Oceania and Pacific

Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Policy Implications in Australia
Dr Stephen Dovers, Centre for Resource and EnvironmentalStudies,
The Australian National University;
Dr Jann Williams, School of Botany,
University of Melbourne;
Prof. Tony Norton, Department of Land Information,
RMIT University.

Summary

Underlying causes of deforestation and degradation of Australia’s biologically significant forest estate differ from elsewhere. Inadequate management, weak institutions, reluctance to engage in purposeful industry policy, and a lack of regulatory control are major barriers to improved policy and management. Unlike many other countries that are afflicted by poverty, fast-growing populations, poorly-developed institutions, landlessness and debt, Australia has the resources and capability – if not the will – to manage its forests sustainably. The current and substantial Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) processes has involved significant steps forward, but only covers one-tenth of the continent’s forests and has a number of limitations. Major challenges in future include: extension of forest policy across all forest types and tenures; cessation of land clearance for agriculture; monitoring and enforcement of emerging management prescriptions; strategic management of the plantation estate; more supportive and interventionist industry policy; and more effective and ongoing stakeholder participation. As well as a measure of political fortitude and good will by stakeholders, these measures require development of statute law and institutions to allow adaptive, persistent and inclusive approaches to policy and management. In terms of the transferability of the Australian experience, there are valuable lessons, both positive and cautionary, in elements of the RFA process, but the entire model should be viewed as located firmly in the particulars of the Australian ecological, historical, economic and political context.

1. Introduction

This paper explores underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation (DFD) in Australia, from a public policy perspective. It covers all forested lands, not just the timber production forests presently dealt with under the Regional Forest Agreement processes. We analyse underlying causes with a view to policy implications, and illustrate some general features of possible policy responses. While this approach may limit the conclusions to one particular political and ecological context, the style of approach, and some of the analytical tools used are of wider relevance. Given space constraints, the analysis is sharply abbreviated, and Tables at the end of the paper are used to summarise complex issues. The aim is to encourage constructive policy debate, rather than to propose clear answers. Section 2 sets the Australian context, section 3 identifies causes of DFD, section 4 discusses barriers to addressing these causes, section 5 explores policy options, and section 6 considers the transferability of the Australian experience.

It is important to delineate the scope and intent of this paper. It is a critical overview of the Australian situation, and thus cannot go into detail of varying conditions in all states or regions. Also, it places forest policy and management questions within the broader arena of sustainability. The paper has been written by independent researchers from forest ecology and public policy. It represents one set of perspectives, and although many stakeholders would concur with the arguments presented here, others would not. Forest management in Australia has been hotly contested for many years, and will undoubtedly continue to be so for some time yet.

2. Ecological, historical, economic and political context

Deforestation and forest degradation (DFD) vary in cause, effect and implications according to particular contexts. It is important to identify key elements of these contexts for two reasons: to allow recognition of features of the context that are in themselves underlying causes of DFD, and to establish the operating environment in which policy responsesare or need to be implemented. Four aspects of the Australian context are outlined; ecological, historical, economic, and political.

Ecological. Australia’s forest estate is not large. At European occupation in 1788, only 9% of the landmass supported what has traditionally been called 'forest' in Australia.⁴ The international term ‘open forest’ has traditionally been called ‘woodland’ in Australia, under a height/projected foliage cover classification. Woodlands generally occur in the drier inland and wet-dry North, and mostly are not a viable economic resource for wood extraction. A recent change in the terminology used by the Commonwealth Government for the purposes of a national forest inventory has resulted in an increase of the total area of ‘forest’ from 41 million hectares to 157 million hectares, by including woodlands (Table 1). We adopt this expanded definition.

Apart from rainforests, forests are dominated by the hardwood genus Eucalyptus. Biota in Australian forests are characterised by high levels of endemism, often relatively limited and specialised distributions, and a strong reliance by taxa such as smaller marsupials and many birds on habitat supplied by old, standing or fallen trees. Fire is a major dynamic in Australian forests, with specific adaptations to regimes of fire intensity and occurrence over time being evident in many biota. Use of fire has been an important management tool of Aboriginal people for some 50,000 years, and fire management and fuel-reduction burning continue to be employed across a variety of forests, for both silvicultural and human safety reasons. Low nutrient soils and variable precipitation affect the productivity of many forest areas, and forests growing on low relief sites with more favourable soils and moisture regimes have been subject to greater pressure for competing uses such as agriculture and forestry. While large areas in northern Australia remain relatively unaffected by such uses, most forests in southern and eastern areas have been and are currently subject to highly modified disturbance regimes. Many ecosystems have been removed or significantly altered as a result of vegetation clearance, habitat fragmentation, grazing, invasion by introduced plants and animals, and changed hydrological and fire regimes.

Some 11% of native forests is in conservation reserves, a high figure relative on global comparison, and this may increase through regional forest agreements. The proportion of forest types in reserves varies, from considerably higher than this for rainforests, to very low for box-ironbark woodlands. However, the reserve estate is fragmented, comprising more, smaller reserves compared to some other countries, and there are ongoing questions over the adequacy of management.

Information on rates of deforestation is limited, but has improved in recent years as a result of public concern, including that over the carbon release/sequestration role of forests. Very high rates of clearing for agriculture have been reported. More recently, for example, between 1983-93 the annual rate of forest and woodland clearance for agriculture ranged from 6,000 and 8,000 ha/yr in Tasmania and Victoria, 11,000, 16,000 and 26,000 ha/yr in South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia, to 150,000 ha/yr in New South Wales and 300,000 in Queensland. Regulatory controls have had an effect on clearing rates in some states, but clearing continues and a lack of enforcement is an issue. While clearing has traditionally been a nature conservation and land degradation issue, recent policy activity has had as much, if not more, to do with the role of land use change in greenhouse gas emissions control.

Historical. A number of major changes in forest exploitation and management regimes occurred with European occupation of the continent. As early as the 1790s, regulation of over-cutting of prized species was necessary. Small logging enterprises have, by and large, been replaced over time by larger enterprises, working under concessionary arrangements on public lands. The post-WWII era saw investment in softwood (mostly Pinus) plantations, aimed to assure longer-term timber supplies. From the late 1800s, extensive areas of forest were dedicated as state timber reserves to maintain productive potential in the face of agricultural clearing. Today, debate centres on these public forests. Substantial areas of productive forests remain on private land, and large areas of sparse woodlands exist on vast inland tracts of pastoral leasehold and, to a lesser extent, on Aboriginal lands. Under the federal system of government, most natural resource management functions reside with the six states and two territories (hereafter referred to as ‘the states’). Following Federation in 1901, limited Commonwealth constitutional involvement in resource and environmental issues exists under external affairs, trade and corporations powers. This ability to override the states has been confirmed in key court cases, but remains largely discretionary and seldom used. National policy is pursued through cooperative processes and the financial incentives provided by the Commonwealth. Importantly, the Commonwealth signs international agreements - such as on biodiversity and climate change - and accepts the responsibilities under these, not the states.

Economic. The main uses of forests on public lands are wood extraction, water yield, recreation, conservation, mining and grazing. On private lands the principal uses are grazing, timber extraction, mining, and erosion control. Australia’s forestry sector is, on global comparison, modest. The forest industries (plantations and native forests) have an annual turnover of over $11 billion which contributes around 2.5% to GDP. About 82,500 people are directly employed including 62,900 in the manufacture and processing of wood and paper products. There are around 1126 hardwood mills and 265 softwood mills, 22 pulp and paper mills, and 18 panel board mills. Australia produces about 85% of its sawn timber needs obtaining 34% of these needs from native forests and 66% from softwood plantations, and is a net exporter of wood-based panels with 96% of production sourced from plantations. In 1996-97 Australia exported about AU$97 million of round and sawnwood products, $516 million of woodchips, $370 million of paper and paper products and $64 million of other forest products. During the same period, about $375 million of round and sawnwood products, $1775 million of paper and paper products and $397 million of other forest products were imported. Australia's trade deficit in forest products in 1996-97 was $1.44 billion. Most imports are from New Zealand, the United States and Canada, while the bulk of exports are to the Asia-Pacific region. The supply of wood from Australia's plantations is expected to increase over the medium term. It will reach at least 70% of total Australian consumption of sawnwood by the year 2000 as softwood timbers displace higher priced imported and domestic hardwood timbers. The trade balance deficit in wood and wood products is due more to under-investment in processing than a shortage of wood volume.

A number of local and regional economies are reliant on forestry and downstream activities and, as many such communities are in regional locations with few other economic options, this affords the sector considerable political sensitivity. Employment in the forests sector has declined sharply over time, often blamed on resource allocation to conservation reserves, but driven in greater part by structural and technological change.

Political. Political conflict over forest allocation and management in Australia has been intense. Forests became a major national policy issue in the 1970s with the rapid growth of an export woodchip industry. Numerous inquiries and re-arranged policy prescriptions have failed to resolve the issue politically, which centres on allocation conflicts between environment and industry, but increasingly involves other interests. Current forest policy is shaped by the 1992 National Forest Policy Statement which arose following an extensive forest and timber inquiry by the Resource Assessment Commission, and in parallel with Australia’s 1990-92 ‘Ecologically Sustainable Development’ (ESD) policy process. Currently, the major public forest policy process involves Comprehensive Regional Assessments (CRA), leading to Regional Forest Agreements (RFA). This process arose as a means of guaranteeing resource access and Commonwealth export permission for production forests for 20 year periods, in return for movement towards a ‘comprehensive, adequate and representative’ (CAR) reserve system and establishment of agreed ‘ecologically sustainable forest management’ (ESFM) practices. Five of 12 RFAs are completed. However, the RFA process only deals with a small portion (~10%) of Australia’s total forest estate, excluding the vast bulk of eucalypt woodlands, mangroves, and Casuarina, Callitris and Melaleuca forests. While private land is usually assessed during a CRA, the revised allocations and management guidelines have normally not dealt with it. Further, the strategic management of the plantation estate is not dealt with.

A Wood and Paper Industry Strategy was created in 1996 to encourage investment and value-adding in the forest industries. A Commonwealth Forest Industry Structural Adjustment Package was developed to assist forest businesses and workers to adjust to changes in the sector. A Plantations 2020 Strategy aims for an ambitious trebling of the plantation estate by 2020. Although plantations increasingly dominate the market, this has not seen reductions in extraction from native forest which has been stable at around 9-10 million cubic metres/yr in the 1990s. Rather, new and generally low value outlets for native timber have been found (eg. woodchips and fuelwood).

An important initiative since the Earth Summit in 1992 has been the development of criteria and indicators for assessing conservation and sustainable management at the national level in temperate and boreal forests. The Montreal Process involves 12 countries that support over 90% of the world's boreal and temperate forests. The criteria agreed by these countries, including Australia, involve maintaining biological diversity, productive capacity, ecosystem health and vitality, soil and water resources, global carbon cycles, socio-economic benefits, and provision of a legal and institutional framework to support these. Australia has developed a regional set of criteria and indicators, and has agreed to incorporate these into its forest management practices through processes such as ESFM.

Table 2 (at end of paper) introduces readers to the major forest issues and identifies problems that are poorly addressed by present policy. Importantly, it shows that significant issues are not solely matters for forest policy, but rather must be addressed through other policy fields including economic, industry and regional development policy. From a political and policy perspective, several major and related issues need to be recognised separately (Table 2). These include nature conservation issues such as the conservation of biological diversity and the maintenance of ecological processes (which largely revolves around the inadequacy of the present conservation reserve network and the sustainability of current management practices); the role of forests in carbon release and sequestration (eg. climate change policy); the protection of cultural heritage values of forests; the maintenance of wood production; the need to manage demand (reducing wood product consumption and waste); management of non-wood resources such as water and recreation; and social and economic issues concerning the viability of regional communities and the nation's trade deficit in wood and paper products.

3. Underlying and proximate causes of deforestation and forest degradation in Australia

The term ‘underlying causes’ is used in the sense that it has been applied to biodiversity loss, separating between:

- proximate (apparent or direct) causes of environmental change such as clearing for agriculture and plantation establishment, firewood collection, imposed fire regimes, exotic plants and animals, grazing pressure
- underlying causes (the reasons why proximate causes operate) such as landlessness and associated demands for crop land, poor economic circumstance driving the use of marginal forest lands, contestable understanding of the impacts of fire, or poor controls over the introduction of exotic species.

While universal underlying causes (UCs) of deforestation and forest degradation might be proposed, they in fact vary across ecological, social and political contexts. Acknowledging this is critical from a policy perspective since incorrect identification of a policy problem can see ‘pseudo-solutions’ applied to ‘pseudo-problems’. It is important to recognise UCs so that policy interventions can target causes – a corrective rather than antidotal response. Hence, we divide UCs into categories based on policy considerations, to maximise the likelihood of isolating key aspects of the ‘causes’ and to begin to match them with general policy options. Readers should note that the task of separating underlying causes is problematic due to many factors, not least the unclear boundaries between causes and effects. This paper takes an iterative approach to underlying causes, rather than attempting a linear or definitive one.

Proximate causes. The chief proximate causes of DFD in Australia can be summarised as:

Public production forests:
- overcutting for logs and woodchips
- too short rotations
- ecological simplification (of tree cohort, and non-timber species)
- impacts of roading and service corridors
- imposed fire regimes
- grazing by introduced livestock
- impacts of exotic species (weeds and pest fauna)

Public conservation areas:
- non-viable areas (size, shape, fragmentation)
- impacts of exotic species
- recreational impact
- modified fire regimes

Private production (or potentially production) forests:
- overcutting, clearing
- too short rotations
- ecological simplification
- grazing by introduced livestock
- firewood harvesting
- modified fire regimes
- other uses (eg. grazing)

Plantations:
- (potential) declines in soil health and system productivity
- impacts of plantation establishment on native vegetation (clearing)

Woodlands (private or leasehold):
- clearing for agriculture
- grazing
- timber extraction (utility)
- firewood harvesting
- exotic species
- modified fire regimes

Of the above, we suggest that the most important proximate causes of DFD are land clearance for agriculture; modified fire regimes; ecologically unsustainable harvesting rates and management practices in production forests; and the impacts of exotic plants and animals across all tenures.

Underlying causes. Underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation in Australia are summarised at the end of the paper in Table 3. This summary includes widely-recognised causes as well as some not so often identified or addressed in policy. Some important and widely recognised UCs at the global level are less significant in Australia. While human population growth drives wood product consumption, profligacy in such areas as per capita paper consumption indicates the need for demand management approaches rather than population control. Poverty and landlessness do not drive DFD in Australia as they do elsewhere. As a rich country with established political and legal institutions, the capacity to implement policy exists, and governability should not be an issue. Scientific and educational capacities are relatively well-developed. This comparative situation is illustrated with biodiversity conservation. Australia is the only rich country recognised as ‘mega-biologically diverse’, possessing both remarkable biodiversity and the wherewithal to protect it without the need to call upon international assistance – any policy failure is an internal matter. The case with forest policy is the same.

The potential of UCs as policy targets (ie. whether they are amenable to policy interventions) is indicated in Table 3. For example, extensive and ongoing clearing for agriculture in woodlands is driven most apparently by the economic situation of landholders with small landholdings, worsening terms of trade and commodity markets, and a profit motive. This is well recognised, but often little is being done about it due, inter alia, to the unfashionability of interventionist trade and industry policy in an era of by neo-liberal economic ideology, a political climate in regional Australia inimical to policy intervention on private lands, and a lack of tradition of controls on private land. Insufficient resolution and sophistication in managing non-wood values of forests (eg. biodiversity) is recognised widely. It has traditionally been underlain by a management paradigm that zones land into either conservation reserves or production forests rather than engaging in the much finer scales and increased information and management effort required to manage for multiple values across all tenures. These issues are further hampered by political divisions, a lack of trust between industry and conservation interests, and by the difficulties of cohesive policy-making in a federal system.

A number of underlying causes appear particularly important in the Australian context with respect to the maintenance of key biophysical and socio-economic values. These UCs are:

Biodiversity: lack of information on elements of biodiversity; lack of management for non-wood values; weak controls over clearance on private land; lack of economic options for landholders; insufficient flow of logs from plantations to ease pressure on native forests; lack of value attributed to biodiversity; lack of concerted control of exotics; lack of monitoring and enforcement of management prescriptions.

Carbon release and sequestration: lack of other options for landholders; lack of controls over clearance on private land.

Cultural heritage: lack of recognition of these values in planning and management; lack of effective consultation with stakeholders, esp. indigenous people.

Wood production: limited native forest resource; insufficient use and processing of wood from plantations; lack of supportive or interventionist industry policy.

Demand/consumption: soft policy options used against high consumption.

Non-wood production values: regimes of management giving primacy to wood production.

Local/regional socio-economic viability: lack of other economic development options; lack of interventionist or supportive industry policy (for wood processing or alternatives).

Balance of trade: reliance on low value exports (woodchips) and on higher value imports; lack of downstream processing and value-adding; lack of supportive or interventionist industry policy; insufficient use of plantation resource.

Developing a process to assign priorities to UCs or to make trade-offs across them is not a trivial exercise and involves conflicting values and policy goals, For example, how should priority be assigned across the UCs of forest biodiversity loss and of economic decline, when the two may be in conflict? Should economic value determine priority and, if so, how should the values of non-market services be determined given that non-market valuation techniques such as contingent valuation are far from firm enough to support proper accounting?

We suggest that UCs known to affect more rather than fewer policy problems can be emphasised. Given this, the following underlying causes are especially significant and should to be recognised by a wider range of stakeholders:

- limited range of economic development options for forest-dependent communities
- economic constraints on agricultural landholders driving land clearance
- lack of downstream processing technologies acceptable to all stakeholders
- lack of sufficiently detailed information, poor data sharing arrangements, and poorly developed techniques for integrating information across social, economic and ecological concerns
- insufficient supply of plantation resource to ease pressure on native forests
- too long and uncertain returns on investment for private growers
- lack of mechanisms whereby maintenance of non-wood values on privately-owned forest can be given an economic value to reward landholders.

Several remaining UCs appear problematic to resolve since they may conflict significantly with other social goals, and so would be more contested. These UCs include:

- weak national institutional arrangements
- an inadequate national conservation reserve network
- forest management practices that are untested and/or appear ecologically unsustainable
- lack of acceptable regulatory or incentive instruments for application on private land
- lack of monitoring of implementation of forest management prescriptions
- harvesting regimes that are untested and/or appear unlikely to ensure long term supply
- broader economic policy and public sector trends (eg. free trade, market-led reform) inimical to intervention in the interests of the viability of regional, resource-dependent communities.

4. Prospects, and barriers to addressing underlying causes

The Regional Forest Agreement process only affects a small part of the forest estate. Hence many forests subject to DFD, and many key issues, will require attention through other processes. These forests and issues include:

- woodlands and other ‘forests’ of low commercial timber value
- most productive or potentially productive forests on private land
- the role of plantations and their management
- alternative management prescriptions and approaches to forest management at the landscape level
- assessment of the reliability of datasets used, especially forestry and economic datasets that are poor compared to biophysical ones
- a poorly executed and belatedly initiated phase of integration of social-economic and biophysical data and issues
- in some stakeholders’ view, insufficient consultation
- continuing mistrust and lack of cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states, and an attendant lack of national coherence in policy
- provision for and resourcing of management, monitoring and enforcement, and for adaptation in the light of emerging knowledge
- adequate resourcing to increase basic knowledge of forests not covered by RFAs
- adequate resourcing to develop better means to integrate ecological, social and economic dimensions to support policy making.

Several of these problems are common across natural resource management in Australia. While the RFA process is one of the nation's most comprehensive resource assessment and planning exercises, it has many difficulties and might be best considered as another step in the process of developing adequate techniques and processes to effectively integrate complex data sets and address a diverse range of issues from ecological, social and economic dimensions. The RFA process serves to underline the enormity of the task of integration and likely issues that will confront future resource allocation processes in Australia (and perhaps elsewhere) in the absence of ongoing R&D and institutional development.

Notable issues of deforestation and forest degradation that appear to be poorly addressed by current processes include:

- land clearance for agriculture
- inadequate conservation reserves in non-production forests and protection of biologically significant sites on private lands
- profligate domestic consumption of wood and paper products
- strategic management of the plantation estate.

The critical causes underlying these problems include:

- insufficient attention to all forest types and tenures in policy
- lack of development of better approaches to integrating social, economic and ecological considerations in policy
- information gaps
- institutional weaknesses, especially regarding coherent national policy and ongoing monitoring and enforcement of policy and management prescriptions
- insufficient consultation with non-core stakeholders
- limited economic alternatives for farmers and forest dependent communities
- reluctance to regulate land clearance, or other practices on private land
- lack of attractiveness of wood crops from an economic perspective
- too distant returns on investment in private tree-growing
- lack of industry policy regarding plantation processing.

Table 4 identifies major attributes of sustainability problems, allowing more clarity as to why a cause might be difficult to address and the types of policy interventions that may be possible. Of these attributes, many operate with respect to the underlying causes identified above. The political scale of forest issues, crossing jurisdictions in a federal system, creates barriers to coherent country-wide approaches and the development of effective institutions. This is a systemic cause, and a jurisdictional problem, evidenced by the arbitrary use of political boundaries to separate the SE New South Wales and East Gippsland RFAs when they constitute a biologically and economically cohesive entity. The time scales of forest growth militate against investment, especially on the part of private interests, and also are difficult to reconcile with the much shorter horizons of management, policy and politics. Cutting rotations of 30-40 years have been lengthened to 80+ years, but these are still insufficient in terms of the development of patterns and structures needed for the maintenance of fauna habitat. Existing institutions and modes of policy analysis and formulation, fashioned against shorter term problems more often contained within jurisdictional boundaries, have difficulty dealing with such problems. Impacts on ecological processes and elements of biodiversity may well be irreversible, at least within any meaningful human time scale.

Risks and uncertainties pervade forest issues. Dealing with these is not assisted by the lack of information sharing between stakeholders (eg. the National Forest Inventory has been delayed as a result of lack of trust and communication between Australian governments). Adopting an adaptive approach to forest management in the face of uncertainty and evolving knowledge is difficult to reconcile with the 20-year ‘resource security’ dimension of the RFAs and the generally weak approach to ecological and policy monitoring.

The availability and acceptability of policy options to adddress DFD varies. In the face of market-oriented reform, sustainable development policy has had little priority. Traditional public sector roles are in question as the state is diminished and residual functions are marketised. Social goals appear problematic since the balance between ecological, social/cultural and economic goals remains to be found. Policy goals are stated much more firmly for environmental aspects of the RFA process than for social and non-market economic ones. Connectivity between what people perceive primarily as forest policy and other policy fields complicate matters, and when unrecognised leads to unrealistic expectations on the part of stakeholders engaged in forest policy processes. Expectations that RFAs might deliver economic stability to rural communities ignore the fact that such stability is threatened by much more than demands for extra nature conservation reserves.

Nevertheless, it is important to note that for some purposes government in Australia will act boldly. For example, in recent decades governments have acted strongly to deregulate the economy, to reduce education budgets, to implement National Competition Policy (a domestic eqivalent of the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment), to lower tarrifs, and to create a national health scheme. It would seem that resource and environmental policy and management, and more especially biodiversity conservation, has not ranked so highly on political agendas. The lack of political will to tackle forest issues is based on several factors, including non-interventionist fashions in policy and government, constrained government budgets, and the perceived sanctity of private land tenure. Many of these barriers are not confined to forests.

5. ‘Solutions’ – assessing policy instruments

Policy instruments available in the fields of sustainability and resource and environmental management, and a set of criteria for instrument choice formulated specifically for sustainability are shown in Table 5. These instruments and criteria are outlined as a basis to consider alternative policy approaches to dealing with DFD.

Proper assessment of such a detailed menu is beyond the scope of this paper, but some illustrative examples of both tried and untried approaches can be explored briefly. Many of these instruments have been applied to forests or are being proposed. For example, several attempts at monitoring and enforcement have been undertaken. These have frequently failed or become redundant as a result of inadequate resourcing, changes in policy directions and priorities, and changes in the nature and intensity of forest uses. In some cases, inferior methods of forest R&D and monitoring and major changes in technology have led to redundancies. The types of changes could have been predicted to some extent, but institutional arrangements have not been sufficient to do this. Recent initiatives involving, for example, state of the environment reporting, ESFM and criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management highlight the need for a much more flexible and resourced management environment to accommodate changes. Increasingly, self-regulation of forest use is promoted, but the dependability of this remains to be proven. Education, training and related support measures have all been adopted at times to help understanding of DFD and the quality of forest management. Packages have also been introduced to support the welfare of people and firms associated with the sector.

Environmental impact assessments have been a standard regulatory requirement of proposals on publicly-owned forested lands during the past two decades, but rarely on private lands. However, even when required, the comprehensiveness and adequacy of EIA processes in terms of DFD has frequently been challenged. In some cases the challenges have led to reviews of proposals and to modification or cessation. The other common use of statute law has been the reservation of land to certain uses. Agreements and covenants over forest lands and land use have been promoted across many Australian regions for over a decade. This type of approach has been successful at times, particularly when adopted on private land supporting biologically significant sites otherwise unlikely to be conserved. Increased community consultation and transparency of policy processes (eg. sharing of data sets) has been promoted more recently to improve problem definition and solving, and overall decision making.

Overall, many policy responses have been inadequate or failed. Our review suggests the following changes are required to mitigate DFD in the short-medium term:

- cessation of widespread forest vegetation clearance on agricultural lands
- enhanced efforts to control and remove exotic organisms
- enhanced fire management, including the elimination of fuel-reduction burning from many biologically significant sites
- reduction or removal of grazing of livestock in biologically significant and sensitive areas
- reduction of intensity of logging on private and public lands to a level that can be demonstrated to be ecologically sustainable
- creation of a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve network across all forests types
- enforcement of adaptive management principles and prescriptions, including implementation of effective monitoring (of both forest condition and application of management prescriptions)
- reduction in domestic per capita wood and paper consumption
- increase of the flow and processing of logs out of plantations, and inclusion of the management of the plantation estate more fully in forest policy
- creation or re-design, and proper resourcing of institutions charged with affecting these reforms.

With respect to these required changes, there are a number of policy instruments which suggest themselves and have not been well-tried:

Strong regulation of forests management and clearing on private land. Current policy trends weigh against the likelihood of strong regulation, and the perceived failure of weak, rarely enforced regulatory approaches in the past is often taken to mean that such instruments are ineffective. In New South Wales, the implementation and enforcement of native vegetation clearance regulations has proved difficult. Mechanisms similar to South Australia’s legislative framework are being developed by other states, but in the absence of incentives may achieve little more than the conservation of smaller patches of remnant vegetation under the ownership of motivated individuals. Any expectations that post-Kyoto climate change policy development will drive land clearance controls are perhaps unfounded, as the base year (1990) on which Australia’s allowed 8% emissions increase will be calculated was at a time of unusually high clearing rates, and rates had already fallen by the time of the Kyoto agreement. Current endangered species legislation in many Australian jurisdictions is regarded by environmental lawyers as relatively weak, as a result of discretionary clauses, limitations in implementation and lack of public standing. In public forests, the ESFM goals of the RFA process are relevant, but yet to be fully developed and their success will depend on the vigour of enforcement and monitoring.

Market mechanisms on private land. These options have been surveyed by Young et al. in the Australian context, and we explore the potential via a sketch analysis of Farrier’s ‘stewardship payment’ proposal. The logic and appeal of reimbursing landholders for foregone benefits and valuing management efforts associated with conserving biodiversity is undeniable, and is an attractive alternative to regulating use or acquiring areas for reservation. However, a number of key issues remain to be resolved to most efffectively adopt this approach, including addressing local biodiversity information gaps; resolving equity issues between farmers who are and are not involved; deciding on the scope and coverage of application and criteria for inclusion, and creating mechanisms for payment and accountability. That is, the instrument has merit, but capacity of existing institutions to implement such a scheme is doubtful. Despite these concerns, we believe that this approach offers much scope to address DFD, given adequate information, planning and implementation.

Reducing consumption. Numerous strategies and schemes aimed at, for example, paper recycling have been initiated. However, per capita wood and paper consumption remains high compared to other countries. Per capita resource consumption is a difficult policy target in a liberal democracy, other than through educational instruments of untested effectiveness. Encouraging developments in this arena include the Forest Stewardship Council’s green labelling schemes, but this is expected by some to only influence the buying behaviour of a small proportion of consumers, and suggest a non-trade barrier for some countries. In the absence of intrusive regulatory interventions or strong market mechanisms, such as disincentive taxes placed on energy, paper, etc., it is unlikely that large changes in consumption patterns will occur.

Strategic management of the Australian plantation estate. A core issue in forest debates in recent times has been the extent to which plantations should supplant native forests in terms of wood supply, thus reducing the potential for degradation of native forests used for wood production. One uncertainty has been the issue of when the plantation resource would be sizable enough to make this possible. Recently, it has been suggested that the plantation estate already contains sufficient volume to achieve this outcome, and that active and coordinated policy and management intervention are all that are required to release this resource. If such a course could be pursued, enormous flexibility could be introduced in terms of reducing pressure on biologically important native forests.

Supportive and active industry policy Development of a stronger industry policy at the regional level would support attempts to address UCs of DFD, although dependability would be hard to predict and the cost not insignificant. While some moves toward developing the plantation estate, to encouraging downstream processing opportunities and to exploring economic alternatives for relevant local and regional economies have been taken, these are weak areas of policy. Regional development policies supporting bottom-up capacity building began in the early 1990s, but have not persisted with any vigour. Interventionist industry policy goes against currently dominant neo-liberal and managerial trends in public policy and politics. An active industry policy may be more acceptable to the community than to policy makers.

Fuller and more sophisticated involvement of communities. Australia is a leader in community-based approaches to natural resource management, following several years experience with Landcare especially (some 4000 groups established), but also with an array of smaller programs. Despite this success, there is emerging unease over the appropriateness of relying too heavily on these programs. It is unclear whether such approaches can be adapted to forested lands, with their very different economic and tenure context. In forest policy specifically, challenges include the reconciling of the principle of community involvement with the realities of political and legal power. Issues in need of consideration include the nature of local community involvement (from policy consultation to co-management), and the choice, design and ongoing maintenance and resourcing of such processes.

Comprehensive monitoring. Our review illustrates the need for adaptive management and learning as a means to support policy aimed at the cessation of DFD and the restoration and rehabilitation of degraded areas. However, long-term ecological research and monitoring requires greater resourcing if it is to be employed most effectively, and the too often low priority assigned to it by policy makers and scientists needs to be addressed. Further, close monitoring of policy and management implementation and effect are crucial to improving sustainable management over time, but have been given little attention in the past. It is the stated intent of governments that the ESFM prescriptions within the regional forests agreements will be monitored and enforced, but it is unclear as yet the precise mechanisms for this and this issue cannot be judged at this early stage in the RFA process.

Institutional reform. The post-ESD and Rio era in Australia has not seen much in the way of purposeful institutional reform, even though the building of national institutional capacity - across resource management as well as regarding forests - has been a recurring call of major policy processes at national and international scales since the World Conservation Strategy in 1980. All of the above instruments require institutional foundations of some persistence and guarantee if they are to be believable and effective. Ideally, institutional reform would be guided by integration of social, economic and ecological aspects; integration across sectors, tenures, portfolios and jurisdictions; the need for a strong informational and monitoring basis; the need for inclusive and flexible approaches; and the necessity of statutory foundations to ensure longevity and the maintenance of purposefully adaptive styles of policy and management.

The ability of present institutions to support the needs of the future is highly questionable. Our analysis indicate that underlying causes are precisely ‘underlying’ because they reflect dominant patterns of production and consumption, governance and settlement, and these patterns have evolved without due regard to sustainable resource use. Institutions are usually a reflection of past rather than present understanding and imperatives. Addressing underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation in the medium to long term will require purposeful institutional reform and a marked redefinition of legal, policy and political goals.

6. Transferability of the Australian experience?

The question arises at this point of the degree to which Australia’s past and current experiences in addressing deforestation and forest degradation can be usefully tranferred to other countries. After more than seventy major inquiries into forest issues, and the investment of some A$100m in the RFA process and all that has involved, there certainly is a wealth of experience. However, the RFA process as a whole should not be taken as a total ‘package’, for three reasons. First, despite this investment of resources and effort, the RFA process, and all that proceeded it, has not and will not finally ‘resolve’ forest issues, although it has moved matters forward in many areas. Contestation of forest policy will continue (whether it should or not is a matter of opinion). Second, the more ongoing value of the RFA experience, both in Australia and elsewhere should other countries be interested, is in the detail. Of particular note are the strengths and weaknesses of approaches and techniques dealing with stakeholder participation, integration of environmental, economic and social dimensions of forest policy, treatment of scientific information in a policy process, and the spurring of needed research in particular areas. These elements can provide both positive and cautionary lessons. Third, as made clear earlier in this paper, the RFA process (and other Australian resource management experiences) are particular to the ecological, historical, economic and politic context of Australia, and owe much to the political situation in the early-mid 1990s. Other countries have there own particular contexts, and successful policy processes will need to reflect those.

7. Conclusion

Australian governments have been active in many areas of resource and environmental management and policy Australia during the past decade. Yet few underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation have been comprehensively addressed and resolved. The reasons for this ineffectiveness are many, varied and often systemic. Compared to economic policy, sustainable development policy in Australia has been developed in a largely ad hoc and fragmented manner, and is underpinned by weak institutions. A number of significant changes can be effected in the immediate and short term to seriously address DFD in Australia. Effective implementation and enforcement of measures to stop the clearance of native vegetation on private land would by themselves be a significant national achievement, and provide the basis for unprecedented innovations and expansion in land restoration as we enter the new millenium. At the same time, there exists a clear need for longer term building of institutions and processes capable of driving more fundamental change and tackling major underlying causes of unsustainable resource consumption. Much will depend on this, and on achieving parity between social, cultural and ecological dimensions and the presently dominant shorter term economic imperatives and near term political needs. Significantly, many of the reforms we have identified cannot be addressed solely through the forestry sector and forest policy. Major innovation and change is required across many areas, including economic and industry policy, biodiversity policy, and regional development. In the absence of changes on these fronts, there would appear to be little prospect of any significant change in patterns of forest use and management, or any great reduction in the degree of policy contests over deforestation and forest degradation in Australia.

TABLES

Table 1. Summary of the Australian forest estate. Showing major types and tenure; as percentages of total forest area (157 million ha). Based on the definition adopted by the Commonwealth Government: an area, incorporating all living and non-living components, that is dominated by trees having a single stem and a mature or potentially mature stand height exceeding 2 metres and with existing or potential crown cover of overstorey strata about equal to or greater than 20%.

Table 2. Policy issues in Australian forests.

* (Biodiversity, resource & env. Policy, Forest, Economic, Regional, Other)

Table 3. Underlying causes of DFD in Australia

Table 4. Attributes of policy problems in sustainability

Attributes for framing problems:
- spatial/political scale of causes and effects
- magnitude of impacts (on human systems, natural systems)
- temporal scale of possible impacts (onset timing, longevity of impacts)
- reversibility of impacts
- measurability of factors and process (complexity and uncertainty)
- connectivity with other policy problems

Attributes for framing responses:
- nature of causes (singular/diffuse, critical/marginal)
- relevance to jurisdiction
- tractability (availability and acceptability of policy options)
- public concern (level, and degree of uniformity across society)
- existence of social and policy goals

Table 5. Policy instruments, and criteria for instrument choice

Criteria for instrument choice:
1. Effectiveness criteria: information requirements; dependability (re. goals); corrective vs. antidotal focus; flexibilility (across contexts, time); gross cost; efficiency (relative to achieving goal); cross-sectoral influence.
2. Implementation criteria: equity impacts; political/social feasibility; legal/constitutional feasibility; institutional feasibility; monitoring requirements; enforcability/avoidability; communicability (re. those affected).

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