The
CBD and the Need to Conserve Real Forests, Not Fake
Forests
The main threat to the world's forests
is not that they will all be cut in the coming decades. There
is an even larger threat; that the last tracks of rich, beautiful,
vibrant biologically diverse primary forests that still exist
on this planet will all be replaced by ugly, biodiversity-poor
and empty rows of monoculture tree plantations. This is one of
the main conclusions that could be drawn from the information
in the latest State of the World's Forest report that was published
by the FAO in 2007; that the trend to replace biologically diverse
forests with tree monocultures is continuing, and it is even accelerating.
Every day, thousands of hectares of biologically diverse forests,
are being replaced by monocultures of Oilpalm, Eucalypt, Pine,
and even genetically modified trees. Some of this replacement
is direct, but the most threatening replacement is indirect: large
tracks of primary forests continue to be lost in continents like
South America and Africa, while especially China has embarked
on an environmentally disastrous exercise of planting thousands
of hectares of tree monocultures. The fact that China is the only
country that is planting genetically modified trees on a large
scale makes this replacement even more devastating from an ecological
point of view (see WRM Bulletin Nš 88).
Other global initiatives, like so-called
"reforestation" and "afforestation" projects
financed through the carbon market and the 1 billion tree campaign
of the UN Environment Program are equally ill-adviced. By including
large-scale monocultures of exotic, often invasive, species in
these efforts these initiatives are not only impacting negatively
on biodiversity and people. They also present a tremendous missed
chance in terms of not ensuring that "reforestation"
efforts are what the term pretends: the REintroduction and REstoration
of real forests as a home to people and spectacular biodiversity.
Real forests provide a home to millions
of people, and a source of livelihood for billions of people,
while monoculture tree plantations are an extremely labour-extensive
form of land use causing rural unemployment, depopulation and
poverty, especially amongst women. Real forests are home to an
estimated 60% of terrestrial biodiversity, while tree plantations
devastate biologically diverse ecosystems, pollute waterstreams
with agrotoxics and often contribute to carbon emissions by destroying
soils.
If there is one institution that should
be truly concerned about the world-wide violation of the term
"forests" that has taken place since FAO and the Parties
to the Climate Convention adopted a definition of forests that
includes any combination of trees, it is the Convention on Biodiversity.
With the FAO definition, "reforestation" can have tremendous
negative impacts on biodiversity, while "deforestation"
can actually benefit biodiversity: cutting large areas of exotic
pine plantations in countries like the Netherlands would greatly
benefit the restoration of native biodiversity.
Happily, as part of the review of its
expanded work program on forest biodiversity, the Convention on
Biodiversity now has a chance to put forests and biodiversity
in harmony again. The Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Forest
Biodiversity has proposed that the Conference of the Parties adopts
a harmonized, global definition of forests. The upcoming 13th
meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological
Advice of the CBD, which will take place in Rome in February,
is supposed to elaborate this recommendation. A globally harmonized
definition is more urgent than ever now that the Parties to the
Climate Convention will be actively debating the role of forests
in mitigating climate change as part of the Bali Roadmap. It should
be ensured any policies and incentives to conserve forests benefit
real forests, not socially and environmentally devastating tree
monocultures.
So the need to adopt a global, legal
definition of forests that matches the sense of the general public
in terms of forests being a biologically diverse, precious and
beautiful ecosystem is not just a matter of semantics. It is a
matter of educating our children, the public, and policy-makers
about what forests really are, and what we will loose if we replace
them by any kind of trees.
By Simone Lovera, Global Forest Coalition,
email: simonelovera@yahoo.com,
http://www.globalforestcoalition.org
