What
are underlying causes?
Forests are one of the most valuable
eco-systems in the world, containing over 60 per cent of the world's
biodiversity. This biodiversity has multiple social and economic
values, apart from its intrinsic value, varying from the important
ecological functions of forests in terms of soil and watershed protection
to the economic value of the numerous products which can be extracted
from the forest. For many indigenous and other forest-dependent
peoples, forests are their livelihood. They provide them with edible
and medicinal plants, bushmeat, fruits, honey, shelter, firewood
and many other goods, as well as with cultural and spiritual values.
On a global scale, all forests play a crucial role in climate regulation
and constitute one of the major carbon sinks on earth, their survival
thus preventing an increase in the greenhouse effect.
Forests have already disappeared in many
parts of the world and deforestation rates worldwide during the
1980s were as high as 15 million hectares per year for tropical
forests alone. In most parts of the world deforestation accelerated
during the 1990s. It should be noted in this respect that deforestation
rates tend to be obscured by the fact that there is no clear definition
of forests. The latest definition given by the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization, formally the main body responsible for forests within
the UN system, is so broad that most green urban areas can be considered
major forest eco-systems. Thus, the replacement of valuable primary
forest eco-systems by monoculture plantations - in many cases an
alien species such as eucalyptus or pine trees - or by biologically
poor forests is seldom taken into account. Europe, for example,
lost most of its primary forests during the 19th century. Yet, the
latest FAO reports state enthusiastically that there is an increase
of boreal and temperate forests in this region. A substantial part
of these "forests" are biologically-poor production forests,
lacking undergrowth, original soil biodiversity, and most original
bird, mammal and reptile species. They are in fact more akin to
monoculture plantations than to true forests.
Direct causes of deforestation
The most important direct causes of deforestation
include logging, the conversion of forested lands for agriculture
and cattle-raising, urbanization, mining and oil exploitation, acid
rain and fire. However, there has been a tendency of highlighting
small-scale migratory farmers or "poverty" as the major
cause of forest loss. Such farmers tend to settle along roads through
the forest, to clear a patch of land and to use it for growing subsistence
or cash crops. In tropical forests, such practices tend to lead
to rapid soil degradation as most soils are too poor to sustain
agriculture. Consequently, the farmer is forced to clear another
patch of forest after a few years. The degraded agricultural land
is often used for a few years more for cattle raising. This is a
death sentence for the soil, as cattle remove the last scarce traces
of fertility. The result is an entirely degraded piece of land which
will be unable to recover its original biomass for many years. It
is a major mistake to think that such unsustainable agricultural
practices only take place in tropical countries. Many parts of North
America and western Europe have become deforested due to unsustainable
agriculture, leading to severe soil degradation and in many cases
abandonment of the area by the farmers.
In other countries, clearcut logging
practices have been the main reason for forest loss. In the early
nineties, Canada and Malaysia were famous examples of countries
where logging companies ruthlessly cleared mile upon mile of precious
primary forests. Here too, the historical perspective should not
be overlooked. Countries like Ireland and Scotland used to be almost
entirely forested, but were nearly completely cleared under British
rule to provide timber for English shipbuilders. Today, logging
still forms the most important direct threat to forests in regions
like the Guianan shield (stable area of low relief in the Earth's
crust), Central Africa, East Siberia and British Columbia.
The underlying causes of deforestation
and forest degradation
During the last few decades, the forest
crisis has prompted many international, regional and national preservation
initiatives, yet many have had little success. There is general
agreement that this is due to the fact that these strategies were
too focused on the immediate causes of deforestation, and neglected
the underlying causes which are multiple and interrelated. In some
cases they are related to major international economic phenomena,
such as macro-economic strategies which provide a strong incentive
for short-term profit-making instead of long-term sustain ability.
Also important are deep-rooted social structures, which result in
inequalities in land tenure, discrimination against indigenous peoples,
subsistence farmers and poor people in general. In other cases they
include political factors such as the lack of participatory democracy,
the influence of the military and the exploitation of rural areas
by urban elites. Overconsumption by consumers in high-income countries
constitutes another of the major underlying causes of deforestation,
while in some regions uncontrolled industrialization is at the heart
of forest degradation with widespread pollution resulting in acid
rain.
The causes of deforestation are many
and varied, and it is impossible to cover them all. However some
examples can show how these causes are closely interrelated one
to each other.
The forces behind unsustainable agriculture
According to the FAO, 90 per cent of
deforestation is caused by unsustainable agricultural practices,
while logging and plantation forestry play a greater role in forest
degradation. However debatable these figures may be, unsustainable
agriculture is undoubtedly one of the major direct causes of deforestation
and forest degradation in many countries of the world. A simplistic
approach to the problem would imply blaming the "ignorance"
of the farmers involved in this process. The process is however
more complex. Few people actually decide that they want to leave
their native land, go to the forest, cut it and convert it into
agricultural land. They are driven to such actions by national and
international forces with interests different to theirs. In some
countries, forests act as safety-valves to avoid social uprisings,
in the following way. The concentration of power and land in few
hands results in large groups of dispossessed people, which may
lead to confrontation. To avoid conflict, some of these people are
offered free land within the forests. Access to forests is made
possible through government-promoted road projects, either built
to open up and "develop" the forests or resulting from
the commercial activities of logging, mining, and energy generation.
In the above example, it is clear that deforestation can take place
only because a number of government policies - social and economic
- indirectly promote it. Whilst the poor may operate the chainsaws
or set the forest on fire, it is mostly governments and corporations
who are behind such actions.
The far-reaching consequences of globalization
In other cases, forests are opened up
for modern large-scale agriculture or cattle-raising aimed at the
export market. For example, forests have been converted for cattle
in Central America, for soy bean production in Brazil and for pulpwood
in Indonesia. In the first case, the process originated in the explosive
development of a fast food - hamburger - market in the US which
required vast amounts of low-quality cheap meat which could be produced
in nearby tropical countries. The result was widespread deforestation
in Central America. Subsidized and highly intensive meat production
in Europe requires an ever-increasing supply of grains to feed livestock.
Soy bean is one of the major inputs for such production and enormous
patches of forest have been opened up in Brazil - and in many other
Southern countries - to ensure the economic sustainability of that
sector through the supply of cheap grain. A similar situation occurs
with paper: the continued growth of paper consumption, particularly
in high income countries, depends on the availability of cheap wood
or pulp to feed the paper mills. Forests are thus being cleared
in Indonesia - and many other parts of the world - to give way to
eucalyptus plantations aimed at supplying that market with increasing
amounts of cheap raw material.
In the above cases, it is clear that
the production of hamburgers in the US, of meat in Europe and of
paper in high-income countries are a contributory cause of deforestation
in Central America, Brazil and Indonesia.
Land tenure policies and inequalities
Ecuador offers an example which applies
not only to most other Amazonian countries but also to many other
Southern countries with deep forests. Since the 1970s there has
been a great influx of farmers into the Ecuadorian Amazon, one of
the most precious forest areas in the world. Most of these farmers
came from the Andes and coastal regions of the country, where they
were faced with landlessness, unemployment, and land degradation.
Migration was strongly encouraged by the Ecuadorian Government,
with a provision for land titles for plots of 45-50 hectares for
the migrants. As farmers ran the risk of losing their land title
if they did not turn it into agricultural or other "useful"
land, deforestation was more or less obligatory.
In most cases, only a combination of
a desperate situation at home and strong legal, economic or other
incentives will make people migrate to the forest. In Ecuador, the
migration was mainly government-driven, caused by the lack of land
reform and sustainable agriculture in the Andes and coastal regions
(push-factors) and a deliberate policy to entice people to move
to the forest (pull-factors), through a public information campaign
using false perspectives and land titles which often encroached
upon the land rights of indigenous peoples. While the construction
of roads by oil companies helped the farmers, it is also important
to note that in countries which do not have such push- and pull-factors,
the construction of roads through the forest does not automatically
lead to migration. In Cameroon, for example, most farmers do not
feel tempted at all to move from their semi-arid homelands in the
North of the country to the tropical forest in the South, despite
the fact that this forest is being increasingly opened up by logging
roads.
Consumption and production patterns
It should be emphasized that it is seldom
the production of food for the poor which causes deforestation,
as the largest areas of forests converted to other uses are currently
being dedicated to the production of cash crops and cattle. These
products, which vary from coffee and beef to coca and soy bean,
are in many cases almost exclusively produced for export markets
in OECD countries. It is absurd to defend the production of these
goods with arguments about food security, as some governments and
international institutions (including the FAO) do, since Northern
countries have excessively high levels of consumption.
Under the current free-trade oriented
ideology, the standard solution of institutions like the International
Monetary Fund for these problems is increasing exports, instead
of decreasing imports. Meanwhile, it is the import of luxury goods
for the wealthy, as well as weapons, which tend to lie at the roots
of trade balance and balance of payments distortions, both in industrialized
and in low income countries. One of the major contributory factors
in deforestation is the failure of macro-economic bodies like the
Bretton Woods Institutions to recognize this relationship between
consumption patterns and macro-economic problems.
A global problem with many actors
Deforestation and forest degradation
occurs both in Northern and Southern countries and its underlying
causes also originate in both, although with varying degrees of
responsibility. Industrialized countries have not only cut down
or degraded their own forests in the past; many are still doing
so today. This occurs either through large-scale clear-cutting -
as in many areas of Canada, the US or Australia - or through the
thinning and therefore degradation - of forests reducing them to
a few commercially valuable species at the expense of biodiversity
- such as in Sweden, France or Finland. At the same time, problems
resulting from industrialization - such as acid rain - are having
a strong impact. In the South, some forests are being clear-felled
- mostly for unsustainable export-oriented agriculture, tree and
oil-palm plantations and cattle - or are being degraded as a result
of the selective logging of the more commercial species - such as
mahogany.
Some underlying causes originate within
the country while others can be found outside national boundaries.
In this latter situation, the main responsibility usually lies in
the North. Macro-economic policies imposed on the South through
a number of mechanisms can also contribute to deforestation. One
of the more obvious results of such policies has been the increasing
incorporation of Southern agricultural exports to markets in Northern
countries, usually at the expense of forests. The same macro-economic
policies have resulted in the concentration of wealth in the North
which, coupled with strong incentives to consumerism, have created
unsustainable consumption patterns which have a strong impact particularly
- though not exclusively - on Southern forests.
Southern governments and elites also
hold responsibility for some deeper causes of deforestation. Government
policies on indigenous peoples' rights - particularly those affecting
territorial rights - have been the cause of much deforestation which
would not have occurred if those rights had been acknowledged. Policies
over land tenure rights in general have resulted in the concentration
of the best agricultural lands in a few hands and the consequent
migration of poor peasants into the forests, resulting in large-scale
felling of trees. In most cases however government policies are
linked to external actors such as multilateral institutions, "co-operation"
agencies and transnational corporations who must share the blame.
Building access roads means that trees are chopped down. The road
then opens up the forest to loggers, landless peasants, mining companies
and many other actors, resulting in tree clearance. Road-building
is one of the activities promoted and funded by multilateral institutions
such as the World Bank and other regional multilateral banks and
it allows governments to comply with the International Monetary
Fund's policies to increase exports. Road-building is also linked
to transnational corporations' interests, as they can thereby access
natural resources and incorporate them into the global market.
The role of the military
Weapons imports constitute an important
socio-economic, and thus ecological burden in many countries. Every
dollar spent on weapons is one dollar less spent on education, health-care,
sustainable technology development and sustainable development in
general. It is also one dollar on the wrong side of the balance
of payments. The export of weapons constitutes big business for
many - particularly Northern - countries. Naturally, war and violence
themselves place a major direct and indirect burden upon forests.
In some cases, the military have direct interests in logging concessions
or the production of cash-crops like coca. The influence of the
military on governmental policies in many countries is profound.
For the military, the inaccessibility of forests is a strategic
problem. Indigenous peoples and other isolated groups of society
can pose a threat. Opening up the forest and stimulating migration
of people from the centre of the country to these isolated areas
serves a strategic purpose. Oil and mineral exploitation within
the nation is strategically important, even when one has to attract
foreign companies with conditions which allows all profits to flow
out of the country.
More indirectly, the continuing dominance
of Cold War mentalities cause some of the world's macro-economic
institutions to be so ruthlessly free-market oriented. Despite these
obvious and not-so-obvious relationships, there seems to be a strong
taboo on discussing the influence of the military on deforestation
and other social and ecological problems. Clear figures are absent
and little research has been done.
Moving forward
The international community - at least
within the framework of the Commission for Sustainable Development's
Intergovernmental Forum on Forests - has recognized the need for
identifying the underlying causes of deforestation in order to find
ways to save the remaining forests of the world. The Non-Governmental
Organizations which participate in the Forum have offered to work
in collaboration with governments and international agencies to
identify the major underlying causes of deforestation in all regions
of the world and to work out solutions.
It is important, however, to realize
that deforestation and forest degradation are not "technical"
issues. Forests are not disappearing because people and their governments
are ignorant or because there are no proper management plans. Forests
are disappearing because a number of interlinked international and
national policies prepare the ground for it to happen. It is therefore
at that level that solutions must be found. In addition, it is crucial
to reach out to the public at large in order to ensure that such
changes are actually implemented in a way that both humanity as
a whole and the people living in the forest areas benefit from them
equally. This is obviously a huge and difficult challenge, but one
which opens up some hope for the future.
Note: This article has been published
in December 1998 in "The World Guide 1999/2000", edited
by Third World Institute, in Montevideo, Uruguay, and New Internationalist
Publications Ltd., in Oxford, United Kingdom. For more information
see: http://www.guiadelmundo.org.uy
