5.1 Components of an Environmental Vision for Forestry
5.2 Scenario 1: Complete Achievement
5.3 Scenario 2: Partial Achievement
5.4 Scenario 3: Non-achievement
Different environmental civil society organizations have different visions for the future of forestry in Asia and the Pacific. They may be based on current trends and realistic expectations, or they may be purely visionary. They may be more or less realistic, depending to some extent on the organization's constituency, audience, and concomitant pressures to achieve results. They may be more or less comprehensive, depending among other factors on the organization's mission and focus. And they may apply to the near or long term. As may be expected, no single vision can be attributed to the 'environmental movement'. The diversity of ECSOs mirrors the myriad of environmental, political, economic, social, and cultural views. However, when considering the ways in which ECSOs propose to operationalize their views, common threads emerge, transforming the effective number of visions into certain consensus approaches to sustainable forest management.
This final section seeks to outline a vision derived from some of the principles environmental organizations feel should be the basis of sustainable forest management, and three scenarios for how ECSO's may be involved in their unfolding in the Asia-Pacific region to 2010. The vision and associated scenarios address the priority interest areas of ECSOs, namely biological diversity (conservation inside and outside protected areas, hunting and wildlife), sustainable forest management (timber harvesting, policy, trade, and processing), indigenous and forest-dependent populations, and water resources and hydroelectric projects (watersheds and dams). It should be noted that the components of the vision are not promoted exclusively by ECSOs, but are also part of the goals of certain public and private entities not included in this review.
Scenario 1 based on the complete fulfilment by the year 2010 of sustainable forest management as envisaged by the majority of ECSOs is the least likely to occur. Scenario 2 assumes partial achievement of the vision, with successes in the current priority areas of the different subsectors of the environmental movement; its likelihood is possible. The third scenario is based on the non-achievement of the goals ECSOs have set themselves and is and is the most probable. As argued earlier, this assessment is in part a reflection of the longer term horizon of many ECSOs. Furthermore, the three scenarios are not necessarily mutually exclusive, they are based on number of assumptions, some of which may evolve different from what current trends suggest. As a consequence, components from of scenario may appear in others.
Conservation of biological diversity
This review suggests that northern ECSOs consider the conservation of biological diversity the overarching priority, and the establishment of protected areas the predominant means to achieve it, whereas southern ECSOs view the improvement of rural livelihoods the more appropriate approach. International legal instruments that link the provision of financial resources to the establishment of protected areas, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, already reinforce the protected area approach to conservation; the decentralization of forest management, enhanced tenure security, and community forestry, on the other hand, contribute to the goals of development/environment CSOs.
Although some ECSOs continue to stress the need for strictly protected areas, there is a discernible shift in ECSO strategies towards multiple-use reserves and towards greater emphasis on ecological representativeness of protected areas than on their mere extent per country. IUCN and WWF, for example, with the recently gained backing of the World Bank, recommend the establishment of "an ecologically representative network of protected areas covering at least 10% of the world's forest area by the year 2000, demonstrating a range of socially and environmentally appropriate models" (WWF/IUCN, 1996). Annex 4 lists those ecoregions in the Asia-Pacific region WWF identified as part of the 'Global 200', a representation of some of some of the world's diverse ecoregions.
An expanded network of protected areas implies that a larger number of forest-dependent populations will be living in or around them. The needs, concerns, and rights of these peoples would be addressed and respected in protected area design and implementation by conservation organizations, governments, and the private sector alike. The WWF draft principles for conservation with indigenous peoples, for instance, "recognize that indigenous peoples live in most of the remaining tracts of high biodiversity on earth, and that, given the frequency with which indigenous peoples' rights have been discriminated against, conservation organizations have a responsibility to make special efforts to respect, protect and comply with their basic human rights" (WWF/IUCN, 1996). The goal of the Philippine Legal Rights and Natural Resources Centre is "to empower the marginalized and disenfranchised peoples directly dependent on our natural resources so as to be able to effect ecologically sustainable, culturally appropriate, gender-sensitive, economically viable, equitable uses, management, conservation and development of natural resources" (LRC-KSK/FoE-Phils., 1996).
The World Resources Institute lists the following ten principles that have guided individuals and institutions in the development of the Global Biodiversity Strategy, and which cover the large majority of ECSOs' views regarding the conservation of biological diversity:
1. Every form of life is unique, and warrants respect from humanity.2. Biodiversity conservation is an investment that yields substantial local, national, and global benefits.
3. The costs and benefits of biodiversity conservation should be shared more equitably among nations and among people within nations.
4. As part of the larger effort to achieve sustainable development, conserving biodiversity requires fundamental changes in patterns and practices of economic development worldwide.
5. Increased funding for biodiversity conservation will not, by itself, slow biodiversity loss. Policy and institutional reforms are needed to create the conditions under which increased funding can be effective.
6. Priorities for biodiversity conservation differ when viewed from local, national, and global perspectives; all are legitimate, and should be taken into account. All countries and communities also have a vested interest in conserving their biodiversity; the focus should not be exclusively on a few species-rich ecosystems or countries.
7. Biodiversity conservation can be sustained only if public awareness and concern are substantially heightened, and if policy-makers have access to reliable information upon which to base policy choices.
8. Action to conserve biodiversity must be planned and implemented at a scale determined by ecological and social criteria. The focus of activity must be where people live and work, as well as in protected wildland areas.
9. Cultural diversity is closely linked to biodiversity. Humanity's collective knowledge of biodiversity and its use and management rests in cultural diversity; conversely, conserving biodiversity often helps strengthen cultural integrity and values.
10. Increased public participation, respect for basic human rights, improved popular access to education and information, and greater institutional accountability are essential elements of biodiversity conservation (WRI, 1992).
Sustainable Forest Management
The second most important forest-related issue to ECSOs is the management of forests for timber production, as well as its associated policies and trade, but northern ECSOs have been and will continue to be involved more closely in these domains, particularly in timber harvesting. They maintain in order for forest management to be truly sustainable, it must take the variety of environmental, social, and economic roles and values of forests into account. As WWF and IUCN state in their joint forest policy book: "Forests should be managed for a variety of values, including those of people and the environment" (WWF/IUCN, 1996). They further note:
It is vital that forest management systems are based on the principle of sustainability. This means that management must be appropriate to the environment, benefit society and be economically viable. Management systems must seek to conserve biodiversity at genetic, species and ecosystem levels. Such systems can only come into being if foresters alter the way they approach forests. Current management practices focus primarily on producing timber. Other forest products and services are almost always regarded as secondary and are only utilized when this does not interfere with timber production. Future forest management plans and systems should concentrate first on conserving the rich natural diversity of forests and on the environmental functions they perform. All human use of forests depends on these two crucial elements. (WWF/IUCN, 1996).
Most ECSOs agree with the above statement and envision forest management to be more comprehensive in terms of goods and services orientation, as well as more respectful of forest-dependent populations living in or near timber concessions. The principles ECSOs would like forest management systems to adhere to are reflected in the various certification and ecolabelling initiatives, such as that of the Forest Stewardship Council, the Rainforest Alliance, and the Silva Forest Foundation. A number of ECSOs have also established criteria for the certification of plantation forestry, including the Rainforest Alliance-initiated SmartWood Certification Programme.
A vision of sustainable forest management would also integrate more closely those policy domains that have an impact on forests, including agriculture, industry, energy, and transportation, among others. Finally, adequate financial resources from governments, the private sector, and bilateral and multilateral donors would be provided for forestry research, extension, and training. In this respect, northern ECSOs emphasize the development of sustainable harvesting practices, while southern ECSOs highlight the need for technology transfers.
Indigenous and forest-dependent peoples
The declared goals and visions of indigenous and forest-dependent populations are evident on one hand from such joint declarations as the Charter of the Indigenous-Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests, reproduced in Annex 2, and from the mission statements of ECSOs representing and/or empowering them. The central elements evolve around respect for human, political, social, economic and cultural rights, respect for right to self-determination, and to pursue their own ways of life. In regards to forests, they demand, for instance, that "all policies towards the forests must be based on a respect for cultural diversity, for a promotion of indigenous models of living, and an understanding that our peoples have developed closely attuned to our environment" (Charter of the Indigenous-Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests, 1992).
In order to cope with evolving economic, legal, and political circumstances, indigenous and forest-dependent populations have already formed numerous organizations to represent their interests and have been supported in their efforts by regional and international institutions. Unlike the forests' flora and fauna, indigenous and forest-dependent peoples can use these channels to communicate their own vision, which should be valued above the sometimes romanticized notions of ECSOs. Accordingly, a vision of forestry would evolve around empowering local communities in dealing with accelerated monetization of rural areas and urbanization, in addressing forest loss and degradation, and in gaming tenure security.
Water resources and hydroelectric projects
Water resources, like forest resources, play a large number of roles which are valued differently by ECSOs. River conservation ECSOs, like the preservationist elements of biological diversity conservationists, envision a world of rivers unobstructed by dams and other large structures, largely on the basis of aesthetic and recreational values; human rights ECSOs are more concerned with the resource needs of riverine communities; and development/environment CSOs' goals are improved water quality and quantity as needed by the rural poor.
The common element in these views is the opposition to those interventions which change river flows, riverine ecosystems, and water quality to the disadvantage of forests and their inhabitants. A vision of forestry would take into account the various roles of water and water systems and be based on their rational and sustainable use. Most importantly, hydroelectric projects would be subject to stringent environmental and social impact assessments and implemented only after the serious consideration of alternatives.
The first scenario is based on the complete achievement of the above vision by the year 2010. It assumes that a number of fundamental changes would have to occur within and outside the environmental movement. Internally, expanded cooperation and collaboration between northern and southern conservation, human rights, and development/environment CSOs would be a primary requirement, most importantly because the active participation of human populations in and around key conservation sites, as well as the improvement of their livelihood, would become a critical component of conservation approaches. Externally, ECSOs would have to collaborate more closely with and respect the claims of private and public stakeholders. Conversely, private and public sectors would need to increase their commitment to sustainable forest management, via criteria and indicator development, certification and ecolabeling.
Of the three scenarios, Scenario 1 is the least likely to occur. This small likelihood is based on (1) projected population growth, especially among the rural poor, and the accompanying demands for agricultural land; (2) the declared importance of the forestry sector, as well as the other sectors influencing forests, in many key Asia-Pacific countries' development strategies; (3) the observed failure to conserve biological diversity inside and outside protected areas; (4) continued violations of indigenous peoples' rights; and (5) the evident lack of adequate domestic and international financial resources.
Conservation of biological diversity
Assuming complete achievement of the vision, the conservation of biological diversity would have to become much more effective than the current level, not so much as a result of a significantly expanded protected area network, but of more integrative protected area management, the active participation of populations inside and around conservation sites, protected area allocation according to ecological representativeness, the establishment of wildlife corridors, and the combination of in situ and ex situ conservation. The commitment and support of governments, and to a lesser extent of the private sector, would be an important requisite, but ECSOs would have to assume a central role in raising awareness of, devising sound strategies for, and operationalizing adequate approaches to biological diversity conservation.
International conservation ECSOs would refine their integrated conservation and development methodologies, the lessons of which would spread and be adopted by national ECSOs in the region as they scale up their activities from awareness raising and environmental education to protected area management. Multiple-use approaches would lead to a greatly increased frequency of collaboration between the different elements of the environmental movement, particularly between rural development oriented CSOs and conservation ECSOs. This is more likely to occur where protected areas are already located in or close to densely populated areas, such as in India, where, as a consequence, the line between 'First World environmentalism' and 'Third World environmentalism' would start to disappear.
Awareness raising and the change of public attitudes towards biological diversity and its roles will be a critical task within the majority of countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This task would become the domain of local ECSOs, which are better able to translate their messages across cultures than are international ECSOs. They will to some extent be assisted by economic growth, particularly in East and Southeast Asia, which tends to shift citizens' valuation of biological diversity from utilitarian to aesthetic and moral reasons. Additionally, economic growth will reduce the pressures on forests as marginalized populations find alternative income sources, a direction that is already apparent in South Korea, Malaysia, and in the coastal regions of China, and will provide governments with more financial resources to invest in the conservation of biological diversity, including through ECSOs.
ECSOs would form partnerships with the private sector where sustainable timber and non-timber product harvesting becomes a component of multiple-use protected areas. ECSOs will assume a role in negotiating on the behalf of indigenous populations for access to resources in timber concessions, in marketing non-timber products, and in monitoring of timber harvesting practices. A number of ECSOs, such as Conservation International, the Rainforest Action Network, and the Rainforest Alliance, are already promoting sustainably harvested non-timber forest products on behalf of indigenous peoples or local cooperatives.
Under this scenario, international and local ECSOs would also form partnerships with local ECSOs and pharmaceutical companies to promote alternative medicinal products in order to relieve pressures on endangered animal species, as has been done to some extent by WWF. Alternatively, animal and animal parts could come from farms or sustainably managed wildlife populations. It is reasonable to assume, however, that some illegal trade in endangered species and species part will continue, due to the increase in demand stemming from the larger number of people in urban areas, particularly in urban centres in East Asia, who will be able to afford the frequently expensive goods.
The conservation of biological diversity outside protected areas will be more effective than under Scenario 2, due to greater ownership by local communities through more secure tenure arrangements, and to some extent to the more rapid spread of low-impact harvesting techniques, such as helicopter and balloon logging or the substitution on heavy machinery with animal power, and the move to more heterogeneous plantation-based timber supplies.
Sustainable forest management
Under this scenario, all timber production for domestic consumption and export will come from sustainably managed natural forests and. to a greater extent, from plantations. The involvement of ECSOs is likely to continue to evolve around monitoring timber harvesting practices on the basis of established criteria and indicators and around promoting lower levels of consumption, more efficient wood use, and recycling.
Timber harvesting and processing: The focus of ECSOs will shift from largely reactive to more proactive approaches. Even though the monitoring activities of local, national, and international ECSOs will continue to expose harvesting malpractices and criticize transnational corporations' roles in forest degradation and the violation of forest-dependent peoples' rights, collaborative initiatives will be much more common. These will evolve around certification and ecolabeling, the implementation of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, conflict resolution between timber harvesters and forest-dependent peoples, and NTFP production, processing and marketing.
In order to accelerate the establishment of sustainable forest management, ECSOs will also be very active on the demand side. International ECSOs will promote the use of certified timber products in industrialized countries of North America and Europe, while Asia-Pacific national and regional ECSOs will target their domestic markets. There will be concerted efforts to apply criteria and indicators to the harvesting of timber for domestic consumption.
ECSOs will pay more attention to industrial plantation forestry as a means for substituting the harvesting in natural forests. This will predominantly evolve around the promotion and monitoring of the application of criteria and indicators, which, for example, will determine the validity of New Zealand's claim of already having achieved sustainable forest management.
Finally, ECSOs will play an important role in promoting the development and application of clean technologies in timber processing, as well as the transfer of technology from developed to developing countries.
Policy: ECSOs' influence on forest policy will be decisive in bringing about greater emphasis on sustainability, decentralization of forest management, and enhanced community rights. In fact, ECSOs' involvement in policy matters under this scenario will be at least as important as in timber harvesting. The shift of focus in forest policy from timber production to a more comprehensive concept of forest resources utilization will itself involve a greater number of ECSOs, due to the integration of a wider range of forest products and roles. Their greater involvement will come both from the growing number of national, regional, and international policy advocacy ECSOs and the traditional development/environment CSOs whose constituencies will gain a larger prominence in forest policies.
The recognition that many of the underlying causes of forest loss and degradation originate outside the forest sector will lead a limited number of ECSOs to address the linkages between forestry and other sectors, including agriculture, transportation, energy, and mining.
Timber trade: The efforts of ECSOs inside and outside the region in timber trade-related issues will focus both on the demand and on the supply side. On the demand side, the growing number of emerging ECSOs will be involved in activities typical of an organization's early stage, including consumer awareness raising and environmental education. Larger, more experienced ECSOs, especially in the newly industrialized countries, may attempt to imitate ECSOs in North America and Europe who are engaged in organizing buyer's groups. The role of ECSOs from Australia and New Zealand, due to their proximity and their countries' role in Asia-Pacific's timber trade, will be crucial in setting examples for their regional counterparts. Larger ECSOs and ECSO networks will play an integral part in developing and monitoring environmental guidelines of regional trade organizations, particularly ASEAN and APEC, as well as other multilateral institutions with influence on trade issues, including the World Trade Organization.
Indigenous and forest-dependent peoples
ECSOs will continue to assist indigenous and forest-dependent populations in securing tenure and political rights in different ways. International conservation ECSOs, in tandem with national and local development/environment CSOs, will demonstrate the benefits of community-based natural resource management through integrated conservation and development projects. International human rights ECSOs, as well as such regional groupings as the South Pacific Forum and the Pacific Asia Council of Indigenous Peoples, will lobby national governments and international organizations for the recognition of indigenous rights.
The rapid monetization of rural life, increased dependence on wage-earning jobs, and urbanization will continue to erode traditional cultures, however, resulting in the integration of issues related to indigenous peoples into more general rural development programmes.
Water resources and hydroelectric projects
The Asia-Pacific region's enormous potential for generating hydroelectric power and the water resource needs of flood plain inhabitants will be central concerns of various stakeholders. The involvement of ECSOs in this domain will continue to reflect the current variety of ECSO activities. Proactive initiatives, such as the recent IUCN workshop on large dams, will be more frequent and will contribute to the more consistent use of environmental and social impact assessments in the planning phases of hydroprojects. Reactive approaches, such as the non-violent protestations witnessed in India, will serve to highlight the urgency of increasing public participation in planning and implementation of such projects, the need for finding more suitable environments in case of relocation, and more adequate compensation for the loss of traditional lands. Collaboration between international and national ECSOs in monitoring water resources-related lending policies of bilateral and multilateral donors will also contribute to more sensitive approaches to water resource utilization.
The closing gap between northern ECSOs and southern environment/development CSOs will result in increased integration of water quality, quantity, and hydroenergy questions. The trend will be towards regional approaches on the one hand, and towards a greater application of watershed management in uplands areas on the other hand. ECSOs' involvement will be relatively greater in the second domain, particularly of development/environment CSOs.
The second scenario could also be termed 'muddling through'. It is based on the assumption that each subsector of the environmental movement will continue to focus on its respective issue area and that that little interaction between and integration of 'First World environmentalism' and Third World environmentalism' will occur. As a consequence, successes would be geographically and topically concentrated. ECSOs would publicize high-profile projects and initiatives to demonstrate their influence on forest-related issues, but the organizations would fail to achieve their goals on a regional level.
The likelihood of Scenario 2 is considerably greater than that of Scenario 1 and could be assessed as possible. This assessment is largely based on the same constraints as outlined under Scenario 1, with the exception that domestic and international support would be at sufficient levels to maintain a critical mass of projects.
Conservation of biological diversity
This author concurs with the assessment of the Asia-Pacific forest conservation outlook study (Paine, 1997), which states under Scenario 1 that "given no further strengthening of environmental policy and action, it is likely that protected area networks will continue to grow in size, but that the quality of the systems will remain poor and continue to deteriorate, as is happening in many cases today". Ecological representativeness, though a declared target of ECSOs, will not be achieved because governments will continue to allocate land where resource competition and population densities are lowest. This also means that regional variations will continue to exist, with fewer effectively protected areas maintained in high population areas.
The large conservation organizations, lacking the resources necessary for managing a greater number of protected areas, will concentrate on existing ones and on training nationals in protected area management. The move towards multiple-use areas will be as pronounced as under Scenario 1, but less promoted by ECSOs than by national governments and the representative organizations of the rural poor. As a result, the frequency of local land-use conflicts will increase and may, pessimistically, lead conservation ECSOs to re-emphasise the need for strictly protected areas. A growing number of local and national ECSOs will continue their efforts in raising awareness of the values of biological diversity, but the lack of financial resources will place significant limits on their reach.
Similarly, attempts to curb the illegal trade in endangered species will be insufficient to mitigate the current threats to such species as tigers, rhinoceros, bears, and elephants, particularly in light of growing demand for traditional medicinal purposes in key Asian markets and insufficient efforts in developing and promoting alternative products. The effects of poaching on wildlife will also increase due to habitat fragmentation and the failure to link protected areas via habitat corridors. Tensions between northern and southern ECSOs will persist in this area, further undermining efforts to protect or sustainably utilize critical wildlife species.
ECSOs' efforts to conserve biological diversity outside protected areas will achieve minimal successes. Forest degradation caused by timber harvesting in natural forests will continue even though low-impact harvesting techniques may be adopted in selected places and an increasing share of timber supplies will come from plantations. On the other hand, the rehabilitation of degraded forest lands through community forestry and agroforestry schemes, particularly in India, Nepal, and China, may make a contribution to the conservation of biological diversity. The role of development/environment CSOs will be a catalyzing factor in this respect.
Sustainable forest management
ECSOs will continue to spend considerable resources on achieving sustainable forest management, but they will have a small impact on developments in the Asia-Pacific region. Timber harvesting will remain the primary concern and the documentation of unsustainable harvesting practices the principal means, followed by the promotion of certification and labelling.
Timber harvesting and processing: The current diversity of approaches to and perspectives on timber harvesting of ECSOs will persist, but their geographical focus will follow supply changes in the region. A significant number of ECSOs will continue to act as watchdogs, publicizing harvesting malpractices, including illegal logging and violations of resource access rights of forest-dependent peoples. These types of activities currently focus on Papua New Guinea, Sarawak, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, and Thailand but will include such places as the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji. These ECSOs will also become more critical of transnational corporations, particularly in light of the current internationalization of Indonesian, Malaysian, and Thai enterprises.
Proactive ECSO initiatives, most notably certification and ecolabeling schemes, will be very slow in gaining ground, with partial successes in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as Australia and New Zealand, although the majority of tropical timber producing countries in Asia and the Pacific subscribe to the International Tropical Timber Organization's Objective Year 2000, and national level initiatives have been underway in several places. In light of the small share of total timber production that is traded internationally and the relative disinterest of consumers in Japan and China, ECSOs may even abandon this approach in the Asia-Pacific region and concentrate instead on production in other parts of the world, and on consumer markets in developed countries.
Policy: Under this scenario, ECSOs will continue to push for forest policy reform and lobby against a global forest convention. Collaboration between international and national ECSOs will result in the capacity building of the latter, which have already achieved certain successes, as in the case of the development of Thailand's Master Plan for Forestry and the development of community forestry law, or the Indonesian NGO consortium that challenged the government in court over the reallocation of government reforestation funds. The impact of ECSOs on forest policy design and implementation will depend on the political environment of the respective countries, which in many places are becoming less restrictive, particularly in countries undergoing a transition to market economies.
The main issue ECSOs will be concerned with in the area of timber processing is pollution associated with the pulp and paper industry. The number of pulp and paper mills is growing at an enormous pace in China, and the industry is expanding in Indonesia and Malaysia. ECSOs have already made important inroads in lobbying for totally chlorine free oxygen bleaching, as in the case of Greenpeace in New Zealand and Australia. Where the political environment allows, similar activities will be taken up by local and national ECSOs; elsewhere, particularly in the projected mega producing country of China, international ECSOs will be more active.
Timber trade: The Asia-Pacific region is projected to remain a major net importer of wood products. On the demand side, ECSOs will remain relatively ineffective in curbing wood product consumption and in promoting preference to certified wood products. Initiatives such as the organization of buyers groups in industrialized countries of Europe and North America will be met with little success in Asia and the Pacific, with the possible exception of Australia and New Zealand. The same applies to ECSO calls for log import bans. On the supply side, ECSO demands for unprocessed log export bans will be irrelevant where countries unilaterally move to restrict such exports, as has been the case in Indonesia, the Philippines, Peninsular Malaysia, Fiji, and Vanuatu, especially as to add value domestically. A number of national and regional policy advocacy ECSOs will concentrate their efforts on lobbying regional trade agreements, such as ASEAN, to pay greater attention to environmental issues.
Indigenous and forest-dependent peoples
ECSOs will continue to publicize the plight of indigenous and forest-dependent populations, particularly in the context of resource exploitation on indigenous lands in such high-profile cases as Sarawak and Papua New Guinea, and Burma. ECSOs will continue to lobby different actors on their behalf, including bilateral and multilateral donors which will be held accountable for their written guidelines on dealing with indigenous populations, national governments in the process of reforming land tenure laws, and international organizations with the potential for providing a forum for indigenous peoples' concerns. The impact of ECSOs will be greater in awareness raising than in direct political and legal changes. Some ECSOs will continue to engage in innovative initiatives, such as community mapping in East Kalimantan by WWF.
Water resources and hydroelectric projects
The environmental consequences of water resources-related projects will continue to be pointed out by ECSOs. As in Scenario 1, their involvement will take different forms, including the lobbying of financing institutions, as practiced by the International Rivers Network (IRN), which tracks the activities of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, as well as other multilateral and bilateral aid agencies and private commercial banks, in large-scale structural interventions in river systems, "questions their methods, and suggests alternatives, works to influence the policies and practices of these institutions, and assists all interested parties in procuring and interpreting official project and policy documents" (IRN, 1997); the exploration of environmentally sustainable dam building, as recently observed at IUCN; and the confrontational but generally non-violent activities typical of the Indian anti-dam movement.
Under this scenario, the impact of ECSOs will be greater on water quality issues than on the construction of hydroelectric dams. The role of forests in watersheds and catchment areas has been widely recognized and significant efforts on the part of governments and ECSOs will continue to be made in the rehabilitation of degraded forest lands. The benefits of energy generation from hydroelectric dams, particularly in light of their potential substitution of wood as an energy source, will be perceived by governments as outweighing the environmental costs of the projects. Moreover, the revenues from harvesting timber resources in areas designated for hydroelectric projects, will be added as justification for the construction of dams.
ECSOs' impact will evolve around high-profile projects, such as the Sardar Sarovar and Bakun dams, and the associated population relocations and timber harvesting operations.
The third scenario assumes that environmental CSOs will be even less able to reverse forest loss and degradation than under Scenario 2, though governments may in certain cases yield to environmental demands. Lack of demonstrable success stories would stifle the growth in numbers of ECSOs in the region through the loss of confidence by governments and donor institutions. Organizations whose budgets are financed by members, such as rural peoples organizations, may constitute exceptions to the rule. Increased tensions between northern and southern ECSOs would also be likely as development and environment objectives would be perceived irreconcilable.
Of the three scenarios, Scenario 3 is the most probable. this assessment recognizes that for the majority of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, economic development currently overrides environmental concerns, which will be addressed at a later stage, and, consequently, that the time horizon is too short. Historical evidence from North America and Europe suggests that the forest transition resulting in a stabilization of forest cover can take centuries. Individual countries in the Asia-Pacific region may be quicker in reducing pressures on their forests, such as South Korea, but persistent population growth and demands for agricultural land will result in continued forest loss and degradation in others.
Conservation of biological diversity
Environmental CSOs will concentrate their efforts exclusively on protected areas, few of which will be able to resist demographic pressures and be exempt from timber production. Governments will increasingly designate protected areas as multiple-use reserves, both to adhere to international conventions and to attract international financial resources, but the lack of appropriate monitoring mechanisms will lead ECSOs to re-emphasise the need for stricter protection, resulting in tensions with governments, local communities, and local and national development/environment CSOs. A few high-profile integrated conservation and development projects in low population density areas will serve as examples of what could be achieved.
Sustainable forest management
Current initiatives in developing criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management and promoting preferences for certified wood products will be continued, but ECSOs will fail to accelerate the process. ECSOs will be more successful in raising consumer awareness in developed countries, which may indirectly have an impact on timber harvesting and trade, but given the currently small share of trade in certified timber products, this impact will be negligible. Consumer boycotts will be similarly unsuccessful.
ECSOs will also fail to significantly influence national governments' forest policies, which will be driven by domestic development concerns, international timber supply and demand evolution, and, possibly, donor pressures.
Indigenous and forest-dependent peoples
Human rights issues related to indigenous and forest-dependent peoples are likely to remain a concern of ECSOs, both of northern and southern origin. Northern ECSOs may achieve some success in lobbying their respective governments to take action, but they will be unable to influence developments in the countries where their constituents reside. Although national governments are likely to grant certain rights to local communities in the process of decentralization, southern ECSOs will be unable to muster the political and economic support necessary to secure adequate recognition of traditional ways of life, institutions, and systems of natural resource management.
Water resources and hydroelectric projects
The region's needs of electricity for economic development will override environmental concerns almost everywhere. Bilateral and multilateral donors have so far been able to demand adherence to certain environmental guidelines when their financial participation or investment guarantees were required but countries in the region will increasingly be able to raise capital without environmental strings attached. ECSOs, who have achieved certain success because of the involvement of international financial institutions, will be less able to so as a result.
Rural development efforts will have an impact on water quantity and quality, and national and local development/environment CSOs could play a certain role in securing local participation. Where forests are threatened by the water demands of growing rural populations, however, ECSOs will be unable to prevent their loss or degradation.
