines, CSOs engage in social forestry and agroforestry have had the greatest impact; in Bangladesh, NGOs have been very strong in other sectors, but have had difficulties in establishing themselves in forestry, due in part to the lack of their recognition as legitimate partners of forest departments; in Thailand and Indonesia, ECSOs are very active in environmental advocacy; and in Laos and Vietnam, national NGOs have only recently emerged. Many of these organizations would probably not describe themselves as environmental organizations, but, as for their rural development counterparts, particularly in South Asia, environmental concerns are nonetheless at the centre of their strategies, for they are intimately connected with the livelihoods of their constituents, particularly those of women.
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Women's Organizations in Natural Resource Management In India, 70% of the population depends on agriculture and, lacking the means or access to markets, on local natural resources, such as fuel. small timber, fodder, fruit, leaves, and medicinal herbs, often derived from forests. Women have traditionally been charged with the collection of biomass from common lands, the productivity of which continues to decline in many places. NGO activities in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat have shown that "unless women are empowered and assert their right to live as equal, dignified human beings, their participation in forestry or natural resource management programmes is likely to remain superficial with few longer term gains". In each of the three districts, forests had been reduced to fragments of their original extent, and droughts continued to threaten the livelihoods of local populations. Yet, it was found that while men would exacerbate the situation by growing cash crop tree species, women, once organized and given the opportunity to participate in land-use decisions, demanded that multipurpose tree species be planted in order to provide a range of goods and services necessary for food security. (Source: Sarin, 1992) |
The perspectives of ECSOs on agriculture and agroforestry are thus very mixed, ranging from relative neglect to representing the centre piece of an organization's mission. By far the largest involvement is witnessed by local and national organizations concerned with the improvement of rural livelihoods through the rehabilitation of degraded forest lands or the afforestation of non-forest lands. In this respect, they represent natural allies of those international ECSOs who aim primarily at preventing forests from ever reaching the stage at which rehabilitation becomes a necessity, for they contribute to reduce pressures on natural forest ecosystems. While alliances between these two subsectors of the environmental movements have been slow to develop, it is likely that increased attention to multiple-use management will bring these sectors closer together.
