|
|
Workshop on Underlying
Causes of
Deforestation and Forest Degradation
Background
Document Asia The Asia Regional workshop on Addressing Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation took place in Anyer, West Java, Indonesia on December4-6 1998. The Workshop was organised by Bioforum, a coalition of 65 Indonesian NGOs, and funded by Global Secretariat of UC Initiative, Embassy of Finland, the Indonesian Tropical Institute (LATIN), the Indonesian Consortium for Community-Based Forest Management (KPSHK) with additional support from some local NGOs. The local political situation in Indonesia created additional hurdles to the task of the organisers, since demonstrations and road blockades were expected at any moment, prior to and during the event. The workshop was attended by 32 participants representing the World Bank, governments, and non-governmental organisations of seven countries in South Asia, East Asia, South-East Asia, and Australia. Regretfully, some invited participants from Governments of several other countries cancelled their participation due to official travel bans from their own Governments in response to the political situation in Indonesia during that time. The workshop faced a lack of participation from some other sub-regions such as West Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East due to funding limitations. Substantive discussions started with plenary discussions on definitional issues. Afterwards, participants divided into groups to focus discussion on the following topics. Cause and effect mapping This exercise was carried out by working groups. Its purpose was to identify causes and their effects on forests and to inscribe them into a categorised and prioritised double entry matrix. The results of the working groups were synthesised by a synthesis group composed of one representative of each group and were presented for scrutiny at the plenary. Through this process, a clear and well-defined set of underlying causes and their most critical effects were identified and prioritised. Objectives setting This exercise was also carried out in working groups. It was rather confusing due to the lack of prioritisation of the elements identified in the prior exercise. However, the discussion at the plenary yielded a clear set of objective-setting elements. Seeking solutions, defining timing and responsibilities The working groups elaborated sets of solutions they believed to be practicable at the regional level. These sets of solutions were then elaborated to include timing and responsibilities. To encourage substantive discussions, the workshop had also roundtable discussions where two resource persons presented their views on major underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation. Forests in the Asia Region The Asia regions are large and diverse and include one-fourth of the world’s tropical forests and approximately half of its biological species. The forests of this region range from the temperate forests of East Asia to tropical forests of various types in South and Southeast Asia. Asia also has wide diversities in languages, religion, and cultures as well as political systems, which renders forest issues in Asia very complex problems. In addition, every country in the region has a different historical background of deforestation. China and India are those that have old historical backgrounds of deforestation, dating back to the period of the dynasties and kingdoms, while Tropical Asia has a much newer deforestation history, while Japan has a medium history of deforestation. The forests of the region have developed over millennia, and unlogged forest may include trees which are several hundred years old. In this balanced ecosystem, all the ecological niches have been filled by species through a long process of competition and adjustment. Fertility is primarily held within the mantle of forest rather than in the soil on which it grows, particularly in hill areas. It is not, therefore, to be expected that the forest, managed on a felling cycle of 35 years or so, will yield a harvest in each cycle as large as that produced by the initial felling of the unlogged forest. During the past century the pressures on tropical forests have intensified massively. The progressive and slow expansion of sedentary farming has been overtaken by pressures on rain forests due to the accelerated expansion of industrialisation, rapid population increase, mass communications and transport, and the increasing linkage of the region with world markets. Logging, mining, plantations, agribusiness and colonisation schemes have brought the forest people into conflict with the outside world on an unprecedented scale. Even though most Asian elites protested colonialism, after independence they and their successors preserved most of the legal inequalities and inertia of the colonial system from which they had benefited. In keeping with their colonial legacies, South and Southeast Asian nations continue to adhere to Western legal doctrines and principles that don’t recognise - let alone value - community-based property rights and management systems. The tropical rain forests of Asia are home to millions of tribal people, for whom the destruction or degradation of the forest means not just economic impoverishment but the end of their distinctive ways of life. Only a small proportion of these peoples, most notably the Penan of Kalimantan and Sarawak, do not practise agriculture and rely entirely on hunted and gathered food for their subsistence. It is not just food that these people derive from their forest. Building materials, rattan for basketry, leaf wrappers, gums, resins, latex, drugs, poisons, medicines, perfumes, birds’ nest, bone, horn, and ivory have all become integral to their economies and have linked them over millennia to an extensive trade network that has encompassed the whole region and beyond. The exact number of forest-dependent people in South and Southeast Asia has not yet been determined. Whatever their numbers, most of their governments consider them to be squatters, illegally using State-owned resources, no matter how long they have occupied the forest. As such, they can be arbitrarily displaced, often with State sanction, The threat ripens into eviction when government officials grant outsiders commercial concessions to extract or control natural resources in areas forest dwellers already occupy and use. Since the early 1970s, the Southeast Asia-Pacific region has been the main source of the tropical timber trade - taking over from Africa, which supplied considerable quantities of logs to Western Europe during the 1950s and early 1960s. In some countries of Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, there has been much movement of people, sponsored or at least encouraged by their national government to form new agricultural settlements away from their home area. The areas chosen and prepared by governments as a focus of development are always close or immediately adjacent to forests, and throughout the region loss of forest is one of the major direct and indirect environmental impacts of new settlement programmes. Transmigration or resettlement programmes also occur in the Philippines and Japan (Hokkaido). Official reluctance to acknowledge the causes and magnitude of deforestation endures, but grave threats to forest resources and their local users is prompting change. Forest fires, floods, landslides, and other well-publicised natural disasters have heightened both international and domestic awareness of deforestation's toll. Floods brought on partly by deforestation have killed thousands of rural Asians in recent years; restrictions and bans on commercial logging have followed. In other cases, the reality of decreasing productivity and loss of environmental services has prompted the development of alternative forest management options. Deforestation contributes to an array of environmental damages besides loss of biodiversity. These include soil erosion, siltation of riverine and coastal water systems, flooding, drought, harm to infrastructure, destruction of mangroves and both freshwater and saline fishing areas, and declines in agricultural productivity. Case Studies Case studies presented in the Asia Regional Workshop came from three different sub-regions. The East Asia sub-region was represented by a case study from Japan. The South Asia sub-region was considered in case studies from Nepal and India. The Southeast Asia sub-region was represented by case studies from Thailand and Indonesia. The case study from Japan analyses post-war Japan’s development policies, which have stimulated wood consumption, as well as land and resource use policy and law changes in Southeast Asia. Major causes of deforestation include Japan's rapid economic development and consequent government extraction policies: these encouraged expansion of wood-hungry export markets, a boom in housing and industrial construction, and overseas investment in wood-exploiting activities. There has also been high domestic consumption of wood and paper products, coupled with environmental indifference on the part of consumers The Thailand case study focuses on three communities and their forestry problems. The three case studies indicate that the political dynamics of deforestation start with national policy-making and decentralisation. Main causes of deforestation in Thailand are forestry concessions, expansion of cash crops, failure of problem-solving in land occupation and the issue of land licences, illegal logging, reforestation by private business, infrastructure, purchase of land for profit anticipation, and the loss of peoples' power and rights to control their resources and knowledge. The author also singles out the underlying causes of deforestation in Thailand, which are liberal capitalism, economic growth policy, State centralised natural resource management, the weakening of civil society and the gap of world view in each sector. A number of solution were proposed to counter deforestation, including supporting alternative agriculture, supporting watershed management and networks, improving management of forests by stopping the removal of people from the forest, supporting community forests and allowing local communities and civil society to participate in natural resource management at all levels. The Nepal case study indicates that deforestation and forest degradation have been occurring for hundreds of years, and the rate of deforestation is neither rapid nor of recent origin. However, forest degradation is continuing in the Hills. In the Terai and Siwalik, deforestation is widespread due to government resettlement programmes and illegal clearing of forest for agriculture. In general, the main causes of deforestation are agricultural production, the need for firewood, and forage for livestock, as well as local unemployment and lack of management from the government. Other causes include political instability, the attitudes of politicians, fire, shifting cultivation, natural processes, forest rewards, individual attitudes, donors' roles and government policy. Several programmes have been established to counter forest loss. Of these, the community forestry program is very successful. By 1998, 6658 Forest User Groups were managing about 0.45 million hectares of forest, involving more than 733 thousand households. A World Bank study has indicated that from the community forestry programme, an additional benefit of rupees 660 per hectare per year is received by the communities. The India case study explains that large scale destruction of forests in India is rooted in commercially oriented forest use and the ownership policies of the British government, which continued even after India gained independence in 1947. The other major cause of deforestation immediately after independence was agricultural expansion, often State-sponsored. In more recent times, deforestation has been caused by new policies and programmes of development; rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and growing consumerism that have resulted in the widescale destruction of the forests. The case study also considers local community participation in maintaning the forest. There are innumerable, small, vibrant, diverse and extremely sustainable forest cultures that survive and flourish even today in the areas where the forests still exist. The study includes three local case studies from various parts of India, representing different ecological, geographical and social situations. The case study from Indonesia found that the underlying issues of deforestation and forest degradation are: (1) a development paradigm influenced by structural adjustment loans, bilateral and multilateral loans, (2) international and regional trade pressures, and (3) a continuing economic growth paradigm under conditions of depleted natural resources. The overall macroeconomic situation and the specific situation in the relevant policy fields have created a serious need for policy change. Since Indonesia’s oil resources will be depleted soon (~ 2005) and the country will then not only lose oil export revenues but will become an oil importer, national development planners would like to boost the economic performance of other sectors. Amongst other promising businesses, pulp and paper as well as agro-business (especially tree crops) have been identified as potential earners of export revenues. Various government ministers have stated that Indonesia is aiming to become the greatest supplier of paper pulp and palm oil in the world. Thus, in the 1990s, an enormous programme is underway to convert primary forest into timber as well as rubber and oil palm plantations in Indonesia. Definitional issues One significant issue raised in the workshop was on the definition of forest. Almost all participants felt that the FAO definition of forest is insufficient. This is linked to the definition of deforestation and forest degradation. The workshop agreed that biodiversity indicators define forest ecosystems, whether they be water production, soil development or other ecosystem functions, and that ecosystem function is the consequence of the activity of the biodiversity of the ecosystem. A forest must be looked at as a whole - that is, as an ecosystem, as an equilibrium dynamic ecosystem, and as an ecosystem whose signature can be seen in term of biodiversity. Natural landscapes are natural forests, managed without exotics, so that the original ecosystem pattern exists. Plantations are part of agriculture. However, there was no consensus on the plantation issue. For participants from developed countries, 'plantation forest' is their forest and there are not many other types of forest , while to participants from developing countries a plantation is not forest. Participants noted that these definitional issues should be further discussed in Global Workshop in Costa Rica. Identification of the Major Underlying Causes The plenary session of the Workshop agreed to the following major underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation: There is a critical lack of recognition of real value and the integral role of forests in maintaining life support systems. The value of forests, including socio-cultural and ecosystem services, are not fully reflected at present because criteria for valuation are not rooted in ecosystem sustainability. In addition, there is a lack of clear definition and understanding of forests. These lead to deforestation due to an unrealised opportunity cost of forest values. As there is not enough economic promotion of forest goods and services, there is not enough will to practice sustainable forest management. The current development paradigm which is based exclusively on consumerism and growth leads to high demand for natural resources including timber. It depreciates indigenous and traditional knowledge and usurps communities' rights to manage their own resources. Globalisation of this paradigm leads to massive deforestation and forest degradation and undermines the will for sustainable development. Governmental policies have created subsidies and perverse incentives that lead to deforestation and forest degradation. Through the lack of proper forest and land use policies and controls, mining, agriculture, transportation, dams, etc. supersede the values of forests. This is exacerbated by the lack of commitment from politicians, bureaucrats and law enforcement agencies. Private enterprises obsessed with financial profit at any cost take advantage of this and help maintain weak institutions and corruption to achieve their goals. Repressive governance facilitates these conditions. Corrupt political and government systems lead to arbitrary decisions on natural resources management, over-riding established laws, norms and traditional practice and values. Often, such corrupt regimes foster militarism that further contributes to deforestation, forest degradation and violation of human rights. Other contributory factors are lack of decentralisation, participation and transparency in government decision making. Current land and resource allocation systems lead to concentration of land and resources under the domain of a few and block the necessary access of indigenous and local peoples to their territories and their resources. This is exemplified by cases in which the state takes over communal lands and their forests. This situation prevents the participation of indigenous and local communities in the sustainable management and benefits arising from the use of their forests. The occurrence of population growth, migration and poverty created by inadequate land and resource allocation system, and the lack of alternative livelihoods, forces rural communities to clear the forest and practice unsustainable agriculture for subsistence and as income generating activities. These problems are exacerbated by the lack of appropriate knowledge of forest biodiversity and ecosystem management as well as inadequate understanding of indigenous knowledge among forestry professionals, politicians, academicians, bureaucrats and other natural resource managers implementing forest policies. International financial and aid institutions through their role in Structural Adjustment Programmes, as well as private capital investors and their allegiance to market forces, contribute critically to policies and incentives that lead to deforestation and forest degradation. In this context, debt servicing may lead to massive changes in land use affecting forest negatively. Suggested Solutions and Actions The participants proposed some solutions to the issues: Market Forces (demand for timber, lack of evaluation, consumerism, globalisation, trade)
Economic Policies
Legal Measures
Institutional
Policy
Social
Immediate action to bring about the above solutions was the clearest call from the workshop. However, a series of actions can only be accomplished in the medium and long term. The strategic set-up identifies the third session of the IFF as the right moment for action in the policy field. As to responsible institutions or individuals, there was clear concern about the role of governments vis-à-vis market forces. There was also a great deal of preoccupation on the situation of indigenous peoples and local communities, particularly in reference to the respect for their human rights. The role of these communities in any attempt to achieve the conservation and sustainable use of the remaining world's forests is critical. List of case studies The Case studies presented in the Asia Regional Workshop came from three different sub-regions.
A summary of all case studies is available from the Asia focal point. List of Participants
|
 |
|||
|
|||
|
Go to Home Page
World Rainforest Movement
Maldonado 1858 - 11200 Montevideo - Uruguay
tel: 598 2 403 2989 / fax: 598 2 408 0762
wrm@wrm.org.uy
