Tropical Forests, International Jungle: The Underside of Global Ecopolitics

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Tropical Forests, International Jungle

The CERI Series in International Relations and Political Economy Series Editors, Christophe Jaffrelot and Christian Lequesne This series consists of works emanating from the foremost French research center in international studies, the Paris-based Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI), part of Sciences Po and associated with the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). Founded in 1952, CERI has about sixty fellows drawn from different disciplines who conduct research on comparative political analysis, international relations, regionalism, transnational flows, political sociology, political economy and on individual states. This series focuses on the transformations of the international arena, in a world where the state, though its sovereignty is questioned, reinvents itself. The series explores the effects on international relations and the world economy of regionalization, globalization (not only of trade and finance but also of culture), and transnational flows at large. This evolution in world affairs sustains a variety of networks from the ideological to the criminal or terrorist. Besides the geopolitical transformations of the globalized planet, the new political economy of the world has a decided impact on its destiny as well, and this series hopes to uncover what that is.

Tropical Forests International Jungle The Underside of Global Ecopolitics Marie-Claude Smouts Translated from the French by Cynthia Schoch

Published with the support of the French Ministry of Culture—Centre National du Livre

TROPICAL FORESTS, INTERNATIONAL JUNGLE

© Marie-Claude Smouts, 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–6203–0 hardback Cataloging-in-Publication data can be found at the Library of Congress. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: May, 2003 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

“Ouvrage publié avec l⬘aide du Ministère française chargé de la culture. Centre national du livre”.

CONTENTS

Foreword Acknowledgments

viii xi

Introduction The political construction of an ecological concept The ecological functions of an endangered heritage The stakes of multifunctionality Sustainable development and political rhetoric Tropical forests and global politics

1 3 6 13 17 22

Chapter One

26 28 30

The Construction of a Global Issue Versions of deforestation The TFAP: a techno-bureaucratic production Versions of survival: from Chico Mendes to indigenous peoples The global register: the greenhouse effect and biodiversity The forest as World Heritage Of game and trees

Chapter Two A Good in Search of a Definition Uncertain knowledge Controversial definitions Competing programs Forest vigilantes Competing epistemic communities Forestry: a profession in suspension

35 43 45 48 55 56 56 60 65 67 73

vi

Contents The discreet charm of economics The counteroffensive of the social sciences

Chapter Three

Deforestation: An Endless Debate Seeking the guilty party The poor versus the forest? The agricultural paradigm Intertwined responsibilities The example of the Amazon Industry and large construction projects Forest fires with a message

Chapter Four The Timber Trade: Guilty Party and Scapegoat A complex system of interactions A commodity rationale A changing geography The appeal of paper A changing political economy Asian competition Microeconomic networks and illegal dealings

77 81 84 87 87 94 97 97 101 103 105 106 107 108 117 120 121 125

Chapter Five Ecopolitics Inch by Inch The emergence of a normative discourse The forest convention: a premature ambition ITTO, FAO, and the World Bank: a continuing education Salvation through the Market? The merchandising of functions The price of sinks

129 132 136

Chapter Six

172 173 174 177 181

Conserving the Tropical Forest The social costs of conservation Protect what and how? Conserve for whom? What funding for the global common good? Sustainable forest management: a conflictual notion An elastic content To each his own truth The French gamble

140 158 158 166

184 185 188 191

CONTENTS Ecocertification and labeling schemes The round dance of criteria and indicators The rise in power of the Forest Stewardship Council The battle of certificates Beneath the conflicts, ethics?

vii 195 195 197 205 208

Conclusion

211

Notes

222

Appendix. Briefing on ITTO’S Project Work

248

List of abbreviations

250

List of Maps

253

Name Index

255

Subject Index

260

FOREWORD

Working on North–South relations in the 1980s, I had been drawn to the then topical problem of raw materials. I thought it would be interesting someday to do a monographic study of a basic commodity from an international relations perspective. I had in mind tropical timber, since an agreement had just been signed for the first time and the topic had been less researched than coffee or cacao. But then a lot of things happened at once.The Soviet bloc collapsed, the concept of globalization was replacing that of interdependence, new actors were coming on the scene (the so-called “civil society”), new arrangements were in the offing. It was difficult to step back and concentrate on a relatively secondary project given the major questions that had arisen in a changing world. When I went back to the idea in 1997, ten years had gone by and everything had changed. Tropical timber had become part of a much broader issue than that of basic commodities. Beyond tropical timber I found trees, beyond trees the forest, and beyond the forest all the sensitive questions attendant on the world environment: biodiversity, the greenhouse effect, rights of local communities, and so forth.The project was even more exciting, it was even more justified, but it had become much more difficult. Never could I have embarked on the adventure if, right from the start of my research, I had not received support from people who know the tropical forest: those who work there, who study it, who live there.All of them encouraged and helped me, answering my naïve “Candide-in-the-woods” questions without ever beating me over the head with the old “It’s a bit more complicated than that” caveat with which we political scientists have a tendency to bully the non-initiate who ventures into our realms.The tropical forest commands humility of its true specialists.

FOREWORD

ix

The story of this research is long and intense.There have been wonderful encounters and powerful moments. Would that I could mention all those who gave me their trust, their time, their ideas, their intellectual and material assistance.There are too many of them, it is impossible to name them all here. My gratitude goes especially to all those who granted me the initial interviews and whose support in the early stages was decisive: Alain Karsenty and Jacques Weber, wonderful “sinks” of science, “reservoirs” of ideas and “sources” of unconventional thought. I would also like to express my debt to the work of the Cirad and how much this Center’s welcome, particularly thanks to Jean-Guy Berthault, touched me and was helpful to me. I am also grateful for the discussion organized by Christophe du Castel and the Agence Française de Développement, for the time Francis Rougier’s graciously accorded me in the final phase of last minute verifications and for the attention of all those who facilitated things for me in the field: the Orstom (now IRD) researchers in Brazil, conservation project supervisors in Africa, the French cultural services in Asia and Latin America. I would like to thank the French Foreign Affairs Ministry for including me in the French delegation to the International Tropical Timbers Organization Council in Yokohama in 1997. Not only did this allow me to observe the workings of a fairly obscure institution (and much more important than it appears) but also to conduct several dozen interviews in record time, taking advantage of the gathering for the Council session of a large sampling of all the actors involved in tropical timber issues. In these interviews, as for the others, I must be taken at my word: My respondents expressed themselves frankly, sometimes criticizing their country, their administration, their employer, or their foreign counterparts. Many asked not to be identified. I therefore decided to give no names.The only exceptions involve statements or biographical elements that figure in published works accessible to the public. In some respects this research has been collective, so much have I enjoyed research conditions provided by the CERI and the Conseil Scientifique of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques and so much have I felt backed by my research unit from one end of the project to the other: by its successive directors, by the review Critique Internationale which published my trial run on the subject, by colleagues who dropped in my mailbox interview write-ups, journals, and press clippings brought back from their missions to countries I did not visit and which enabled me to hear voices of those who do not have access to international discussion but who have forceful things to say. I particularly wish to thank Christophe Jaffrelot, who made the translation of this book possible,

x

Foreword

Belden Fields, whose attentive and serious appraisal was not skewed by our longstanding friendship, and especially Cynthia Schoch, an exceptional translator whose ability and patience manage to assuage all the anxieties of a finicky author. And then there is Henri, my husband, architect, pianist, environmentalist, great connoisseur of timber, carpenter capable of paneling an entire room with Honduran mahogany (yes, indeed!), captive listener, and a willing reader. So many maps and compasses along so many trails explored together for over thirty years . . . is that not co-authorship? I have one regret and one concern. The regret: not having spoken with enough anthropologists. “You can’t do everything,” we tell our doctoral students, but like them, we regret our shortfalls. The concern: how to repay the debt I owe to all those who will never read this book: peasants, fishermen, boatmen, village women, unemployed students, and their little cobbled-together NGOs? My thoughts go out to Ewa Justin, who has been through all the trials of an African woman (except for war, luckily) and has never given up. We talked for hours on end, but never enough.And she convinced me, if need be, that without a doubt the rain forest cannot be managed from ministries and delegates’ lounges, even adorned with the label “global common good.” It is hard work conducted in the jungle and in the rain, through a long learning process, and it is a matter of life itself.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following people for their time, their insights, and their help in the field: Rosa Acevedo, sociologist (Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos, NAEA, Belém) Jean-Claude Anoh, Director (Société de développement des forêts, Abidjan) Serge Bahuchet, anthropologist (Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris) Enzo Barattini, Deputy Head of Unit—Commodities (DG VIII Development, European Commission, Brussels) Jean-Guy Berthault (Cirad-forêt) Alain Bertrand (Cirad-forêt) Juergen Blaser (World Bank) Jacques Boucah-Orumbongany (Société Nationale des Bois du Gabon, Libreville) M. Cardoso, agronomist (Center for Agrarian Studies, Belém) Edna Castro, sociologist, Director of Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos ( NAEA, Belém) Christophe du Castel (Agence française de développement) Alain Chaudron (Ministry of Environment and Forests, Cameroon) Bernard Chevalier (Agriculture Ministry, international affairs, France) Fredmar Corrêa, General Coordinator (Coordination secretariat for Amazonia, Ministry of the Environment, Brasilia)

xii

Acknowledgments

Alain Daumerie, Head of awareness training on the ECOFAC project (Cameroon) Laurent Debroux (World Bank) Patrick B. Durst, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Bangkok, FAO) Jean Estève (Office national des forêts) Keister Evans, Executive Director (Tropical Forest Foundation) Jean-Yves Grosclaude, Secretary-General of the FFEM (Agence française de développement) Olivier Hamel (Cirad-forêt) P. D. Hardcastle, expert Panel Member of the ITTO (Scotland) Rebecca Hardin, anthropologist (Yale University) Makoto Hoshino, Executive director (WWF Japan,Tokyo) Conceição D’Incao, sociologist (Belém, Sao Paulo) Untung Iskandar, Director (Bureau of International Cooperation, Forestry Ministry, Djakarta) Jean Prosper Koyo, former Forestry Minister in the Congo (FAO, Accra-Bujumbura) Nazaré Impiriba (POEMA, Federal University of Pará, Belém) Morris Kapong Senap, Project Manager (Kuching, Sarawak) Alain Karsenty (Cirad-forêt) Yoichi Kudora, Secretary-General of the Jatan (Japan Tropical Forest Action Network,Tokyo) Jean-Jacques Landrot (Association Technique Internationale des Bois Tropicaux) John E. Lenne, General Manager (CELOS, Surinam) Denis Loyer (Agence française de développement) Philippe Lena, geographer (IRD, Rio) Colin McQuistan, researcher (Grassroots Action Program, Thailand Environment Institute, Bangkok) Eishi Maezawa, Forest Officer (WWF Japan,Tokyo) William E. Mankin, Director (Global Forest Policy Project: Friends of the Earth—US National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club) Arnoldo Matos Lemos, Director (Division of Atlantic Forests, Ministry of the Environment, Brasilia) Kenko Minami (The Rainforest Foundation, Japan)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xiii

Parfait Mimbimi Esono, national working group on sustainable forest management and certification (Cameroon) Christian Morieux, Cultural Counselor (French Embassy,Tokyo) Cleto Ndikumagenge,Assistant to the Coordinator (IUCN, CEFDHAC program) Assitou Ndinga, Regional Coordinator (IUCN, Central African Program) Jean-Claude Nguiringuiri (IUCN, Cameroon) Marc Pain, Cultural Counselor (French Embassy, Brasilia) Jean-François Pajot, Director (Pallisco, Cameroon, Pasquet Group) Jose Penac, legal specialist on land tenure issues (NAEA, Belém) Geoffrey Pleydell (U.K.Timber Trade Federation) Marc Pottier, Cultural Attaché (French Consulate, Rio de Janeiro) Jorge Pozzobon, anthropologist (Goeldi Institute, Belém) Jean-Marc Roda (Cirad-forêt) Pascale de Robert, anthropologist (IRD, Belém) Francis Rougier, Director-General (Rougier Group) Gérard Roy, sociologist (IRD, Belém) Mihoko Uramoto, Secretary-General (Sarawak Campaign Committee, Tokyo) Eduerdo Viola, professor of international relations and environmental politics (University of Brasilia) Jacques Weber (Cirad-forêt) Yoko Yanagita, professor (Tokyo) Haïro Yanagita, student (Tokyo) Gerold John Zondervan,Teamleader of Forestry Division (Surinam)

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Introduction

How has mankind organized itself to ensure the durability of its natural resources on planet Earth? Very poorly, it seems, judging by the fate to which they have abandoned their tropical forests, the most extensive of all woodlands, the most populated, the richest in animal and plant species, the most abundant in economic resources, the most highly charged with dreams and creation myths. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were about three and a half billion hectares of forest in the tropics. At the end of the twentieth century, only half remained.1 Nearly 200 million hectares were lost between 1980 and 1995.The annual loss of natural forests in developing countries ranges between 13.7 and 15.5 million hectares.2 At the current rate, will most of the tropical forests existing today have vanished by the end of the century, to be replaced by an unproductive growth of stunted trees and scrub? Some high-minded people will object that there is not substantial proof to deduce from the evidence that the preservation of life on Earth is in jeopardy.The entire history of the forest is one of ebb and flow.The countries of Europe cleared their wooded areas for centuries without significantly altering man’s fate. Four centuries before the Common Era, Plato already bemoaned the sight of the land surrounding Athens, which he likened to “the bones of the wasted body,” and recalled that on the barren mountains of Attica “not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of a size sufficient to cover the largest houses.”3 Ancient Greece had its ecological refugees.Thousands of inhabitants were forced to move, driven away by the irreversible erosion of their land, which vegetation no longer protected from sun and wind. Random clearing undertaken by the Roman Empire all around the Mediterranean rim contributed as much as war and other catastrophes to the ruin of the most prosperous cities of Asia Minor.Venice’s ambition to rule the seas in the fifteenth century,

2


followed by the wars in the sixteenth century, dealt a fatal blow to the Mediterranean forest, most of which had been spoiled beyond recovery. Some areas were later reconstituted up until the mid nineteenth century. Today, the forests of the Mediterranean are once again in danger. In the South, overexploitation, clearing for agriculture, and overgrazing put heavy pressure on them. In the North, the decline of agriculture, the poor maintenance of unproductive areas, urban development, and tourism all increase the risk of forest fires. Several thousand hectares are destroyed each year. And yet on the whole, the Mediterranean forest is gaining ground in France, Italy, and Spain, albeit at the price of considerable financial outlay.4 For centuries, clearing of temperate forests exceeded the natural regeneration rate, causing severe deforestation that accompanied population growth, wars, and technological changes. Threats of shortages led France, and later England, to institute the first guidelines for forest management very early on. As a result, in 1346, an edict well known to all French foresters, issued by Philippe de Valois, established what amounted to a forest code, ordering the officers of the Office des Eaux et Forêts to visit wooded areas, investigate them and make sure they were exploited in such a way that “the said forests could perpetually be sustained in a good state.”5 In Charlemagne’s time, the forests of France covered approximately 30 million hectares. In the early fourteenth century, they had been reduced to 13 million.6 They only covered 6 million hectares at the end of the eighteenth century.Today, forest cover in France represents over 15 million hectares.The forest had doubled over the course of 150 years and was increasing by over 1 percent per year when the storm of December 1999 struck, devastating about 3 to 4 percent of the wooded area. These fluctuations are a good illustration, skeptics will point out, that one can only reason over very long periods. The time frame that characterizes man’s relationship with the forest is the long term of historians and ecologists, not the short term of politicians. Beneath this historical review lurks another, more sensitive argument that is more difficult to express openly: developing countries, where nearly all of the tropical forests are located, are in a situation comparable to that of Western Europe at the dawn of the Gothic period.7 As in medieval Europe, the forest there constitutes a fundamental aspect of the economy. To its population, it provides firewood, building material, traditional medicines, food, game and fish, fruit and roots, honey, and oils. To its powerful landowners in today’s autocratic states, the successors to the lords and clergy of yore, it provides an active and lucrative timber trade. As in the past, trees are threatened by the increased demand for

INTRODUCTION

3

wood due to demographic pressure, urban development, fire, and the diminishing of forestland as it is converted into farmland.And if the tropical countries allow their largest and most magnificent forests to be cut down in order to satisfy the demands of the world market and thereby obtain the foreign currency they require for their development, are they more to blame than were the warlords and monastic orders in the age of cathedrals? The state of the forests is the reflection of the circumstances at a given point in time. Trying to shape the trajectories and social dynamics they express through outside intervention would be illusory. The two foregoing lines of reasoning, which must be taken seriously and not dismissed with a mere wave of the hand, are sometimes supported by a disturbing syllogism that can be stated as follows: the Nazi regime and Hitler’s personal wish are responsible for the most extensive forest preservation legislation that humanity has ever known; this legislation exalted nature and broke with the tradition inherited from the Enlightenment that put man at the center of the universe; therefore, considering the forest worthy of interest in and of itself comes down to sharing in a fascist ideology.Thus, any champion of nature is likened to the extremists of “deep ecology” for whom there is no difference between the rights of trees and animals and the rights of human beings. Lumping these premises together is crude, but effective.8 These three arguments, the historical, the sociological, and the philosophical, intersect to support the idea that the deforestation of the tropics is inevitable and that ranking it among the global risks justifying an international political reaction is unwarranted. We obviously do not share this opinion, but it requires us to seriously reconsider the preconceived notion that the fight against deforestation is a self-evident major international cause. The first task of this book will be to examine how and why tropical forests suddenly became a global political issue only in the early 1980s, despite the fact that botanists in the 1950s who sounded warnings of the forests’ imminent disappearance were totally ignored9 and that so much skepticism endures today. The Political Construction of an Ecological Concept “How are you coming with that study on, uh . . . exotic wood, uh . . . precious wood, bois d’ébène (sic),10 rare species, building materials (!), or whatever it is you’re working on these days?” How often have we heard this friendly and somewhat mocking question from our political science colleagues! It sums up well the perplexity and the fantasies aroused by any mention of the tropical forest in our Western imaginations.

4


The object itself is indeed elusive. Specialists, ecologists, and botanists themselves confess to a lack of scientific knowledge about this highly complex system. Little is known about the tropical forest, its structure, its functioning, the pollination, germination, and regeneration mechanisms that go on inside it, even less about the species that compose it and their evolution. The terminology is unclear. When people think of tropical forests, it is usually the rain forest that comes to mind, a concept defined in 1898 by a renowned naturalist, the German botanist A. F. W. Schimper, who coined the word Regenwald.This term denotes forests that grow in a constantly moist environment with rainfall spread regularly over the entire year, having very few dry periods, high but not excessive temperatures, and a high average rainfall (100 millimeters per month or more). Since Schimper, several attempts have been made to improve the nomenclature of forest formations in the tropics according to various criteria: climate, altitude, composition by tree species. No terminology has taken a firm hold. The ordinary language used by international actors has won out over the scientific categories used by experts such as the FAO, and the expression “tropical rain forest” is being used in an increasingly broad sense. It includes both the evergreen forests in constantly moist regions and partially deciduous11 forests in less rainy regions where seasonal variations occur. It is defined, in fact, by opposition to dry, arid forests (in the African Sahel, for instance) and especially in contrast to the grassy, sparsely treed savannah, the nightmare for traditional tropical foresters.12 To simplify matters, many use the term tropical rain forest to refer to all forests included in the moist tropics where annual precipitation exceeds the quantity of water lost by evaporation and transpiration. For greater precision, some botanists have suggested the name “ombrophilous forest” to denote what Schimper had defined as rain forest. The expression is a nice one and we would have liked to keep it, but unfortunately it has not entered common parlance.13 The construction of the notion of “tropical forest” in international discourse is a construction of political ecology. It does not refer to a type of ecosystem that scientists have clearly identified. It refers to a certain type of social, political, and economic relations that structure man’s interactions with nature in a given environment. It is a useful category for drawing attention to the alarming rate of deforestation in certain areas of the world and to related problems there: search for new farmland, overharvesting of timber, illegal cutting, unclear logging concession policies, and pillaging of indigenous communities. Movements formed to protect forests, their political interlocutors, and ordinary citizens

INTRODUCTION

5

blithely confuse dry forests and moist forests, open forests and closed forests, and equatorial, tropical, and subtropical climates. Everything that lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, or a little above and a little below, is tropical forest, a beautiful and threatened natural resource for which something must be done. For champions of nature, to disregard the highbrow distinctions of geographers, botanists, and foresters and instead use the same term for everything, is a shortcut that “saves space, which saves paper which saves trees.”14 The problem is that, on a local level, the facts do make a difference. A generalizing rhetoric manufactured in Northern hemisphere countries seeks to apply the same recipes everywhere: solutions often inherited from silviculture lessons taught in Europe in the early 1950s, or worse, concocted by distinguished economists and crank ecologists who have never spent more than two days in an inhospitable rain forest. This discourse is profitable nowhere except in international circles where it feeds on itself. Lack of precision regarding the object generally results in a lack of precision regarding the geographical areas discussed. For nonspecialists, the tropical forest is more an object of fantasy, Paul et Virginie illustrated by Douanier Rousseau, than a specific reality. Oddly, it was not until 1990 that the first maps were published assembling the available data on the sites and state of extant tropical moist forests.15 Until then, the distribution of tropical forests throughout the world had only been roughly outlined.The international movement against tropical forest degradation and destruction developed without the benefit of precise geographical data, around themes that, as we shall see, were only indirectly related to forestry. In this work, we will refer to the tropical moist forests found in three main areas, which include approximately 70 countries: 23 in the Americas, 16 in Asia, and 31 in Africa.16 The first group comprises the Amazon and Orinoco basins, part of Brazil’s Atlantic coast, a section stretching through the Andes in Ecuador and Colombia extending to the south of Mexico via a large part of Central America. Brazil occupies pride of place, boasting the largest tropical forest in the world. Tropical South and Central America have the highest rate of deforestation per year in terms of total surface area covered.The Asian group, the second largest in area, includes what botanists refer to as the Indo-Malayan forests, probably the most beautiful in the world, most of which are located in Indonesia and Malaysia. It embraces the Philippines, stretches beyond the Malaysian peninsula to the countries of Southeast Asia, in Myanmar and southern China, including a strip of the western coast of India and Sri Lanka, only a few tens of thousands of hectares remaining in the Himalayan foothills of Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Assam in India.

6


We should also mention Papua New Guinea, the Melanesian islands and the remnants of dense forest remaining on the east coast of Australia (state of Queensland). Asia has the highest rate of reforestation, a meager compensation for overexploitation of its primary forests and for a considerable rate of forest degradation. The third region comprises the best-preserved ensemble of primary forests in the world, despite the recent and alarming acceleration of deforestation.17 Most of it is found in central Africa: ex-Zaire, Cameroon, Central African Republic, the Congo, and Gabon. Some stands are also found in Kenya and Tanzania, and especially on the east coast of Madagascar.The average rate of deforestation per year in tropical Africa is right now comparable to, even higher than, that in tropical South and Central America in terms of percentage of total forest area.18 All these forest complexes are located, it appears, in developing countries. Only two industrialized countries have tropical forests: Australia, with mainly deciduous forests and a coastal strip of rain forest of a little over 10 million hectares; and France, with tiny patches of high altitude forests in Guadeloupe and Martinique, and, especially, in French Guiana, where the slightly under 8 million hectares of forest land are one hundred percent natural forest,19 and this makes up 90.6 percent of the department’s total area.The question remains open as to whether either country has any reason to boast about its management of this heritage or has any lessons to give developing countries. One thing is certain: discussion on the tropical forest is an integral part of the North–South dialectic. It is, moreover, significant that the notion of tropical forest is used in international discussions mainly to talk about forests rich in internationally marketable timber. For these forests, the epithet “moist” is usually dropped. For other forest formations, the adjective is maintained: “dry,” “arid,” “mangrove,” “montane,” and so on.

The Ecological Functions of an Endangered Heritage Contrary to other objects of environmental concern, air or water, for instance, the tropical forest does not relate to only two or three specific sectors of life on Earth, health care, food, or trade. It involves every aspect of natural and social life.Tropical forests have such a multitude of functions—aesthetic and ecological, economic and cultural, financial and spiritual, scientifically analyzed and irrationally perceived—that the mere mention of them strikes an emotional or intellectual chord in all of us. Nearly all books on tropical forests, even the most technical, begin by evoking the impressions of a traveler discovering the luxuriance of this

Asia

R. GIMENO, P. MITRANO, Sciences Po Paris, March 2001.

Africa

Pacific Ocean Equator

1000 km Atlantic Ocean

Pacific Ocean

Indian Ocean

South America

Source: Rainforests, Weldon Owen Publishing, Sydney–San Francisco–London, 1993.

Map 1 Distribution of tropical ombrophilous forests

Australia

Current forest Original forest

8


strange world.Trees of many species close together whose upper foliage (the canopy) can form a continuous cover over 45 meters above the ground. Straight trunks buttressed by immense tangles of aboveground root systems, branchless for dozens of meters, reaching skyward and spreading their foliage 50 to 60 meters off the ground.All kinds of bark, sometimes thick and honeycombed, in which bees and countless other insects nest, sometimes smooth and surprisingly colorful, sometimes scarified, seemingly in tresses, often producing the familiar products of rubber, resin, and colored sap. Seeds fall like rain, from which oil, medicines, and even poison can be made. Berries, nuts, and fruit abound. In the Malaysian forest and the Indonesian archipelago, there are the famous Dipterocarpaceae,20 a family of often giant, luxuriant, broadleafed trees that have the particularity of blossoming and bearing fruit only once or twice each decade, turning the canopy into a vast field of flowers.This exceptionally rich genus provides logging companies with a particularly high cubic meter yield of excellent wood per hectare. The forest undergrowth in the plains hosts a profusion of vines, plants creeping toward the light, epiphytes21 where we find thousands of varieties of orchids, long beards of lichen, huge ferns, and moisture-soaked mosses. The Indians called this mysterious world “jangal” in Hindi, “the uninhabited world.” Jungle: the word stuck. Oppressing and bewitching, the tropical forest prompts a traveler to lavish superlatives. But also to confuse the whole with the part, which, more than anywhere else, is a mistake. Not only do the forests in the tropics differ considerably from one another, botanists having described over 40 kinds of rain forests, but the flora and fauna inhabiting them vary significantly with the tiers of foliage.The densest part of the forest flourishes and multiplies in the daylight-exposed canopy; beneath it grow shorter trees; in the underbrush where the light penetrates young trees and herbaceous plants make up the real jungle. Or the shade is so dark that nothing grows and it is difficult to make one’s way over ground strewn with dead leaves and a tangle of roots. Each of these tiers has its own microclimate, specific habitats, and certain types of forest (“the forest above the forest” in the words of Alexander Von Humbold, one of the great nineteenth-century naturalists of the Amazon). And it is precisely this diversity that makes the tropical forests so precious and so fragile. Unlike the temperate forests of Europe where the number of tree species does not exceed a dozen per hectare, it is not rare to count as many as 300 species per hectare in a tropical forest. In a mere dozen hectares of forest in Borneo, 700 species of trees have been inventoried, more than in all of North America, and many more than in all of Europe.22

INTRODUCTION

9

The tropical forest is the largest conservatory of diversity of life forms: diversity of species, diversity within species, diversity of ecosystems, in other words, what has been labeled biodiversity. According to the most conservative estimates, half of the earth’s animal and plant species inhabit the rain forest.23 All of nature’s fantasies, particularly in the animal kingdom, can be found there. An endless orgy of forms, colors, and unusual behavior makes up a world that is both dramatic and entertaining, surrounded by shadow and silence. It may repel or fascinate, but in any case it leaves no one indifferent. Many Westerners who worry about the fate of tropical forest, pay dues to the WWF24 or take part in boycotts of tropical wood products, have never entered a rain forest and never will. They most likely would not be able to stand more than ten minutes of the mosquitoes, the ominous buzzing, and the reptiles dropping from branches.Yet the idea that this world might disappear pains them.There is a poetic aspect, a bond with the dawning of the world, an inexhaustible source of oddities that is in danger of vanishing.This “existence value” is difficult to measure in economic terms, but it is deeply felt and emerges clearly from surveys. A poll taken, for instance, among consumers of four European countries (the principal market for wood and wood products in Europe: Germany, France, Italy, and Great Britain) showed that 70 percent of the respondents believed that the tropical forest cover is shrinking, along with the number of animal and plant species; over 60 percent of those polled were distressed by this state of affairs and 41 percent “not happy at all”; about 30 percent were unaware and had no opinion.25 A large majority is convinced that the main factor behind this alarming situation is industrial logging, an opinion around which most of the international debate on tropical forest management has crystallized, as we shall see. There is no easy answer to the question of what degree of biodiversity should be maintained. For some ecological fundamentalists, any form of life has an intrinsic value, be it a plant, an insect, or a human being. People weep over bromeliaceae, arthropoda, and orangutans, but are not moved at the sight of villages destroyed and communities forcibly displaced to make way for a “natural” park where monkeys can play, as has occurred in Kenya. More sensible ecologists point out that the tropical forest is a fabulous reservoir of genetic resources of which the nutritional and medicinal properties have hardly been explored. To let such riches disappear before they are even known would be a deplorable loss and waste for all of humanity. Furthermore, naturalists have shown that the high degree of tropical forest biodiversity involves countless interrelationships. Animal and plant species live there and form very complex

10


associations, each having a specific functional role: shelter, predation, pollination, the dispersion of seeds, nutrient supply, and so on.These associations sometimes involve a dozen species and are essential to the forest’s natural regeneration process. The disappearance of one species or group of species through disturbance of its environment inevitably leads to a change in the entire system. This is another difference with temperate forests, where the ecosystems are not as complex and the risk of destruction not as acute. The balance is therefore a fragile one and rests on a whole series of fairly obscure interdependencies that are even more misunderstood because most tropical fauna and flora are of rare species that are difficult to study. Among the species found there, only 10 to 20 percent are present in large numbers.26 While a limited, local disturbance can be beneficial to diversity, extreme fragmentation and massive deforestation can wipe out habitats and cause an often irreparable break in the ecological chain. In these cases, in fact, the regeneration process is very slow. In 40 years barren soil can again be covered with trees (secondary forest), but sometimes it is a real forest only in appearance.The trees do not display the same characteristics as in a mature forest, there is little plant diversity, and the animal diversity does not come back altogether. It takes many centuries for an ombrophilous forest to recover all its splendor. Tropical soil is poor, the arable layer is thin, organic matter is deficient. If rain forests give such an impression of abundance and exuberance, it is precisely because they contribute to forming and improving soil through their unique capacity to quickly recycle the nutrients given off by their decomposing organisms: leaves, insects, fungi, carcasses, and the like. Deprived of this sustenance by excessive cutting, the soil becomes depleted. Its nutrients are washed away by the brief and frequent torrential rains typical of tropical climates. Erosion sets in. Millions of migrant peasants, as we will see later, have been victims of this delusion that the forest is an inexhaustible source of land to tame and wealth to seize. Forestry experts know that a forest regulates water drainage and protects against flooding. The treetops hold rainwater, which evaporates into the atmosphere. Roots absorb water from the soil and release it into the air.They also help maintain watershed banks.Trees and stumps form natural obstacles to drainage. Forest destruction alters hydraulic regulation mechanisms. Where the presence of a root network, a layer of humus, and a dense cover once reduced surface water and facilitated water seepage into the soil, nothing any longer counteracts the force of precipitation or the rush of a river. Waterways overflow, floods are devastating.The local consequences are inestimable.Thus in China, the 1998

INTRODUCTION

11

floods caused the death of over 4,000 people (official estimates) and billions of dollars in damage.The government admitted the role of massive deforestation in the catastrophe by temporarily banning all cutting in old-growth forests in central and southern China. Restrictive measures were considered in other regions. A direct effect: a million people living off the timber industry were left without a job and the entire market for forest products was affected. Certainly, the connection between forests and flood control is more complex than suggested by the summary given here. It is important to know what species make up the forest in question, what activities are practiced there, how it is exploited (roads, excavations, etc.). Between hydraulic engineers and foresters, discussion is sometimes heated, the former accusing the latter of overstating the role of forests in flood prevention and deliberately spreading myths about forest hydrology to defend “their trees.”27 What we know for certain in any case, is that one way or another, deforestation influences water flow, and major fluctuations have dramatic consequences on water flora and fauna. Fish hauls in rivers and coastal waters are diminishing and with them the local inhabitants’ income and nutritional balance.This has been observed in the Amazon and also, very recently, in Cambodia, where nearly half of the country lives in the Tonle Sap lake region. Rice and vegetables are grown on its flood plains, and especially, “with its 200 species of fish, 70 of which are commercially important, the lake comprises 70 percent of Cambodia’s protein,” the Cambodian environmental minister reminds us.28 But illegal cutting has taken place here, to supply the timber trade, to open mines in the basin and to expand cropland with heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides. As a consequence, sedimentation has occurred in one of the main tributaries feeding the lake, increasing deposits on the floor of this naturally shallow water body.This could affect the country’s entire food balance. Those who are familiar with Cambodia also know the cultural and symbolic dimension of this great lake, what joy the “turning of the waters” festival brings to them, the boat races, the charm of the undulating landscapes, the dances, and the poetry associated with them. UNESCO and the United Nations rose to the occasion. They made their usual suggestion: create a biosphere reserve and classify certain zones as natural sites to be registered as world heritage. These are noble but imported ideas, the implementation of which depends, first of all, on the evolution of the domestic situation and the power games of local despots. Not only are the living conditions of local communities threatened pretty much everywhere in the tropics by the effects of ill-advised clearing but, more and more, the impact of deforestation on worldwide fresh

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water regulation and the global climate system is beginning to cause concern. Through retroactive mechanisms, the technical aspects of which will not be reviewed here, forests influence the exchange of energy between the soil and the atmosphere.29 They weigh on the various parameters of the climate system: the reflective power of the sun’s rays, water vapor transfer through the evaporation/transpiration cycle, storage and release of carbon dioxide, interception of powders in suspension (aerosols), and other processes.The slogan popular in the 1980s describing the Amazon as “the lungs of the planet” was absurd. Under normal conditions, a fully constituted forest absorbs as much oxygen as it releases into the atmosphere and emits as much carbon dioxide as it produces. The respiration of plants and organisms that feed off the biomass regulates the absorption of carbon dioxide by photosynthesis.30 Only properly managed forests in a growing stage enrich the oxygen content of the atmosphere by enabling a portion of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide to be stored as organic matter: wood. On the other hand, it is known that the large rain forest areas, the Amazon and the Congo basin in particular, play a major role in water and climate cycles. Simulations have shown, for instance, that the complete disappearance of the Amazon forest would lead to a decrease in precipitation in the already very dry Nordeste region of Brazil, by an average of about 0.5 millimeter per day and by 6 percent over the entire Amazon basin.31 The region’s average temperature could rise by four degrees. A decrease in rainfall, a rise in temperature: the climatic effects would be felt for thousands of kilometers, with local manifestations that are impossible to predict. Through a political sleight of hand that will be described in detail further on, the tropical forest has become a major issue in international negotiations on global warming and the greenhouse effect caused by anthropogenic gas emissions into the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide.The quantity of carbon stored in the vegetation and soil of dense tropical forests is, in fact, considerably higher than that of temperate forests.The figures are impressive: the biomass of a dense forest can store up to 250 tons of carbon per hectare. Out of the approximately 7.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide released annually into the atmosphere from human activity, between 1.5 and 1.8 come from the destruction of tropical forests through fire, burnings, and ruthless logging methods.32 It has been calculated that in the 1980s, the conversion of tropical forest areas led to the release of about 1.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (25 percent of the total anthropogenic emissions during this period) and that the world’s vegetation during this same period had assimilated approximately 1.8 billion tons, in other words a carbon

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“sink” function estimated at 200 million tons per year. This makes the tropical forest both a remarkable reservoir of carbon and a formidable source of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen oxides. Some industrialized countries that produce large amounts of greenhouse gases, the first in line being the United States, believe it would be less costly to help tropical countries to preserve their forests, especially to replant them with fast-growing internationally marketable species, than to make drastic reductions in their own emissions. The United States argues that it makes no difference where emissions reduction comes from. If it can be done without much effort and at a lesser cost in the Third World by sequestering carbon in the forests, the atmosphere will benefit as much as if it was done in a costly, and in any case unacceptable fashion for the populations of the North.The Kyoto protocol, adopted in December 1997, therefore provided for various mechanisms that would enable countries contributing to afforestation and reforestation in other countries to earn carbon dioxide emission “credits.” The decrease in volume of carbon dioxide obtained from the land in poor countries would count as being part of the national reduction effort to which industrialized countries were committed by international treaty. We will see that this ingenious proposition is not necessarily a guarantee against deforestation: how can the actual existence of these so-called carbon sinks be verified? Can cutting a primary forest and replacing it with fast-growing lucrative species be considered as reforestation? How can one be sure that reforestation projects comply with the criteria and indicators of “sustainable forest management,” and so forth. In any event, the ecological function of the tropical forest has already vanished as a value worth preserving in and of itself. It is a potential commodity that can be produced, sold, and exchanged on a totally fabricated market.

The Stakes of Multifunctionality The tropical forest is the environmental sector in which international law has gained the least foothold. Whereas for most topics of world interest—pollution, protection of the marine environment, conservation of wild species, protection of the ozone layer, climate change, transportation of toxic waste—states have agreed to commit themselves to a minimum of international obligations, no binding text has been produced to indicate what is permitted and what is not in forest management from an international community standpoint. What is

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more, the desirability of such a text has been the subject of years of diplomatic debate to which there is no end in sight. The only international commitment specifically devoted to forests is a declaration adopted in 1992 during the Rio Conference, entitled, in the purest United Nations style, the Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests! Like all multilateral resolutions, this Statement is a multilayered political compromise that entitles all parties to some satisfaction and commits no one to anything specific. The tropical countries and the forest industry obtained recognition for principles by which states have the sovereign and inalienable right to exploit their forest lands pursuant to their needs (principles 1a and 2b); “efforts should be made to promote a supportive international economic climate conducive to sustained and environmentally sound development of forests in all countries” (7a) and that “open and free international trade in forest products should be facilitated” (13a). Defenders of forest communities secured the assurance that “national forest policies should recognize and duly support the identity, culture and the rights of indigenous people” (principles 2, 5, 6, and 12). Developing countries obtained recognition for the principle of aid: “specific financial resources should be provided to developing countries with significant forest areas which establish [conservation] programs” (7 and 10). All functions of the forest are mentioned: satisfaction of “social, economic, ecological, cultural and spiritual needs of present and future generations” (2b), “maintaining the ecological processes and balance at the local, national, regional and global levels” (4), but the emphasis is clearly placed on the productive aspect of the forest and forest areas: the role of the forest in “meeting energy requirements [. . .] and the demands for fuelwood for household and industrial needs” (6a); the right to convert forest areas “for other uses” within the country’s overall socio-economic development plan and based on “rational land-use policies” (2a); plantations are strongly encouraged:“The role of planted forests and permanent agricultural crops as sustainable and environmentally sound sources of renewable energy and industrial raw material should be recognized, enhanced and promoted. Their contribution to the maintenance of ecological processes, to offsetting pressure on primary/old-growth forest and to providing regional employment and development with the adequate involvement of local inhabitants should be recognized and enhanced” (6d). The Statement of Forest Principles as well as a chapter on deforestation in Agenda 21, also adopted in Rio (chapter XI), are mainly of interest in that they give a panoramic view of the lofty considerations

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15

surrounding the theme of the forest at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The prolixity of these documents reflects the impossibility of reaching an agreement on a few guiding principles. Instead of presenting a series of commitments to fulfill, the two texts list the questions to take into account if substance is to be given to the new notion of “sustainable development” as applied to forestry under the term sustainable forest management (SFM). Through these long enumerations, a problematic can be seen taking shape. Developed countries emphasize the forest’s ecological and social functions while pushing for its economic valuation in keeping with a free trade perspective. Developing countries link SFM to the larger question of development and demand that their efforts to promote sustainable management be supported substantially through aid and technology transfer. For their inhabitants, economically and socially dependent on the forest, they insist on knowing what alternative options are available to them if they are no longer allowed to draw on forest resources (principle 9b of the statement). Has any progress been made toward defining a global policy against tropical deforestation since 1992? We will try to gauge it in a contradictory context. On the one hand, a sensitivity to environmental questions has developed on an international level, a debate has taken hold. “For 50 years the forest was exploited mindlessly, now that has to stop” (interview): this remark by a World Bank representative fairly well sums up the current attitude.The set of principles laid down in Rio constitutes a sort of common system of reference that neither public nor private timber companies can disregard.The notion of sustainable forest management has become omnipresent, and the constant reference made to it weighs as an obligation on the various actors. On the other hand, the cleavages on the international scene remain deep: between developing countries and industrialized countries, between the forest culture of old western European countries and other forest cultures (in North America especially), and between conservation advocates and supporters of commercial logging. Can the notion of sustainability, on which all of the players appear to agree, be defined in anything but very general and scarcely operational terms?34 According to a generally agreed definition, “sustainable development aims to satisfy the needs of present generations without jeopardizing the capacity of future generations to satisfy their own needs.”35 Applied to forests, the diplomatic discourse has begun to sound like an incantation: Forest management should not impinge on the sovereign right of states to control the use of their land . . .

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Particularly the right of developing countries to draw benefit from their basic resources to finance their development . . . And decrease poverty . . . But the preservation of species and biological richness must be taken into account . . . As well as the rights of women, indigenous peoples and local communities . . . The refrain serves to keep an attitude alive and acknowledge the global importance of the tropical forest. It is not a closed environment reserved to foresters, with no connection to the socio-political environment and other sectors of public life. It is not just a source of raw materials for trade and industry, a source of income for states and political elites, a resource from which millions of people derive their means of subsistence, a reserve of biodiversity that concerns all of humankind, an ecosystem where several million indigenous peoples live—huntergatherers for whom man and forest make one. It is all of that at once and forms a system. All French foresters have learned a three-headed formula—protection, production, accommodation—that sums up the forest’s threefold function: ecological, economic, and social. In the European tradition, shaped by Prussia and France in the nineteenth century, forest land is a multifunctional space that must accommodate multiple uses.The dissociation of functions in space, often recommended by North American foresters, is considered “an intellectually simplistic option,” “a debatable option that reflects a lack of technical expertise.”36 The question remains as to whether this schematization into three functions and the philosophy of multiuse management are relevant to tropical regions. The debate fuels a recurrent quarrel between two approaches to conservation. One holds that the only effective conservation strategy is to reserve specific areas for specific uses. It distinguishes between protection and production and campaigns actively in favor of designating and extending protected areas set aside entirely for the protection of all aspects of biodiversity.37 This is the position of a great number of NGOs and to a large extent, the World Bank, who announced “an alliance” with the WWF, on the following aims: to establish 50 million hectares of new protected areas by 2005; secure effective protection for an additional 50 million hectares of forest already classified as reserve but actually severely threatened because of poor management; bring 200 million hectares of productive forest under sustainable management and certification.The other approach advocates a sustainable management system applicable to all forests, except for the very rare cases of primary forests that should be

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considered “true monuments of natural heritage for all humanity” and treated as such.38 In this perspective, the conservation of species and industrial logging are not considered incompatible, on the contrary. Advocates of sustainable land use point out that if the tropical forest is not developed from an economic standpoint, it will be burned, pillaged, and laid to waste because it is considered unimportant. It is not surprising that the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), the aim of which is to facilitate trade in and market access for tropical timber, is a staunch advocate of forest management plans. In 1990, it persuaded its members to adopt an objective that was just as ambitious as it was illusory: by the year 2000, all exported timber would come from sustainably managed sources (Bali Declaration, Year 2000 Objective). Ten years later, less than 1 percent of this timber came from sustainably managed forests, but everyone was talking about sustainable management. The three basic functions of the forest are also found in tropical rain forests. Protection: tropical forests play a role of regulation and preservation through their biological diversity and their interactions with the air, the atmosphere, soil, and water. Production: the forest produces wood for lumber and fuelwood (not to forget Pernambuco wood from which bows for string instruments are made) as well as over a hundred marketed nonwood forest products: fruit, fibers, rubber, resins, various chemical substances, of which the average annual market value ranged from 5 and 10 billion dollars in the 1990s.39 It is a source of job-creating activities: agroforestry, hiking (“ecotourism”), hunting. Accommodation: the forest is a living environment that is a repository for cultural and spiritual heritage, and traditional forest-related knowledge.40 The difference from temperate forests, with respect to which the discussion of multifunctionality developed, is that everything is on a much larger scale. In tropical forests, the biomass is greater, the area is larger, the share of timber in national revenue more significant, the population higher, poverty, administration deficiencies, corruption, waste, and other signs of underdevelopment more obvious. Consequently, the stakes are much higher, the interests more conflicting, the clashes more violent. Compatibility of functions is virtually impossible to ensure in a given forest area without arbitration and a strong enough administration to enforce it. Multiuse forestry is an appealing idea.Whether it can be credibly implemented remains to be seen. Sustainable Development and Political Rhetoric Theoretically, the stakes of the debate on multifunctionality are extremely high. All of international society is faced with the delicate

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question of reforestation and planted forests, and consequently carbon sinks and negotiable gas emission permits. The multifunctionality issue raises particular concern among timber professionals, who have been steadily on the defensive since environmentalist rhetoric “hit them over the head” (interview).Theoretically, the extension of protected areas is an obstacle to tree felling, road building, mining, unrestricted tourism, and hunting. It is in direct conflict with traditional economic interests. Still theoretically, SFM plans are devised on the basis of a balance among all the stakeholders: environmental activists who keep an eye on preserving biodiversity; political leaders who seek to secure revenues from wood to develop their country in the best of all worlds, but usually to ensure themselves personal gains, keep their generals quiet, reward their clientele, and conduct their “belly politics”;41 forest concession holders who seek to maximize the return on their investments and their shareholders’ dividends; local communities who believe that the forest belongs to them and that they have a right to hunt game, eat meat from the bush, gather firewood, farm their little patch of land, even if it means burning trees “that cast shade on our plantains” (interview, South Cameroon). In this context, foresters not only have to ensure rational exploitation of wood resources, they must also take into account the entire ecosystem and the web of relations between man and nature.That certainly marks a change in their profession! In fact, the exploitation/protection debate remains largely theoretical. Seen from the field, it is even surrealistic. The economic and political cost of effective protection is considered to be too high by most leaders in developing countries, especially if the forest contains lucrative timber species for the international market or can be converted into farmland for landless peasants (Brazil, Indonesia). In 1996, only 8 percent of tropical forests were designated as protected areas. Out of these 8 percent, less than 1 percent was safe from various processes of degradation: illegal logging, fire, and poaching.42 The conditions for such a protected-reserve project to work are so difficult to bring together that successful examples are an exception.This raises the question of why a project is almost never abandoned once it is underway, despite its obvious shortcomings. We will see that the sociology of organizations offers some clues to the behavior of NGOs and major international bureaucracies. Nearly one-third of the existing tropical forest is officially allocated to timber production.43 By all estimates, the surface area of tropical rain forests used for harvesting will only increase, especially in Africa and South America. If they cannot be protected and if they are not to disappear, the only possible solution remaining is forest management.

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Considered from a technical standpoint alone and viewed purely as a matter of silviculture, forest management is feasible, as all foresters will say. Given adequate harvesting and regeneration technologies, they insist that multiple use of the forest will not diminish its overall production potential: “A sustainably managed forest will, therefore, provide timber on a sustainable basis, while at the same time ensuring a continuous supply of fuelwood, food and other goods and services.”44 Reduced-impact logging techniques are being experimented with. Forest management plans are being tested.Various management systems are being compared. A mad rush to define “criteria and indicators” of good management is underway. Experts constantly roam the planet while international organizations compete, through “processes” and “guidelines,” to define the legitimate approach and impose their definition of sustainable management standards. NGOs are not left by the wayside, particularly the Forest Stewardship Council, an emanation of the WWF, which, with its own list of criteria and indicators, has set up a private certification system that aims to put pressure on logging companies by sensitizing Northern hemisphere consumers to the demands of sustainable management. We will see that the forests thus certified are mainly forests in the North, heirs to a long tradition of “sustained yield” and fairly poor in biological wealth. In tropical forests, there will always be some species of monkey, bird, or butterfly likely to be disturbed by the mere fact that trees were felled and their habitat modified. Consequently, it is always possible that an environmental organization will go on the warpath against a company in the name of biodiversity.That makes private certification as random as it is costly and a rather unattractive alternative to the industry. All this effervescence has had little effect up to now on the rate of deforestation and the means to remedy it. Outside the circle of forestry engineers who understand one another but who have lost their monopoly in discussion of the subject, the concepts remain vague. The very notions of forest, afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation have different meanings depending on who is talking.The search goes on in vain for the famous “epistemic community” of which certain American international relations scholars have shown the importance in the learning and changing processes. As regards both the data on the causes and extent of deforestation, and the means to slow it, the information is incomplete and diagnoses vary. Consultants are thus ensured a long future. Forums follow in succession, reports pile up, and the tropical forest continues to deteriorate. The truth is that it is impossible to determine in advance a general level of “sustainability” for all forest areas and how to guarantee it.

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Sustainability varies depending on the state of the physical environment, the type and structure of forest, the density of cover, the makeup of species. It varies above all depending on the state of society. Sustainable management is not only a matter of silviculture. Since the forest supports a set of composite values—economic, spiritual, and environmental— each society, and each party involved in this society, is bound to enhance one value over another in determining how forest resources should be utilized.These values vary over time: after having wreaked havoc in its forest, Malaysia, for instance, devised a very effective policy of sustainable management on the peninsula. On the other hand, Malaysian companies continue to lay the Sarawak to waste and are seeking to gain a foothold in the Amazon and the Congo basin with equally devastating methods. An Amazon Indian tribe long presented on the Western world’s media stage as “the gardeners of the forest” one day set about cutting wood indiscriminately and selling it illegally.The much-touted stakeholders, an obligatory reference in the new international discourse, adapt in unsuspected ways and are difficult to plug into any one model once they have discovered how the market operates and the hundreds of ways to profit from it. Despite the ecumenical verbiage heard in international conferences, no broadly operational agreement on the forest’s functions is possible on a global scale.The whole problem is, in fact, to know how to rank these functions at a given point in time and in a given space. It cannot be decreed from on high and once and for all. As soon as the question is how to manage a specific forest area, conflicting views clash.The hierarchy of needs to be met and the choice of means to satisfy them varies according to the respective position of the actors within the forest system. Governments and sponsors, timber companies and local communities, NGOs and international institutions, economists and foresters, all have their own analysis, interests, and strategies.The policy implemented depends on the interaction of all these actors. No one can determine the outcome beforehand because they cannot know exactly what will come into play, when and with what assets.Twenty-five years of international effort can, nevertheless, provide some indication as to the conditions for success and, conversely, the ingredients for a foreseeable failure. On the basis of these experiments, some of which have been successful, a minimum of global knowledge could be shared to guide political action. Implementation comes up against considerable foot-dragging and long-standing interests, and it has trouble taking hold, even among those who claim to be experts.45 The case of the tropical forest is not, in fact, unique.The same gap exists, for instance, in the areas of global warming and air pollution in general, between knowledge derived from scientific

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observation and the consequences political actors and consulting experts have drawn from it. Putting sustainable management into practice is considerably more difficult than the “all you have to do is . . .” used to introduce ideological arguments—a militant plea against the “merchandizing” of the world and the evil multinational logging companies or, on the other hand, a blithe invocation of the virtues of a market economy and neo-institutionalism. For the former, this means salvation through the great wisdom of local communities who know what is good for them and how to preserve their living environment; for the latter, it envisages sustainable management through economic efficiency, security of usage rights over a long period and a minimal institutional framework.These noble certainties disregard two essential factors: the particularities of timber harvesting in tropical countries and the vulnerability of political and social institutions in these countries. In response to the anti-globalization “all you have to do is . . .” claims, it is important to remember that 80 percent of the wood cut in tropical rain forests is used for fuelwood by the local population, that threequarters of the deforestation registered in the Treaty for Amazonian Cooperation member countries is a result of the extension of agricultural land; and that most of the annual production of lumber is for the domestic market. Only a small portion of the wood harvested, between 13 and 16 percent, is put on the world market. This mitigates both the role of international trade in deforestation and the impact of boycotting campaigns against tropical timber called for from time to time. But to the “all you have to do is . . .” crowd of free-marketeers dogmatically explaining that if the resource has a value and if users’ rights are guaranteed, they will all take care of the tropical forests which will then be as well managed tomorrow as the temperate forest is today,46 it must be explained that the logic of rational choice in tropical forests does not necessarily lean toward sustainability. But even if selective cutting techniques are used, which are theoretically more environmentally sound than clearcutting, the collateral damage is considerable. Over 40 percent of the timber cut by logging companies is left on the ground, it being too expensive to transport and not profitable enough if it is not an easily marketable species. In general, the low return on tropical timber encourages ever greater cuts. Recent studies have shown that the higher the value of timber rises for logging companies, particularly through fiscal measures intended as incentives to curb waste and make better use of the resource the more the companies cut, even in areas previously considered of little interest. The belief in market incentives postulates

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that private operators have every interest in maintaining a sustained yield if the main obstacles to the free market are lifted: ban on log exports, concession-holders’ obligation to process part of the timber harvested, and so on. Empirical evidence has yet to confirm this assumption. On the other hand, studies abound showing that the quest for profitability is hardly compatible with sustainable management.47 In many regions, profitability is on the decline: the most sought-after species on the market have been cut, leaving only secondary species of less interest. Only by going deeper and deeper into the forest can large-diameter trees be found, which increases transportation costs. Between two rotations, the forest does not have enough time to regenerate entirely. The trend is to cut as much as possible on increasingly large tracts of land. Moreover, the weakness of the institutional framework does not facilitate implementation of sustainable management. A large portion of the timber put on the market does not come from duly registered forest concessions but from illegal logging, which is increasing in volume nearly everywhere. Institutional weakness, often combined with the connivance of government officials, encourages this illicit trade in a context where the demand is soaring and the resource is shrinking. Few states have the wherewithal to enforce their legislation and monitor the implementation of management plans. For instance, in Gabon, one of the richest timber producing countries, an officer from the Minister of Water and Forests is in charge of overseeing an average of 864 square kilometers of forest concessions and does not always have a vehicle at his disposal. Elsewhere the situation is worse: in Cameroon, for example, a single field agent for the Ministry of the Environment and Forests is responsible for inspecting an average of nearly 21,000 hectares of concessions in the East province, where logging activity is the most intense.48 We must not forget, finally, that in many countries population pressure is high. Depending on the estimates, anywhere between 180 and 300 million people depend directly on the forest for their livelihood. Conflicts between the various users of the forest are frequent and often violent. To deal with these tensions, there are few means of meting out justice, few conflict resolving mechanisms, and little social regulation. Enforcement of the best-designed forest regulations drafted with the aid of the best international experts comes up against such realities as these. Tropical Forests and Global Politics The politics of tropical forest preservation presents a wide array of entangled problems, providing a fantastic field of observation for the

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international relations specialist. It offers an opportunity to study how global society works, on the basis of concrete cases that raise almost every currently debated issue in the field. At the risk of disappointing those who opened these pages searching only for the method to halt the decline of the forests, this work is primarily a study in international relations, it cannot help but be. How could a political scientist who, like everyone else, came across the problem of deforestation a few years ago, settle an issue with a pinch of social science when the best forestry experts have admitted their dilemma and the limits of their knowledge? Only a deliberately militant approach would justify such presumptuousness. The powerful charms of the tropical rain forest are not lost on the author, but her intention lies elsewhere. The aim of this study is to contribute to the ongoing reflection about the new sociology of international relations at a time when the discipline’s fundamental paradigms—state, power, sovereignty—are being challenged, and the mechanisms of transnationalism which are tending to replace them are not yet clarified. In doing so, our objective is not so far removed from the concerns of both professional and amateur foresters. First, because the international dimension is omnipresent in forest management in tropical countries: the battle of standard-setting surrounding sustainable management is being fought on an international scale and new watchwords are being imposed from the outside; the actors involved in logging or forest conservation are often foreign to the country; the influence of international financial institutions and bankrollers is unwavering; tropical timber is a commodity traded on the international market and subject to all the ups and downs of the world economy.Then, because the multifunctional nature of the forest implies much more complex dialogue than elsewhere between the human sciences and the other sciences (climatology for instance). Lastly and above all, because there is a basic question posed to everyone: how collectively to meet a challenge that concerns all of humanity in a politically fragmented world subject to local rationales that are both interdependent and contradictory? The question is not new and does not solely apply to the problem of deforestation in the tropics. It is standard in strategic studies (how to face the nuclear threat, the spread of violence) and, in economic and financial matters (how to manage collectively trade instability and deregulation). It has recently been brought to the fore by the handful of international relations specialists who are interested in ecology, worried about the accumulating threats to the working of the essential components of the biosphere, and, it must be said, often attuned to environmental NGO activism in the United States, Canada, England, and the Northern

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European countries. Since the 1980s, deforestation has ranked among the major environmental threats, along with global warming, ozone layer depletion, the concentration of heavy metals in the air and water, the destruction of marine habitats, fresh water shortages, and loss of biodiversity. An analysis of how international society reacts to this particular risk sheds light on the way it reacts, in general, to challenges facing the planet. So far, putting environmental problems on the international agenda has not altered either practices on the international scene or the theoretical approaches to their analysis. Nor have the entreaties of doomsayers or slogans drafted by UN bodies—“our common safety,” “One Earth,” “our common future”—managed to make environmental threats the focus of the international debate as a priority to be dealt with using emergency measures.They have merely helped put more subjects on the multilateral agenda that spark no more or no less interest among political leaders than the dozens of other subjects of low politics49 and are usually left to the routine attention of technical ministries and subordinate ranks of the administrative hierarchy, except for a few brief gesticulations in which chiefs of state and government occasionally take part. Despite the enormity of what is at stake, the environment constitutes nothing more than just another a pile of files.50 The more the subject is stripped of its exceptional features to become a mundane object of international politics, the more its study instructs us about the way the world works. Thus, the treatment of the subject “deforestation” is less a reflection of the particular object “tropical forests” than it is of the interactions structuring the world society at a given time. The purpose of this book is to lay bare these interactions so as to understand how an international environmental policy is constructed and, in so doing, to test the paradigms the discipline of international relations is proposing today. The discipline is in a crisis. To a large extent, it suffers from having been bound for decades by lines dividing it into competing schools with little exchange between them, each wheeling endlessly on itself ad nauseum. Originating mostly in the United States (and to a lesser extent Great Britain), these cleavages have taken over the entire academic community.To be taken seriously and become part of the networks that matter in the discipline, any international relations specialist is enjoined to identify which school he or she belongs to according to the nomenclature used in English-language textbooks.When environmental questions emerged on the world scene, the existing currents were not questioned from within.51 Scholars merely applied their favorite models to these

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new issues.To analyze the global politics of tropical rain forest preservation, suffice it then to dip into the stock of available approaches and find the answer before even undertaking a study.“Realists” will view the forest as a natural resource coming under state sovereignty. Access to the resource is subject to competition, the outcome of which depends on the power each of the various actors has to wield.The “liberal neo-institutionalists” will see the question as a collective problem for which institutions must be set up, leading in turn to a more or less formalized agreement which satisfies all parties to some extent and which will be christened a “regime.” Soft neo-Marxist “structuralists” will find an explanation of forest degradation in the structure of the world economy and the weakness of civil society organizations, consumer associations, and social movements in the face of multinationals and the major financial institutions. And the really smart ones will proclaim themselves “postmodern” and find in the English translation of choice morsels from Foucault and Derrida a few relevant passages to justify deconstructing a discourse that constructs the discourses which deconstructed the tropical rain forest as an instrument of domination of the population. A still minority fringe of the discipline is seeking to free itself from these yokes, while acknowledging the significant contributions of each. Along the lines of what John Burton and the famous School of World Society52 have sketched out, it is exploring paths to a sociology of international relations adapted to the context of globalization and its series of new challenges, including that of worldwide environmental threats.This is the approach that we espouse, first by taking a look at what system of actors has shaped the idea of the tropical forest as a global common good justifying the political involvement of international institutions, the places and mechanisms of bargaining, the patterns of influence leading to its placement on the agenda.We will then analyze the type of regulations produced by international activity, how they came about, their content, their ethical and political implications, in particular, in the relations between industrialized and developing countries. Lastly, we will examine the reception of these informal rules, the various aspects of the interaction between the global level where international rules are defined and the local level where they must be implemented, and analyze the two routes most commonly proposed: salvation through the economic valuation of the forest’s functions and its link to the market; or participative management and new forms of political action.

CHAPTER

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The Construction of a Global Issue

The tropical forest has become a global political object, meaning, an object of international negotiation leading to decisions likely to affect worldwide political and economic practices, following a scenario that is virtually the same for all environmental issues affecting the entire planet.1 At the outset of the process are people, usually scientists, who detect the risk of a change in the functioning of a component of the biosphere. Studies are conducted to prove or disprove the existence of this risk and a debate commences among experts. The discussion phase among specialists can be extremely long (as it was regarding anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions) or fairly short (as in the case of determining the role of CFCs in the shrinking of the ozone layer).This phase may be shorter if the nature of the risk detected coincides with related subjects of concern that have already mobilized social actors, who then take on the new topic and interpret it (“translate” it) in such a way as to reinforce their current opinion and stances already taken on similar areas, an operation Pierre Lascoumes has aptly described as “transcoding.”2 The decisive turning point in this process is generally an event that serves as a catalyst to draw media and public attention. “Policy entrepreneurs”—a composite group of public figures, organizations, and interest groups that invest resources and implement strategies, some to convince political officials to take hold of this new issue, others to persuade them to do nothing about it—then come onto the scene.3 Scientists are sought out from all sides.Transnational coalitions form and proclaim themselves mediators between science and policy-making activity.

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The existence of international organizations, particularly the United Nations, canalizes the process, but only partly. These organizations provide tribunes for policy entrepreneurs, fora for discussion among the parties involved, and bodies for legitimating policy. More importantly, the repetitive nature of the game that is played there maintains the question on the international agenda long after the dramatic effects of the catalyzing event have dissipated. Rarely is the object defined (what are we talking about?) and qualified (what are the issues?) in a single forum, and government bodies today can no longer claim exclusivity over it.When an environmental problem is successfully made into a global political object, numerous networks and public and private organizations run away with it; the places and topics of discussion are scattered. Rivalry arises over how the problem should be approached (what does it mean?) and addressed (what tools should be used to analyze it?). Ordinary citizens are in a quandary before the vast array of interpretations offered to them. Industrials and other economic players have trouble determining from where the “legitimate issue” will emerge and how it will be imposed on them; the least cynical and most sensitive to variations in public opinion grow wary and begin to seek out the most useful potential partners. Expectations with regard to public action gradually become more and more confused. Governments are urged to act, set common goals, and negotiate compromises, but they do not hold sway over the definition of the problem or its ramifications, largely beyond their control. In a game that globalization and instant access to information have blown totally open, countless actors come into play to give their interpretation of what is at stake. They operate in different public arenas, at different moments, and have different assessments of the present and future situation.This is true of all global issues, but even more so when it comes to environmental risk, a complex subject that is never purely technical in nature but also reflects the various stakeholders’ conflicting choices, fears, and aspirations. Biosecurity offers a good example today. It is discussed in a variety of public and private fora, and the stakes of the issue shift as biotechnologies evolve and multinational corporations adjust their strategies in the face of erratic shifts in public opinion and divisions within states. For the tropical forest, the object appears to be clearer: there were once splendid trees and luxuriant forest ecosystems that are deteriorating and disappearing.This must be stopped.Yet the definition of the issue, its scope and its consequences, has been slow and awkward, and when deforestation is ranked among the serious global threats, it is not certain that everyone is talking about the same thing.

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Tropical Forests, International Jungle Versions of Deforestation

The worldwide alert to the extent of deforestation and its consequences for the entire planet was late in coming: it was not sounded until the 1980s. Not, however, for lack of prior warning: we have already mentioned the work of British botanist Richards,4 who in 1952 predicted that the tropical forest would vanish within a century. In the mid-1970s, geographers here and there imparted some disturbing observations.5 NGOs in the field protested against various obvious signs of degradation on the local level. But scientific research into changes in the components of the tropical forest remained rare, badly disseminated, and unfamiliar outside a small circle of specialists. On the international level, only the local or indirect implications of deforestation were taken into account. In the context of the major North–South dialogue of the 1970s, forest degradation was acknowledged as an aggravating factor of underdevelopment due to soil erosion and the resulting loss of agricultural productivity. It was not held to be a matter of global concern.The major forest countries, Brazil in the lead, actually strived to maintain the status quo. In 1972, they managed to draw attention away from the matter at the Stockholm Conference, the first major U.N. Conference on the environment. And in negotiating Principle 21 of the final declaration acknowledging states both their “sovereign right to exploit their own natural resources pursuant to their own environmental policies,” and their “responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond their national jurisdiction,” the underlying concern was not the Amazon forest but the huge Itaipu dam and its repercussions on the environment in Argentina. In the 1970s, the only text global in scope having anything to do with the forest was related to wetlands of international importance and aimed to protect waterfowl in mangrove and swamp forests.6 CITES, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, signed in 1973,7 had not yet revealed its potential for interfering with the timber trade.8 At that time, the theme of birds, elephants, and big monkeys in Africa had greater emotional appeal than tree species did. Yet alarming estimates of the rate of tropical deforestation were beginning to circulate. One of the first, published in 1976 in Unasylva, the journal put out by the FAO, estimated the rate of tropical deforestation at over 11 million hectares per year, with a span of 11 to 15 million.9 To reach these figures, first, a list of countries to be included in the tropical moist zone (65) was drawn up, the available statistics on the annual rates

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of deforestation in these countries were gathered, and then the average rate of deforestation was calculated and extrapolated to all of the tropical moist forests. But the statistics used pertained to only 13 countries, together representing no more than 16 percent of this forest type (neither Brazil nor Indonesia nor Cameroon was included, for instance). The study was criticized, naturally,10 but it became a reference. The upper estimate, 15 million hectares, became a widespread figure. The FAO director-general, in a speech to the 8th World Forestry Congress (1978), translated it as “the destruction of 30 hectares a minute” (which actually would have been closer to 16 million hectares per year).11 Soon appeared the expression that was to catch on like wildfire, picked up by Madonna and other show business stars when the emotional content of the tropical forest started being exploited to the hilt a few years later: “The rainforest is being cleared at a rate of one football field a second” or “8 football fields deforested a minute” and even “20 fields a minute.” And when Greenpeace was asked about the circulation of these whimsical figures and its own latest assertion: “a football field every two seconds,”12 the reply came bursting forth:“The numbers are not important, what is important is that there is huge destruction going on.”13 When it comes to love, who’s counting? In 1980, the FAO officially estimated the reduction in the surface area of tropical forests at 11.3 million hectares per year on the average, including 7.5 million for dense moist forests.Ten years later, its estimates wavered between 17 million (1991) and 15.4 million (1992).We will see further on how difficult it is to compile reliable data on forest area and the deforestation rate in tropical countries. It should simply be kept in mind that the discussion engaged on the world scene was on the basis of undependable figures, from 100,000 to 250,000 square kilometers of forest lost per year depending on where the estimates came from. All, nevertheless, indicated a clear trend of tropical forest degradation. The extent of it was debatable but not the reality. In the mid-1970s, all the experts had been alerted, the U.S. and E.U. member countries were beginning to ponder the matter, and studies were commissioned. In 1979, the U.S. Department of State held an international conference on tropical forests; in 1980, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) organized an expert meeting on the topic. At that time and throughout the entire 1980s, most of the research aimed to measure forest cover and the rate of deforestation in the tropics was undertaken by the FAO Forestry Department and an independent British consultant, Norman Myers, a major figure in forest protection activism. This pugnacious and persuasive personality is the archetypal

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policy entrepreneur in environmental matters. His first report, drafted in 1980 for the American Academy of Sciences, announced similar findings to the figures published by the FAO14 (except for the rate of deforestation in Asia, which was enough to spark wide-scale debate).The second, published by Friends of the Earth in 1989, was more pessimistic in its percountry evaluations but, not being based on the same methods, it did not give the same information.15 The main contrast between the two was the caustic tone and comments accompanying the second report, questioning the FAO, its overly traditional approach and its organizational culture that was more oriented toward food and agriculture issues than forestry matters.16 Indeed, in 1988, a series of dramatic events occurred almost simultaneously, a single one of which would have been sufficient to stir international public opinion, but a combination of them put the forest on state and international organization agendas once and for all, provoking massive mobilization of individual actors and environmental organizations. By the end of the 1980s, deforestation was ranked among the threats to the planet, and the competition surrounding the conceptualization of the legitimate problematic had begun. The first phase of the competition took place between technicians, international civil servants or their hired consultants, international organizations, and private research centers. It resulted in a Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP), the first international response to the challenge of deforestation, a remarkable piece of bureaucratic craftsmanship. The second phase witnessed massive mobilization of environmental protection organizations and the media dramatization of the most diversified champions of the tropical forest.This resulted in a multiplication of versions of deforestation, which were “transcoded” into a wide variety of registers. In the third phase, the major forest countries entered the fray, trying to recover and assert their seriously battered sovereignty. On the eve of the Rio Conference (1992),17 things had developed into a free-for-all. The TFAP: A Techno-Bureaucratic Production The results of the first systematic assessments of tropical forest resources and the extent of deforestation by country caused a real shock. The FAO,18 the most qualified U.N. agency in forestry matters, grouping the most professionals, with the greatest amount of interdisciplinary expertise permanently at its disposal, this selfsame FAO, was not prepared for this. It found itself urged by member states and various U.N. agencies19 (the UNEP as well as UNESCO)20 to suggest guidelines for

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action, play a more active role in establishing priorities, ensure better coordination of bilateral and multilateral aid, in short to devise a global policy for tropical forests. The two bodies that brought together the organization’s member countries every two years, the tropical countries for the Committee on Forest Development in the Tropics (CFDT), and all of its member states for the Committee on Forestry (COFO), were to become the discussion platforms from which to conduct urgent international action. FAO set to work, outlined a five-area action program,21 and obtained its approval by the 9th World Forestry Congress (Mexico, July 1985). At the same time, the World Bank took the initiative of putting to work the WRI,22 a brand new private policy think tank, with a view to setting up a program to combat the destruction of tropical rain forests. An international task force was organized (of which Norman Myers was part) including World Bank and UNDP23 representatives as well as bilateral development aid agencies. The FAO and the WRI published “separate, but complementary”24 reports in October 1985. The two initiatives were finally merged in 1987 and the TFAP was officially launched in Bellagio under the joint sponsorship of FAO, the World Bank, the WRI, and the UNDP. It was decided that FAO would be the lead agency in coordinating the Plan’s efforts and implementation.25 The WRI’s major contribution was to convince FAO to associate the major environmental NGOs, which it considered adolescent troublemakers and had little use for them, with the launching of the Plan and invite them to Bellagio.Well-established international NGOs—the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), the IUCN (World Conservation Union), the International Institute for the Environment and Development (IIED)— were invited to this first strategic conference on action to be undertaken in tropical forests. These organizations soon demanded “equal responsibility and participation in all stages of implementation.”26 They were indeed to hold pride of place. For all the participants, the primary more or less avowed aim of the Action Plan was clearly to provide a framework within which to strengthen international action in the forestry sector in tropical countries with increased funding and investments. European countries, the main source of aid, made much ado of this.The community of sponsors used the TFAP as a frame of reference in its distribution policy of multilateral and bilateral aid. The budget allocated ($1.6 billion per year over five years) was considerable: it tripled the annual aid going to the tropical forest sector. In fact, actual foreign aid to this sector doubled between 1985 and 1990 ($1.3 billion in 1990), which attested to broad

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international support for the TFAP. It is hardly surprising in these conditions that over 70 tropical countries (with the notable exception of Brazil) agreed to be active partners in the Plan and that they demonstrated their willingness to take part in formulating National Forestry Action Plans (NFAP), national applications of the general process. The Plan was drafted in such a way as to reflect everything that was being said at the time on the role of forestry in development and the satisfaction of human needs. It promised a lot, in particular to reconcile at once conservation, local communities’ wood needs, economic prosperity, and the demands of “sustainable” management. Five priority areas of action were to be strengthened: agroforestry and watershed management; protection of species; sustainable management of natural forests; improvement of logging methods, wood use and marketing techniques; research and education. The stated aim was to reduce deforestation by tackling what was proclaimed its primary cause: itinerant agriculture and forest clearance by indigent peasants.The international community had a mechanism by which to send aid; the funds were there; the institutions adaptations had been made, including the creation of a Forestry Advisers Group meeting every six months to discuss the financial backers’ response and strategy.27 The TFAP had all the features of a legitimate international process. All was for the best in the best of national, technical, and bureaucratic worlds. And yet, as soon as the first National Forestry Action Plans (NFAP) elaborated under the aegis of the FAO began to be published,28 a salvo of criticism was fired from local NGOs and echoed by large environmentalist federations. The neat international legitimacy was blown to pieces. Actually, despite all the rhetoric in which they were packaged, the NFAPs contained no innovations tackling the root causes of deforestation, but merely strengthened and institutionalized ongoing practices. Far from taking into consideration all factors contributing to deforestation in a given country from a multisector standpoint, they were limited to a very traditional approach reducing forest management to a mere question of forestry. Is this any surprise? The civil servants and consultants in charge of them were foresters. They implemented practices they were familiar with and were trained for: the plans to enhance the tropical forests were entirely based in production and industrial development.At the time, most tropical foresters were European.They were trained in silviculture and forest economics during the colonial period.They had arrived in international circuits at a time when the dominant model in development economics was the “take-off ” model and sustained-yield production which was to ensure the transition to modernity.29 They naturally “translated” the question put

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to them according to their area of expertise: the art of developing tropical timber production and harvest, adapting forest management principles used in Europe to ensure sustained forest yield. In their rationale, the right strategy to fight deforestation was to encourage the use of timber resources to satisfy local needs by developing the market for the timber industry. Goods and services extracted from the forest were promoted for the common good. Three very negative reviews published in 1990, one of which was commissioned by the FAO itself from three independent consultants,30 tainted the international credibility of the Action Plan to such an extent that it had to be revised and renamed, more modestly, Program. Among the numerous shortcomings stigmatized by the three reports were (1) a misunderstanding of the deep-rooted causes of deforestation and the little attention paid to administrative and political reforms that would help remedy it; (2) disregard for indigenous peoples and their lack of input in a process guided exclusively from on high; and (3) the disproportionate role given to donors and major development banks in a supply-sided approach giving priority to industrial projects and bilateral agricultural and institutional aid projects of the donor countries. All three reviews concluded that the rate of deforestation had increased since the launching of the TFAP, the more moderate stating that this was “despite” the TFAP, the more radical pinning the blame on it. Five years after the first version of the TFAP was published, FAO found itself isolated and under fire from all sides. The WRI, cofounder of the process, published memo after memo, each more critical than the last, before announcing that it was putting an end to its contribution. The WWF also decided to withdraw.The World Rainforest Movement, followed by several NGOs, launched an appeal for a funding moratorium. The U.S. Senate got involved and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee asked the World Bank to suspend funding for projects through TFAP. Under considerable pressure from American environmental NGOs, the G7 entered the Houston summit in July 199031 calling for a revision of the TFAP to place more emphasis on conservation and protection of biodiversity.32 The attacks focused particularly on the FAO, the lead agency accused of not seeking advice outside of forestry circles, of being cumbersome, bureaucratic, and ill-equipped for implementing such an ambitious plan despite its claim to being the most competent and specialized in the area. It was recalled that its forestry department received less than 5 percent of the total FAO budget and that it did not have the means to fulfill a new large-scale task in a sufficiently energetic manner.

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This avalanche of criticism came within a particularly unfavorable context for U.N. system institutions.All of them felt threatened since the Reagan administration had launched a general offensive against the United Nations. In 1985, the United States withdrew from UNESCO; in 1986, they challenged, and jeopardized, the whole U.N. funding system and unilaterally reduced their contribution to the general budget. Like UNESCO director-general M’Bow, FAO director-general Edouard Saouma was exposed to countless attacks orchestrated by American agencies that were more or less tied to the Congress (including the notorious Heritage Foundation). In short, the FAO was the weakest link in the TFAP mechanism. In the competition among international organizations, the launching of the TFAP was supposed to demonstrate its preeminence. It instead relegated FAO to the background. The Plan was revised and renamed; new principles were incorporated to defuse criticism, but there was no profound restructuring and international attention waned.The disappointed NGOs turned their attention to the new International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) that had just set up offices in Japan in 1986, thinking that they could perhaps be more effective there. Finally, in the forestry sector as elsewhere, it was the World Bank that asserted itself and become the dominant locus of power and expertise. Today, nearly all the tropical countries have undertaken national plans under the strict surveillance of the World Bank and the NGOs working in association with it. The paradox of the TFAP is that, although the Plan had everything to satisfy logging companies and the timber industry, and they had so far been treated with relative consideration by environmental groups, the implementation of the national Plans drew world attention to their activity.The tropical timber trade was pinpointed the world over as the main culprit of deforestation in old-growth forests. The report by the World Rainforest Movement, the most radical in its protest, argued, not without reason, that substantial development of a local wood product processing industry would lead to ever-increasing pressure on the resource, leading to ever increasing timber harvests and forest clearing. Significantly, it was from Asia that criticism against the logging companies began. It is on this continent where the rate of deforestation due to industrial exploitation was the highest and where the most obvious devastation had taken place in what are the most beautiful forests in the world.33 The World Rainforest Movement was founded in 1986 in Penang (Malaysia) following a conference on the crisis of forest resources in Asia and the Pacific region. It waged a campaign against the activities of

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Japanese companies in Southeast Asia and initiated a worldwide petition asking the United Nations Secretary-General to call a special session of the United Nations General Assembly on tropical deforestation (1989).34 Its criticism of the TFAP, drawing on the documented analysis of nine National Forestry Action Plans, earned it a worldwide audience. Its arguments were validated and taken up by local and international NGOs everywhere. Along with the first translation attributing deforestation to indigenous needs for wood and farmland, another version of deforestation took hold, pointing to logging company activities as the major cause behind the phenomenon. Since the TFAP was international, and claimed to be “the” international community’s response to a threat, the scope of which had just been discovered, it was the most widely discussed international forest program attempting to supply a logical framework for the use of forest resources. But it was not the only one. In the 1980s, numerous initiatives were supported by various private and public organizations, with a view to reconciling development of the private sector and the fight against deforestation: National conservation strategies (IUCN), National Environmental Action Plans (World Bank), forest master plans (The African Development Bank), forest resource management projects (World Bank), and so on.What all these projects had in common was to be directed from on high, dominated by foreign experts and development agencies, and to impose a version of the issues in which neither the local communities, nor the indigenous peoples, nor the peasants, in short, none of those whose living conditions would be considerably altered by the projects, had participated. Versions of Survival: From Chico Mendes to Indigenous Peoples As long as the experts, civil servants, and Northern hemisphere NGOs were to remain the sole mediators between the tropical forest and the international scene, the defense of the rain forests could appear to be a rich-country concern spurred on by an urban middle class that dreamed of a lost paradise. It was easy for Brazil and Malaysia to proclaim that their forests would never be Europe’s and the United States’ “botanical garden.”When grassroots movements began to organize in these forests and make themselves known in international networks, it became obvious that deforestation was not only a problem of silviculture and forest economics but also a social, cultural, and moral issue. Destruction of the dense moist forest threatens the existence of millions of people who depend on its resources for their subsistence.

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In many areas, it jeopardizes the survival of indigenous peoples. But for that issue to emerge onto the international political agenda, men and women involved in struggles in the forest had to perform a transcoding operation to translate their objectives into a register used by foreign ecologists. We will review two significant examples: Chico Mendes for the cause of the Brazil’s seringueiros (rubber-tappers); and Kayapo leaders Raoni and Paiakan for their own interests but globally serving the cause of native Amazon Indians in the West’s imagination. A seringueiro is a worker who every day follows alternating tracks (estradas de seringa) that connect as many as two hundred rubber trees growing naturally in the forest. He makes an incision in each tree, attaches a little beaker to collect the latex, and heats the liquid rubber thus obtained to make it coagulate and form balls that can weigh from 30 to 50 kilos.35 When Chico Mendes started working at the age of nine, the life of an Amazon rubber-tapper was akin to that of a slave, being totally dependent on the plantation owner. He was required to sell the owner all of his production and had to buy everything he needed at the seringal store.Any attempt to unionize was repressed, the “guilty” parties were executed publicly. Schools were forbidden, the workers could neither read nor do arithmetic, they went into debt and, if they ran away, the seringalista’s hired killers (pistoleiros) would be set on their trail. Chico Mendes’ struggle was first a struggle to free the rubber-tappers from these miserable living conditions. He joined the union in his region, founded a local union in his village, for a time was member of the Brazilian Communist Party (underground at the time), and later joined the Workers Party. He organized rent strikes to force employers to show property deeds they oftentimes did not have, persuaded the seringueiros to sell their rubber in bulk instead of in small quantities to dismantle the system of artificially low prices, and so forth. Life was tough and dangerous, but remained in harmony with the environment. In the state of Acre where Chico Mendes campaigned, the rubber-tappers did not destroy the forest.They found game, fruits, and nuts that complemented their diet (when they gained access rights), fibers from which to weave hats and baskets, bark to use for fuel, leaves to weave nets, and hammocks. Chico Mendes’ aim was to teach these workers that they had rights, help them to pull out of the vicious circle of debt that enslaved them, and create cooperatives and schools to ensure their development. In the 1970s, the struggle took on a new dimension.The drop in rubber prices spurred landowners to sell off their plantations to cattle ranchers from the south who arrived in droves.The seringueiros were not only in danger of being crushed by debt, their very livelihood was at stake.

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The ambition of the local political class was to convert the basic economy based on rubber and Brazil nuts into a “modern” economy based on livestock and meat production. Brazil then undertook a vast program to settle the Amazon, building roads into the new El Dorado, offering it to landless peasants who had nothing left to lose, to the big landowners, and to major mining and logging companies drawn by particularly attractive fiscal incentives. Occupy the land by all means available, clear the forest and raise cattle, such was the ambition of many.And if that did not work, the big landowners would sell their titles at a much higher price than what they had bought them for, causing a surge in property speculation. The forest thus conquered was burned. Indian tribes were expelled from their traditional habitat, sometimes in collusion with the National Indian Foundation (FNUAI) theoretically responsible for their protection. Violence was rife: between squatters, “legal” landowners and speculators, conflicts were settled with guns. Fraud, intimidation, and aggression were all used to chase away the seringueiros who made up the majority of the rural population in the state of Acre. This law of the jungle was the target of Chico Mendes’ revolt. His method was the empate, a spontaneous form of protest he did not invent but one that he used as a systematic defense weapon. It is described as follows: When a community is threatened with deforestation, it contacts other communities in the area. Everyone gets together in a big meeting in the middle of the forest and appoints teams responsible for taking the lead in confrontations with the workers cutting the trees with chainsaws, all of this in a peaceful and organized fashion. These teams also try to convince the workers hired by the landowners to leave the area.The seringueiros also have a tendency to demolish the workers’ camps to make them leave . . . One important thing is for the whole community—men, women and children—to take part in the empate. Women stay up front to keep the police from shooting at us.The police know that if they open fire, they will kill women and children. In 1988, Chico Mendes added:“The trouble is, the landowners are only asking to use violence. I’m worried sick right know because they have indeed started killing people.We know that they plan to kill the workers first, then go on and attack the movement’s leaders.”36 Six months later, Chico Mendes was murdered. He had just turned 44. Chico Mendes was unknown outside of his area until the last three years of his life. He was never as famous as after his death. For over

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twenty years, his fight was local and produced few results. Arrested several times by the police, sometimes tortured, always threatened, an unlucky candidate in political elections, he never gave up: between 1975 and 1988, he recounted, he and his followers organized 45 empates.“Four hundred of us were arrested and about forty were tortured, and a few were killed, but we succeeded in keeping more than three million hectares of forest from being destroyed. Thirty of our blockades failed and fifteen worked, but it was worth it.”37 Sooner than some of these companions, Chico Mendes had understood that rubber-tapping was more or less a thing of the past and that his movement needed to shift its aim toward ensuring the seringueiros a livelihood in the forest by exploiting many other products the Amazon forest had to offer besides rubber and nuts (fruit, oil, fibers, etc.) through a cooperative system that would allow the gatherers to manage their own economy. For the cooperative to function, its members had to be educated. Schools and cooperatives: that in essence was the Projeto Seringueiro. Two encounters were to help get the project off the ground. Maria Helena Allegretti, a Brazilian anthropologist who had come to the Amazon on the heels of a specialist on the Acre Indians, had just finished her dissertation on the seringueiros. She was appalled and affected by the situation she found there. She had interviewed Chico Mendes in the course of her research and decided to help him to the best of her ability. Tony Ross, a British political scientist, came to the Amazon in the same research movement. He was responsible for several dozen projects monitored by Oxfam38 and took an interest in the Projeto Seringueiro. Both of them helped Chico Mendes put it together. Oxfam contributed funds to build the first schools, the cooperatives took care of the rest. The first school (partly for adults) was opened in 1982. Around two dozen schools for rubber-tappers were built in the state of Acre, despite the fierce hostility of the cattle ranchers and periodic police raids searching for subversive material. The return of democracy in Brazil fostered a rise in activism and ideas of social justice.At the regional level, the fight of the seringueiros for land rights and justice began to be the fight of all the deprived and destitute: Indians, rural workers, landless peasants. On the national level, a little community of environmentalist intellectuals, among them Maria Allegretti and Tony Ross, began to form and found support abroad. Returning from a trip to the United States where they had met with American activists fiercely opposed to the new settlement plan in northwestern Brazil (the Polonoreste Project)39 and determined to undermine the granting of a loan that Brazil was negotiating with the

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major international banks to finance it, Maria Allegretti persuaded Chico Mendes that his cause was an environmental one. He was in need of support and funding. If that meant changing his tack and presenting himself as a champion of the forest, why not? All the more so since, like all forest dwellers, he had an emotional bond with his surroundings. Transcoding for outside purposes was easy to do. They could continue to talk about social justice, land tenure, and freedom to work, but the emphasis would be placed on the empates to “save the trees.” The rhetoric about land also changed. In 1985, during the first major national gathering of all of Brazil’s rubber-tappers, Chico Mendes called for the creation of “special rural modules.” He had in mind a type of land reform tailored to the Amazon, creating areas reserved for exploiting forest products where the seringueiros could live and work without fearing eviction and tree felling, somewhat along the lines of land reserved for Indians.The notion was translated by an anthropologist into “extractive reserve.”40 The expression stuck, and everyone attributed it to Chico Mendes who in turn adopted it. Chico Mendes’ plain talk and his dual message—“we are fighting to defend the forest, but we are also making reasonable propositions”— corresponded exactly to what the American environmentalists defending the Amazon forest needed to advance their cause in Washington. The building of the Transamazonian and its attending flood of miserable wretches and terrible predators made for a story too full of ash and blood for the public at large to bear. Only a handful of biologists, anthropologists, and horrified documentary filmmakers showed any interest in it. With Chico Mendes, they finally had a positive hero. Filmmakers and journalists dashed in. A British director, Adrian Cowell, a great Amazon specialist, followed his every footstep and made him known (“Without Cowell, Chico Mendes would likely have remained a small-time labor leader in the Amazonian backwater of Xapuri,” writes Revkin).41 In 1987–88, Chico Mendes was invited to the United States. He received international awards. He went to England. The Ford Foundation took an interest in him. The “champion of the forest” was even hailed by the New York Times. And although the role of champion of the “lungs of the world” sometimes exasperated him,42 he knew he needed backing, that the meager means his movement had available were all donated from abroad, that his only supporters were environmentalists, while back in the field, things were going from bad to worse. Murders were multiplying. He could not count on either the police or the courts. His death was foretold. It came on December 22, 1988.

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The murder of Chico Mendes by the hired guns of a large landowner prompted a wave of indignation. This tragic end, commented at great length by the media, was the catalyst that finally raised saving the tropical forest to the ranks of major world causes in its most dramatic form. In Europe and the United States, the fad effect was intense: the tropical forest had to be “saved.” Show business rode away with the theme, and the big media circus soon found, in indigenous peoples in general, and certain tribes of Brazil in particular, new symbols of innocence and ecological purity. Against a backdrop of forest fires, record high temperatures and concern about global warming, the West felt a great need for “virgin” forests and good savages to be the “gardeners of the forest.” British rock singer Sting thought he had found both in the Xingu park and the Kayapo tribe that inhabited it. During a well-prepared Amazon Woodstock43 that brought in 600 Indians who had come to protest against the building of dams that threatened their territory, with just what was required in the way of feathers, machetes, and ritual face paint, and over 200 journalists come to cover one of the most fashionable events of the season (Prince Charles, Brigitte Bardot, the King of Sweden, and other celebrities were expected), the singer announced the creation of the Rainforest Foundation, which aimed to finance the creation of an immense natural reserve in the heart of the Amazon, encompassing the Kayapos reserve. At his side was the Kayapo chief Roani, soon swept off by the rock star and his wife on a European tour where he was introduced to such figures as François and Danielle Mitterrand, the Pope and the Queen of Spain.Ten years later Raoni was seen photographed on the steps of the French presidential palace in Spring 2000 with Jacques Chirac, great admirer, as everyone knows, of “primary” arts. The image of the Indian chief with his feathers and his protruding lips was, of course, seen as that of the primitive who had come to plead for the right to remain in a natural state in the heart of his forest. It was very difficult to get hurried commentators to admit44 that Raoni was an old warrior, an old hat at all forms of struggle, including hostage-taking, since the 1960s, that he had negotiated advantageous agreements with gold-diggers and logging companies, contributed to the development of his community’s villages where some houses are built as permanent structures, adorned with parabolic antennae, and that Internet and video cameras were weapons of struggle that the Kayapos use with great skill.45 In the Western imagination, a good Indian is an Indian untouched by commercial trade. All this rhetoric about the forest as a “garden of Eden” and indigenous peoples “guardians of the forest” that must be “saved,” all these

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microphones picking up prefabricated speeches, all these cameras trained on prearranged pictures, the entire game of mutual exploitation is pregnant with mutual disillusions that inevitably occur. Paiakan’s example is a sad one in this regard. This Kayapo leader fought with acumen and obstinacy to defend not only the rights of his community, but also those of the Yanomami Indians. It is he who organized the big rally at Altamira. On an initiative of Friends of the Earth and Survival International, he had previously toured Europe and the United Nations to win backing from banks, political leaders, and logging companies in his fight against the plans for a dam across the Xingu River. His cause had been heard. He had other legal and administrative achievements to his credit that affected people’s lives in very tangible ways.The Western press took hold of him and made him a Walt Disney style world ecological hero. Four years after Chico Mendes, he was awarded exactly the same distinctions: a medal from Ted Turner’s Better World Society and the Global 500 prize from the UNEP. It was his turn to be the one to “Save the Planet.” When Paiakan was suspected in a bizarre rape case, and especially, when it was proven that Raoni and the Kayapos had struck an alliance with the logging companies and were selling wood illegally, the love affair between the Indians and show business came to a halt: “The Indians try to fool you all the time and tend to see Whites as a source of resources rather than a friend,” Sting fumed. “He earned a lot of money on my back. The Brazilian Indian does not need him,” retorted Raoni.46 Good savages are sure not what they used to be. No anthropologist today would be surprised to hear a pygmy ask someone wanting to photograph him: “You want me standing or dancing?” and set his price accordingly.47 Economically isolated autonomous groups are now a rarity.48 All of them maintain trade relations with the outside.The state of poverty and insecurity in which forest peoples generally live constantly incites them to bargain, even with anthropologists who come to study them and with volunteers who come to “help” them: “I’ll be happy to answer your questions and tell you what you want to know, but when you come back, bring me medicine, this and that.” When it comes to obtaining international support, they have few assets to bargain with unless they capitalize on the expectations of those who put them in this position. And when the latter clearly indicate the role, postures, and message expected of them, then is not conforming to them a rational strategy? “I’ll give you the image of me that you need; in return I expect you to provide the means to pursue my real aims.” This complex interplay of mirror images does not occur everywhere. Nothing of the sort occurred, for instance, when Sarawak peoples started

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blocking roads (1985–87) to try to halt the destruction of their forest by logging companies exporting to Japan, the largest tropical timber importer in the world. Asian environmental defense organizations then bluntly criticized the Japanese production system and campaigned in favor of a boycott on tropical timbers. In a matter of only a few years, the indifference of the Japanese press and the repressive policy employed by Malaysia got the better of this attempt to question the relationship between dominator and dominated in plain terms. The Sarawak Campaign Committee was very active in Japan right before and right after Rio. The fact that the United Nations had declared 1993 “International Year for the World’s Indigenous Peoples” facilitated its access to the Foreign Ministry and local administrations. Realizing that they were making no headway and especially, that their correspondents in Sarawak had disappeared or physically could not communicate with them, the activists grew discouraged and turned to other causes.49 The Dayaks and other peoples of the Indo-Malaysian forests have been pillaged, displaced, and uprooted (unfortunate pun) without creating an international scandal. Claudine Friedberg rightly points out, “It is the smallest populations, those in the Amazon, that are the most talked about.”50 She puts forth some possible explanations: “several ethnic groups are increasing in size and these are the ones that have the strongest political and identity claims.” And, fundamental in our belief, she adds: “We can presume that the West’s newfound awareness of Amerindian cultures is all the greater since its responsibility for their disappearance is more flagrant. In addition,Amerindian peoples feel all the more solidarity among one another in their struggle when it is picked up by the media . . .”51 This newfound awareness and the complex interaction between Western Whites and Amazon Indians have nevertheless set trends that have caught on in every continent.They prompted consideration for the role and rights of indigenous peoples at a time when preparation for major international talks about the forest was underway. The necessity of constituting a unified actor to be included in these discussions led indigenous peoples to organize, first locally, then on an international scale. Everywhere unions were formed in the wake of the Union of Indigenous Peoples founded in Brazil in 1980 (which joined forces with the seringueiros and the cablocos52 nine years later to form the Alliance of Forest Dwellers for which the work of Chico Mendes had paved the way): Hill Dwellers of Thailand, the Cordillera Peoples of the Philippines, and so forth. In preparation for the Rio Conference, an intercontinental network of indigenous tropical forest dwellers was

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created at a large rally in Penang, Malaysia,The International Alliance of Indigenous-Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests (February 1992). Peoples from every continent belonging to 30 different countries were represented. Since its creation, the Alliance has been more than a stepping stone attempting to secure direct representation for member peoples in various official and informal international fora. It serves as a think tank that develops and implements concrete proposals. It has become a significant lobby wherever forestry and sustainable development principles are discussed. A high point was the meeting in Leticia, Colombia in 1996, the “International Meeting of Indigenous and Other Forest-Dependent Peoples on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests.” A declaration and statement of principles for action was drawn up. A process was initiated, the translation of which can be seen in a new discourse on participative management, traditional knowledge, the empowerment of indigenous peoples, respect for their demands and aspirations, and so on. There is also talk of taking into account land tenure in defining Criteria and Indicators of sustainable forest management, of enforcing intellectual property rights and other protective measures for forest-related knowledge. And here matters get serious, because the security of investments in research and exploitation of molecules for the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries is likely to be involved, a situation that generally calls for the fairly rapid creation of a legal framework because investors like rules . . . . Provided that there are investors, that is. This may seem like U.N. gibberish. If one ponders the sorry fate met by most forest dwellers, certainly it is. But it is worth considering that, for one, this gibberish did not exist ten years ago and its content is not devoid of meaning or substance. Moreover, history has provided enough examples of incantatory statements that have wound up as international regulations for these achievements to be taken seriously, however modest they may be. In any event, they translate a definition of the forest that implicates indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent peoples. Practices still need to be developed, but the reference point is there and cannot be disregarded.

The Global Register: The Greenhouse Effect and Biodiversity Public interest in the tropical forest and the fate of its inhabitants would not have reached the same heights if images of fire and devastation had

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not been broadcast by all Western television channels, fitting into a general context of vague concern for the state of planet Earth. The year 1988 was the hottest year on record in North America. Drought ruined harvests in the Middle West and the great plains of Canada. Fire devastated the forests.Yellowstone National Park was not spared. Northern Europe also suffered. And it was precisely at that time that the first satellite photos began to come in.They were published the world over and showed the fire season in the Amazon in 1987, a record year for deforestation in Brazil. (Five years earlier, the largest forest fire in contemporary history had, in the space of a few months, destroyed nearly 5 million hectares of forest in east Kalimantan, Borneo without causing any particular emotion.) This time on all television screens viewers could see thousands of fires burning simultaneously, enormous pillars of smoke meeting in the sky, and long black gouges in the forest. At the sight of these dramatic pictures during a scorching summer, Americans and Europeans who were sensitive to environmental questions could hear the coals of the Amazon forest crackling like an echo to their own anxiety. People began to make a connection between these spectacular fires and global warming, which scientists were talking about more and more, to the extent that the U.S. Congress began hearings on the subject.The public suddenly became aware that this massive destruction of the forests by fire resulted in the emission of enormous quantities of greenhouse gases: mainly carbon dioxide, but methane and carbon monoxide as well. They learned that out of the 7.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year, 1.5 to 1.8 billion tons came from forestrelated human activity (some studies put this number higher still). They learned that the aboveground biomass of tropical rain forests, those most subject to deforestation, is often more than 175 tons of carbon per hectare, and that when the forest goes up in smoke, a large portion of this biomass winds up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.53 This damage to the forest is therefore a source of greenhouse gases.The journalistic clichés referring to the “lungs of the world” are a means of explaining that trees capture atmospheric carbon through the process of photosynthesis and respiration: this is the sink function. The sequestration of carbon in the form of cellulose or lignin is the reservoir function. The economic and political consequences of this regulatory function had not yet been factored into the bargaining in climate change negotiations. They came on the agenda with the Kyoto conference in 1997 and were to be placed at the center of confrontation between the United States and Europe in the years following. At the end of the

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1980s, everyone agreed on the need to preserve greenhouse gas sinks and reservoirs and to manage them properly, to fight forest fires and everything else leading to a degradation of biomass stocks that endangers the planet.54 For a good fifteen years, the seeds of a global environmental crisis seemed to be accumulating. In 1972, Club of Rome economists predicted that fossil fuels would run out and the world’s industrial capacity would decline uncontrollably within a century if nothing was done to reverse the demographic, pollution, industrialization, and agricultural production trends.55 Demographers announced an intolerable growth in human population and spoke of a population bomb. Some merrily played on people’s fears by announcing astronomical figures: 12 billion in 2035, 24 billion in 2070, and so on.The most serious viewpoint estimated a world population of six billion inhabitants at the end of the twentieth century, a projection that has turned out to be true. It was presented as intolerable: never could the planet feed that many people, rich countries would be overrun by migrants from the Third World, the Western growth model would never survive.56 Oceanographers noted increasing deterioration of the marine world. From the shipwreck of Torrey Canyon (1967) to the great Alaskan oil spill (1989), not forgetting Amoco-Cadiz (1978), particularly striking images in the media of birds drenched in crude oil and polluted natural coastlines were a repeated reminder of the risks and scope of marine pollution.Then came the turn of physicists, geophysicists, and climatologists to sound the alarm. They had discovered a hole in the ozone layer and a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At the same time, new risks were announced for human health and the preservation of species, due to greater exposure to the sun’s rays and inevitable major climate changes to occur, who knows when, in who knows what proportions, with effects no one can predict.The accumulation of these threats and their spread over the planet are indeed distressing.A new concept— “environmental security”—has begun to circulate in international circles.57 It does not really have any operational content, but it reflects an international awareness of both the fragility of the balances that ensure life on earth and the global dimension of environmental risks. The Forest as World Heritage At the end of the 1980s, the environment had become a global issue. It was no longer merely a question of preventing local damage, remedying disturbances by sector, saving elephants or blue whales.What was at stake

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was the biosphere, that thin envelope including the earth and the atmosphere in which life is naturally spawned and which encompasses all living things.58 Significantly, at the start of the year 1989, Time magazine chose as figure of the year “Endangered Earth.”59 The tone was new and the vocabulary changed. From the old idea of protecting nature, there has been a shift to the notion of preserving biological diversity, renamed “biodiversity” for more media-friendly concision. Protection of the living world was no longer a ludicrous fantasy of somewhat amateur naturalists. Nor was it merely the easily ignored obsession of botanists and zoologists enamored of their subject. Human activity, growth patterns, and a population increase, constantly creating greater needs for natural resources, all cause the decrease in the variety of living species in the biosphere to continue at an unprecedented rate in world history. Ecological disasters—desertification, pollution, flooding—have displaced millions of people.60 The question is clearly raised as to how far the human race can go in depleting biological resources on land and in the ocean without jeopardizing its capacity for development, even its very survival. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted in Rio in 1992 officially declared the conservation of biological diversity a “common concern of humanity.”61 The translation of tropical deforestation had shifted at that point to another register. In addition to the loss of economically valuable timber resources and the destruction of environments and habitats on which many populations and their cultures depend, the destruction of tropical rain forests began to imply the extinction of millions of living species lost forever to medicine, agriculture, industry, and . . . to our contemplation.62 The issue had become global. Regarding what policy to conduct to preserve biological resources, the CBD made little precise contribution.63 Each state party, “in accordance with its particular conditions and capabilities,” pledged to integrate conservation of biological diversity in its programs and take in-situ conservation measures “as far as possible and as appropriate.”The tropical rain forest is not mentioned per se but, given that it shelters 50 to 75 percent of living species, it obviously constitutes the main field of application for the recommended systems: strict nature reserves or specially managed protected areas, specific regulations, protection or rehabilitation of natural ecosystems and habitats, identification and monitoring of activities likely to have adverse effects on biological diversity (art. 7 and 8), and so forth. This text is both very vague and potentially very binding. First of all, biodiversity is a vast notion that encompasses the entire sphere of life,64 and second, the type of commitment made is as

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comprehensive as it is imprecise. On this basis, any public or private international organization at any time can accuse any forest user of having an adverse effect on biological diversity. Forest practices are virtually under close surveillance.This is one of the aims pursued by the conservationist movement that fought for the adoption of the convention. But, as all observers know, during the Rio negotiations, the central issue was not conservation. The primary objective was commercial and financial: industrialized countries wanted unrestricted access to the genetic resources found in the tropical forests of developing countries on the pretense that they were the common heritage of mankind. The countries of the South intended to safeguard sovereignty over their natural wealth and subject this access to fees and technology transfer. Nearly ten years later, it turns out that the commercial value of the molecules found in the South has not been demonstrated and that the main topic of concern has shifted. In the Conferences of the Parties during which the signatories periodically meet,65 discussion today is less focused on protection and the economy of animal and plant populations than on the expansion of biotechnology, the desirability of patenting living species, genetically modified organisms, and “biosecurity.” The CBD has not really added anything new to what has been said and done in conservation since the end of the nineteenth century. It has not formulated any original proposals. The system of natural parks and protected areas has been in existence for many decades, and this is the strategy recommended by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).66 Founded in 1948 on the initiative of several renowned scientists including UNESCO’s first director-general, British biologist and author Sir Julian Huxley, it is an atypical international organization in that it brings together states, public institutions, and private organizations.67 Its original mission was to foster cooperation between governments and organizations interested in the protection of nature, preservation of wildlife, and natural habitats. It remains the largest and most influential nature conservation organization, with scientific and technical expertise in setting up protected areas that make it indispensable. It handles the secretariat for several major conventions on the protection of species, many of which it initiated. It is too often forgotten that the now prevalent concept of sustainable development was set forth by the IUCN in 1980 in its World Conservation Strategy program launched in conjunction with the WWF68 and the competent U.N. agencies in environmental matters. The designation of protected areas according to IUCN principles has become widespread practice (and with it the multiplication of

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“paper parks,” a subject to which we will return further on).The most common method is to register them on a list.This is how the previously mentioned Ramsar convention works. A curious text that has potential for tropical forests is the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.This convention clearly consecrates the notion of “world heritage,” qualifies it as “unique and irreplaceable property,” stipulating that this heritage must be safeguarded and transmitted to future generations and that it cannot be allowed to be degraded by “whatever people [to whom] it may belong.” Natural heritage sites are those “sites or precisely delineated natural areas of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.”70 It is clearly stated that the degradation of such heritage “constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world” (preamble) and that “it is the duty of the international community as a whole to co-operate” in the protection of this “world heritage” (art. 6). The World Heritage Committee (21 states that are party to the convention elected by the Conference of the Parties during the UNESCO General Assembly) has already included 33 tropical forest areas on the World Heritage List covering 21 million hectares in all.71 Some experts in forestry policy see this as a worthwhile approach to be encouraged and developed.72 Rather than chasing the illusion of total biological resource conservation over vast areas without sufficient means or welldefined long-term benefits, why not settle for having two-thirds of the forest used to satisfy immediate needs and list the rest of it as world heritage for its outstanding biological wealth by encouraging the international community to devote the necessary funds and assistance to ensure real protection in these areas. Such a suggestion goes along the lines of the Man and the Biosphere program also launched by UNESCO, in 1971, which identifies biosphere reserves, particularly in watersheds, and provides scientific and technical assistance to reconcile respect for biodiversity and sustainable use for the benefit of local communities. Of Game and Trees For a long time, nature conservation movements considered the tropical rain forest only from the standpoint of its fauna.The subject of animals still causes considerable mobilization, and exploitation of the forest is increasingly denounced because of the serious threats it poses to wildlife.73 Not only does it upset natural habitats, but it also opens new roads to hunters and poachers, and increases the consumption and trade

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of bushmeat in alarming proportions. In Gabon, for instance, the White Paper for the latest National Environmental Action Plan (1999) reports that 80 tons of meat were consumed in a year by 1,200 employees at a logging site very near the large Lopé Reserve.We have had the opportunity to hear similar figures in reference to logging site near the Dja Reserve in southern Cameroon (a site, moreover, on the World Heritage List). In Gabon again, where timber production has doubled in ten years, there has never been so much bushmeat available in restaurants and foodstands: from young antelopes to “protected” gorillas, trade is flourishing. In all of tropical moist Africa, the growth of the logging industry has facilitated access to a resource in high demand and that yields a high return. A study on the Congo, for instance, showed that hunting can contribute as much as 40 percent of a logging company employee’s income.74 Much of this meat is taken clandestinely by logging trucks to urban areas and, it must be said, in vehicles belonging to NGOs responsible for implementing conservation projects; this we have witnessed. Similarly, it is not rare to see a conservation project’s base-camp refrigerators and freezers used to store illegally killed animal carcasses as soon as the project head has turned his back. In current translations of deforestation, the game issue has taken on unsuspected proportions. For the past few years, the attention of environmental movements has also turned to tree species conservation. Originally, CITES, the first major universal treaty to protect all wildlife, was primarily targeted at international trade in fauna and derivative products: ivory, fur, pelts, scales, and the like. The idea that the trees in tropical forests could be threatened with extinction scarcely surfaced,75 but it has gained ground in the past decade. Lists of threatened forest species started to be drawn up by other institutions than FAO, particularly the IUCN (The World List of Threatened Trees). Starting with the networks formed around the Ramsar convention and the CITES, a dense web of associations, specialized organizations, and half-institutional half-independent research centers gradually came together.76 Data banks were compiled. Lists and estimates were produced supplying both an information service on the degree of species vulnerability and a world tree protection campaign.77 There again, the timber industry felt defensive.They perceived this flurry of activity as a prelude to new complications for the international tropical timber trade. Until now, however, the obstacles created by enforcing CITES in this sector have been minimal. The convention provides for the establishment of import and export permits for the species listed in appendices to the convention with more or less stringent conditions

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depending on the degree of species vulnerability. Appendix I: the natural species is critically threatened with extinction, trade is prohibited and can only take place in highly exceptional circumstances; Appendix II: the species may be threatened with extinction, exploitation is limited, trade is regulated, export and import permits are required as well as a huge amount of administrative red tape and formalities for which not all ports or customs authorities are always equipped; Appendix III: the species is endangered, one of several range countries declare its decision to regulate exploitation and restrict exports; international cooperation is requested and other state parties agree to monitor the origin of shipments, ensure that the countries that have included that species have granted an export permit and that other exporting countries have presented a certificate of origin. In Spring 2000, 26 tree species were included in the CITES appendices (out of over 300 tropical timber species currently on the market): seven in Appendix I; sixteen in Appendix II; and three in Appendix III.This is three more than in 1996, which is not a spectacular increase. Moreover, only two species are marketed internationally in significant volume.Yet the concern is real in the timber industry and it is not only over elephants that debates at CITES grow heated. There is strong pressure from environmental movements to include a certain number of heavily traded tropical tree species in Appendix II. Powerful groups brandish lists of tropical timber species more or less threatened with extinction. In 1997, for instance, the English branch of Friends of the Earth published the Good Wood Guide, which identified as highly endangered species, woods—Iroko, Sapelli, Meranti, and so forth—that make up a large portion of the timber trade from Africa and Asia. At the same time, a financial estimate made by the Netherlands on the basis of a European version of the CITES criteria listed 58 species, most of them African, enough to cause anxiety among the European companies, particularly the French! More recently, in June 1999, a long report was submitted by the WCMC to the CITES Plants Committee which analyzed some 250 species and concluded that most of them “qualified” for Appendix II.78 This latent pressure explains the stormy debate that raged for five years over a particular species of mahogany: Swietenia macrophylla (big-leafed mahogany). It was a test case, raising the whole problem of conservation as opposed to free trade and, in its wake, the issue of the appropriate level of protection. Swietenia macrophylla is the most widely commercialized species of mahogany. On the international market it has replaced two other species that have been exploited for centuries (Honduran mahogany and Caribbean mahogany) decimated by overexploitation and which are

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now included in Appendix II. The species talked most about at CITES comes from South America and Central America, but is also found in Indonesia. In 1995, Costa Rica, a magnificent little country where protection of its environment and biodiversity is a key element of its trade policy (income from the tourist sector is nearly as high as from banana exports), included big-leafed mahogany in Appendix III. This move surprised everyone and sparked off a colossal dispute. When a country requested inclusion, all CITES party states were obligated to cooperate. Other range states had to provide a certificate of origin proving the provenance of the wood exported, and consumer countries’ authorities had to deliver import permits that could only be obtained on presentation of an export permit or certificate of origin. Since all countries with big-leafed mahogany ranges did not fulfill their obligations, great chaos set in. An exceptional and temporary working group on timber was hastily constituted at CITES to examine the conditions in which the forest species were included in the convention appendices.The context was all the more tense since various NGOs inspired by Friends of the Earth had launched a campaign to boycott mahogany targeted mainly at Brazil, using the powerful theme of the endangered Amazon. On the British market, the second after the United States, mahogany imports plummeted in 1996.79 An incredible political, technical, and bureaucratic row burst out on the international scene, within the European Union, and inside the range and consumer countries. The question, in fact, was immediately posed as to whether inclusion in Appendix III was sufficient protection for S. macrophylla or if further measures should not be taken to include it on Appendix II. For some administrations in some range and consumer countries, going from list III to list II was problematic, certainly, but a lesser evil given the NGOs pugnacity. For others, it would be an additional hindrance in an already difficult market, it would give a negative sign to consumers, leading them to believe S. macrophylla was an endangered species and the trade was at fault. Since this would set a precedent for inclusion of other species, without conservational certainty, staunch opposition was called for. Tension reached its height in 1997 when Bolivia, a range country, and the United States, the world’s largest mahogany consumer (absorbing 90 percent of Brazil’s production and most of Bolivia’s) officially submitted a joint proposal to list S. macrophylla on Appendix II at the 10th CITES Conference of the Parties (COP) in Harare. Lobbying was intense and timber industry representatives—the U.S. International Wood Products Association, the Bolivian national chamber of forest industries—campaigned against their own

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government. The proposal was finally rejected for lack of the requisite two-thirds majority, but it was close: 67 countries for; 45 against; 9 abstentions including Brazil, which had nevertheless argued against it. Since then, most mahogany range countries have included their S. macrophylla on Appendix III. The crisis was temporarily defused by the creation of a regional working group on mahogany constituted on a Brazil–United States initiative. All Latin American range states are part of it, as are the major consumer countries. Their work has resulted in increased regional cooperation both in the scientific study of mahogany conservation and management, and in the monitoring of cross-border trade and illegal trafficking. Joint programs were set up in liaison with the WWF and various other programs and organizations. The future of the species is under surveillance. On the United States’ request, the 11th Conference of the Parties in April 2000 simply agreed to charge a working group with reviewing the impact of Appendix III listings, analyze legal and illegal trade in big-leafed mahogany, and report on its findings at the next COP.The tone has certainly changed.80 However limited this case may be, it is instructive. Not because of the psychodrama that developed over the vote on the U.S.–Bolivian proposal: delegates enjoy this sort of thrill which puts a little spice in otherwise terribly dreary multilateral conferences. Not because all this agitation took place over a species that has not been proven to be endangered: there are plantations in some forty countries.81 Nor even because of the arguments exchanged on either side in terms of a recurring debate between conservation movements and logging advocates: for the former, any exploitation is by definition destructive; for the latter, anything that causes trees and the forest to lose their economic value accelerates pillage and depletion of the resource. Even less because it would mark the triumph of one side over the other.The case is instructive, on the contrary, because it illustrates the complex system of interactions that structures international public action. In this system there are neither winners nor losers, the game is never over, the process simply continues in a different manner. S. macrophylla was not listed on Appendix II, but the conservation camp did not fail as long as its objective is seen to have been to establish better monitoring of logging and trade in the species. The means are not those it recommended, but legal and institutional provisions were made at the national and regional level, the achievements (and setbacks) of which, as regards the future of the species, do not differ significantly from what they would have been if Appendix II provisions had been implemented. For range countries and exporting companies, it is no longer possible to use the resource indiscriminately.

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Scientific monitoring and warning systems have been set up and are fed by multiple channels; mobilization can resume at a moment’s notice. But in substance reality won out: either the range countries have the will and above all the means to take inventory of the resource, set up a system of sustainable management and control illegal harvesting and trade, and the species will be preserved. Or the countries do not have the means to ensure protection, and natural ranges of big-leafed mahogany will become increasingly rare, with or without CITES. The profitability of S. macrophylla plantations in Asia and elsewhere will increase as a result. What is the appropriate scale, indeed, at which to conserve forest biological diversity? On a planetary scale? Regional? National? Forest stands? Landscape units? Management units (a few hectares)? This is a huge theoretical question for which there are no scientific answers, only political choices.The field of implementation of biological resource conservation is doomed to remain vague and subject to circumstantial interpretations. One certainty, on the other hand, is that appending the global rhetoric on biodiversity to forest matters has profoundly altered perspectives on the forest and sustainable management criteria. It has resulted in the introduction of new variables that require new assessment techniques for new types of inventories. Where once the purpose of a forest inventory was qualitative and quantitative assessment of wood resources, it is now expected to serve as a tool to comprehend and monitor animal and plant biodiversity.82 From one version to another, from one register to another, deforestation in tropical forests emerged at the end of the 1980s as one of the most critical environmental problems for the international community. The process was a very gradual one.That tropical rain forest degradation may jeopardize development possibilities, exacerbate social tensions, and destroy indigenous cultures was certainly regrettable for the affected people and for international morale but it remained the responsibility of NGOs and specialized U.N. agencies. That it could have catastrophic consequences for biodiversity and, above all, may contribute to global climate change warranted concern on the part of the wealthiest countries and justified the development of measurement and detection tools to evaluate the threat with accuracy. Two satellite mapping specialists, in their report to USAID, put it bluntly: International consensus over the gravity of tropical deforestation did not emerge until the late 1980s when the focus of attention shifted to global climate change. [Until then] even in the U.S. and

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Europe where the technologies and methods originated, the political support needed to mobilize public monies to undertake global level satellite-based forest surveys was absent. FAO had to carry out its recent world forest resources assessment with minimal resources. Only with the initiation of research on global climate change, did funds become available to map forests over large areas of the tropics.83

CHAPTER TWO

A Good in Search of a Definition

Unlike other planetary threats to the environment—the greenhouse effect or thinning of the ozone layer—deforestation can be seen with the naked eye.At least, the average citizen believes it can.Technicians are not the ones who make the damage plain to see the way geophysicists do, for instance, with the aid of abstract scenarios about global warming. Scientists do not have a monopoly on discussion of the state of the forests. Any talented documentary filmmaker, any organization with media access will say so convincingly: tropical moist forests are in danger of disappearing. In the course of our interviews, we heard nothing but ominous predictions and few dissonant voices, except from a small number of French geographers and socio-economists indicating that the dominant discourse on deforestation concealed discrete forest dynamics among local populations, who were much more capable of positive adaptation than is commonly admitted, and hid the fact that the tropical forest can regenerate itself, that it is more robust than people say, and that secondary forests can also have a wealth of biodiversity. In a way, their statements seemed to echo protests heard in Central Africa and in the Amazon, particularly among women. For these villagers, the decline of the forest was the least of their worries: “Deforestation, what deforestation? There are huge trees all around here, blocking our crops from the sunlight . . .. That nearby logging site? We’re furious: they ran a power line in, but didn’t even bring electricity as far as our village.” For most rural populations, the dense forest is still an inexhaustible resource. It belongs to those who live there, they feel they have the right to use it the way they see fit. It is a question of survival. Deforestation is a white

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man’s craze, a wild notion of discredited bureaucrats: “They tell us not to cut down trees any more and not to eat the animals. Well, what do they suggest we do instead?” The destruction of tropical forests, however, is not a matter of perceptions. The causes, extent, and effects of deforestation are at issue, but not the phenomenon itself nor the need to stop it. In order to control the processes underway with appropriate national policies backed by a sound global strategy, which is the stated aim of all outside parties involved, precise data on the scope of the destruction and its local impact are needed. But contrary to what the public at large believes, at the very beginning of the twenty-first century these data do not exist. They are in the process of being collected. It will take several more years to have a true measure of deforestation in tropical countries. For the moment, there are no reliable figures, only rough estimates. Uncertain Knowledge First observation: there is no general agreement on the very definition of forest, even less so on the definition of deforestation. Countries take their inventories and make their assessments using their own classifications, which creates a huge disparity in national reports on the basis of which international organizations (FAO,World Bank, ITTO) must make their estimates. Scientific programs use a variety of indicators and methodologies depending on the period and the project.Without a consensus on what should be considered as forest and how to measure it, comparisons are extremely difficult to make. FAO, whose mission is to monitor the state of the world’s forest resources, should have been the bible in this field. It is a major authority on the matter, but its definitions have been criticized and have not always become the reference. They have, moreover, varied over time. Controversial Definitions To establish a limit between what is forest and what is not, FAO constructed a definition that takes into account two types of criteria: (1) vegetation cover on the ground, its height and density; (2) land use, forest use or non-forest use. Up until the 1980s, a height of 7 meters was used to distinguish between trees and shrubs or bushes. In the 1990s, this threshold was reduced to 5 meters. For a long time FAO distinguished between industrialized and developing countries. It also introduced a clear distinction in its definition of

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forests in developing countries between planted forests and natural forests made up of indigenous trees not planted by man. Its definition of tropical forests reads: “. . . ecosystems with a minimum of 10 percent crown cover of trees and/or bamboos, generally associated with wild flora, fauna and natural soil conditions and not subject to agricultural practices.”1 Density is an important notion: it pertains to the percentage of the ground area that is covered by the vertical projection of the crown cover of trees (the canopy) and is, therefore, not visible from above, for instance from a plane.2 Over 10 percent, a tree formation is considered a forest. A forest that reaches 40 percent or more is a dense forest.3 Not all countries and organizations agree with this percentage of forest cover. With regard to tropical rain forests, the thresholds used by the various authorities can range from 60 to 100 percent.The European TREES program,4 for instance, defines dense forest as wooded area with at least 68 percent crown cover.5 This points up the difference in qualitative estimates of what is forest in a tropical environment.These divergences have significant consequences: depending on the minimal percentage of the crown cover used, forest area will vary in size. The more a country sees its forest cover shrinking, the more it attempts to conceal the fact by constantly enlarging the notion of forest. FAO’s simple and rigorous definitions have not held up, in particular as regards land use criteria. Deforestation was first defined as “a change of land use with the depletion of tree crown cover to less than 10 percent.” If FAO’s definition was applied to the letter “plantations devoted mainly to forestry such as eucalyptus plantations would come under the definition of forest, whereas rubber plantations and agroforests are not forests, because they are used for agricultural production.”6 The definition was corrected more for political than scientific reasons: “How could the Ivory Coast claim to have over 5 million hectares of forest and the Malaysian peninsula such a high level of forestation if rubber trees and soon oil palms did not count as forest cover?” a CIRAD program director recently confided. FAO currently gives the following definition of forest:“Land with tree crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of more than 10 percent and area of more than 0.5 ha.The trees should be able to reach a minimum height of 5 m at maturity in situ.” [Then follows a long list of what the term forest covers, including:] “. . . areas normally forming part of the forest area which are temporarily unstocked as a result of human intervention or natural causes but which are expected to revert to forest. Includes: forest nurseries and seed orchards [. . .]; cleared tracts, firebreaks and other small open areas [. . .]: plantations primarily used for

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forestry purposes, including rubberwood plantations and cork oak stands. Excludes: Land predominantly used for agricultural practices.”7 This broad definition, far too long to reproduce here in extenso, is the result of over two years of endeavor to harmonize terminology conducted by an expert group under the aegis of FAO and the U.N. European Economic Commission (UN-EEC).8 Their final aim was to produce the major Year 2000 report on Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA 2000). The UN-EEC was in charge of evaluating the boreal and temperate regions, FAO was in charge of evaluating the tropical and subtropical regions. In June 1996, a group of 32 experts from both the industrialized and the developing world met in Kotka, Finland (known as Kotka III in specialists’ jargon) to begin examining a set of definitions, reaching compromises on the existing terms, and suggesting the necessary adjustments.The task was pursued by a team of specialists until a list of “Terms and Definitions” was compiled that was officially agreed in November 1988, under the diplomats’ watchful eye. It should be noted that this time no distinction was made between the forests in developing countries and forests in developed countries.9 This change satisfied tropical timber producing countries that for years and in every international body, refused to see their forests treated differently from forests in the major industrialized countries, particularly the United States and Canada, where large areas of primary forest remain and with regard to which developing countries feel there is matter for debate. It is thus understandable why the new definition is both minimalist— forests are defined as land on which the crown tree cover is over 10 percent and the trees reach a minimum height of 5 meters—and accompanied by numerous distinctions that can take into account all situations: closed forest (density over 40 percent) and open forest (density between 10 and 40 percent), natural forest undisturbed by humans, natural forest disturbed by humans, semi-natural forest, and so on, each divided into subdivisions. These classifications all list what should be included in forest: forest nurseries, seed orchards, forest roads, firebreaks, windbreaks and shelterbelts of trees, and so on. The forest has been caught up in the merciless logic of the typical U.N. exercise of reaching a compromise at a global level between several divergent approaches, which will create the illusion of a common vision called consensus.Wherefore these layer-cake lists that satisfy no one but displease none: one layer for the South, one layer for the North, a little icing to bring it all together. Less refined than the former definition, less precise from a technical standpoint and substantively hardly different

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under close examination, the new definition of forest lacks in rigor but is diplomatically correct. Even more problematic than the distinction between what qualifies as forest and what does not is the definition of deforestation. FAO’s initial estimates, for instance, did not take into account forest degradation, defined as “changes within the forest class (from closed to open forest), which negatively affect the stand or site and, in particular, lower the production capacity.” In general, the tendency of both international and national public administrations is to consider deforestation in all-ornothing terms. It exists or does not.There is deforestation when there is a catastrophe, a total and irreversible destruction of the forest cover.The more subtle processes of resource depletion, for instance, the difficulty of forest ecosystems to regenerate due to repeated fires or overexploitation of certain species, is scarcely taken into account. Environmental defense organizations, on the other hand, tend to include a wide variety of areas as deforested areas without necessarily indicating the cause of deforestation by type of vegetation (primary or secondary forest?) or the time factors involved (newly deforested areas and/or areas cleared long ago?). When speaking of the extent of tropical deforestation, the actors are not all talking about the same thing. Each argument refers to a specific vision of the forest as well as specific objectives. Here again, FRA 2000 attempts to satisfy everyone by keeping the traditional definition of deforestation, which reassures states, and by adding a paragraph describing the various causes of forest degradation, which satisfies the NGOs, all the while making sure not to displease the timber industry: Forest degradation takes different forms, particularly in open forest formations, deriving mainly from human activities such as overgrazing, overexploitation (for fuelwood or timber), repeated fires, or due to attacks by insects, diseases, plant parasites or other natural sources such as cyclones. In most cases, degradation does not show as a decrease in the area of woody vegetation but rather as a gradual reduction of biomass, changes in species composition and soil degradation. Unsustainable logging practices can contribute to degradation if the extraction of mature trees is not accompanied with their regeneration or if the use of heavy machinery causes soil compaction or loss of productive forest area. With such caution these things are expressed . . . There is not one single classification system that can serve and satisfy the needs of all parties, FAO declares; what matters is to have clear and

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objectively applicable classification criteria.They still have a long way to go. It remains to be seen whether clarity and universality are compatible objectives with a field as political as the forest. Clarity is essential in order to establish a methodology recognized and employed by the entire scientific community so as to permit comparisons and foster cooperation.Technicians strive for it since, although they have no trouble understanding one another, they would like precise terminology and concise definitions so as to limit the margin for political interpretation. Universality, on the other hand, expresses the infinite complexity of the world through texts rife with subtleties and additions imposed by diplomats whose primary mission is to express their country’s specificity within the international community. New concepts are created and gradually diluted as they are developed. Competing Programs It is all the more difficult to reach an agreement on what indicators to use in measuring deforestation since reliable detection techniques are both recent and changing quickly. It has seemed more urgent to spend time on adapting to them rather than to devote time to cooperation. Today, for the first time in history, it is technically possible to know exactly what is happening in the forests at the global, national, and local level, but international competition for gathering and processing data is not conducive to compiling a shared body of knowledge. Until the early 1970s, tropical forest estimates were made using different types of equipment and often out-of-date data. Most were based on information gathered by aerial photography, completed by ground observation. These techniques are still used today, but they are cumbersome operations to set up, are carried out infrequently, and do not provide complete information on the entire forest cover or a means to monitor chronological sequences. In addition to the expense in time and money required for total forest coverage, rain and the thick cloud layer hovering over moist forests remain serious obstacles to precise identification.The margin of error is considerable. In 1972, NASA’s launch of the Landsat satellite hailed a new era in the assessment and monitoring of the forest cover in tropical countries. A continuous supply of images began to come in, enabling change to be measured. Brazil’s National Space Research Institute10 was thus able to conduct the first studies comparing Landsat’s TM (Thematic Mapper) images from 1978 and 1988 and show the extent of deforestation in the Amazon, with the worldwide political hue and cry described earlier.11

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The optical and thermal sensor-equipped satellites for remote sensing allow observation of huge areas and the collection of information at repeated intervals over time. They basically supply two types of data depending on the spatial resolution of the images obtained.12 The French satellite SPOT, the Landsat TM and Landsat MSS (Multi Spectral Scanner) are high resolution systems: 10 meters, 30 meters, 80 meters. Weather satellites such as NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) equipped with AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) sensors provide coarse resolution data: 1.1 kilometers for LAC (Local Area Coverage) data, 4.4 kilometers for GAC (Global Area Coverage) data. To process these data, a sophisticated method has been developed, including computer data processing, mathematical models, and statistical methods that store and use satellite information, particularly through what are known as Geographical Information Systems (GIS) or spatial reference information systems, a revolution in modeling methods that we will hopefully be forgiven for not describing here.13 GIS allows information from satellite images to be combined with other geographical, biological, and economic information sources and to process these data to deduce “causal” relationships from them. Once the various types of land use are better known, an attempt is made to link the identified typologies to ecological processes.14 In the long run, the aim is to tackle the very difficult question of managing changes in forest land use in a less uncertain context. In the late 1980s, scientific community pressure to obtain funding and state-of-the-art forest resources assessment equipment found an echo among the new political preoccupations of governments.These included concern for measuring forest habitat degradation and the loss of biodiversity, but mainly it was the need to determine the precise role of the forest in climate change that encouraged the launching of ambitious programs. Thus, the Pathfinder project undertaken in 1992 by NASA and the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was a component of the global carbon research, itself part of a vast American program called the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Its primary aim was to draw a map of 75 percent of the world’s tropical forested areas and measure change at three points in time: the early 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, by interpreting some 2,700 Landsat images (three times 900 images). For the moment, the project covers Southeast Asia, South America, and Central Africa.15 The connection made in international discussion between the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the afforestation–deforestation– reforestation trilogy sustained government interest in better understanding

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how tropical forest ecosystems worked. Other major international programs were set up and competed with each other. The European TREES project is one of the vaster ones. It was launched in 1990 on the joint initiative of the European Union and the European Space Agency with three objectives: conduct a global tropical forest inventory, monitor change in these forests by analyzing active deforestation areas (“hot spots”), and model climate–forest interactions. In the first phase,TREES undertook to map all of the tropical rain forests on the basis of NOAA coarse resolution satellite images validated by sampling of high resolution Landsat and SPOT images supplemented by ground-based methods. The first global and multitemporal tropical forest map drawn up by TREES covers the 1992–94 period. It provided the first overall view of the tropical zone observed in a homogeneous manner.All previous maps had been drawn up on the basis of disparate and non-cumulative sources. TREES devised an integrated GIS bringing together all the multitemporal date gathered by the program which, in particular, enabled them to identify and analyze deforestation hot spots. Furthermore, since 1998, Europe has had a new sensor,VEGETATION, put into orbit on SPOT 4. It provides excellent quality images processed by the Global Vegetation Monitoring unit, one of whose missions is to detect forest fires and their consequences (the FIRE project). These data are also incorporated into the TREES GIS. The entire set of data should contribute to better understanding the complex processes of deforestation. Meanwhile, TREES has published its first quantitative evaluations. The figures given by its first global reference map for 1992–94 estimated the entire surface area of dense tropical forest at 1,165 million hectares: 202 million in Africa, 260 million in Asia, 704 million in Latin America. According to the various inventories available from other sources, the total tropical rain forest cover varies between 1,090 and 1,220 million hectares, spread out as follows: 185 to 215 million hectares in Africa, 235 to 275 million hectares in Asia, 630 to 730 million hectares in Latin America.16 This again shows that the exact state of tropical country forest resources is far from known with certainty. Great expectations were put into remote detection observation satellites. They nevertheless have substantial limits: inability to penetrate the cloud cover over rain forests, inadequate resolution to recognize the various forest structures and forest land uses, and so on. These limits largely explain the remaining margin of uncertainty. A new turning point is being reached in space imagery, this time with radar sensors sent into space. Since NASA launched the first Seasat in

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1978, several SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites have been put into orbit to observe the earth, first for military purposes, but increasingly for civilian purposes since the end of the cold war. The United States is way ahead but many other SAR satellites, Europe’s ERS-1 and ERS-2, Japan’s JERS-1, and Canada’s Radarsat-2, were all launched in the 1990s. New platforms were being prepared for 2001–02. As a French expert in forest mapping enthusiastically declared: “The revolution is right here before us. Advances in radar interferometry17 will enable us to see through clouds, to put us at the tree crown, give us three-dimensional images, even see the same object from different angles” (personal communication). This new technological leap and the perspective of exploiting images of unmatched precision have given new impetus to existing forest cover assessment and monitoring research programs. TREES for instance has entered phase II, increasing the volume and diversity of its data, and improving its analytical tools. New international programs have been set up, the most ambitious of them probably being the Global Rain Forest Mapping Project (GRFM) launched by the Earth Observation Research Center in Japan, a joint effort begun in 1995, between National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) in cooperation with NASA. The undertaking is very similar to that of TREES.18 In the medium term, the aim is nothing short of mapping the entire rain forest twice a year with a 100-meter resolution. This implies a capacity to process 13,000 radar images covering approximately 50 million square kilometers. The project is currently divided into three geographic regions: South and Central America, Central and Eastern Africa, and Southeast Asia and Australia. By 1999, three areas had been observed by the JERS-1 SAR at least once. The entire Amazon basin had been covered twice: in high flood season and low flood season. Some international cooperation agreements have been set up to process the data for each of these regions (for instance with Brazil’s INPE for the Amazon and with TREES for Central Africa), but they are isolated cases. Efforts are made here and there to coordinate and network the many organizations involved in mapping and monitoring tropical forests, but they have trouble getting off the ground. Given the enormous field opened up by space observation with ever more sophisticated means, scientific cooperation is in its infancy. Researchers are overwhelmed with an abundance of disparate data. They work with satellite images taken at different scales, with field studies ranging from isolated sites and experimental plots to entire countries, regions, even the entire planet. These data are gathered over periods that can be short (weeks or

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months) or long (over two years).An agreement must be reached among scientists as to how to link these data, structure them, disseminate them, and share this bountiful harvest to make optimal use of it. They are a long way off. Certainly, experts meet, images are circulated, and the maps derived from a certain type of data are completed with information supplied by others. But competition reigns.The stakes, as one may imagine, by far surpass those of precisely measuring change in the wooded area of the tropics. Technical progress will most likely lead within the next few years to the global mapping of forest cover and its characteristics with time sequences that will allow comparison and measurement of change.That does not mean that the controversies over data interpretation will end. There still needs to be agreement on what is meant when talking about cleared areas, what type of use brought about deforestation, what spatial reference is used to calculate percentages of deforestation or degradation, what forest and vegetation classifications have been established, and so on. Here, FAO’s efforts to harmonize terms and definitions and its directives regarding assessment methods in tropical countries can be fully appreciated. Today, the challenge is less a technical one than an institutional and financial one. Processing the dozens of millions of data gathered by thousands of images each covering several hundred square meters requires increasingly powerful computers, better software, more precise data processing methods, ever greater funding of man-machine hourly costs. Only large, well-endowed organizations can undertake such enormous programs. The most advanced Southern hemisphere countries in the field of satellite imagery, Brazil and India in particular, have trouble keeping up. The gap is widening between rich countries that observe and developing countries that are under observation. The FAO, here again, has a specific role to play. Certainly, everyone knows it is dependent on its member states and that the data supplied by countries and regional institutes overestimate forest cover. FAO is aware of this bias. However, with regard to other specialized centers that sometimes get excited about the continual technological advances and practice art for art’s sake, it has several advantages: the ability to make immediate use of new interpretations and draw states’ attention to questions deserving an urgent reaction; a clear orientation toward developing and strengthening international cooperation; an obligation of transparency and data accessibility. Its methods are constantly improved, particularly through remote sensing surveys,19 and through a policy of association and cooperation with qualified professionals in the various

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countries. On the strength of these assets, the FAO is attempting to assert itself as the central link in a world network of forest resource assessment. But competition is stiff. In this field as in many others, the growing influence of private organizations in the global public space is tangible. Forest Vigilantes The last born of these international tropical forest observation centers is a remarkably astute and potentially influential non-governmental institution. Its distant sponsorship can be traced back to the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development. Set up with the support of former chiefs of state and government after the disappointing Rio negotiations over the forest, this independent commission was made up of political officials and senior civil servants from 25 different countries, all of whom had had responsibilities in forestry, agriculture, or the environment. It worked in a similar fashion to the Brundtland Commission20 and held public hearings for 18 months (from March 1996 to September 1997) with representatives from all those with a stake in the forest, who studied it, lived in it, and lived off of it. During the course of its work the idea came about of a Forestrust International, whose primary aim would be to develop a forest surveillance system, a forestwatch.This involved bringing together those best placed to know “what is happening in their backyards”: local organizations, grassroots communities, village committees, people with specific knowledge, and so on, and to create a world network of groups and individuals able to obtain and disseminate precise information on the state of forests, how they are managed, who uses them and how they behave. The World Resources Institute had already begun to think about such a system; it was prepared to get involved. It placed itself in a lead position, announcing without further ado the creation of Global Forest Watch (1997) and brought it to the baptismal fountain with the unction and congratulations of the august international assembly.21 Its creed: “Approximately half of the forests that initially covered our planet have been cleared, and another 30 percent have been fragmented, or degraded, or replaced by secondary forest. Urgent steps must be taken to safeguard the remaining fifth, located mostly in the Amazon Basin, Central Africa, Canada, Southeast Asia, and Russia.” Its ambition: “To fill a vital information gap” by developing “an early warning system to alert governments to the threats weighing on the remaining fairly intact forest ecosystems.” Its modus operandi: networking national and local organizations that observe what goes on in forests. Its method: map

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forest development activities (logging concessions, mines, road building) and publish this information immediately on Internet. Global Forest Watch (GFW) has begun publishing maps showing the extent of threatened forest areas in the main forest regions of the world, indicating the location of exploitation activities, the companies’ identity, the conditions under which extraction activities take place, how they evolve, their advantages and drawbacks from both an economic and ecological standpoint, the regulations in effect, and the extent of compliance with them. Unlike openly militant NGOs such as Global Witness, whose major role in Cambodia we will examine further on, Global Forest Watch denies any activist intention. It declares itself in favor of discussion on all of the data it publishes and presents itself as a totally neutral “information service”: Global Forest Watch’s mission is limited to collecting and disseminating data: “it is not a platform for advocacy or campaigning.” This modest rhetoric of neutrality is all the more astute since it is served by a remarkable public relations policy. For example, the Global Forest Watch network was officially launched before the National Press Club in Washington in February 2000; Global Forest Watch officials took the trouble to come to Europe to present their first two reports dealing with Cameroon and Gabon, respectively. Wielding both technical expertise and communication savvy, they sparked the interest of even the most skeptical of French experts, who were watching very closely as one might imagine. The establishment of such a network is not insignificant. It adheres marvelously to the logic of the times, playing on two mainsprings of globalization: instant dissemination of information and civil society’s transnational power of expression. Added to that is the World Resources Institute’s know-how and reputation for excellence with all that such a backing represents in terms of funding and institutional support.22 The watch network is only in its infancy, but all the conditions are gathered for this web of forest sentinels to become an influential actor in the construction of world beliefs about deforestation. Already a large concern such as Ikea has turned to Global Forest Watch to obtain the necessary maps and information to conduct an “environmentally friendly” purchasing policy23 enabling it to print the statement on its product labels: “This wood does not come from a virgin forest.” The initial Global Forest Watch reports make no secret of the difficulties and limits of their undertaking.24 They are interesting as much in the remarkable effort made to combine all possible sources on the state of forest resources in Gabon and Cameroon as in the revelation of information gaps and the near impossibility of precisely assessing the situation

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that they attest to. The forest data collected by public agencies are not always shared, their method of collection is subject to circumspection, the exact location of concessions is not always known, the way cutting permits are granted is anything but transparent, and so on. Nevertheless, Global Forest Watch continues its investigations and building its network with the means at hand, convinced that “decisions cannot be taken without sufficient information. Similarly, the efficiency and relevance of these decisions cannot be determined if the public is uninformed.” This Wilsonian trust in the power of public opinion and the force of enlightened people25 may seem laughable to those who are familiar with the various deceptions and dissimulations in which absolutely all actors having anything whatsoever to do with tropical forest exploitation partake. Old hands in French coopération do not fail to accuse Global Forest Watch of being extremely naive: “Trusting local actors to supply information is a delusion. Everyone cheats, including the local NGOs which, in Africa, are often empty shells. The Global Forest Watch partners are people we know well and with whom we have worked for years. There is no new information.Those who really know what is happening cannot talk about it, it is too dangerous” (interviews). The fact nevertheless remains that these reports are serious and undisputed, that the Global Forest Watch approach is a way of grouping and processing in a homogenous manner all the available information, that this action is a way of putting a little order in the scattered profusion of studies and initiatives to “monitor” change in the forest. Global Forest Watch has drafted a manual for NGOs on how to set up natural resource monitoring programs accompanied by a study drawing lessons from 13 experiments conducted with this sort of program. It is highly likely that these publications, put out jointly with environmental NGOs, will serve as world references and that, gradually, Global Forest Watch’s influence will expand and its work will gain in authority.Those governments that have officially registered their competent agencies in forest matters among the partners in the network in Cameroon, Gabon, Indonesia, Chile, and so on knew what they were doing. Competing Epistemic Communities Despite vague definitions and tentative data, the tropical forest is still perceived as a resource that concerns all humanity and everyone still feels he has a say in the matter. But this imprecision permeates the entire debate.As to what should be protected, against what and how, the world concert is such cacophony that no major theme has emerged on which

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intergovernmental negotiation can focus.The vagueness is all the greater since it is inconceivable to hold negotiations on tropical forests alone: developing countries are staunchly opposed to it. Governments and their experts do indeed meet and engage in dialogue, and how! But it is the NGOs that impose the themes and the choice of objects for scientific study. Since the active organizations are numerous, diverse, and monomaniacal, each has its own priority. All possible subjects on all possible types of forests are simultaneously put on the agenda. Everything is discussed at once without rank or priority. Certainly the international agitation over the forest for the past twenty years has not been in vain: the way forest policies are approached has changed considerably, and an international consensus is clearly taking shape around a few basic principles.26 Yet states are as reluctant as ever to negotiate on the basis of restrictive texts that legally engage their international responsibility. They are willing to talk about the hundreds of proposals for action put to them from one U.N. discussion forum to the next,27 but they cannot seriously get a grip on the subject. One of the reasons is probably that, unlike other environmental objects (protecting whales, combating the thinning of the ozone layer, global warming, etc.), no epistemic community has durably imposed itself in forest matters that is capable of canalizing the arguments and organizing information in such a way as to provide state actors with a common definition of the problem and possible solutions. Of course, the weight of scientific coalitions in structuring the international debate must not be overestimated, and when this influence does exist, the ideas and values proposed are not necessarily respectable just because they have received the stamp of expertise. But the idea put forth by American political scientists that international regimes are built through epistemic communities is not devoid of interest, especially when taken the other way around, to examine what happens when no knowledge community manages to take the lead on the global political stage. According to Peter Haas and his colleagues,28 an epistemic community is “a network of professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area.”29 These networks function in a transnational manner today.Their data and findings are rapidly published and discussed, a consensus in scientific knowledge emerges above and beyond frontiers. According to Haas et al., when certain conditions are met, epistemic communities can play a major role in identifying problems and how they are approached on an international level. Much more than that, they can have a real influence on political choices in that they

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provide answers to questions leaders ask regarding the cause–effect relationships in the evolution of a given phenomenon. By supplying the information political leaders have requested, these knowledge communities help spell out the nature of the issues. Aiding governments in this way to better identify their interests and the aims to achieve, they make an important, even decisive contribution to establishing new international regimes in the field of the environment. The Mediterranean Sea protection regime developed by the riparian states and the rapid agreements reached on protecting the ozone layer are, to Peter Haas’ mind, obvious examples of international cooperation determined by the existence of an epistemic community.30 The major shortcoming of this theory is that it only takes into account winning coalitions. It does not explain why an epistemic community emerges at a certain time, how it gains access to political and economic decision-makers, and why strategic actors choose at a given time to lend credence to one type of coalition rather than another. The whole problem of pressure groups and bureaucratic rationality is left aside, as though science was structured separately from the social and political field. Similarly, it fails to envisage the hypothesis that policymakers will choose the epistemic communities and other coalitions that are most likely to reinforce the political preferences they already hold. Our point here is not to review each possible objection to the theory; there are many.31 Despite its drawbacks, the epistemic community approach has a certain number of merits. First of all, it shows the importance of cognitive factors and beliefs in defining an international policy. There are many ways of constructing a set of shared beliefs, without which there can be no international action: recalling that an intellectual coalition claiming scientific authority can contribute to this construction is not unhelpful. More innovative are the hints it gives to understand the conditions under which a network of specialists is led to form an epistemic community able to influence world ecopolitics. According to Haas, the members of an epistemic community can have various backgrounds and do not necessarily belong to the same discipline. All they have to do (an understatement!), is to come together on at least four points: share the same normative convictions and the same values regarding the social role of their community; the same analysis of cause–effect relationships in their field of expertise (i.e., “chlorofluorocarbons released into the atmosphere reduce the ozone layer”); the same criteria for validating and assessing the scientific nature in this area; the same conception of the political action to be taken, the objectives to set, and the political opinions to support in order to achieve them. In short,

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the entire theory rests on a postulate: normative convictions (the precautionary principle, for instance) and intersubjective understandings held by an intellectual network concerned with going beyond its role of producing knowledge and accessing policy-making centers can influence the course of international debate. It would be instructive to know exactly what the members of an epistemic community are seeking, the international public good or the satisfaction of their own interests (prestige, money, esprit de corps, etc.). Such is not a concern of this theory. For Haas and his colleagues, the point is not to know why scientists seek to exercise influence on the building of international regimes, but to demonstrate that they do. The most favorable context for an epistemic community to orient international action is one in which governments are conscious of the potential risks and damage, and wish to guard society against them, but do not have a clear idea of the nature of this risk, its causes, and possible effects. In such a situation of uncertainty and demand, the arguments of a network of scientists sharing the same analysis and the same convictions can help define priorities and thereby frame the object of negotiation. Once negotiation is underway, these experts fulfill a watchdog function, which helps to maintain the momentum and pursue the endeavor. As regards the shrinking of the ozone layer, for instance, scientists proudly announced in December 2000 that according to their observations and calculations, the ozone layer might reform within 50 years if governments continued to abide by the commitments contained in the Montreal Protocol.32 They took all the credit for this: “What our response to the ozone hole shows is that by understanding the science of global environmental problems, we can convince governments to take action to turn things around.”33 As regards global warming, the major industrial powers wished to institutionalize scientific contacts on climate issues and so announced the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the 1998 G7 summit. The IPCC fostered the formation of an epistemic community that escapes both Greenpeace-style NGOs and the oil lobbies. Different states use it in different ways: the U.S. administration’s negotiators have drawn very solid expertise from it.The British have also put it to good use, sending delegations well versed in the issues. It is poorly used by France, whose state apparatus is divided, its representatives being from diverse backgrounds and its authorities too busy to take the time and find the means to assert their technical knowledge.34 Over one thousand climate specialists participate in the work of the IPCC. Their conclusions are summarized in an official report endorsed by the

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governments. Most public policy issues are subject to considerable scientific controversy: regarding the possible climatic and economic scenarios, the costs of immediate or differed action, the calculation of potential damage, the specifics of a greenhouse gas emissions reduction policy, there are great discrepancies among the results the various models produce. Multiple levels of expertise35 also coexist among economists, climatologists, researchers, engineers, and so on. Yet scientific consensus has progressed on certain findings that the public at large understands in this way: carbon dioxide (the principal greenhouse gas) produces heat; the proportion of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions could triple or quadruple during this century if nothing is done to reverse the trend; a large part of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere (half of it) will stay there for a long time, 100 years on average; the Earth’s temperature increased in the twentieth century at a pace unprecedented in 10,000 years; given the current state of knowledge the rise in temperature between now and the end of this century will be between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Centigrade. Scientists were the first to sound the alarm on the greenhouse effect, they also gave political leaders the information necessary to understand, basically, the chain of causes and effects in the interaction between carbon dioxide (and methane) emissions and global warming. On the basis of this information, political leaders discuss the appropriateness of taking measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, how the international effort to enact them should be distributed and the flexibility mechanisms that would allow costs of the effort undertaken by industrialized countries to be reduced. Diplomatic negotiations are progressing with difficulty, but at least the issues are understood, and the requests governments make of scientists give a good indication of what the hidden agendas are. No epistemic community has come together around the forest comparable to the one geophysicists or climatologists have formed. Knowledge communities exist and coexist, each specialized in a particular forest function. Their influence on the terms of world debate is not insignificant, but it does not go through the typical international decision-making channels. The only truly serious international political negotiation with regard to forests is connected with talks on global warming. In this context, the matter is not one of seeing how the international community can protect threatened forests but how the role of the forest in the carbon cycle can be used by the parties at the bargaining table. Not only is there no intellectual consensus and no epistemic community on the subject, but the scientific controversy has come at the perfect time to strengthen the stances already held by the two key actors: the

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United States and its allies (Canada, Japan, and Australia) on one side, European Union countries on the other.American negotiators maintain that the quantities of carbon dioxide absorbed by their forests and farmlands should be deducted from the amount of greenhouse gas emissions allowed for each. The Europeans dispute the calculations presented by the United States both in terms of the quantity of carbon stored on American soil and the share of the “additional sinks” that would come from forest measures (plantation, renovation) undertaken in developing countries. On the one hand, specialists, usually American ones, emphasize the “sink” function of forests and vegetation, believing that basically they are capable of absorbing a large portion of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions by photosynthesis. On the other, research centers, often European ones, publish estimates that challenge this “captor” function by showing that it is variable and temporary, and that it is not known whether forests will continue to remain efficient as the concentration of carbon dioxide rises and global warming increases. On the eve of the Hague Conference (COP 6, November 2000), British researchers caused a sensation by predicting that the rise in temperature would increase plant respiration and the pace of decomposition of organic matter in the soil to the extent that it would lead to the saturation of forest ecosystems, causing an inversion: they would become “sources” and no longer “sinks” by the year 2050.36 Greenpeace and WWF immediately ran away with this information, disregarding the fine distinctions and precautions accompanying the scientific presentation.Their message was translated into this extraordinary title from the Reuter agency:“Global warming could happen faster than scientists expect because forests, instead of mitigating climate change, could speed it up”!37 This well-orchestrated misinformation campaign appears to have even reached the French Prime Minister’s environmental advisor if one is to believe the AFP wire quoting Madame Laville “referring to forests and plants which in a growth state ‘draw’ and at maturity release carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.”38 A blatant scientific error that any plant ecologist will denounce.39 It will take several months, even years, to reduce the uncertainties and know precisely under what circumstances, at what latitudes and in how much time forest ecosystems could possibly reach saturation and begin releasing greenhouse gases in the air, after having stored carbon dioxide in their biomass for decades, if not centuries. This must not be forgotten.40 Nor must it be forgotten that growing trees absorb tons of carbon per hectare and that “planting trees is a strategy that plays for time.”41

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The scientific controversy regarding the volume and change of carbon storage is ongoing. It takes place publicly among serious research centers that publish in the best international journals. But powerful environmental associations have decided that the debate is closed. They know what people should think: the American proposal is “scientifically unfounded.”42 One can refuse to take sinks into account in negotiations to combat the greenhouse effect.There is no shortage of good reasons to do so, as we shall see further on. One can also be wary of proposals that encourage clearing natural forests to replant them with fast growing species that are lucrative from an industrial standpoint (pine and eucalyptus already account for 43 percent of plantations in tropical countries). One can be alarmed by the fact that the five major countries possessing nearly twothirds of forest plantations in the world (China, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States) would draw the most benefit from such a system. But to justify these refusals and fears by suggesting that the more forests are planted, the greater the risk of increasing global warming, is dangerously manipulative: to follow through with this reasoning, why not simply clear the entire forest and let the sun’s rays reflect off of the earth once it has been entirely converted into desert?43 The case is significant. In the domain of the forest, and particularly tropical forests, to which world attention is turned, scientists have been dispossessed of the public discussion on their object of study. Forestry: A Profession in Suspension Since the unfortunate episode of the TFAPs (see chapter 1), traditional forestry experts no longer come very much to bear upon the international political agenda.They played a certain role in the pre-negotiation phase of the Rio Summit, preparing the report on the roles and functions of the forest submitted to the Parties by the Conference secretariat, but they held no sway in the negotiation that would lead to the Rio Statement of Forest Principles.44 Neither in defining the problems nor in exploring the means to solve them were their voices particularly heard in the seats of international power. At most their studies were given passing publicity when they were used to strategic ends by international organizations, NGOs, or logging companies who therein found arguments to justify their positions.45 The World Forestry Congresses that meet approximately every six years under the aegis of the FAO are an opportunity to take stock of the major forestry issues at the moment and feel which way the wind is

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blowing. They are important loci of socialization, particularly for tropical countries, which can get a sense of the major trends of the moment, the themes, and the vocabulary that will shape the pressures to be exerted on them.Thus, the 9th Congress, in Mexico in 1985, marked the gain of worldwide awareness of the extent of tropical deforestation; the 10th Congress, held in Paris in 1991, drew lessons from it, meeting on the theme of “Forests, a heritage for the future.” France became deeply involved in the organization of this huge gathering of 2,800 participants from 136 countries, included some fifty Forest ministers and nearly one hundred forestry administration heads. In a pre-Rio atmosphere, much discussion centered on the themes and principles that provided the outline for documents to be submitted for negotiation a few months later. The 10th Congress ended with a solemn plea—the “Paris Declaration”—appealing to public opinion and policy-makers to reconcile the economic use of natural resources and environmental protection in a sustainable development perspective, involving local communities in the integrated management of their land. Six years later, the 11th Congress in Antalya, Turkey in October 1997 brought together even more participants, NGOs, international organizations, wood professionals, environmental economists, foresters, and national administration representatives. It gave rise to just as many excellent papers, but the general atmosphere was one of a déjà vu, making no notable progress, like the disappointing Rio ⫹ 5 meetings held in New York a few months previously. More scientific meetings between specialized forest engineers occur during the congresses organized by International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO). Their discussions are highly technical, receive little publicity, and do not immediately result in appeals to public policy-makers. In addition to the role of promoting scientific exchanges and standardization of research tools that this type of organization can play, in the early 1980s, the IUFRO was charged by its members and international organizations with stepping up research related to forest resources in developing countries. In 1983, a special program was set up, funded mainly by the World Bank: the IUFRO-SPDC (Special Program for Developing Countries). Ten years later, in 1993, the international institutional landscape of agronomic and forestry research was remodeled with the creation of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR, based in Bogor, Indonesia) and the incorporation of the International Center for Agroforestry Research (ICRAF, based in Nairobi, Kenya) within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Here again, the World Bank was pivotal.

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The World Bank’s role in the organization and functioning of the transnational forestry research system today is impressive. The CGIAR had been founded in 1971, in the heyday of development ideology (marked in particular by the Pearson Report on Development). Its first meeting was held at the World Bank and was presided by the director of the Bank’s Development Services Department. Its secretariat is still a department of the World Bank.This very loose and pragmatic structure has managed to gain ground over the prerogatives of all competing international institutions in its fields of activity (including the IUFROSPDC, which has scaled back to training activities and scientific publications). Its success in institutional competition has been such that in 1998 the CGIAR was handed this extraordinary compliment from a group of independent expert assessors:46 “investment in the CGIAR has been the single most effective use of official development assistance (ODA), bar none. There can be no long-term agenda for eradicating poverty, ending hunger, and ensuring sustainable food security without the CGIAR.”47 Luckily the FAO and the UNDP cosponsored the CGIAR at its inception.Their honor is intact! The major preoccupation of the 1970s was agricultural development and nutrition in developing countries.The CGIAR was set up with the primary mission of providing incentive for agricultural research, particularly on cereals, by federating specialized international research centers. In the 1980s, the concern for “sustainable agricultural development” was added to the productivity objective whereas in all good bureaucratic logic the CGIAR decided to expand its areas of competence to agroforestry first, then to forestry.Wherefore the creation of CIFOR in 1993, within the CGIAR system, with a mission to respond to “global concerns about the social, environmental and economic consequences of loss and degradation of forests.”48 This innovation inevitably rocked a few boats. In France, for instance, the administration was undecided as to the appropriateness of this new organization since many feared, and rightly so, that it would even further dispossess the FAO of its means and tip the approach to forestry matters even more in the Anglophone direction.49 In fact, CIFOR has established itself as the benchmark international organization in tropical forest research.50 Generally speaking, at the national level, tropical forestry research and education is not doing well. European countries that have developed solid skills in this area (France, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium) have slackened their efforts since the end of colonization. Job opportunities are uncertain, recruitment is dwindling, the older generation is retiring, and expertise is frittering away. Only a few strongholds

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remain, such as the Cirad in France, the Oxford Forestry Institute in England, and the organizations supported by the GTZ51 in Germany. In most developing countries, research potential is low and the core of knowledge is below critical mass.52 Third World forestry engineers, too few in number, trapped between national administrations dominated by political power struggles and Western NGOs who speak for them, have little opportunity to make themselves heard. Changes in the job market and a much more global manner than before of looking at the forest have also altered the exercise of a profession in which knowledge and know-how cannot be dissociated. For centuries, a forester’s mission was to ensure the forest’s sustained yield: that the resource renewed itself and profits were derived from it in such a way that the landowner experienced no loss of income or investment. They had to know the trees, optimal harvest conditions, cutting techniques, transportation methods, and so on.This entire science was castigated when total conservation ideology began to hold the fore on the world scene. Because they dared say when and how trees should be cut, foresters were accused of “selling out” to the timber industry. Such accusations durably destabilized the profession. Today it must take into account the whole array of forest activity in all its complexity and augment its timeworn skills by those that will ensure respect for biodiversity, the rights of indigenous peoples, the mechanisms of community forests, and so on.Yet, in that area, not only is the forestry community in competition with other disciplines (anthropology, sociology), but it is divided, often along cultural and geographical lines. As much as experts can agree worldwide on the ideal diameter of a Moabi or the yield of such and such variety of Meranti, it is impossible for them to present a united front when it comes to defining priorities that have to do as much with ethics and political choice as with forestry techniques. NGOs have occupied this vacuum with their rhetoric, leaving not only foresters but also biologists, botanists, anthropologists, and sociologists far behind. They assume all these roles at once. It is they who coin the watchwords and put new concepts on the agenda (or reinvent them): sustainable forest management, reduced-impact logging, and so on. Since they also employ many a young graduate of forestry schools, and not-so-young degree-holders who can no longer find jobs in their own countries, they can rightfully claim scientific expertise.The European Commission and the World Bank frequently call on them for advice and invite them to discussion meetings with national government representatives. However, the primary concern of NGOs is to find funding, contracts, and support, and make themselves heard. Given the proliferation of organizations state

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officials must deal with and the avalanche of rhetoric they are obliged to take in, since every NGO is determined to flaunt its projects and its wealth of experience, they are in over their heads and end up forgetting exactly what they came to negotiate (interview with a ministerial official from the French Cooperation ministry who added: “What’s more, since any proposal from a European Union member has first been put through the European grinder, not much remains to be discussed”). Occasionally, major figures from the forestry field let out a loud and clear protest. People such as Jean Clément, E. F. Bruenig, or Jeffrey A. Sayer53 can be heard making an appeal to the demands of scientific rigor, the body of knowledge accumulated in the course of tropical research, the recognition of forest management guidelines that have proven their “sustainability” well before they were rediscovered and renamed with fashionable terms, in sum, the need to stop spouting nonsense and hold firm on a few basic principles. Amidst the clamor that passes for international discussion, their warnings do not go unnoticed, but they are soon drowned out. For lack of an expert coalition able to make itself heard and blaze the paths of negotiation on forests with a few essential markers regarding the priority issues to resolve, political leaders and administrations return to the usual themes of any international discussion having a North–South dimension.At the U.N., on the pretense of talking about the forest, they talk about trade, technology transfer, the creation of a funding facility. Since Agenda 21, no progress has been made via multilateral negotiation. Advances on what to do for the tropical forest, and there have been some, occur outside the institutional cooperation of states, by little strokes and dabs, without high-level discussion.

The Discreet Charm of Economics The only knowledge community that meets the criteria of an epistemic community, in other words, that shares both the same scientific certainties, the desire to weigh in the fate of the rain forest and an ability to make itself heard by policy-makers, has formed among environmental economists. Subtly but surely, it is in the process of imposing its approach to the tropical forest. Generally speaking, economists have gained access to the loci of power on the international scene. In the galaxy of the World Bank, in particular, economics has long since unseated forestry. In 1999, out of the few hundred World Bank officials dealing with forestry in any capacity,

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only eleven of them were trained forestry engineers. Nine of them were in the field, therefore leaving only two foresters at headquarters!54 The environmental economist community is organized transnationally through the US-based International Society for Ecological Economics founded in 1987, which seeks to federate the ten or so national and regional associations that have cropped up in the same discipline (including the European Society for Ecological Economics founded in 1996). Of course, all its members do not share the same approach, but within the subdiscipline an influential community has formed around cost–benefit analysis (CBA) applied to forest land use. Well entrenched in its neoclassical certainties and large enough to create a circle of admiration and mutual references on a global scale, it has managed to impose a new line of argumentation on financial backers, and consequently on the Southern hemisphere states. This community has all the broader an audience since it claims to have settled the recurrent debate on multiplicity of forest uses, the diversity of actors, and the conflict of interests that trip up all wide-sweeping arguments.Whereas other disciplines, ethnology in particular, constantly remind us that all situations are specific and criticize any overall proposal on the pretense that for such and such a people in such and such a valley at such and such a time “things are not at all like that,” the adepts of cost–benefit analysis hold up supposedly universal models and a golden rule to enlighten a collective decision. We will return further along in this book (chapter 5) to the mechanics of this approach and its effects on forest policies. Let us review briefly here the rationale on which it is based for readers not versed in economics.The first postulate is founded on a simple line of reasoning: tropical forests are an important resource for economic development in tropical countries.They can be used in a variety of ways: timber extraction, traditional subsistence activities, conversion into farmland, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and the like. Policy-makers are responsible for making sure that the use of forest land produces the best goods and services for the greatest possible collective well-being while guaranteeing respect for the natural environment. How can the choices be made? According to neoclassical theorists, a clear understanding of the benefits and costs attached to each of the forest land’s various functions must precede any rational decision. To achieve this understanding, they must identify the various material and immaterial goods and services produced by the forest and compare them with what the various forest land use projects would provide, analyze each of the economic benefits these goods and services would procure and value each one in monetary

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terms, in other words assign a market price to them (generally in dollars). This price will determine the cost effectiveness of the project. A second postulate comes into play: the allocation of resources decided according to this criterion of cost effectiveness will be a “rational” assessment likely to produce the best level of collective well-being.55 This places us in the rationale of welfare economics, which stipulates that a free market system promotes optimal use of resources and leads to general well-being.56 David Pearce and his colleagues of the London School, among whom the better known are E. B. Barbier and A. Markandya, first suggested applying cost–benefit analysis to the environment in the 1980s.The idea immediately sparked considerable enthusiasm, for it seemed to provide a means of reconciling environmental conservation and economic growth at a time when the world was discovering the extent of tropical deforestation. Countless studies set about to refine the concepts applicable to the forest, in particular the notions of “benefits,” “uses,” and “value,” and discuss valuation methods. One of the methods in vogue today is the contingent valuation method (CVM), which strives to assign a price to all goods and services related to forest land use, including attributes that have no established monetary market value:57 aesthetic pleasure, cultural and symbolic function (sacred forests, for instance), biodiversity reservoir, and so on. It involves constructing a sort of hypothetical market and placing the respondents in a simulated market situation using survey techniques in which the respondents are asked what they would be willing to pay in order to enjoy a given forest-related benefit or what they would be willing to accept in compensation for tolerating a cost associated with a change in this area.58 According to one of the main postulates of welfare economics, individuals are the best judges, and the costs and benefits linked to the use of a resource can be evaluated on the basis of individual preferences. The method is supposed to reveal these preferences and translate them into monetary values. If one were to yield to the temptation to caricature, it would lead to asking the following question in a pygmy village: “How much are you willing to pay to preserve the forest?” But it is highly unlikely that the question will ever be asked. Looking at the list of forest valuation studies inventoried for the World Bank and examining the reports and manuals designed to guide experts in their evaluation tasks, the dearth of developments related to the forest’s non-market functions and the superficiality of field studies are striking. Two functions of the environment that natural resource economics is highly familiar with, option value and existence value, should

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theoretically be taken into account in the total value of the forest. In reality, these are disregarded by the economists-cum-survey-takers. Option value has to do with the possible use of the resource in the future, the potential benefit an individual may derive from it, or the potential use that should be preserved. By applying CVM, one asks, for instance, if a farmer would agree to preserve the forest today knowing that tomorrow conservation of the flora and fauna could generate as much income and well-being as do his current swidden cultivation techniques. Existence value is related to benefits an individual derives from the mere existence of a natural resource regardless of any present or future use: the delight of nature, observing animals, the mere sense of harmony. Economists associate existence value with heritage value, the desire to hand down this resource to one’s descendents, and all values that are immaterial, cultural, religious, and aesthetic. The impossibility of assigning a monetary value to “non-use” goods (because economists consider a good that does not pass through the market to be without use) that procure satisfaction for an entire community is unbearable to most neoclassical economists.Volumes of theory have been produced to justify the monetary valuation of these immaterial use-values, and scholarly studies have been devoted to the existence value of the stickleback or the Wisconsin wild goose. Empirically, this valuation is virtually never done in tropical countries, simply because it is unfeasible. An official manual purporting to guide decisions regarding the use of forestlands in all Southeast Asian countries quite simply admits:“Option and existence values are rarely included in CBA despite the fact that there is evidence to suggest that these values can be very high. One reason for this is that CVM is the only approach which can estimate option and existence values and this is a time consuming and expensive research technique.”59 A fine admission of powerlessness well into a manual boasting the merits of a method that supposedly justifies the making of rational choices for the benefit of all. Everything is taken into account except for the intrinsic value that an environment holds for people who know nothing else. Despite its obvious limits, cost–benefit analysis has become the preferred model of international organizations and financial sponsors. It guides project funding decisions at the World Bank as well as the Asian Development Bank. The vision of the forest as a set of market goods and services has taken hold beyond any political debate through the sheer strength of a self-assured epistemic community arriving just in time to assuage the discomfort of policy-makers before a global good so complex they do not know which angle to approach it from.

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The Counteroffensive of the Social Sciences In addition, and not necessarily in opposition, to the market conception of the forest’s goods and services is the simple idea that environmentally sound forest use policies cannot be implemented and sustained without the participation of the local inhabitants. The theme of participatory management has become orthodox. Any discourse on the tropical forest must make reference to it. What today strikes us as obvious took decades to impose itself on nature conservation movements and land use planners alike. Among the former, the subject of the virgin forest long dominated.A well-protected forest was a forest without inhabitants. For the latter, a population that hunted, collected fuelwood, and cleared trees for farmland could only be an obstacle to exploitation, sustainable or not.The NGOs who championed indigenous and local populations had few motives to engage in a cooperative forestry policy. Resistance and denunciation of the countless abuses visited upon these populations was the urgent matter at hand.60 To switch from protecting the forest from “human action” to managing the forest “for the benefit of all” is a mental operation that is not selfevident and cannot be taken for granted. In 1998, a WWF member was still heard protesting against the “complete control” of social scientists to the detriment of botanists and naturalists, against the “growth of human rights and the decline of the rights of nature,” and against “fundamentalist social scientists” and the “virulence of the anti-biology lobby.”61 In the global reflection on development, recognition of other social sciences besides economics was late in coming. It did not begin until the mid-1970s.62 In the forestry sector, resorting to anthropology and sociology occurred later still. It was not until the late 1980s that research in this field started to be incorporated, even encouraged. Paradoxically, the intellectual domination of the market approach may well have contributed to earning social scientists’ recognition.The companion theory, in fact, to the neoclassical cost–benefit approach to forest resources is the “property rights” theory, which holds that optimal natural resource allocation depends on the type and division of property rights over these resources.63 According to proponents of this theory, one of the major underlying causes of deforestation is the absence of clearly defined rights over the various forest goods and services.This idea took hold transnationally, and the heading “unreliable title to property” figures expressly in most lists of underlying causes (see next chapter). Understanding the land tenure relationship as a “spatially determined social relationship” and what the notion of “appropriation” covers, analyzing the usage

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rights in forest areas, and understanding how these rights are distributed, are all preliminaries to optimal forest management that require meticulous long-term field work conducted by competent analysts of social organization systems.64 These studies having demonstrated the importance of non-market relationships in most tropical forest societies, the intellectual correlations drawn between the “total market” and “society first” philosophies soon prove to be limited. However, the utility of supplementing technical data and economic considerations with sociological and cultural variables is, henceforth, acknowledged. The World Bank’s emphasis on reducing poverty as a major aspect of its strategy enhances this new tendency to consider what goes on “down below.” Social scientists’ perseverant but often little publicized methods in tropical forests should gain strength in this. The convergence between preoccupations of such different natures offers a peculiar panorama. To put together land use projects, forest “socio-economists”—economists who have taken into account the human dimension and the rationale of the actors in determining economic possibilities—are consulted more and more often. In colloquia on the tropical forest, more and more liberal neo-institutionalists along the lines of Elinor Ostrom are heard refining their typologies and presenting their long lists of conditions to fulfill in order for social forestry projects to succeed.65 In the field, sociologists, anthropologists, and human geography specialists are hard at work.They conduct quality studies and put out informative reports. Some attain renown and have an influence on the development of vast multinational projects. Many are involved in large-scale projects: E.U.-financed conservation projects, for instance (the biggest of them being ECOFAC, Conservation and Rational Use of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa), projects to assist in implementing forest policy in a given country (the “Forêts et terroirs” project in Cameroon, for instance).66 Still others pursue in-depth studies on the interactions between man and the tropical rain forest, country by country, area by area. An ambitious study in this domain was commissioned from a group of anthropologists by the European Commission in 1992. Their mandate was to establish a report on the situation of indigenous rain forest peoples. The study was conducted in the Amazon (Brazil, Peru, Bolivia), central Africa (Congo, Zaire, Gabon), and in the Asian islands (Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea). The first report, submitted in 1994, was preceded by a summary that made quite a splash, as it ran counter to many preconceived notions. The preface opened with these

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words:“There is no such thing as a virgin forest.”The entire line of argument demonstrated that “traditional societies cannot possibly be seen as destroying a hypothetical virgin nature which would need protecting from them,” that swidden agriculture was not the cause of deforestation, that the establishment of protected areas designed to preserve nature such as national parks of wildlife preserves could represent for an indigenous community “a far worse catastrophe than starting up logging industries in their area, and its effects are equivalent to building a dam . . .” It showed that the disruptions in natural forests are never caused by local communities and their subsistence economy and that excluding forest farm populations from land use projects in their forest would lead not only to depriving the world of “their ancestral knowledge of forest ecology,” but also to “an increased urban underprivileged class of poor and easily manipulated people.”67 That this report was published by the European Union, that it was followed by another study published in 2001, and that the community of anthropologists conducting this type of work had networked in a European program entitled “The Future of Tropical Rainforest Peoples” financed by DG VIII,68 all increased the import of studies on indigenous peoples and their authors’ recommendations. In the flurry of interdisciplinary scientific activity undertaken in the field of tropical forests, the social sciences have always had their place, but they have only managed to make their way into official discourse in the past ten years. All political orators today now hold forth about “respect for local knowledge,” “the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities,” “the full participation of women,” and so on. It is an inroad that the social sciences community should be pleased with. It remains to be seen what place they will be reserved in implementing the grand principles they have helped to bring to light.

CHAPTER THREE

Deforestation: an Endless Debate

Combating the destruction of tropical forest on a global scale is one thing, where to begin is another question. Deforestation is not a matter of trees and wildlife. It is a human endeavor that is tough, always brutal, sometimes tragic, each time specific. Not only are the definitions and dimensions of the forest area indefinite, but the overlapping of perceptions and the imbrication of responsibilities also form an inextricably complex system. The causes of deforestation can change in a single region over a very short period of time: in the Brazilian Amazon, for instance, the colossal construction projects (dams and Transamazonian highways) and the colonization policy conducted by the Brazilian government were the initial causes of deforestation.Then the expansion of large cattle raising schemes was considered to be the main source of pressure on the forest. Today, the combination of industrial logging and the recent launching of a huge infrastructure program pose new threats to the Amazon forest.1 On a single continent, from one region to another, the factors differ. For example, in Africa, the large forests in the Ivory Coast were first cleared for logging and converting the soil to cash crops (cocoa, coffee); in the Congo and former Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo), the search for subsistence farmland is one of the major causes of shrinking forestland. In Gabon, wide scale commercial logging could become a threat. Given this variety of reasons, either the analysis pertains to tropical rain forests in general and results in a random list of main causes of deforestation that neither ranks nor orders them,2 or else an attempt is made to understand changes affecting the environment in a specific area. This requires extremely detailed studies combining

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biophysics analysis and socio-economics, environmental science, history, and political science. According to FAO experts, some 500 million hectares of tropical forest have disappeared over the past 50 years (nearly one-quarter of their surface area). Tens of millions of hectares have been degraded and their genetic and ecological capital is seriously jeopardized.3 Here again, in the absence of reliable data on the state of the forest cover in the past, this is a rough estimate that most likely remains too optimistic.When, in 1997, the FAO estimated that the annual deforestation rate in tropical forest was on the decrease, dropping from 15.5 million hectares in the 1980s to 13.7 million hectares between 1990 and 1995, it was accused of minimizing the damage and hiding the truth. It was impossible to know, in fact, whether the observed decrease was due to an actual slowdown in the destruction of the forests or to new definitions and the use of new methods.The same uncertainties characterized the latest data published which estimate that 13.5 million hectares of forest were destroyed per year between 1990 and 2000.4 The estimates available to compare the current situation with what existed ten years ago are based on fairly unreliable data. In FAO’s 1992 assessment, for instance, out of a total of 90 countries, the forest cover of only 21 countries was estimated on the basis of several national forest inventories; 3 countries supplied no inventory at all; 66 supplied only one, 39 of which dated from before 1981.5 The FRA 2000 was drawn up on the basis of equally incomplete inventories. Most of the data published are extrapolated from what was known of the forest cover at a given point in time, corrected by population estimates and various economic data. In such conditions, it is difficult indeed to establish the possible correlations between the deforestation rate and a particular cause with any certainty. Serious specialists all underscore the absence of credible forest cover estimates for lack of good quality empirical data. Although hypotheses can be sensibly advanced for fairly homogenous subregions, as soon as the comparison is international, certainties are thrown to the winds.6 The data for African countries are particularly poor, which fuels a controversy on the extent of forest decline in West Africa and Madagascar in the twentieth century and the role of small farmers. Based on research into archives, travelogues, and oral accounts, two British scholars have thus shown that the extent of the forest cover in the Ivory Coast in 1900 and in the 1950s had been hugely overestimated, first by colonial foresters then by the FAO and that, consequently, “forest cover loss in Ivory Coast during the present century may have been only half



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Map 2 Ombrophilous forests of Central and Western Africa

of what present authors consider it to have been.”7 It nevertheless remains that since 1960 the forest cover in the Ivory Coast has diminished from 12 million hectares to less than 3 million today.8 Even admitting that there is a general tendency to overestimate primary forest cover in past centuries and underestimate the extent of new growth and the wealth of secondary forests today, the pace of deforestation has been high enough in the past half-century to warrant discussion of the subject on a global level. The immediate causes are always the same: uncontrolled burning, deliberate clearing for agriculture, unbridled commercial and industrial logging.The problem is to rank these causes and understand the underlying dynamics, a step without which no appropriate policy can be defined. But this point provokes heated controversy. Affects, ideologies


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and economic interests structure the international public debate more surely than scientific knowledge. Seeking the Guilty Party “Halt all logging,” cry the environmental activists. Industrial and commercial logging of tropical timber is without a doubt the primary cause of deforestation.9 “It’s farmers who destroy the forest,” the logging companies retort. Rural populations and their shifting agriculture methods are the main culprits of deforestation.World Bank experts have been repeating it for fifteen years: “In the closed tropical forest zone, shifting cultivation accounts for about 70 percent of total deforestation in Africa, 50 percent in Asia, and 35 percent in tropical America.”10 “A harmful prejudice,” say field researchers, socio-economists, and anthropologists. Deforestation is the consequence of repressive forest policies and ill-suited administrative practices.11 The doomsayers’ rhetoric on deforestation helps legitimate policies that repress and impoverish rural populations. These policies devalue forest land, are totally ineffective in development, and end up aggravating the deforestation that they are supposed to halt: “In particular, in West Africa, claims of one-way deforestation have completely obscured what seems to have been a large increase in the area of the forest zone in recent centuries. [ . . . ] Exaggerated estimates of deforestation . . . obscure appreciation of how farmers may have been enriching and stably managing their landscapes.”12 The debate is endless because the three positions express partial truths and are based on verifiable examples, given the vast array of deforestationrelated factors that combine differently depending on the situation. Yet the tropical rain forest does not bear up to generalization, and no interpretation is universally valid. Deforestation is the sum of unique histories experienced and related by multiple actors whose voices should be heard without a preconceived order.All do not carry the same weight in the international public arena, but in the field, all participate in the future of the forest, for better and for worse. The Poor versus the Forest? What is a forest? Wood, an area, a land.The transformation of that space and the uncontrolled extraction of wood resources are the main factors of its destruction. Deforestation “implies the long-term or permanent

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loss of forest cover and implies transformation in another land use. Such a loss can only be caused and maintained by a continued humaninduced or natural perturbation.”13 But what do we know about the actors responsible for it and the reasons that make them continue to cut and clear? The arguments exchanged on this topic on the international scene are always justifications. Since they influence the recommendation of forest measures and involve public and private outside participants, these arguments are worth examining more closely. The first and most widespread explanation points to poverty and demographic pressure as the deep causes of deforestation. The argument seems irrefutable and suits many. It suits tropical country governments in that it justifies their international demands for technical aid, technology transfer, and trade agreements (Mugabe opened the CITES Conference in Harare on this theme). It suits commercial logging companies that use it freely to minimize their share of responsibility in forest degradation that cannot be compared, they say, with the damage caused by the extension of farmland and swidden cultivation techniques. Lastly, it diverts attention both from the role played by large landowners in massacring the forest in Latin America and the harmful effects of various government-sponsored clearing incentives. Of course, the explanation holds an enormous kernel of truth. But the poverty–population–deforestation relationship espouses a variety of forms, and the reality is not always what preconceived ideas suggest nor what certain actors want to make us believe. A considerable share of the population in tropical countries with rain forests depends on the forest for its subsistence (fruit, game, nuts, fuelwood, lumber, etc.). It is difficult to estimate in numerical terms. Figures can double for a given country depending on what dependence criteria are used. For Indonesia, for example, they range from 3014 to 65 million15 (out of a population of nearly 203 million inhabitants in 2000). What is known for certain, however, is that the peoples who depend most on the forest are also the poorest, and this is true in all tropical countries.16 The pressure on the forest is exerted for wood supplies (firewood to cook food, lumber for shelter), but it is primarily exerted in search for land. Generally speaking, wood remains the main source of fuel supply in tropical countries. Fuelwood represents over 80 percent of the total wood production in these countries, even more than 86 percent in the Congo basin rain forests. For instance, in 1998 in Cameroon, a major wood exporter, “four times more wood was harvested for fuel than was sold as industrial roundwood. Traditional fuels, including firewood and


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charcoal, accounted for roughly 80 percent of all energy consumption in the country in 1995.”17 If the phenomenon has less frightening ecological consequences in rain forests than in the tropical dry zone, where the “tree decline” is aggravating a crisis in which nothing short of the local populations’ survival is at stake,18 it is nonetheless disturbing.19 Population pressure and the push for industrialization continually increase energy demands and consequently demands for wood resources. The increasing needs of urban areas where the population is constantly on the rise leads, particularly in central Africa, “to the ever wider use of charcoal manufactured using often poorly controlled conversion processes yielding little and increasing pressure on the forest.”20 On a completely different scale, the Brazilian policy of methanol production (a fuel compound made from wood) is also sometimes said to be a contributing factor to deforestation. The share of fuelwood consumed by rural communities is the product of family wood gathering, a task often carried out by women for home use and difficult to quantify.With rare and highly localized exceptions, it has yet to be proven that the use of firewood by these populations is a significant cause of deforestation.Various studies suggest that in the wood collected for family use, there is a much higher proportion of deadwood and wood from felled trees abandoned in the forest by logging companies than standing wood. In Africa and Asia, especially, the diameter of the trees and the difficulty of cutting them with rudimentary tools are such that gathering is done preferably in already deforested areas. Women complain, moreover, of having to walk too far to reach them. An educated villager, a former schoolteacher met in South Cameroon, told us bluntly: “We need chainsaws. It’s too hard with machetes.” (We are not the only one to have heard such statements and the plea for chainsaws is frequent among rural populations, even when they live in “protected” forests).21 Even more than the quest for fuelwood, swidden cultivation, or slashand-burn agriculture, is held up as the destructive practice par excellence of poor peasants and “primitive” ethnic groups (interviews with various logging industry representatives in central Africa and delegates from the major Asian member countries of the ITTO). It has long been at the top of the list of causes of deforestation in specialized studies.22 There is no lack of apocalyptic forecasts for the end of this century, imaging the tropical rain forests haunted by nomadic, isolated peasants burning trees and exhausting the soil in their path through the great natural forest.The confusion is maintained, often purposefully, between slash-and-burn agriculture and the use of fire to clear forest land for other uses.Thus, in

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1997, during the highly publicized forest fires in Borneo and Sumatra, forest tribes were pointed to as the guilty parties by those very industrial loggers and corrupt governing bodies who were directly and indirectly responsible for the catastrophe. However, before losing everything in the blaze, both their vital resources and their social organization, the Dayaks in Kalimantan (Indonesian part of Borneo) had practiced swidden cultivation of rice for centuries. This tradition, handed down through the ages, allowed communities to live off their harvests while ensuring the sustainability of their forest land.23 According to tropical agronomy experts, slash-and-burn techniques laying forest land to fallow, used on every continent, have proven their superiority in terms of labor costs over all other farming methods where land is abundant and sparsely inhabited. It is a way of making the best use of poor quality soil. In the traditional method employed by forest dwelling tribes, the cleared plots are rotated: the same plot is burned only every 15 or 20 years; burning supplies large quantities of nutrients that fertilize the soil; after a year or two of cultivation, the field is laid to fallow for at least 15 years.This allows a secondary forest to grow back, weeds are held back by the shade of trees, and a biomass reforms, restoring the possibility of again fertilizing the soil by burning. Everything, naturally, depends on the length of the fallow period, which should be long, the dimension and placement of the swidden plots, which should not overly fragment the forest area. Too many crop rotations, too large a cleared area, and plots too close together do not allow the forest to regenerate. In resettlement policies aiming to cultivate land taken from the forest, the lessons many of these “primitive” populations could have given in forest management were not taken into account by the proponents of “modern” agriculture. Moreover, slash-and-burn techniques undertaken by hoards of inexperienced immigrants and new settlers are particularly destructive. Not only are trees destroyed and biodiversity lost, but poor soil cannot stand up to intensive use that does not allow it to regenerate, and these burnings are frequently the cause of forest fires that rage out of control. Large-scale population displacements caused primary forests to decline in tropical moist zones throughout the twentieth century. We should recall, for instance, the Kolonisatie program instituted by Dutch colonists in 1905, aiming to convert the forest-covered islands of Sumatra, Borneo, Irian Jaya, and Sulawesi (former Celebes) by sending hundreds of thousands of “transmigrants” from Java and Madura.24 The aim was to reduce the pressure on the land in the overpopulated islands and develop rice cultivation in the outer islands with modern techniques


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that were believed to be more efficient than the indigenous peoples’ archaic methods. From 1905 to 1941, the Dutch colonists moved 229,905 people (Dutch records are precise!).The program was reinstated right after independence and labeled Transmigration: from 1950 to 1968, 403,747 people were displaced, 84 percent of them to Sumatra. Relaunched by Suharto in the 1970s, transmigration was the largest organized farming resettlement program in the world.25 The Javanization of the outer provinces, particularly Irian Jaya (the Indonesian portion of Papua) often occurred along with considerable tension with the indigenous peoples, a situation that continues today. Alongside official transmigration, spontaneous transmigration developed with the influx and settlement of immigrants seeking to enhance new land outside any institutionalized program. “Some of them have adopted the local production systems suited to conditions in the region. [ . . . ] But the search for good soil on steep terrain has sometimes seriously damaged the environment. Others, always on the lookout for available land, practice a form of itinerant agriculture in remote regions.”26 Many have settled in forbidden areas: natural preserves, protected forests, production forests set aside for logging concessions.They practice illegal clearing with rudimentary methods and creep in anywhere where commercial logging companies have cut skidding trails that facilitate forest access. At first the Indonesian government let this movement develop, as it fit into its plan of population transfer and contributed to the planned resettlement of the forest-covered islands.When the tropical forest issue became a subject of international concern, NGOs started campaigns criticizing both the harm to the environment and the dispossession of indigenous peoples, and Friends of the Earth began denouncing the ecological damage due to transmigration, Indonesia, like all tropical countries, made environmental conservation an apparent priority in all of its speeches. In the name of this priority, the administration did not berate the logging companies whose cutting methods destroy between 60 and 95 percent of the forest cover to harvest a few cubic meters per hectare, but the weakest link in the chain of deforestation causes: the spontaneous settlers accused of all environmental evils. With army support, the local administration had plantations burned or bulldozed over, thousands of homes burned, and tens of thousands of families displaced27 (50,000 in ten years in the Lampung region alone).28 The example of Indonesia is not the only one.The same practices have been witnessed in certain African nations. In many countries, the alibi of forest protection and biodiversity conceal ferocious battles over land rights. It is used to justify the most inhumane eviction measures (we have been told of villages evacuated by

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flamethrower in Togo).The immediate result is further impoverishment of the poorest peoples in the least hospitable regions. This was not the environmental activists’ aim. In terms of food production and improvement of people’s general well-being, transmigration, whether official or spontaneous, achieved mixed results. Success can be boasted in many places, particularly where state-procured infrastructures enabled the (costly) irrigation of the settlement perimeter. And in such cases, how can one fail to share the opinion of the French geographer who told us: “Of course the forest has been cut down and biodiversity has been lost, but you cannot criticize the conversion of forestland into farmland when it is a matter of feeding people in a country where the population pressure in already cultivated regions has become insurmountable. When you see the success of certain operations in southern Sumatra, you don’t hesitate: you take risks so that people can live better, and when it works, you have to accept that the forest recedes.” Converting forestland to other uses that promote the country’s development and improve its inhabitants’ well-being is considered scandalous only by environmental fanatics who hold trees to be equal, if not superior, to people. But that is not the question. In farming resettlement policies, examples abound of ecological disaster with no positive tradeoff. That is the problem. According to on-site observers, “most transmigration centers in the rainy food-producing areas of Sumatra and Kalimantan were a flagrant failure.”29 Unable to obtain sufficient yields, tens of thousands of transmigrants ended up giving up farming after less than five years, leaving behind them a devastated landscape, exhausted soil, and fallow land overrun with weeds. In general, rural poverty did not decline, but simply shifted and increased in all of the host regions.30 Here again, it is difficult to find converging sources on the assessment of deforestation due to spontaneous Transmigration. Problems of definition, measurement, and observation techniques cause estimates to vary, even at a local level. However, the forest is clearly in serious enough decline for wood resources to be diminishing and no longer meeting industrial demand (which leads to an increase in illegal cutting). The south of Sumatra is a revealing example: “Forestland occupied three-quarters of the ground area before the war. Primary forests now cover less than 20 percent of South Sumatra province and hardly more than 10 percent in Lampung province.”31 But the relationship between the number of migrants and the deforested area gives rise to the wildest estimations, even on the scale of a province.Thus, in the Sumatra Selatan province (south Sumatra), the local authorities gave the following


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figures: 51,000 families settled in the forest, 700,000 hectares destroyed, over 50 percent of the protected forest cut.“That would mean that each family would have cleared an average of 14 hectares. Yet, observations show that the land farmed by migrants rarely exceed 1 or 2 hectares.”32 Either the number of migrants was underestimated and “the figure of 51,000 should be multiplied by 10 or 15,” or illegal cutting was done by other actors than migrants. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. From such confusion, which is merely an example of what can be seen in all tropical countries, we can draw at least four lessons: everyone cheats, which is not exactly a revelation; the government is incapable of knowing exactly what its forest resources are; migrants are convenient scapegoats; their numbers are such that repressive and


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Map 3 Ombrophilous forests of Asia and Melanesia


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exclusionary policies are totally illusory and futile. Poverty, overpopulation, and the search for land are such that numerous families will continue to be drawn by the myth of the lush and bountiful forest. If the forest is to be protected, solutions must be studied with all those who live there, not against them, unless the forest is to be transformed into a military base.And in that case, it is the soldiers who will make deals with wood cutters to make away with a portion of the forest’s bounty . . . (this has been seen to happen in the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia; it can be seen today in African countries fraught by civil war). The Agricultural Paradigm Along with poverty and population pressure, the expansion of cash crops is the most often cited cause of deforestation. True, there is no lack of examples. The resettlement policy in Malaysia, for instance, contributed to the devastation of some of the world’s most beautiful forests. The motives were clearly economic, development of the agro-industrial sector being the primary objective.33 Started in the mid-1950s, this policy sought to clear vast areas to develop cash crops, particularly plantations of oil palms and rubber trees. Landless peasants were set up in these new areas to supply the necessary labor (which did not prevent them from using foreign, often illegal manpower, from Indonesia and the Philippines). Between 1956 and the end of the 1980s (with a significant peak between 1970 and 1985), this federal program alone was responsible for establishing 700,000 settlers and clearing 15,000 square kilometers, including 6,600 square kilometers on the Peninsula, the remainder in the Malaysian portion of Borneo, especially in Sabah.34 Of course, not all the cleared areas were conducive to year-round farming. Large areas went unused and a secondary forest has not always grown back on this deserted land, but on the whole, the agro-industrial gamble was a success, with a watchful administration strictly controlling installation, production, and marketing conditions. The population became settled and, according to the World Bank, were relatively satisfied with their lot twenty years after their arrival.35 Deforestation in the Malay peninsula is quoted as one of the rare examples in the tropical Third World where in thirty years the original forest was replaced by a sustainable and profitable agricultural system. Through its deliberate conversion policy, Malaysia has become one of the world’s largest rubber, palm oil, and cacao producers at the price of massive destruction of the primary forest in the Peninsula and Sabah and a huge loss of biodiversity in these


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regions.The rhinoceros, tiger, and elephant populations have diminished considerably, and several species of primates have vanished. After having seriously damaged its forest to the extent that there is now a timber shortage, Malaysia has enacted stringent measures to protect what remains of it in the Peninsula: no illegal settlements, virtually no slash-and-burn farming, and a heavy-handed administration strictly controlling land use. Its forestry administration is considered to be the best in the region, the state of the peninsula’s forest has stabilized . . . and the Malay logging companies have gone elsewhere to pursue their destructive enterprise: Sarawak, Melanesia,Africa, and now in South America. In Sabah, clearing for plantation continues and the needs for labor have created a crossborder situation that could partly repeat the pattern of spontaneous Transmigration in Indonesia. There, as in many places, the preeminence of the agricultural paradigm over the forest paradigm encourages illegal immigration and the exploitation of underpaid workers. The agricultural paradigm involves “creating an imbalance in the natural environment and maintaining it for the purpose of production.” The forest paradigm involves “preserving natural processes that contribute to the wealth and equilibrium of the ecosystem and gradually influence this equilibrium in the desired direction by spot actions on certain elements of the ecosystem. The point is not, in fact, to leave nature entirely alone as in a total forest preserve, but to manage a natural equilibrium according to set goals.”36 In all tropical countries, the agricultural paradigm has taken over to the detriment of the forest paradigm, even in regions where the soil is theoretically unsuited for farming or where the farmland is remote from transportation networks allowing the produce to be marketed (this links deforestation to the cultivation of illegal plants such as coca in Latin America and poppies in Asia). Its primary justification is “to feed the world,” and rice, manioc, and corn crops have developed in Asia,Africa, and Latin America, respectively, by encroaching on the forest. It is also to foster development, contribute to industrialization, and bring in foreign currency.The expansion of agriculture for commercial ends is considered one of the main fuels to the economy in tropical countries, which are encouraged in this vein by international organizations in the name of comparative advantages and the primacy of export. Globalization and trade liberalization cannot help but encourage this expansion, and consequently deforestation, by offering new markets where the tightness of domestic markets had previously limited any incentive to produce more. Deforestation of tropical forests began in the nineteenth century in response to an increasing demand for tropical

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products (wood, rice, sugar, coffee, cotton, etc.) in Europe, Japan, and North America. It has been accelerating since 1945.The case of Thailand is interesting in this regard.37 The land issue is no more sensitive than anywhere else, the state did not encourage large properties or large holdings managed by multinational corporations, there is little itinerant agriculture and little fuelwood gathering. Many authors consider the rapid deforestation in this country, where the forest cover spread over 50 percent of the territory in the 1960s and was only 20 percent in the mid-1980s, as caused simply by Thailand’s growing desire to integrate the world economy in every aspect—trade flows, tourism, and so on— for reasons of national security as much as for economic reasons (not to mention the predatory practices and illegal cutting carried out with the support of corrupt politicians, a widespread phenomenon to which we will return later). According to FAO, about 86 percent of tropical forest decline is due to agriculture.This percentage gives an approximate idea but does not mean much. In most cases, the conquest of farmland over forest goes hand in hand with unbridled exploitation of timber resources. These two practices form such a synergy that, in identifying the causes of deforestation, it becomes impossible to untangle the role of clearing for agriculture from that of timber extraction.The Ivory Coast is often presented as the archetypal example of these two policies that grip the forest for reasons of political clientelism as much as profitability. On the one side, timber extraction by foreign logging companies,“organized with ever increasing intensity since the late 1950s” provides the Ivory Coast government with “the necessary tax revenues to set up its administration and conduct urban development, mainly in Abidjan.” On the other, the conquest of farmland over forest is pursued by “Ivory Coast elites from the planters’ union” from which President Houphouët-Boigny drew his power base. And the observers conclude: “the plantation economy appears to have developed out of competition with, but actually developed in conjunction with, the Ivory Coast’s forestry policy.”38 The case of the Ivory Coast is exemplary but not unique. The same process explains the colossal deforestation in the Philippines where ninetenths of the primary forest has been lost in 40 years (10 million hectares in the 1950s; 1 million at the end of the 1980s), turning the country into a wood importer whereas it had been the prime timber supplier for the entire region during the previous century.The receding of the forest had begun in the nineteenth century with a logging frenzy and the development of cash crops (sugar cane, tobacco) that gradually grew as the archipelago made its entry into international trade.The trend accelerated


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in the 1950s. A thorough study conducted by an American geographer shows how timber extraction played a decisive role in transforming the primary forest into a secondary and residual forest, and how agriculture spread to these areas at such a pace that it is difficult to determine whether timber extraction or agricultural expansion was mainly responsible for forest loss.39 The two go hand in hand, which considerably weakens the logging companies’ favorite argument that the agricultural paradigm is the main factor in deforestation. Generally speaking, each time the stock of logs diminishes and seems insufficient, either due to heavy rains, fire, or restrictions in granting logging permits, the timber industry searches for raw material. Farmers and cattle-ranchers occasionally supply it and in this capacity are significant links in wood-related industries. “Before preparing to burn, farmers sell their best stands of timber; sawyers exploit them because most farmers do not have the necessary equipment. By the same token, cattle-ranchers, before clearing for pastureland, sell the most marketable trees to the logging companies. For farmers and cattle-ranchers, the sale of standing timber is a major source of income; for sawyers, this source of supply is worthwhile because the purchase price of this timber is not very high.”40 Intertwined Responsibilities The Example of the Amazon Of all the manifestations of deforestation, that in the Amazon is the most often mentioned, as it receives the greatest media attention. In Brazil, the splendid Atlantic coastal forests have all but disappeared and what remains of them is in serious danger, but no one talks about it. On the other hand, 85 percent of the Amazon forest is still intact, but the 15 percent that has been cleared is enough to fuel the concerns and passions of a developed world so numbed by noise and gadgets that it is no longer sensitive to mystery except through myths.The myth of the virgin forest is a powerful one! Like all forests for centuries, the Amazon forest has been frequented by hunters, gatherers, and farmers who have not endangered it but who have left their mark. Before the Spanish and Portuguese conquests, there was a higher density of the indigenous rural population and probably more intense agriculture. Large parts of the Amazon have always been cleared, plants have been domesticated, animals hunted. About fifteen years ago, pottery fragments that bore totally different characteristics from familiar Amazon crockery were unearthed. That means that certain indigenous communities knew how to enrich their

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Atlantic Ocean

Equator

Pacific Ocean



Map 4 Ombrophilous forests of the Amazon Basin and the Atlantic coast of Brazil

naturally unfertile soils and had reached an advanced enough stage of technical development to use ceramics.41 Yet the myth of virgin areas remains deep-rooted in Europe and North America. A sad paradox: it is fed by the fantasy of precisely what destroyed it:“The notion of a vast, undisturbed wilderness in Amazonia is an artefact of the indigenous population crash after contact with Europeans and the unleashing of introduced diseases such as smallpox and influenza.”42 Of course, it is not because it is based on a mythical image and selective indignation that there is no reason for concern.The Amazon forest has been declining rapidly over the past 40 years. The intense degradation process of the remainder of the largest wooded expanse in the world

DEFORESTATION: AN ENDLESS DEBATE 43

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can leave no one indifferent. But here again, the argument of poverty and population pressure given by politicians as primary factors of deforestation must be regarded with circumspection. In the Brazilian Amazon, an aggressive land use policy has been conducted for over 30 years under the aegis of the Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA). In the 1970s, some 766,000 settlers arrived in the legal Amazon.44 The movement continues in waves, each year involving dozens of thousands of migrants, mainly from the South (Parana, Rio Grande do Sul) and the Northeast of Brazil. As do researchers on Transmigration in Indonesia, Amazon specialists emphasize the diversity of the population in these “pioneer fronts” made up partly of enterprising individuals endowed with a certain degree of experience and resources striking out on a great adventure, and partly of unfortunate people struggling to survive, with no other ambition than to feed their families “fated to ‘tame the land,’ as the saying goes, before handing it over to the former.”45 The annual deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon is high, wavering between one million and three million hectares per year. It is the highest in the world. Over an area covering more than 5 million square kilometers, there cannot be only one single explanation for clearing. Behaviors differ from one region to another, and the dominant activities are not the same everywhere. It is agreed, however, that the phenomenon has evolved over time and changed in nature. In the 1970s, about 30 percent of the deforestation was due to family farming.46 In 1995 and 1996, 48 percent of the largest clearings were on plots smaller than 50 hectares, the size of the plots exploited by small peasants being on the average between 25 and 50 hectares. Since 1997, the average areas cleared have increased considerably in size, sometimes reaching 1,000 hectares:“From there to claim that the small settlers of the agrarian reform responsible for the first period have been supplanted by massive forest clearing by the fazendeiros47 and the major sawmills (encouraged by the availability of funding) is a step that some analysts take without hesitation.”48 But although there are too few comparative studies to make any firm assertions, field researchers are still strongly convinced of it.This change in the role between small settlers and large cattle ranchers has been confirmed by all the interviews we have conducted in Brazil. The pattern often described goes as follows: A landless peasant entirely dependent on the fazendeiros of the South or the Nordeste has been told that the Amazon is a land of plenty, an open, free space that he merely needs to settle to find what he needs. He arrives with little preparation, few tools, and no idea of the diseases that are rife in the area.The first year he clears part

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of the forest on the plot allotted to him, lives by hunting and gathering in the part set aside as a reserve, and sells the felled trees to some madeireiro49 in the region. Each year he clears a little more land, farms more intensively without having the means to fertilize, dreams of the fazendas he once knew, and seeds pastureland, more and more pastureland. He goes into debt to purchase cattle and build fences. After a few years his whole area has been cleared, there is no more forest in reserve, the fragile soil is depleted, the pastures do not provide enough, malaria strikes, and the peasant sells his land to a large cattle rancher who expands his property and clears on a large scale. Only part of a partial and sad story that does not take into account other possible histories of accumulation depending on the start-up capital, the geographic conditions, the family strategy, the particular forms of organization, the socio-economic environment, and so on. But still, a true and oft repeated story. Intensive cattle ranching has been described as the main cause of land transformation and forest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon.50 The activity is a lucrative one: Brazil exports some 600,000 tons of meat per year and has become the world’s third largest exporter after Australia and the United States.51 Agriculture is not particularly widespread in this area; year-round crops account for only 12 percent of the clearings.The demand for grazing land is high, and land speculation on cleared plots is skyrocketing. At the same time, the rural exodus has grown and the Amazon question is becoming increasingly an urban one: 60 percent of the population lives in cities and has no direct impact on the surrounding forest. A study of the proportion of deforestation among the various Amazon states shows that “most of the destruction takes place in states dominated by large cattle ranches.”52 The phenomenon has been studied there more than elsewhere but is not confined to the Brazilian Amazon. It has also been observed in Central America: Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and other countries. The more peasants see their income rise, the more they invest in cattle raising and grazing. In Nicaragua, a peasant with cattle uses twice as much land for agricultural purposes than a peasant without cattle, and when he reaches about twenty heads he uses four times more. Conclusion: the more income rises, the more titles to the property are secure, the more clearing takes place.53 The same conclusions appear in a study on Ecuador which also shows that the more farmers have access to loans and the market, the more advantageous it is for them to invest in clearing and converting the land to non forest uses.54 That should, at least for Latin America, considerably attenuate the automatic correlation between deforestation and poverty, forest decline and subsistence agricultures.


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As can be plainly seen, the ties between population growth, poverty, and deforestation in tropical countries are not simple relations of cause and effect.A major study by Angelsen and Kaimowitz reviews over 140 economic models analyzing the causes of tropical deforestation.55 It shows that the models based on the demographic premise give contradictory results: some maintain that population growth increases deforestation, others that it has mixed effects, and still others that it has no significant effect.56 Similarly, on the theoretical level, the relationship between economic growth and the rate of deforestation is not clear. On the one hand, one would expect that a rise in national revenue goes together with an increase in employment in sectors other than logging and farming and that the pressure on the forest would be reduced accordingly. Better educated people can demand better environmental protection; a stronger state should be better able to guarantee this protection. On the other hand, the more the countries develop, the higher the demand for forest products and farm produce, not to mention the development of road infrastructures and technological progress that allows further penetration into the forest and the extraction of greater quantities of timber. In reality, the second hypothesis is the only one proven true in tropical countries, and the level that the rise in national income needs to reach before the trend is significantly reversed is not yet in sight. Industry and Large Construction Projects Up until now, the large investments and industrial activity usually associated with development have only accelerated tropical forest degradation. The mining industry has developed: tin, copper, gold, bauxite, cobalt, coal, iron ore, oil, natural gas, and so on. It results in the clearing of vast expanses, it pollutes rivers, it spares neither protected forests nor national parks, and it puts local populations, particularly forest dwelling tribes, in a situation of dependence and destabilizes them. Papua New Guinea is regularly prey to serious clashes over copper mining; oil drilling concessions are granted in national parks in Kalimantan; five “enormous” coal deposits have recently been located in Irian Jaya57 and there is reason for concern about the fate of indigenous peoples living in this western part of Papua; in Cameroon, in 1999, a permit was granted to an American mining corporation specialized in cobalt and nickel to dig shafts in a mining area on the edge of the Dja Reserve (a World Heritage site!) over an area that has been kept secret but which is said to be possibly as large as the reserve itself.58 Countless other examples can be found.

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Major hydraulic projects—dams and artificial reservoirs—are almost always ecological, human, and cultural disasters. The case of the Tucurui dam in the Brazilian Amazon speaks volumes: before filling the enormous reservoir (twice the size of that initially planned), the ground had to be entirely cleared, for technical and public health reasons.59 Actually, only a part of the forest was clear-cut, the remainder was treated with defoliant: the company contracted complained that there was not enough saleable timber to make logging worthwhile. It declared bankruptcy, and in compensation received a logging permit for over 90,000 hectares located in two neighboring Indian reservations!60 Highway infrastructures are especially taken to task by ecologists for their direct and particularly indirect destructive effects, because the influx of people in traditionally sparsely populated forest areas is directly linked to the building of roads connecting the cities in the forest. In the Brazilian Amazon, the correlation between the highway network and the location of cleared areas is plain to see. The highest rates of deforestation are concentrated around what is known as the “deforestation arc,” a huge pioneer front between 200 and 600 kilometers wide, very precisely hugging the map of the famous Transamazon highways and secondary roads. One-hundred-hectare plots along these newly built federal roads were, in fact, granted to encourage this trend.61 Systematic opponents to logging in tropical forests stigmatize roadbuilding by logging companies to gain forest access and allow log removal: by facilitating access to previously inaccessible areas, these roads encourage hunting, farming, and illegal cutting, thus aggravating the destruction of fauna and deforestation.62 But logging roads are not the only elements of destruction. In Ecuador, for instance, the “oil routes” built by the oil companies opened “the main route via which the northeast of Ecuador has been settled and has provided for the development of tourism in this region. [. . .] The equation is simple: where there is a greater number of oil wells, there are more roads; where there are more roads, settlement increases; where settlers settle, deforestation spreads.”63 Comparative studies have indeed shown that in all tropical countries “the areas alongside roads are those that are the most in danger of being cleared.”64 In poor regions all over the world a strip of deforestation can be noticed parallel to transportation routes, roads, and rivers, with a radius of 12 to 15 kilometers corresponding to the walking distance of farmers who wish to sell their produce. An African woman in a remote village 12 kilometers from the nearest road told us what it was like: Here we have no road. No one wants to come here. We had a school but there’s no teacher.We want one to come but who will


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come see us? There’s no road. And our children, what can they do? To get to the market, we women go off and walk for three hours through the forest, there’s no road, and afterward we walk along the road to go to the market and sell our manioc and our seeds. It often rains, our clothes are all wet, we’re too tired to go home, so we sleep there on the ground. And if we haven’t sold, afterward it all goes rotten. Hearing that, one cannot help think that a road through the forest could be something other than the pure ecological disaster described by unbending conservationists, usually well equipped with four-wheel drive vehicles. Forest Fires with a Message The long list of causes of deforestation is not finished. Since 1997, fires have taken the lead in Asia and Latin America. In recent years, this scourge has been the greatest cause of degradation in tropical rain forests, which are particularly vulnerable, contrary to what one might believe, as soon as an unusually low rainfall increases the intensity of fires and extends the fire season, which normally runs from July to early October. Millions of hectares have been scorched. According to the FAO, in 1998 over 2 million hectares burned in Brazil.All of Central America was also hit. In Indonesia, the disaster was commented the world over. Still according to the FAO, “2 million hectares were destroyed in 1997 in Indonesia, probably more in 1998.” This is a conservative estimate. According to other sources, closer to 6 to 10 million hectares were ravaged.65 Millions of hectares of forest disappeared in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Fires started again in 1999, and again in 2000. After Suharto was ousted, the Indonesian government admitted that half of Indonesia’s forests had burned in the past two decades: 20 million hectares out of a total of 40 million.66 It was incapable of either preventing or limiting the disaster. In 1998, one of our Brazilian respondents told us: “The worst thing for the government about the great fires of 1998 was to have shown that it was unable to extinguish them.” Because they are spectacular, frightening, and strike public opinion, fires serve to reveal the multiple shortcomings of the state and the weight of political responsibilities in the shrinking of the forest. More than any other cause of deforestation, they trigger emotions and questions both inside the country and abroad. In 1997–98, the case of Indonesia was widely debated, because the effects of the fire were felt in all the neighboring countries. Smoke fumes

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blocked airports, hampered shipping, intoxicated Manila and Singapore, and most of all, discouraged tourism. Regional catastrophe, world dismay. In the analysis of satellite images, it was possible to establish the responsibility of large-scale industrial plantations (oil palms and eucalyptus for paper pulp) by companies that found it more economical to clear the earth by fire once they had clear-cut the forest.This did not prevent Bob Hassan, the famous logging tycoon and President Suharto’s golfing buddy, from declaring to the BBC that these were unfounded accusations made by NGOs led by former communists and relayed by unprofessional journalists.67 In a single province, near Singapore, some thirty logging companies active there were indicted after Suharto’s fall, but the big groups behind their activities were not bothered and they continue to campaign against indigenous peoples and small peasants, accused of all evils. According to a World Bank report, out of the 176 companies proven guilty of setting fire to the forest to set up plantations, 133 of them oil palm companies, none were taken to court.68 What was proven especially was the negligence, lack of oversight, corruption, the lack of means and technical know-how, and above all large-scale clear-cutting practices that left vast quantities of particularly inflammable residue on site during an unusually severe drought. A forest that is not logged is less sensitive to fire than a cleared forest. And this leads to what many consider the epicenter of all the trouble: the overexploitation of timber resources.

CHAPTER

FOUR

The Timber Trade: Guilty Party and Scapegoat

In the beginning there was wood. Timber production has been, is, and will remain the primary function of the forest, no matter what people say. The impossibility of taking in all the faces of deforestation in one glance prompts people to accuse the timber trade as being the primary, and for some, the only factor in the forest issue, and so most international debate ends up focusing on industrial logging and the responsibilities incumbent upon it.The controversy is intense. It is developing in a particularly unstable economic and political context that does not help reconcile the various points of view. For the agencies in the United Nations system (FAO, ITTO), most of their member countries, and the timber trade, the expansion of subsistence agriculture and the major economic development programs are the key factors in forest decline, the unavoidable price to pay for development. Then come excessive fuelwood gathering, overgrazing, fires, overexploitation of timber, and poor harvest practices.1 Official rhetoric presents commercial timber extraction as a factor that could possibly “aggravate changes in forest cover” but not as a direct cause of deforestation. On the other hand, for the past ten years, non-governmental organizations that first mobilized against the major road construction projects in the Amazon forest, then against transmigration policies that scorned the rights of indigenous peoples in Asia, have trained all their zeal on industrial timber extraction. For them, logging is the primary cause of loss and degradation of the remaining natural forests.2 Like any generalization, this one must be regarded with caution. Much depends on the region, the actors, the logging methods, and the way these three elements combine. There is no doubt, however, that the various forest

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productions interact increasingly with the world scene and the picture of the resource base is changing. A Complex System of Interactions At the current rate of exploitation, the splendid natural forests of the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah, those in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Philippines, will no longer exist in thirty years. In four decades, 50 to 70 percent of the forest cover in these countries has already been destroyed by legal and illegal harvests. In central Africa, destruction is less advanced. The area is less populated, the pressure on the land is not as heavy, cutting is more selective, primary forests have been exploited in a less destructive manner. But forest degradation, if not deforestation, is a serious threat if sustainable management techniques are not implemented. For example, FAO estimates that nearly 90 percent of logging in the dense forests of Cameroon in the 1980s took place in primary forests. Huge stands of previously intact frontier forests3 have been opened: “Although logging per se results in low rates of tree removal per hectare, logging roads open previously inaccessible areas to human settlements, agricultural encroachment, and hunting pressure.”4 In Gabon, an estimated two-thirds of the original forest cover still exists, but wood production has virtually doubled in the past ten years. This rapid increase in commercial logging is a new phenomenon. In 1957, less than 10 percent of the forests were given over to logging concessions. In 1999, over three-quarters of Gabon’s forests had been set aside for this purpose or were in the course of becoming concession areas. Whereas in many countries, most production is used on site, over 80 percent of the logs produced in Gabon are exported. Wood is the country’s second largest source of export revenue after oil. Between 1995 and 1997, half of these exports went to Asia.5 After a slump due to the Asian crisis, the trend picked up again in 1999: Asia bought nearly 54 percent of Gabon’s total exports in 1999, China absorbing the largest share of them. In 2000, timber production continued to rise and exports to increase (1.65 million cubic meters) although the percentage of on-site processing grew considerably, from 7 to 15 percent in five years.6 The pressure on the forest is rising and is accompanied by unprecedented diversification in the number of species exploited. Until the early 1990s, a single timber species, Okoumé, accounted for about 70 percent of the export volume. Now, the production of “miscellaneous woods” accounts for a large portion of exports, with over 65 timber species marketed, twenty of them in increasing quantities.7 A publication that will never be suspected of being critical of tropical timber logging

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accompanied the presentation of these figures with the following commentary: “On one hand, harvesting sixty-five species generates more per-hectare value of the forest once opened, and this pleases many economists. On the other, large harvests have a greater impact on the forest makeup and its biodiversity: Okoumé propagates, its regeneration facilitated by the clearings made, but also forests are kept open by repeated passes for cutting to keep up with market evolution.This impact is particularly negative for the fauna, and cross-border trade has already been established to supply markets not only in Libreville but also in Yaounde and Douala.”8 The large volumes harvested are not in themselves an indication of forest degradation. Everything depends on how extraction is carried out. The next chapter shows how sustainable management is making progress in the Congo basin countries. A rapid increase in commercial logging, however, cannot help but cause concern. A Commodity Rationale The trend to exploit formerly underutilized species is a general tendency, encouraged by World Bank economists in both Asia and Africa. The stated aim is to prompt companies to better value the resources of the area open for exploitation by achieving greater per-hectare productivity and thereby cover less surface area while alleviating the pressure on the most heavily marketed species. Logging companies more or less respond to these incentives. Some wonder “how far they can go in intensive logging while maintaining an ecosystem,”9 while most of them are mainly concerned with making quick profits in a volatile market by quickly enhancing the value of the resources on their concession and at the same time keeping production costs as low as possible. If the wood is not too tender and too fragile to withstand long storage and complicated transportation, and if it is not too heavy to transport, too hard to saw, too long to dry, in a word if all the production costs are not too high in proportion to the sale price, they will exploit the secondary species. Otherwise they will not use them.10 The dominant rationale is one of commodity. It has little to do with the idealized image of “precious” wood carefully harvested for sophisticated consumers commonly associated with the mention of tropical timbers in the minds of many nonspecialists. Tropical timbers are rarely “precious” woods from carefully managed natural forests. Most of the supply is in the form of all-purpose lumber and wood pulp. The majestic trees of the tropical forests will become forms to mold concrete in Japan and South Korea,11 everyday furniture, miscellaneous door and window frames. Their low quality roundwood timber will be

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used for fiberboard panels; part of the wood from Brazil and plantation forests in Indonesia will supply paper pulp and, if pulp is in short supply, they will also cut in natural forests as is the practice in Indonesia, a country that has risen to the challenge of becoming the world’s main plywood exporter and hopes to win this same rank for pulp exports. Both limited quantities of high quality timber reserved for special, often prestigious uses (the Bibliothèque Nationale de France) and the raw material used in large supply for medium quality goods, are taken from all tropical rain forests. Once felled, a tree is no more than a trivial commodity just like any other. It is harvested, sold, transformed, and exported. And if it is not profitable, it is left on the ground to rot. A Changing Geography The notion of tropical timber serves to situate the production of hot regions by comparison to timber production in temperate and boreal regions. From an international economic standpoint, it makes sense only if a distinction is made between the different sorts of products. In fact, there is not a single tropical timber market but several markets, which all differ by the degree to which the wood is processed.12 To understand the situation, a few definitions must be recalled. Below are the definitions used by CITES based on the World Customs Organization Harmonized System (known as the HS classification code) wood products code, the aim of which is to describe and codify goods subject to international trade: Logs: All wood in the rough, whether or not stripped of bark or sapwood, or roughly squared, for processing, notably into sawn wood, pulpwood, or veneer sheets; Sawnwood:Wood simply sawn lengthwise or produced by a profilechipping process. Sawn wood normally exceeds 6 mm in thickness; Veneer sheets: Thin layers or sheets of wood of uniform thickness, usually 6 mm or less, usually peeled or sliced, for use in making plywood, for veneering furniture, veneer containers, etc. Professionals also talk about roundwood in reference to shaped logs (which are cylindrical in form) taken out of the forest, sawn timber (sawn wood with sharp edges) and lumber (roughly processed wood: sawn, peeled, or sliced, etc.) as opposed to wood in the rough (trunk and branches) used for fuelwood and charcoal, and with pulpwood (for paper pulp, cardboard, etc.).

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Until recently, the political economy of tropical timber was based on a colonial type of international division of labor: companies in industrialized countries exploited the forests in developing countries, harvested the rough timber and transported the raw material out of the country to process it. After the Second World War, the large demand in Europe and the West for wood and wood by-products for reconstruction was satisfied in this way. Japan continues to base its supply on massive imports of raw timber.Today, it is the largest importer of tropical logs, along with China. However, for numerous reasons that blend together changing strategies in the North and a push for national industrialization in the South, the international economy of tropical timbers is currently changing.13 A large number of timber producing countries formally banned the export of logs from their territory. Brazil has imposed this ban since the late 1970s. Indonesia set up restrictions in 1980 and issued a total ban in 1985. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, this ban was lifted at some point in 1998.The following year, no log exports were officially recorded. All the 1999 exports were illicit, done with illegally harvested timber! In 2000, the Indonesian government decided to reinstate the log export ban as a means to help control this illicit traffic. The IMF looked the other way, having declared it did not want to interfere in the country’s agriculture or forestry.14 Since January 20, 1999, Cameroon has banned log exports of 23 of its traditional species, including the species in greatest demand in Europe,15 while subjecting a number of other species to special export permits granted as long as an export surcharge and export duties are paid, including on Ayous, the main species logged in Cameroon along with Sapele. (This caused a great stir in the French timber industry and spawned countless studies and meetings on Cameroon’s forestry taxes.) The list of countries that restrict raw timber exports, if not entirely, at least above a certain volume or for certain species, is long and growing longer. Gabon itself announced in 2001 that 20 percent of the timber produced there would have to be processed before being exported.The economic repercussions of these bans on the producing countries are subject to debate. Many believe that without a suitable tax policy and strict monitoring of forest management, reducing timber exports mainly has the effect of sheltering local inefficient and unproductive sawmills and processing plants from international competition and world prices. This can only increase the waste of wood resources and overexploitation of the forests, while depriving the state of substantial revenues. Indonesia’s example in this regard is worth looking into: stimulating demand for cheap Indonesian plywood in a context of reduced supply

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(due to the major fires and the low profitability of already overlogged forests) leads local logging companies to search for logs at all costs, including illegal cuts in more and more remote areas and in forests that are theoretically off-limits to logging. The trend nevertheless seems unstoppable. Limiting raw log exports satisfies the national pride of people who are exasperated by fleets of logging trucks speeding by—often with no headlights, causing countless accidents—to carry far away the resources of a forest they consider their own.The purpose is to create more added value locally, create jobs and foster industrial development in the producing countries. It is called for, and often imposed, by local lobbies.16 It is encouraged by NGOs who see it as the first step in putting a stop to international trade in wood harvested from dense moist forests. Today, as trade networks are reconfigured, no one can say what the tropical timber trade will be tomorrow. The evolution underway is full of paradoxes. At least six trends can be identified: 1. Tropical timber production represents only a small portion of the world’s timber production. Whereas tropical forests make up approximately one-half of the wooded area in the world, they only provide 20 percent of the world’s timber production (most of which, as we have seen, is consumed as fuelwood and charcoal). Most of the world’s timber production (80 percent) is divided among the United States (27 percent), Europe (20 percent), Canada (12 percent), the Commonwealth of Independent States (7 percent) and miscellaneous countries (14 percent).17 The production of tropical timbers is about 300 million cubic meters, which is distributed as follows: 85 million in Brazil, 70 million in Africa, 47 million in Indonesia, and 36 million in Malaysia. In comparison, the consumption of developing countries is 490 million cubic meters, therefore greater than the supply of tropical timber. There are more net importing developing countries than net exporting countries. The use of tropical timber in European countries and North America is therefore much lower than what is suggested by the calls to boycott tropical timber heard here and there. France is the only developed country that imports just about as much tropical log production as it does nontropical logs. But it is also a large producer. One specialist pointed out that in 1997, for instance,“Cameroon, with an area very close to that of France, produced 3.5 million cubic meters of logs. That is about six times less than France if one refers only to logs for lumber and ten times less than all of France’s production put on the market.”18

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2. Not only does tropical timber production represent merely one-fifth of world timber production, but also only a minute portion of the tropical timber harvested is exported. Less than 20 percent of the wood produced in the tropics reaches the international market. Most of it is destined for domestic consumption, if only for fuelwood, the importance of which has already been highlighted. The production/domestic consumption ratio is very high everywhere, with the notable exception of Indonesia and Malaysia and, more recently, Gabon. According to official statistics, in 1999, 86 percent of all the wood produced in the Brazilian Amazon was used for the domestic market, and only 14 percent was exported. Brazil processes most of its harvested wood locally for its domestic market. But the temptation to increase harvests for a very eager foreign market is strong. It will only increase in the coming decades. More and more allusions are already being made in the international timber trade press to the fabulous forest reserves in Brazil and its huge export potential if, as some predict, there is a world wood shortage in the next twenty years.19 3. The world tropical timber trade deals more and more in processed goods. The share of raw timber in total tropical timber exports has plummeted in twenty years, from 60 percent in the 1980s to less than 25 percent in 1999. Only Africa has continued to export most of its production in the form of logs. In 1999, trade in tropical logs represented 2 percent of the world log production, whereas trade in raw timber from temperate and boreal forests represented twice that much (4 percent). It should be noted that, in 1999, tropical timbers made up less than one-sixth of the world’s log production (114 million cubic meters altogether, most of it produced in North America, Scandinavia, and Russia).20 As for sawn wood, the share of tropical timbers in international trade is also small. First, tropical timbers only make up one-tenth of the world production of sawn wood (36 million cubic meters out of a total 352 million cubic meters). Second, domestic consumption remains high. In 1999, international trade mainly dealt in nontropical sawn wood. These made up 25 percent of world production, a high volume of raw material marketed by industrialized countries.21 The situation is radically different for veneer and plywood. For veneer sheets, tropical timbers made up nearly half of the world production in 1999: over 2 million cubic meters out of a total of 5 million. Trade in tropical peeled veneer is greater than trade in nontropical peeled veneer:22 28 percent of the world production compared to 22 percent. The contrast is even clearer for plywood.23 In 1999, tropical timber made up nearly two-fifths of the world plywood production, or 20 million cubic meters out of a total of 48. But exports of tropical plywood

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represent 25 percent of the world production. Trade in nontropical plywood accounts for only 9 percent of the world production. 4. The world tropical timber industry has an increasingly marked South– South dimension in which Asia plays a dominant role. Four countries— Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, and India—are both the largest consumers and the largest producers of tropical logs and sawn wood. In both cases, one exporter, Malaysia, and two importers, Japan and China, handle most of the international trade.24 In 1999, the largest exporters of tropical logs were, in order of size, Malaysia (17 percent of world exports), Papua New Guinea (16 percent), Gabon (14 percent), Cameroon (9 percent). The largest importers of tropical logs were China (31 percent), Japan (24 percent), India (9 percent), and Taiwan (8 percent). The Philippines are Papua New Guinea’s third largest customer after Japan and South Korea. For sawn wood, the largest exporters in 1999 were Malaysia (49 percent), Indonesia (9 percent), the Ivory Coast (8 percent), and Brazil (8 percent).The main importers: China (18 percent) and Japan (16 percent). Malaysia’s main customers are in Asia: Thailand, China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Brazil, which supplies Europe and the United States, has found that it must compete with the arrival of Asian wood on the American market. It exports more to its traditional markets in the Persian Gulf and the new Asian markets.The Philippines, which devastated their forest to the point where it must import huge quantities of wood at a high price, is a major new customer for Brazil, whenever the state of its economy permits. Regarding veneer, a sector with a high volume of international trade as we have seen, two countries have a “crucial influence”25 on the world situation: Malaysia, which handles over one-third of the world production (34 percent) and over half of the world’s exports (54 percent), China, which consumes nearly one-third of the world production (29 percent) and which is the largest importer (44 percent) followed by Taiwan (14 percent). Cambodia is the second largest exporter (12 percent), followed by the Ivory Coast (11 percent), and Ghana (7 percent). On this market,Asia is the main destination for Asian exports, and the European Union is the main recipient of African exports. As for plywood, Asian domination is even more apparent: 90 percent of the production and 75 percent of the world consumption of tropical plywood takes place on this continent.26 In 1999, Malaysia and Indonesia alone handled 60 percent of the production of tropical plywood and consumed less than 10 percent of it. This considerable gap between production and consumption is described as an anomaly in European timber industry circles (private conversation). In any case, it indicates how

R. GIMENO, P. MITRANO, Sciences Po Paris, March 2001. Projection J. Bertin

2 1 0.2 million m3

Map 5 Principal trade routes of tropical logs

1

10 million m3

Source: J.-M. Roda, État de I’économie des bois d’ ceuvre tropicaux 2000, Cirad, Montpellier, 2000.

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important the export industries are in these two countries. Indonesia won its gamble of replacing Japan as the world’s leading producer (40 percent) and leading exporter (62 percent) of tropical plywood. Malaysia is the second largest exporter (29 percent), followed at a distance by Brazil (3 percent). Japan now only ranks third among producing countries (9 percent), behind China (10 percent). China and Japan are also large consumers.Together they make up 54 percent of the world consumption of tropical plywood, to which must be added South Korea (6 percent). The main importers are Japan (46 percent), the United States (16 percent), China (11 percent), and South Korea (7 percent). Thus, whatever the market for primary timber products—logs, sawn wood, veneer, plywood—Asia is both the main producer and the main consumer of tropical timber. Its weight in the industry is decisive and, given its building techniques and consumption habits, its needs are considerable. According to the United Nations, Asia’s population, which makes up more than half the world’s today, could increase by 57.7 percent in 28 years (1997–2025), in other words less than the time needed for a tree to grow to a reasonable diameter to be harvested. This new configuration and the potentially colossal markets opening in the countries of the Northern Pacific Rim has not escaped the eye of the European companies specialized in tropical timber logging and trade. 5. Despite the increase in wood consumption in major markets such as Japan, China, and South Korea, trade in primary tropical timber products has not grown. On the contrary, the overall value of imports of primary tropical wood products in this new century is lower than that observed in the mid-1990s before the Asian crisis. The market is more resistant for secondary processed wood products (furniture and ornaments).27 With the exception of China, whose demand for logs is always higher, and the United States, where the flourishing plywood market is in search of peeler species, the principal markets for primary timber products are stagnating and some are on a sharp decline (the Philippines,Thailand). The restrictions affecting log and sawnwood exports in many tropical countries do not entirely explain the phenomenon. The stiff competition of temperate timber, including on the Asian markets, is a major factor. The timber sectors in Japan and South Korea are turning more than before toward the resinous woods of Russia, Scandinavian timber, and woods from New Zealand and North America. Even in China, the appearance of a new affluent class has stimulated a new demand for quality furniture with a preference for blond wood.These demands favor temperate woods and boost exports of European timber.

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Competition is stiff in all markets, and European companies exploiting African timber are in danger of bearing the brunt of it.Traditionally, in fact, the European market absorbed most of Africa’s production. France remains the primary European importer of tropical logs. But African log and sawnwood imports are on the downturn in Europe, at once because Europe uses its own wood, it has newfound sources of supply since the end of the Cold War, its high-tech machines make temperate timber more competitive and environmentalist campaigns against the use of noncertified tropical timber are beginning to influence consumers.28 Another important element is competition with products substituted for wood, particularly PVC29 and aluminum more and more frequently used for windows and outdoor woodwork instead of traditional tropical timber. A manager at Lapeyre thus described the drop in the use of wood in this sector: “in less than 10 years wood has dropped from 61 percent to 29 percent while during the same period PVC has risen from 9 percent to 47 percent.”30 Knowing that a number of African producing countries still depend on trade in primary timber products for their export revenues and tax receipts, and wood resources to keep the elites in their posts, it is a mystery how they will be able to finance the sustainable management programs asked of them by the international community and ensure a transition to the secondary processed products trade (furniture, doors and windows, ornaments, etc.) to which the market rationale is pushing them, unless they open wide to Asian demand. 6. The quest for raw material has become the forest sector’s primary concern. Several elements combine to fuel the fear of a world shortage of tropical timber resources. Producing countries engaged in the industrialization process have considerably increased their national milling and processing capacities. In Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil, as well as Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, and the Ivory Coast, sawmills and secondary processing facilities have been built and must be supplied. Except for Brazil where the forest reserves are considerable, the wood resource in these countries is no longer sufficient to sustain the supply to local industries.A large portion of processed wood comes from conversion forests, primary forest areas that will be converted into plantations or farmland (Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, the Ivory Coast). By its very nature, this source is not sustainable.31 Moreover, the overexploitation of natural forests has been conducted at such a pace for the past forty years, particularly in Western Africa and in Southeast Asia, that the volume of saleable wood has decreased sharply, either because the area has been definitively lost for

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forest use, or because the forest has not had the time to regenerate after the first cut (and often the second or third). The period of rotation required for forest regeneration in a tropical environment is estimated to be 25 to 35 years, a length that is not respected.32 For a long time, supply to sawmills and local processing industries was based on the availability of a bountiful raw material at below market prices, encouraged by measures restricting log exports and tax incentives. Today, resource renewal is no longer guaranteed, and many countries are in a situation of industrial overcapacity. Karsenty has underlined this paradox:“The growth of Southeast Asia’s industrial processing capacities has heightened domestic demand for wood to a maximum while the harvest capacities of natural forests are declining due to forest conversion.”33 This paradox is not limited to Asia. It is also encountered in other regions of the world. In the Ivory Coast, for instance, the government encourages industrialists in the forest sector to increase capital gains locally by stepping up secondary wood processing capacities. The country’s major forest port, which had some 15 plants in 1995, had 25 in 1999.Yet the Ivory Coast forest cover is only a quarter of what it was 40 years ago and the timber harvest is half what it was in the 1970s.34 Ivory Coast forests are no longer capable of feeding the processing facilities, and the search for raw material has become “the main concern of industrials in the area.” A shortage also threatens central African countries. According to a long established major French logging company:“Cameroon is perhaps the most in danger of being unable to maintain a producing forest in the future . . .. Most countries, be it Cameroon, Gabon or in the Okoumé-growing region in the southern Congo, are at a turning point. From now on, or in the coming years, the pioneer front, in other words logging in primary exploitation zones of virgin forest, is nearly exhausted . . .There is little, if any, virgin forest left.”35 In Brazil, a geographer reports:“Logging concessions are rising steadily, and the structure of the timber industry is developing along with exports”; in the Brazilian Amazon “all logging companies without exception are in constant search of logs.”36 The old forests of the Congo and Amazon basins have already been identified as major timber production centers for the twenty-first century and it is hard to see what could thwart this logging plan.37 Traditional high quality species such as Asian meranti, South American mahogany, African okoumé, niango, and azobé are growing scarcer and more difficult to access. Diminishing resources are pushing logging companies to move into new areas that had previously been considered inaccessible or marginal: companies first set up in Cameroon are now

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seeking concessions in northern Congo (the Lebanese company Hazim Hazim, the Malaysian Shimmer International). In the mountainous regions of Sarawak, helicopters are used to extract felled timber from areas that heavy equipment cannot reach.“A good example of reducedimpact logging,” say some. “Property violation and scorn for forest dwellers,” say others.What will happen tomorrow in the great forests of Irian Jaya that shelter some of the last arboreal peoples in the world? The Appeal of Paper The wood pulp sector is undergoing changes similar to those affecting the tropical timber industry. There is the same appetite for raw material, the same geographical reconfigurations of production and consumption, the same fascination for the boom in China, the same problems of overcapacity and vulnerability in the new producing countries. And the same threats to the forest. Wood is the raw material used to make paper pulp. Over half the world’s paper production (55 percent) comes from wood harvested specifically for this purpose, although the proportion of recycled fibers, 38 percent, has grown considerably. The remainder is marginal and comes from nonwood fibers such as bamboo (especially in China). In industrialized countries, the share of recycled fibers is bound to continue increasing, but up to now world demand for wood pulp has been so high that recycling “has served more as a supplement than as a substitute for virgin fiber.”38 World paper consumption has more than doubled in 25 years; it should continue to increase by more than 30 percent in the next ten years.39 This frenetic activity accelerates market reconfiguration and pressures on wood resources.40 Currently, over 42 percent of the wood harvested for industrial purposes (i.e. other than fuelwood) is used to make paper. That could represent over half the world demand for industrial timber before the mid-twenty-first century. Here again, despite the slump due to the 1997–98 crisis, prospects of the Asian market appeared immense, particularly in China where paper consumption has risen by 127 percent since 1990. In 1997, the Chinese population consumed less than 27 kilograms of paper per year per person, which is little compared to Japan (249 kilograms), a lot compared to India (less than 4 kilograms), enormous in absolute value due simply to the demographic factor: 1,250,000,000 people officially counted. China has begun to modernize its mills; it doubled its production in the last decade and more than tripled its wood pulp imports, but the demand by far exceeds the national capacity. China today is the largest importer

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of paper in the world and its consumption is rising at a rate of about 2 kilograms per year per person.41 In the past ten years, several countries of the Southern hemisphere have launched out into the pulp production industry. First Brazil, then Indonesia, Malaysia, and various Latin American countries arrived on the market alongside the United States, Canada, and the Scandinavian countries, traditional suppliers to the world market. Huge investments have been made in these new producing countries, encouraged by subsidies and the help of international banks. At first glance, the gamble seems to make sense. With cheap labor, low pollution standards, new highly efficient paper mills, Southern hemisphere countries are capable of supplying thousands of tons of pulp per year with very competitive production costs that are much lower than in Western countries. For instance, in Brazil the industry has the lowest production costs in the world: $165 is the average cost of a ton of pulp in Brazil, $169 in Indonesia, between $272 and $325 per ton in North America or in Europe.42 Eucalyptus grows twice as fast in Brazil than a comparable species in Spain and five times faster than in Scandinavia! Brazil is so confident of its comparative advantages that is has undertaken a second wave of investments, 7 billion dollars in the next five years, and intends to have increased its pulp production by 45 percent by 2005, mainly for export. All new producing countries have reached a point of no return: they must produce pulp and win foreign markets. But how can these often colossal production units be supplied?43 The matter has been poorly weighed, and therefore poorly addressed, entailing possible social unrest, industrial bankruptcies, and even greater threats to the forest. The example of Indonesia is, once again, worth pondering.44 For over a decade, the government backed a process that led to multiplying the country’s capacity in the pulp sector by seven, with the political ambition of making it a world leader. To achieve this aim, all manner of aid was given to a handful of Indonesian subsidiaries of the major Asian conglomerates (Sinar Mar Group and Raja Gadura Mas Group): subsidies, low-interest loans, funds for plantations, access privileges to the natural forests, and other advantages. And when these firms’ activities and their gigantic appetite resulted in conflicts with local communities, the investors could count on the Suharto government to repress any revolt. Huge mills were built, no less huge loans were granted (in particular by international banks based in Singapore belonging to these same conglomerates as well as by American investment banks) and colossal debts were accumulated without a care. Some $12 billion of investments were made in the 1990s.To turn a profit on such large investments, the mills

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were planned to run round-the-clock at full capacity. Oddly enough, no one seemed concerned with where the required wood fiber would come from or how it would be harvested: legally or illegally? sustainably or not? Neither the banks nor the international financial institutions made any further inquiries when the firms claimed to be able to establish enough plantations to meet all of their needs. Actually, the development of production capacities was far swifter than that of the plantations, and the latter only supplied a minute portion of the wood used (8 percent according to the figures Chris Barr collected from the Indonesia Pulp and Paper Association).The remainder came from clear cuts in the natural forest, many of which were performed illegally. The wood pulp industry had already cleared 835,000 hectares in twelve years, to supply a mere four mills. This state of things is bound to last for some time to come.The quantity of wood fiber that can be harvested according to sustainable management principles is notoriously insufficient to run the Indonesian mills, whereas a fiber shortage is beginning to be felt. The forest resources in the areas neighboring these oversized mills have been exhausted.Access to raw material is becoming more difficult. Production costs are rising. Profitability is diminishing. Shares in Asia Pulp and Paper were plummeting at the end of 2000. Public funds have been sought to buoy a sector that today represents 50 percent of Indonesia’s forest product exports. Will a portion of the international public development aid granted to Indonesia go to relieve the debt of the big “woodchoppers”? The example of Indonesia epitomizes the current issue regarding wood pulp and its implications for the forest.The mills take a long time to build, they are expensive (as much as $1.5 to $2 billion). Overhead is high, the sector lacks flexibility and has proven vulnerable. Considerable financial risks have been taken in the new producing countries of Southeast Asia. The profitability requirement implies that the mills run round the clock, seven days a week, processing staggering quantities of wood pulp daily. Everyone knows that they will have to draw from natural forests.“And what if the resource is depleted?” an industrial is asked. “There are still plenty of protected forests . . . ” comes his reply!45 The problem of supply is not only an issue in tropical countries. All pulp producing countries are faced with it. Environmentalists have not neglected to denounce the threats the paper industry poses to the boreal forests of Canada and Russia. In 30 years, some 12 million hectares of natural pine forests have disappeared in the United States, a loss poorly offset by plantation forests with much less biodiversity. Why would the Southern hemisphere countries not use this as an argument to refuse that tropical forests be treated separately in international discussions?

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Is a policy of massive plantation the solution? There are strong incentives to make large-scale plantations of the three species used most in paper manufacturing: pine, eucalyptus, and acacia. The tropical climate allows for impressive yields: whereas in Sweden a species supplies about 5 cubic meters per hectare, a species providing a comparable wood will yield 26 cubic meters in Chile and up to 40 cubic meters in Brazil. When plantations for wood pulp have a 20-to-30-year rotation length in temperate regions, they can be harvested in six to ten years in the tropics. Governments have subsidized the planting of millions of hectares of fast-growing species in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brazil. As for the Japanese paper industry, they have invested heavily in this sort of plantation wherever possible: Vietnam, China, Papua New Guinea, Chile, New Zealand, and so on. In an ideal world, plantation forests should cover the industry’s needs and by the same token lower the pressure on natural forests and their inhabitants. For the moment, reality is another matter.The sites available are not limitless in countries where the land access issue is a constant problem.Very often, plantation land has been wrested from dense forestland by displacing indigenous peoples with terrifying brutality. The appeal of paper prompts the industry to cut old trees in old-growth forests or younger trees in secondary forests that only yield once so that they can be replaced by fast-growing species that guarantee quick and repeated profits. Without very strict monitoring of plantation policy implementation, they can wind up increasing deforestation. A Changing Political Economy The aggressive industrialization policies of wood-producing developing countries, whether they apply to timber or wood pulp, are not the only responsible parties in the pursuit of raw material. North Asian countries are also involved in the frantic quest for new resources to supply processing plants. Some have built modern industrial facilities to manufacture secondary products even though they produce little timber (South Korea,Taiwan). Others, such as Japan, have chosen to establish their own forests as sanctuaries by strictly protecting them while drawing their wood supply from others’ forests. The major European logging companies virtually mined their logging concessions for 40 years and today find that the conditions of supply to their industries have changed considerably. They have begun competing for access to forest land that still supports tropical species now in short supply in their usual concessions. Today, for instance, three of the major logging companies in Africa (the French Thanry, the German Danzer, and the Dutch Wijma) are showing

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interest in Guinea’s and Liberia’s forest reserves to continue to supply processing plants established in the Ivory Coast. To all this is added the arrival of China in international trade with nearly limitless needs for an enormous population and a booming economy. New prospects are opening up on the Chinese market for species that European operators were not accustomed to exploiting: soft wood and small diameter trees neglected up to now. But to supply this market, competition is fierce and the battle is fought on the global level. What remains of the tropical rain forests could become the first victim. In the final analysis, their fate depends on the future patterns of interaction between the national and international and between economics and politics, at both the local and world levels, the very definition of international political economy.46 The increase in demand in a context of uncertain stability of supply gave rise to a growing appetite for the wood sector at a time when globalization was opening borders.The lowering of trade barriers, new measures facilitating direct foreign investment, and improved means of transportation and communication have all fostered a huge expansion of transnational corporations, thus reconfiguring the traditional geography of tropical timbers and upsetting the stability of long established political channels between Europe and Africa, the United States, and Europe and Brazil in particular. New competitors have emerged that have reshuffled the deck. Moreover, in tropical rain forests, as the saying goes, “money grows on trees.”47 For many public and private individual actors, there is a great temptation to go collect this wealth by all possible means. Asian Competition Not only have the traditionally Europe-oriented export flows been redirected toward Asia, but competition for the direct control over production forests has taken an unexpected turn with the arrival of very powerful Southeast Asian companies in Central Africa and South America, zones the Western industrialists once believed to be their territory.48 In terms of volume of timber logged in old forests, the ten largest groups in the tropical timber sector today are Asian49 and European.50 The biggest surprise came from the giant companies in Malaysia which, when they set up in Cameroon, Guyana, Surinam, and Brazil in the mid-1990s, was experienced as a real “yellow tornado”51 (a crude expression but indicative of the turmoil this caused). The Asian companies’ constant push forward is not, however, a new phenomenon. Japan’s insatiable needs and, to a lesser extent,Taiwan’s and

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South Korea’s, prompted their companies to seek their supply first in the Philippines (1950–60), then in Indonesia and Sabah (1960–70), then in Sarawak (since the 1990s) and now more and more in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Everywhere these companies have overlogged the forest, harvested excessive quantities of timber, used devastating cutting methods, scorned the local people, and disregarded every rule of sustainable forest management. Observers do not hesitate to hold Japan as the primary culprit of deforestation in Southeast Asia and Melanesia. An Australian researcher demonstrated how very sophisticated business arrangements enable Japanese trading companies (sogo shosha) to act as middlemen between the logging companies (usually Chinese-Malaysian), shipping companies, and Japanese buyers, guaranteeing the latter a steady supply at abnormally low prices. Six of them allegedly control two-thirds of the log and sawnwood imports to Japan. These are the biggest firms in the country: Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Itochu Marubeni, Sumimoto, and Nissho Iwai.52 The upheaval arises from the fact that the activity of Asian multinationals has overflowed the Southeast Asia/Oceania/Northern Asia zone and infiltrated areas where a weak currency and fragile political institutions drive timber prices down and facilitate access to the resource.Aside from the fictions that crop up when newcomers appear in areas where they were least expected (in Cameroon we have heard tell of “forbidden areas” that were “strictly guarded,” “clandestine” ports from which illegal cargos were shipped “in the night,” etc.), the behavior of these multinationals in the forest is distressing for at least two reasons: their logging methods and the opaqueness of their organization.The largest groups are Malaysian, and they are preceded by a deplorable reputation for the way they behaved at home in Sarawak and are now behaving in Oceania. In the Solomon Islands, they are accused of having the world’s worst forest practices, destroying everything in their path to the point of leaving not even one single specimen of marketable species on the site.53 A field study conducted by two experts on the methods used by a Malaysian company established in Cameroon puts these assertions somewhat in perspective, but it is still not entirely reassuring.54 It identified “rather primitive” logging methods, harvests made with no prior plan or schedule, sometimes “in virtual contradiction with forest dynamics.” It confirms the lack of respect for local communities: all the staff are Malaysian (project managers, truck drivers, fellers, skidders, etc.). Cameroonians are only hired for prospecting and unskilled jobs.They are paid flat wages with no profit-sharing schemes. Malaysian workers have a one-year contract, they work seven days a week and are paid by their

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output: the more the tree-fellers and tractor operators cut and extract, the more they are paid. Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that logging is intensive and the harvest sometimes resembles clear-cutting. With this short-term/high-output rationale, a concession’s economic potential is soon exhausted, obliging the company to seek concessions elsewhere and open new areas to logging:“This method is only viable if the accessible areas are enormous and not already occupied by competitors.This is what the Malaysian operators realized.They think logging on a global level, and have undertaken a strategy to control the major dense moist forests in the great supply basins of the intertropical belt.”55 The merger and acquisition policies of the major Asian companies and their organizational complexity add to the apprehension caused by their methods. The three largest Malaysian logging companies, Rimbunan Jijau, Samling, and WTK, have moved toward Guyana, Surinam, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Cambodia, and Brazil.56 These gigantic corporations hold millions of hectares of forest concessions and have available vast amounts of very mobile capital.They arrived in Africa and South America in the mid-1990s, left when the Asian crisis struck and returned as soon as the market showed signs of an upturn. Timber is only a small aspect of their activity: they also have a stake in agriculture, oil palm plantations, real estate, insurance, transportation, tourism, and so on. Wherever these huge conglomerates establish their presence, a multitude of subsidiaries are formed, themselves divided into subsubsidiaries, corresponding to as many vaguely bankrupt or bought out local companies, holding vague permits to extract timber from vaguely delimited concessions. In Brazil, for instance, it is not rare for the Brazilian environmental agency (IBAMA) to claim its inability to ascertain who owns forest land and the amount of timber harvested, bought, processed, and exported by these subsidiaries (private conversation). Between the logging companies that can be seen on site and the majority shareholder who collects the profits, stretches a complex pyramid-shaped network made up of several levels of companies, usually registered in the United Kingdom’s Cayman Islands or Virgin Islands, with branches in Hong Kong or Taiwan, all this perpetually shifting. This arrangement recalls a similar one in ocean shipping, with similar effects: it is impossible to assign responsibility to anyone. The majority shareholders often belong to two or three of these large groups at the same time and regularly practice buyouts and transfers among themselves. These infinitely complex networks are all controlled by Malaysian Chinese. The Chinese diaspora is clearly playing a major role in the reconfiguration of the world timber market.

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It would be a mistake, however, to demarcate between Asian groups seen as “woodchoppers” by nature and cultural fatality, and European companies that out of tradition conventionally exploit the resource in a spirit of sustainable forest management.This Manichean belief is sometimes conveyed in European timber industry circles. It shortchanges history and is inaccurate. Everything depends on the context and the moment. The sustainable management rhetoric of European logging companies is a recent, politically correct discourse required to gain access to certain Northern European markets in England, the Netherlands, and Germany.When the executive of a major group declares that “new challenges have arisen in the past ten years,” that they are “more pressing,” and that “we can no longer exploit the forest any which way . . . ”57 he implicitly acknowledges that the forest had been exploited “any which way.” There is no doubt that the rhetoric is sincere and practices are bound to change. These new challenges must be met. Unlike many of their competitors, European companies are organized in a fairly straightforward, often family manner. Timber logging and processing are their sole sector of activity, their capital is invested in this sector and does not allow for much mobility. In conducting their business, they are subject to the vigilance of government officials and increasingly finicky consumers who have been duly lectured by NGOs. In the vicinity of cutting sites, the local communities are growing aware that their forest resources are being exploited by foreign companies that reinvest their gains elsewhere. They are organizing and adamantly demanding their share. One must not underestimate, either, a genuine attachment to the forest and all that it represents, often encountered among timber professionals. In sum, in several regions the general mood is an incitement to virtue. Provided that competition remains healthy, a green ethic and a market rationale can work together. All companies seek to make profits.This is their primary aim.The way they go about it depends on the context, the nature of their field of operations, their customers’ expectations, and the flexibility they enjoy with respect to the authorities and local populations. The same group, whatever its nationality, will not behave the same way in all circumstances and for every operation. For instance, in Cameroon in 1999, the entire timber trade was talking about bulldozers belonging to a perfectly respectable and respected French company that were in a place they should not have been to supply the group’s mills in a perfectly illegal manner. At the time there was a deadlock due to a tug of war between the Cameroon President and the World Bank. Concessions ceased to be granted. No one knew to whom and how they would be allocated, except for certain companies with direct relations to the President,

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which had nothing to worry about. Nor did anyone know which species would be subject to an export ban in compliance with the foreseen regulations on log trading. During this period of uncertainty, that a logging company should seek to keep up its supply did not really shock anyone. In general, there was never so much illegal cutting in Cameroon as during those long months of waiting. On the other hand, there are examples in peninsular Malaysia and Thailand, limited perhaps but unthinkable twenty years ago, of sustainable logging practiced by the nationally run subsidiaries of major Asian groups under the watchful eye of NGOs and local communities.Western elites are not the only ones endowed with environmental sensitivity.Asia has some environmental defense groups with forceful and noteworthy things to say about the forest.When their political system allows them to express themselves, loggers and the timber industry have to take them into account. Even in Africa, in Gabon and Cameroon where the general attitude is changing, some Malaysian loggers are beginning to resign themselves to sustainable forest management practices.58 The political dimension is at the core of the process everywhere. In Asia and Africa, where most of the forest land is state-owned, logging companies carve out their share within a system where the basic issue is a power struggle. In South America, the central issue is land redistribution, wealth, and means of development. In all cases, the fate of the forest is bound up with the evolution of each country’s political and social system. Microeconomic Networks and Illegal Dealings “I don’t like tropical timber, it’s war timber.” says Mr. R, a carpenter and roofing contractor for three generations who owns his own sawmill in the Seine et Marne department. “What share does it represent in your supply?” “About 20 percent.” “Why do you buy it?” “Because I can use all of it, there’s no waste, and it holds up well for outdoor use.” “Why is it war timber?” “Because they fight over it, so they cut everything any which way.” A simple anecdote, of course, with no particular significance except that it reflects the vague feeling that something is wrong with tropical timber. How the belief has come about that it is “war timber” and who “they” are is a mystery. But however instinctive the judgment may be, the feeling is not entirely unfounded. The forest is a coveted resource

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over which people fight: Uganda’s and Rwanda’s takeover of the forest resources in the northeast of former Zaire both for timber and mines is a reminder of this.Timber finances civil wars: it is a well-known fact that Khmer Rouge guerrilla warfare was funded in part by continued timber trafficking between Cambodia and Thailand. It is less known that the coministers of the Royal Government of Cambodia had secretly signed contracts authorizing a dozen Thai firms to export several million cubic meters of timber from the Khmer Rouge zones. In a climate of intense corruption, timber served to finance both the guerilla and the army supposed to combat it, thus prolonging a devastating conflict. Despite measures to ban log exports imposed by the IMF in 1996, illegal export permits continued to be granted under Hun Sen’s government, including to China and Japan. A 1997 U.S. State Department document described this trafficking and the pressure sponsors tried to exert on the authorities in Phnom Penh to make them cease illegal cutting and exports, oblige the Thai authorities to comply with Cambodian legislation, and create the conditions for timber revenues to return to the coffers of a state propped up by the international community. Interestingly enough, the same document praised the action undertaken in this same vein by British NGO Global Witness.59 Financial backers suspended loans to Phnom Penh in 1997 as a sanction against the authorities’ reluctance to combat illegal felling and the pillage of the forest by unscrupulous concessionaires. Loans were reinstated in 1999 after Hun Sen pledged to put a stop to these practices. As an outward sign of this will to deal ruthlessly with the culprits, a Forest Crime Monitoring Unit was established. It has three components: a Department of Forest and Wildlife in charge of monitoring crimes committed in production forests; an office of the Environmental Ministry in charge of monitoring crimes committed in protected areas; and Global Witness overseeing it all as an independent organization in charge of monitoring the monitors.A mission entrusted to a private foreign organization in charge of monitoring the workings of public national bodies in an eminently sovereign domain since it involves the police, the revenue department and land use planning: now, there is a fine example of the overlapping between the national, transnational, and international levels. All of this was instigated by Cambodia’s financial backers: The IMF, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and bilateral donors all joined together in a Consultative Group. The case of Cambodia is one of the more familiar because the most powerful international actors officially took charge of it.That of Liberia also is beginning to attract international attention. In December 2000, a

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group of United Nations experts for Sierra Leone denounced corruption in the timber trade in Liberia and the role these dealers played in arms trafficking with Sierra Leone. In January 2001, Global Witness submitted its own report to the United Nations confirming and expounding on the expert group’s information without bothering with diplomatic precautions. The question was brought before the Security Council, and the United States, backed by Great Britain, asked for an embargo to be declared on timber exports from Liberia, in addition to the sanctions already levied on diamonds, weapons, and airline travel. One can imagine the embarrassment caused to France, which absorbed 37.07 percent of Liberia’s total timber exports in 1999,60 and increased its imports by 11 percent in the first six months of 2000 despite the region’s political instability. Thirty-five companies log in Liberia, all are not incriminated in illegal felling and illicit traffic, but opprobrium over this country’s timber is spreading the way it did on diamonds. Charles Taylor, Liberia’s president, is accused of personal enrichment from timber trade revenues and of having awarded enormous forest concessions to a single company, the Oriental Timber Company (OTC), as well as the control of a major port and the near monopoly on land transportation in exchange for hard currency. The OTC presents itself as Malaysian but is actually owned by an Indonesian and operated by a Dutch citizen named in the brief to the U.N. as being at the center of all dealings. With a free hand and, according to Global Witness, probably exempt from taxes, the OTC performs devastating cuts, disregards all regulations, bulldozes through villages and plantations without offering any compensation, and organizes the logistics of all the arms trafficking in the region. Forest roads have been built that are used to transport arms inside Liberia and to Sierra Leone, supplying both Charles Taylor’s security forces and Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels. Not only are huge stretches of Liberia’s forest resources being pillaged by a company that has respect for nothing, but they are also used to prolong a horrible conflict that has spread to Guinea and is destabilizing the entire region. Liberia was one of the rare African countries that still had a considerable amount of its original forest cover.According to Greenpeace, nearly half of it has already been destroyed due to civil war. In April 2000, the Agriculture minister expressed concern about drought in the country if what remained of the forest was not carefully managed. Some sources claim that new plans for concessions are in the works.Two-thirds of Liberia’s forest would then be given over to concessions and the marketable timber will likely have been logged out in a matter of years if it continues to enrich some, arm others, and lead the people of an entire region down its path of destruction.

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The case of Cambodia and Liberia are of course two extreme examples, but they are not the only places where broad-scale corruption and fraud are practiced. One would also have to mention Indonesia, where 70 percent of the timber industry supply derives from illegal felling;61 the Brazilian Amazon where, according to Greenpeace, 80 percent of the timber harvested is cut fraudulently; Sabah, Malaysia, where poachers cut down trees in protected forests and steal logs from state reserves; Laos, where soldiers control logging; Cameroon, where concessions are often awarded to friends and family, if not to friends of friends and family who quickly turn around and subcontract to companies for which sustainable forest management is the least of their worries, and many other countries. In all producing countries, logging gives rise to an underground economy fed by illegal clearing.The weight of more or less loosely networked microeconomic actors with the more or less obvious collusion of the authorities is an important dimension in the international economy of tropical timbers. Diasporas, corrupt civil servants, warlords and contraband channels create transnational zones that escape all domestic and international regulatory devices.This is demonstrated in the figures provided in ITTO charts on trade in tropical logs.The gap between the quantities indicated by an exporting country and those given by an importing country can vary by 100 percent in both directions,62 a strong indication of the extent of illegal trade! The ITTO attempts to collect the most precise statistics possible on trade in tropical timbers, but it is forced to admit the low reliability of official data due to the extent of trade that escapes the record-keeping of its member states. Official statistics give the volume of timber officially produced, consumed, and exported.They do not show how a conjunction of political and economic interests, corruption, and clientelistic customs, the practices of well-established elites and small-time adventurers contribute to devastating a dwindling resource day after day. They do not show the stealing, the illegal felling, and the arbitrary methods of handing out logging permits, or the declassification of protected forests. Like diamonds and oil, timber is a major resource behind the operations of many tropical countries’ political systems. In this case, a small portion of revenues reverts to the state’s budget, but most of them are used by leaders to reinforce their political base, finance their clientelistic networks, pay the army’s wages, and build personal wealth by using micro-actors who profit from them. Recovering as much income from the forest as quickly as possible has been the practice of numerous individuals in Africa and Asia for decades and is often a major cause of deforestation. Wars and social unrest have sometimes changed the recipients, but predation tends to remain, so much is it ingrained in power and survival strategies.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Ecopolitics Inch by Inch

As soon as the public became aware of the threats to the rain forest, all of the players on the international scene went into action: states, international organizations, NGOs, experts, and later the timber industry were all caught up in the movement. Meetings and interdisciplinary forums have multiplied to the extent that the ongoing relations of these actors have ended up forming a system and this system has begun to produce retroactions: in the past five or six years discussion about the tropical forest has not only focused on tales of woe; a certain number of success stories have also been reported. If the beginnings of an international forest ecopolitics can be detected,1 it has nothing to do with the establishment of a regime of any sort.There is no world system of collective action, no major formalized agreement, no institutional structure that holds sway, practically no common longterm financial commitments, in short, none of the things that provide the bread and butter of regime theorists. And yet something is happening. Beliefs about the tropical forest have evolved considerably over the past fifteen years, and this is true among all the actors. Conceptions of sustainable forest management are growing more unified and gaining in substance. Countless local and regional initiatives have been taken, and these are commented and assessed on the international level.A sort of common reference point has been formed that not only influences the discussion and drafting of national legislation, often purely formal exercises, but also more and more frequently the actual modes of forest area use.The mere fact that a system of information, reflection, and evaluation now links a large number of significant actors in the forest sector is in itself a new phenomenon. The question is to know who is part of it, how it is held together, what types of interactions it produces, and who benefits from them.

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The system is very heterogeneous indeed: by the nature of the actors composing it, the diversity of the roles and means of influence exercised therein, and the variety of sectors involved. No category of actor is a single unit. Each is divided and each element of each category is engaged in conflict/cooperation relations with all the others, the cleavages varying depending on the place and time. States do not share the same points of view and, domestically, their administrations do not all share the same beliefs about the forest issue.The major international organizations have their specific culture and bureaucratic interests that pit them as rivals although they are theoretically pursuing the same aims. NGOs agree on all the issues (respect for ecosystems, protection of biodiversity, respect for indigenous peoples’ rights, fair redistribution of forest revenues, etc.) but compete for media attention and funding and do not all choose the same strategic options. The experts communicate well with each other but tend to act by opposition and maintain technical debates that are their livelihood. Industry representatives are all defending the same rights but do not have the same history, the same limitations, or the same advantages in dealing with states, NGOs, or the market in a competition that is now worldwide. In such a heterogeneous system, the justifications the actors invoke are varied:2 they are market-related, ethical, and technical. All these spheres of justification (and many others) coexist, conflict, or overlap. Listing them in a summary fashion merely helps to evoke the heterogeneity of issues at hand in world forest ecopolitics, the many beliefs about it, and the multitude of projects for action on the tropical rain forest. How has the continuous networking of such different social spheres and sectors been set up, and to what extent have such varied issues been made “politically treatable”? The first step was to turn to classic conference diplomacy. It was a logical step: the multilateral sphere had expanded terrifically in the preceding decades, international bodies proliferated, large conferences multiplied. But this approach has demonstrated its shortcomings. Each international meeting ends with the scheduling of another appointment, each committee engenders another committee.The goal of the exercise is to put out a text at all costs, this being the essential criterion for success in the eyes of the world community and, if issuing a statement proves impossible, at least a date is set for another meeting. The less progress is made in substance, the more emphasis is placed on the procedures of dialogue. In the forest sector, intergovernmental meetings have not been the driving force: the miring of negotiations on a possible global convention and the reluctance to create a common worldwide forest fund are glaring illustrations of this.

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Ideas have circulated and taken hold much faster than formal discussion among states has progressed.The case of the tropical forest confirms the contemporary versions of neo-functionalism3 and the accuracy of the theses that highlight the circulation of ideas by networking individuals and organizations in today’s international relations.4 Progress toward a common definition of the “tropical rain forest” issue and the ways to address it has grown out of the repeated interplay of international organizations, experts, and technical ministries, structured by NGOs present both in the field and on the international scene. By constantly comparing the stakes invoked by the various parties, a collective learning process has been established during which the parties involved have begun to seek beyond their respective reference frameworks to acquire a certain joint way of looking at the dense forest. This openness to other representations and other rationalities has led them to discover new problems leading in turn to the definition of new objectives for action. In such a process, the role of information and the acquisition of new knowledge are critical. The sum total of seminars, notes, reports, briefs, and case studies aimed at disseminating the body of acquired knowledge has brought about changes in perception and, little by little, the formulation of common reference points.Today everyone understands the impact of the actions taken and their outcomes a little better. If a change has occurred, it is not only due to the virtues of repeated mass brainstorming and the exceptional open-mindedness the partners have demonstrated (even if, in the course of interviews, several traditional foresters indeed admitted the importance these meetings have had in the evolution of their beliefs about the forest).Tactical considerations are not absent: sometimes it is better to adopt the rationale of the other party to influence his positions rather than to maintain a purely negative stand, or worse, to be excluded altogether from the discussion and the places where new legitimate issues are defined. One never knows what concept, slogan, or phrase will come out of the international arena and catch on: better to try to leave one’s imprint ex ante.5 This is the wellknown merit of repetitive exercises: It is in no one’s interest to withdraw from the game when they know it is bound to continue and that, in any event, they will meet the participants again in the field at some point or another. And when those who act as intellectual entrepreneurs have not only the convictions but also the means to exert pressure, it is all the more necessary to negotiate common frameworks for action with them. A very subtle game has thus been established between, on one side, the NGOs most apt to weigh in public opinion, and on the other, the

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timber industry, national administrations, and the major international organizations. Less than five years after the head-on opposition of the early 1990s, there was a shift to a policy of partnership even between NGOs and the forest industry, which was inconceivable at the time of the Rio summit. Logging companies stunned by the pugnacity of environmental defense associations and worried about their market and their investments, agreed to take into account the ENGOs’ concerns. The latter, on the other hand, agreed to get involved in forest management activities in conjunction with private companies.At the heart of this evolution is a world debate on sustainable forest management criteria and indicators, and forest certification, which currently structures everything. This interplay of actors, ideas, and strategies has for the time being produced only partial results. First, because the system is not comprehensive: the main predators are not taking part for the moment. Next, because the definition of a common framework is merely a step. The implementation of a truly sustainable forest management policy cannot be achieved with only a theoretical framework. It is developed on the ground in contexts that are always specific. It requires skills, technology, and financing, and progress is not made at the same pace in all parts of the world. Lastly, because industrialized countries and the major international financial institutions speak volumes about sustainable development, common heritage, and global common goods, but finance more short-term and consensual operations than risky forest management programs requiring long-term support.

The Emergence of a Normative Discourse Is the forest too serious a matter to be left to diplomats? All the attempts to frame conservation and wooded area management policies within a big intergovernmental convention have failed. There are no longer any real negotiations on the subject. But this absence should not be delusive: The forest issue is surrounded on all sides by international legal instruments that do not deal with it directly but that create a general climate from which it cannot escape. Let us recall them briefly: ●

The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (adopted in 1971) applies to marsh forests and mangroves. Originally designed to protect waterfowl, it was expanded to take into account biodiversity in general and the ecological functions of the areas listed as well as the health and well-being of local communities.

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A strategic plan was developed for 1997–2002. Over 900 sites have been listed (covering nearly 70 million hectares). It is implemented by NGOs with the support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the European Union. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, adopted in 1973) targets a certain number of tree species and periodically reopens the debate on the tropical timber trade. It prompts measures to be taken to control hunting and the respect of protected species that figure in the development of any sustainable forest management plan. The practical difficulty is to know who should be in charge of administering it, as we will see further on. The UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (adopted in 1972) currently has 33 forest areas registered on the World Heritage List (see supra).

At the United Nations it is customary to talk about the “three sisters” which are the conventions on biodiversity, the climate, and desertification: ●

The Convention on Biological Diversity (adopted in Rio in 1992) is rather vague, as we have already noted (chapter 1). According to a high-level officer of Friends of the Earth (personal communication): “In negotiating this text, which is legally binding, States blocked everything regarding the forest.”Yet it is probably the one that carries the most weight, not so much owing to the exact content of its provisions, which few are familiar with, but for its symbolic role in building a world ethic of nature conservation. Among the articles directly dealing with the forest are those that provide for “general measures for sustainable conservation and use of components of biological diversity” (art. 6 and 10); a very lengthy article 8 that provides for “in-situ conservation” by establishing a system of protected areas or areas where special measures need to be taken, each of its thirteen paragraphs being likely to weigh in the definition of a sustainable forest management plan and forest certification criteria; two paragraphs providing for the respect and preservation of traditional knowledge and lifestyles (8j ) and for encouraging “customary use of biological resources in accordance with traditional cultural practices that are compatible with conservation or sustainable use requirements” (10c). In all these regards, it supplements the Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples adopted in 1989 by the International Labor Organization,

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Tropical Forests, International Jungle which recognizes the property and usage rights of indigenous peoples on their traditional land, including forests. Convention on Biological Diversity ( June 5, 1992)

Article 8. In-situ Conservation Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate: (a) Establish a system of protected areas or areas where special measures need to be taken to conserve biological diversity; (b) Develop, where necessary, guidelines for the selection, establishment and management of protected areas or areas where special measures need to be taken to conserve biological diversity; (c) Regulate or manage biological resources important for the conservation of biological diversity whether within or outside protected areas, with a view to ensuring their conservation and sustainable use; (d) Promote the protection of ecosystems, natural habitats and the maintenance of viable populations of species in natural surroundings; (e) Promote environmentally sound and sustainable development in areas adjacent to protected areas with a view to furthering protection of these areas; (f ) Rehabilitate and restore degraded ecosystems and promote the recovery of threatened species, inter alia, through the development and implementation of plans or other management strategies; (g) Establish or maintain means to regulate, manage or control the risks associated with the use and release of living modified organisms resulting from biotechnology which are likely to have adverse environmental impacts that could affect the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account the risks to human health; (h) Prevent the introduction of, control or eradicate those alien species which threaten ecosystems, habitats or species; (i) Endeavor to provide the conditions needed for compatibility between present uses and the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of its components; (j) Subject to its national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices;

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(k) Develop or maintain necessary legislation and/or other regulatory provisions for the protection of threatened species and populations; (l) Where a significant adverse effect on biological diversity has been determined pursuant to Article 7, regulate or manage the relevant processes and categories of activities; and (m)Cooperate in providing financial and other support for in-situ conservation outlined in subparagraphs (a) to (l) above, particularly to developing countries. Article 10. Sustainable Use of Components of Biological Diversity Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate: (a) Integrate consideration of the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources into national decision-making; (b) Adopt measures relating to the use of biological resources to avoid or minimize adverse impacts on biological diversity; (c) Protect and encourage customary use of biological resources in accordance with traditional cultural practices that are compatible with conservation or sustainable use requirements; (d) Support local populations to develop and implement remedial action in degraded areas where biological diversity has been reduced; and (e) Encourage cooperation between its governmental authorities and its private sector in developing methods for sustainable use of biological resources.

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The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (adopted in Rio in 1992) deals with the forest solely as regards greenhouse gases.The forest is a “reservoir,” meaning “a component or components of the climate system where a greenhouse gas or a precursor of a greenhouse gas is stored.” The forest is a “sink,” meaning “any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.” The forest is a “source,” meaning “any process or activity which releases a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere” (art. 1). The convention stipulates that “parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects” and extend these measures to “cover all relevant sources, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases” (art. 3.3). Forest preservation thus comes under precautionary measures.

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The Parties pledge to “cooperate in the development, application and diffusion, including by transfer, of technologies, practices and processes that control, reduce or prevent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [. . .] in all relevant sectors, including the energy, transport, industry, agriculture, forestry and waste management sectors” (art. 4.1c). This could, for instance, imply the obligation to provide technical assistance in the fight against devastating forest fires. The Parties also pledge to promote “sustainable management” and “promote and cooperate in the conservation and enhancement, as appropriate, of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases . . . including biomass, forests and oceans as well as other terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems” (art. 4.1d). States are therefore obliged to preserve, even enhance their forest areas but this, and the restriction is an important one, while “taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and their specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances” (art. 4.1). And if countries must limit their production and consumption of timber and fuelwood, they can claim dispensation under the provisions for helping countries “whose economies are highly dependent on income generated from the production, processing and export, and/or on consumption of fossil fuels and associated energy-intensive products” implement the commitments made (art. 4.8h). The Convention to Combat Desertification (adopted in 1994) is the only cross-sector convention dealing with all aspects of land use. It contains the standard recommendations on sustainable development, participation of local communities, the spirit of solidarity and international partnership, and recourse to multilateral and bilateral financial mechanisms. It encourages countries threatened with drought and desertification to implement “integrated strategies” and develop cooperation at all levels: local, regional, and international, but the problem is that it remains an empty shell. Its funding is absurdly inadequate; the Conferences of the Parties lead nowhere. Countries have been pushed to develop costly plans and are left to their own devices when it comes to implementing them. This convention does not deal with rain forests but its pathetic example cannot help but strengthen the arguments of those hostile to the idea of a global forest convention. The Forest Convention: A Premature Ambition Not all the opponents to a general convention specific to forests have always been against the idea. On the contrary. At the Houston summit

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in July 1990, President George Bush, together with Germany, insisted on pushing a text through the G7 in which all the great leaders of the industrialized world would declare themselves prepared to begin negotiations as soon as possible toward a convention or a world agreement on forests. NGOs were plugging hard for it. In 1990 it was on everyone’s mind: the FAO considered itself to be the appropriate body to lead this type of negotiation; the European Council in Dublin suggested that a specific protocol for tropical forests be concluded in the future climate convention; the European Parliament urged the Commission to put preparation and implementation of a global forest protection convention high on its agenda; the second climate conference recommended adopting an international legal instrument on forests in conjunction with texts on climate change and biodiversity, and so on.6 In the preparatory discussions leading up to the Rio summit, the issue began to resemble a North–South confrontation. At the time, the mood was extremely tense. NGOs demonstrated unbending fanatical conservationism, and their proposals, following a total preservation rationale, had a tendency to put tropical forests under a bell jar. Threats of a boycott on tropical timbers spread, making the timber industry and producing countries nervous. The difficulty of conciliating environment with development that weighed and still weighs on the whole environmental issue took a particularly acute turn with regard to the forest.7 The major producing countries, Malaysia in the lead with Brazil following discretely behind, did everything to hinder efforts to complete the convention supported by the industrialized countries and mainly American and European conservation movements.The Rio summit led to nothing more than the adoption of the famous “Forest Principles” and Chapter XI of Agenda 21.8 The terms of the intergovernmental negotiation that continued for many years within the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (1995–97) created by the Commission for Sustainable Development, then the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests which succeeded it (1997–2000), gradually became clear.9 Basically the bargain was as follows: Developing countries would commit themselves to maintaining their forest cover and preserve biological diversity contained in their forests. In exchange, industrialized countries would contribute their financial support and technology.All parties, states, funding agencies, the private sector, NGOs, and major groups would cooperate to promote the “sustainable” use of the forest while developing trade in forest products. Actually, the dice were loaded because the rich countries rejected any financial commitments and the Southern hemisphere countries did not want to accept

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anything that would in any way interfere with their sovereignty and their right to freely dispose of their natural resources. When the General Assembly met in June 1997 to reexamine the question in an extraordinary session (Rio ⫹ 5), influential NGOs had changed their minds and were now campaigning against a global forest convention. Over one hundred of them had gotten together with the major federations (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace,WWF) on a Forest Policy Project to publish a manifesto explaining the six reasons why the idea was no longer a good one: Countries would agree on the lowest common denominator and align themselves along very low standards, thereby paving the way for destructive practices and thwarting more rigorous initiatives underway. The text would be dominated by timber industry interests and would do nothing to counter the predatory practices of a growing number of multinational firms. It would diminish the historic role of the Convention on Biological Diversity; it would leave aside the most crucial and thorny forest issues, most of which were external to the forestry sector, and would not tackle the chronic underlying causes of deforestation. It ran the risk of sabotaging important nongovernmental initiatives, such as certification, and of hampering rural societies’ capacity to decide the fate of their own forests. Lastly, the fabrication of a legally binding global mechanism was a long and costly process during which a whole series of possible actions in favor of the forest would be suspended, a loss of time and money that would be better used to solve more pressing problems and implement existing agreements.10 The main orchestrator of this campaign, Bill Mankin, a representative from Friends of the Earth and very present in all discussions on the tropical forest, summarized his viewpoint in very direct terms: In 1991–1992 the NGOs wanted a forest convention.At the time it was a new thing, it was in the air. It would have been a good demonstration that we wanted to do something for the environment. Six years later, when we saw how all these governments behaved, when we figured out what they wanted and what they opposed, we found ourselves before an unpleasant picture. If those are the people who want a convention, we’re not interested. All they’re offering is free trade, weak standards, no certification, no additional resources. In sum, a bad looking forest convention.What needs to be done is to make existing measures work. There’s a whole slew of instruments, that’s what we need.The only justification for a convention would be clear progress in forest management, a ban on subsidies, land reform, agriculture and trade reforms, and very stringent

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conditions for allocating concessions to multinationals. For the moment, it’s all just window dressing.11 The United States argued a very similar point of view, maintaining that the idea of a general forest convention was a pretext to avoid implementing commitments made by signing other conventions. Were they influenced by the NGOs? Many believe so. A Swiss negotiator in favor of the project complained vehemently to us: “We’ve seen Bill Mankin hand in glove with the USA block a series of IPF initiatives.” (Switzerland, it should be noted, is the second largest donor to the International Tropical Timber Organization after Japan.) Others feel that the weight of the American timber industry, a very well organized and powerful sector, had a decisive hand in the US about-face. Both, actually, go in the same direction and reinforce one another. It is not rare in environmental matters that the most conflicting forces end up in an objective alliance with radically contrary motivations: the case was also seen during negotiations on “biodiversity—world heritage,” a principle backed both by ENGOs and US pharmaceutical lobbies, with totally opposite ulterior motives. Although certain Southern hemisphere countries have also changed their minds in the other direction and some have proven to be in favor of a global convention (Malaysia, Indonesia) or are no longer theoretically opposed to the idea of a convention as long as it covers all types of forest and a variety of conditions are met (China, Colombia, India), states remain too divided for the convention project to take shape. Regarding the forest preservation and management issue, the cleavages are not between the North and the South. They run through all geographic, cultural, and political groups. States make their decisions depending on their own situation with regard to the forest, thwarting any possibility of strategic coalition. Even beneath its outward unity, the European Union is basically split. Great Britain is against a forest convention. Germany is not particularly enthusiastic about it. France has proven to be one of the stauncher partisans, although in inter-ministry discussions the Agriculture Ministry, which employs forestry engineers who are “for,” has been known to conflict with the Ministry of the Environment, which has few foresters and which is more sensitive to the NGO opinion “against.” In 1998, a French representative to the IPF and IFF from the Agriculture Ministry explained to us the advantage of such a convention from the European standpoint. First, it would provide a means to group everything about the forest in a single instrument and permit an integrated view of the problem. Second, having a convention

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would be the best way to conduct coherent action by bringing together all the funds allocated to forests. These for the time being are scattered and sometimes reduplicated. It would discipline “those who put money where it suits them.” But to the question: “Are you prepared to grant more financing to a forest fund?” the reply, after a brief pause, was “That . . . no.” Another delegate, working at that time for the Cooperation Ministry, offered a complementary perspective: I’d have liked to see a big convention, a broad, empty framework that we later would have filled by getting states to agree on a regional framework, Africa, Asia, etc. When people talk in general terms, they’re never talking about the same thing. Including indigenous peoples, for instance, does not mean the same thing or have the same importance from one country to another. In Gabon, the forest is practically uninhabited. A framework agreement would have been the opportunity to analyze everything that had been agreed and see how it could apply to the forest and, within that, there would have been regional sub-conventions between countries which would have had a certain ecological and economic coherence. (personal communication) Except for the NGOs, no one has really ever been in favor of a strong and binding legal framework. Not only after ten years of discussion is the international community prey to “convention fatigue,” but the current situation, in which a whole array of common ethical principles exist, but the participants can still draw up their made-to-measure guidelines in changing configurations, is finally a rather comfortable one. The failure of the project to draft a specific global convention in no way means that the international actors have given up the idea of tackling the forest question as a group.The failure is only of one technique among others, that of worldwide intergovernmental discussion. It is apparently too soon for international law to do the job of ordering and clarifying forest matters. Perception of the problem of tropical deforestation has only come about in the past twenty years. Everything is still new; ideas are gushing forth every which way and colliding with one another. They have no overall coherence, but a discourse has been structured, many things are done along its lines and synergies exist. ITTO, FAO, and the World Bank: A Continuing Education Although Rio ⫹ 5 ended with an admission of failure, states did not want to break off dialogue and thereby give a very negative sign for the

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forest. A new discussion body was set up to replace the IPF, an “ad hoc open-ended Intergovernmental Forum on Forests” (IFF) which itself was replaced by the United Nations Forum on Forests in 2000.This new Forum is financed out of the United Nations general budget, which lends it greater stability than its predecessor.12 It has five years to examine the various parameters of a legal framework applicable to all types of forests and recommendations made by experts concerning financial mechanisms, technology transfers, and trade issues that should be included in this framework.13 It includes all United Nations member states and the member states of specialized agencies. All international organizations, including regional organizations and all the major groups, are welcome. The Forum meets for two weeks once a year. It is a subsidiary body of the UN’s Economic and Social Council, in other words, the most tedious and the least stimulating for the political imagination. It is safe to bet that the most interesting discussions will take place elsewhere and outside the sessions. The ten years of fruitless discussions among states on whether or not to negotiate a forest convention have not at all been in vain. A decision had to be made, in fact, on the themes the newly created intergovernmental bodies would work on.This required identifying and listing the various international policy issues raised by the forest and restoring some order among them.The challenges to be met are now known: cooperation in environmentally sound financial assistance and technology transfer; trade in forest products and services; identification of the main causes of deforestation and forest degradation; status of traditional forest-related knowledge; scientific research on forest assessment and the development of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management; enhancement of nonwood forest products. On all these issues, countless meetings and seminars have been held between the official sessions. In fact, national initiatives by member states were expected to take place. One of the most significant was the initiative jointly sponsored by Costa Rica and Canada14 aiming to clarify existing international arrangements and prevent the over-fragmentation of the guiding principles of sustainable forest management. It made a last ditch effort to save the intergovernmental negotiation mechanism on the eve of the fourth and last IFF meeting. But many others were organized: on deforestation, protected areas, trade, plantations, and so on. These meetings brought together interested states, international experts, and the competent international organizations. A considerable body of knowledge was thus produced and disseminated among the partners that only the existence of a multilateral system could bring

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together: Honduras, Uganda, and Indonesia, for instance, coordinated a workshop in Germany with Finland and England. Reports were drawn up and plans of action were submitted on all the topics identified. What was said in the context of the IPF and later the IFF was taken up in other frameworks: G8 summits made reference to them (at the Birmingham summit in 1998, in particular), as did Commonwealth meetings, European ministerial conferences on forest protection, the 11th World Forestry Congress, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the ITTO, the FAO, and so on. The whole institutional meshwork that any country’s foreign forestry policy is sifted through has conveyed the same references and the same rhetoric.This fairly coherent discourse developed over the years is taken for granted today. Fifteen years ago, only bits and pieces of it existed, disseminated here and there by individuals and organizations in scattered order. Lastly, the intergovernmental mechanism, and this may be its main contribution, has helped to see more clearly through the proliferation of institutions, programs, and committees having anything to do with the forest.Their propagation is mind-boggling, and the reader will be spared the fastidious list here. It is illusory to believe that adopting a forest convention would channel this proliferation. Nothing can now stop the comitological madness.15 The CBD is a flagrant illustration of this: no one could possibly count the number of working groups and subgroups engendered by this framework agreement:There are liaison groups, special groups of technical experts, special working groups (for instance a special working group on art. 8j of the convention), the SBSTTA,16 and of course a convention secretariat urged to examine how these groups and mechanisms could be put to better use. There is every indication that a forest convention would engender the same organizational proliferation with the same results. A multitude of groups and subgroups is working on forest-related themes: In 2002, the SBSTTA agenda listed the study of forest biological diversity as a priority; the concerns of the subgroup on article 8j were also shared by the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests, and so on. Meetings usually end with a request addressed to the competent international organizations (FAO, UNPD, UNEP, World Bank) to “support implementation of the work program and ensure that these activities do not overlap.” A tall order indeed! A wise initiative of the IFF, which the new United Nations Forum on Forests has subsumed as the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, was establishing an Informal High Level Interagency Task Force on Forests (ITFF). Under this splendid UN

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appellation a partnership was created among the main qualified institutions in forest matters, presided by the FAO: CIFOR; the World Bank, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Environment Program, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). The goal was to review in detail the existing instruments and organizations, the roles and mandates entrusted to each, institutional overlaps or on the contrary possible gaps, to organize synergies better and avoid reduplications.17 The aim was also to encourage cooperation among agencies working in the same area but with different objectives, assigning each of them work programs for which they were best suited at the local, regional, and international level. Basically, the division of labor was as follows: —Technical/operational: UNDP, FAO, CIFOR,World Bank —Policymaking: ITTO, FAO, UNEP, CBD —Coordination: FAO, UNEP, CBD, DESA —Financial cooperation:World Bank, UNDP —Standard setting: FAO, ITTO, CBD, UNEP. Each program was broken down into these different elements. For each element a lead agency was appointed and partners were identified both in the interagency system and outside it.To assess the various benefits of the forest, for instance, the FAO is the leader, CIFOR, ITTO, and the UNEP are its partners in the interagency system, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe is the outside partner.18 Never to our knowledge has such an attempt at clarification and rationalization been made in the multilateral jungle. The complexity of the task and the amount of goodwill demonstrated by the partner organizations is easy to measure. Yet different histories and different organizational cultures have put these organizations in competition with one another: the ITTO and the FAO are discreet rivals, whereas for all actors the World Bank is both the most unavoidable and the most disparaged partner in the world forest system. The International Tropical Timber Organization is the only institution created to deal specifically with tropical timber, as its name indicates. Its founding act, the International Tropical Timber Agreement, is the only international treaty in effect that specifically addresses tropical forests. The ITTO is based in Yokohama, Japan, and its host country provides most of its operating costs; by succeeding for the first time in

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having an international organization established on its territory, the host government received a sort of international recognition that is worth the price. Designed originally to promote the tropical timber trade in line with the trade agreements developed in the 1970s,19 the ITTO since its creation has constantly broadened its field of action and sought ways of increasing its audience in the international forest system. This fairly modest organization, which is little known outside of the timber trade, has managed rather cleverly to compete with the FAO on its own turf: information. Its constitutive treaty assigns ITTO the mission of improving “market intelligence with a view to ensuring greater transparency in the international timber market” (art. 1h). It thus began by publishing a quarterly newsletter on tropical timbers in conjunction with Genevabased organizations (GATT/UNCTAD) from 1990 to 1995, and then transferred its Market News Service to its headquarters in 1995. Since then, every two weeks the ITTO Tropical Timber Market Information Service has supplied information on the export price of tropical forest products for a wide variety of species and degrees of processing, thanks to a network of correspondents in producer and consumer countries. The ITTO secretariat has attracted top-notch economists. It regularly publishes reports giving the current state of the market. Its Annual Review and Assessment of the World Timber Situation is awaited every year. In May 2000, the Organization boasted having been cited by the United States Assistant Secretary of State as compiling the world’s best statistics on tropical timbers.20 Yet no more than the FAO does it delude itself as to the quality of its data. It does not hide the fact that the statistics it is supplied are far from reliable and that for some countries they are nearly nonexistent: “while the data presented by ITTO are the best available, they must still be regarded as indicative only due to flaws in their collection and reporting.”21 The ITTO came about in 1986 after ten years of negotiations.22 Environmental NGOs thought for a moment that the new organization would offer them the field of action and a sphere of influence that the FAO did not provide.They came in droves to the first Council sessions, which meet biannually in Yokohama in the Fall, and in a producer country in the Spring.The Organization’s first studies on the state of tropical forests encouraged them. In a since famous report entitled No Timber without Trees,23 it was shown that in 1988 practically not one single tropical forest was managed in anything closely resembling a sustainable manner. But above all, and this was a revolution, the report asserted that achieving sustained yield of timber was not in itself sustainable forest management. Such an assertion ran counter to the deepest rooted

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conviction in traditional forestry; it contradicted the approach that the FAO and most European foresters had used so far. The report opened new perspectives on the conditions of sustainable management: stability of land tenure, planning, and so on. On this basis, the ITTO set to work on drafting Guidelines for Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests and developing a set of Criteria and Indicators by which to assess progress made and the quality of management. Between 1990 and 1998, it thus put out four sets of Guidelines and a set of Criteria and Indicators adopted by the member states as guides and codes of good conduct for the sustainable management and exploitation of timber-producing forests. This work on sustainable forest management was rather well received by the timber industry, which considered it “important in alleviating bad press that the tropical timber industry receives around the world”24 while wondering how it “might digest and use this guidance.”25 The main achievement of the ITTO is to have pushed through a decision in Bali, in May 1990, by which all tropical timber sold on the international market by its member countries should come from sustainably managed forests by the Year 2000. In a context of deepening uneasiness over the future of tropical forests and increased expectations in the international community to mobilize to prevent the disaster foretold, the ITTO’s Year 2000 Objective was the new institution’s response to the concerns of the times. It did not offer a global solution, but instead attempted to catalyze its members’ efforts by betting on reciprocal support between the tropical timber trade and conservation.A special fund, the Bali Partnership Fund, was created to help countries implement the Year 2000 Objective or enable them to create conservation programs in timber-producing forests. However, the ITTO remains principally a commodity organization. Its members are divided into two groups: producer member countries and consumer member countries.26 The system of distributing votes in the Council is amazingly complex. Each group has 1,000 votes distributed in accordance with their respective shares in production, export, and import of tropical timber and, for the producer countries, their share in the total tropical forest resources. In other words, the more one cuts and the more one buys what is cut, the more votes one has in the Council. With this system, Japan alone has 320 votes out of 1,000, the European Union 302, and the United States 51. Indonesia has 170 votes, Malaysia 139, and Brazil 133.Actually a vote is never taken because decisions are all reached by consensus, but this vote distribution system accurately reflects the real power forces within the organization: everything is played out among those six members.27 Negotiating sessions take

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place between blocs.With a large and competent delegation, Brazil often leads the producer member countries. The European Union tends to smooth things over in confrontations between this group and the consumer member countries, whereas the United States has made brutality a bargaining practice, as it has done in all other domains for decades.The European Commission representative plays an important diplomatic role in that EU delegations are composed as often as not (in other words when the Council meets in Yokohama) of foreign affairs ministry representatives who know absolutely nothing about tropical timber and who are bored stiff and count on the Commission to identify the problematic items on the agenda. Often enough the latter then relies on three or four representatives (from Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Great Britain) who are experts in timber issues, to define the European Union’s position. Sessions that take place in a producer country are attended by many more Southern European delegates from technical ministries and expert circles.When funds are limited and a choice must be made, it is tempting to prefer the session in the tropics. The weight of experts in the working of the ITTO is decisive.They do everything; the portion of negotiating left to diplomats is very slim. Appointed jointly by the producers and consumers, many of them are renowned figures moving throughout the entire world forest system, like Jürgen Blaser, a Swiss forester who has worked as a researcher in Central America and the Amazon, taught in Madagascar, participated in the ITTO Council sessions as technical adviser for the Swiss government, belonged to a good half-dozen expert groups in charge of developing ITTO Guidelines, C&I, and Plan of Action, who was the head forester in the environmental Department of the World Bank and who wound up vice-president of the ITTO Council for 2001.28 During Council sessions, delegates are divided into four permanent committees: Economic Information and Market Intelligence; Reforestation and Forest Management; Forest Industry; Finance and Administration.29 A considerable portion of these sessions involves examining and approving requests for technical assistance and financing of forest management plans submitted by the producer states after experts have gone through them with a fine-tooth comb. These projects are often located in Southeast Asia: Japan being both the main consumer of tropical timber in Asia and the largest donor to the ITTO, this is hardly surprising.30 At each session some twenty projects are approved in this way, a few examples of which can be found in the annex to this book. In September 2000, the ITTO had financed 444 projects for a total amount of 188 million dollars. These projects are all structured according to the

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same model. In addition to a detailed description of the project’s technical characteristics and expected results, its consistency with ITTO goals, criteria, action plan, and priorities must be demonstrated. It must be stated how it fits into the country’s national forestry program, who will benefit from it, and who will be affected. In a well-designed project, the heading “target beneficiaries and other people involved” gives information on environmental, social, and management aspects of the project. Lastly, the reason for requesting ITTO funding must be stated as well as the possible risks involved. It is interesting to note that, on this last point, the risk most often described is political and social in nature: “in the event we have not managed to set up a sound management structure involving the local community,” “in the event villagers lose interest,”“in the event that forest sector officials are not prepared to involve local communities in the management and sharing of forest products,” the project’s success may be jeopardized. Thus, little by little, a common philosophy is emerging as to what constitutes a good tropical forest management project in the only body in the world where producer and consumer countries meet on an equal footing representing 95 percent of the world tropical timber trade. The sessions are becoming increasingly technical. The Organization’s makeup, its operation, and the common goals of all its members have come together to make the ITTO the ideal place to exalt harmonious relationships between trade and conservation. The Organization’s mission, and what holds it together when so many other commodity organizations have collapsed, is the will to demonstrate that “its trade components were an instrument for conservation as well as ends in themselves.”31 This ambition is upheld by its member states, its officials, and the horde of experts hovering around it. For NGOs that make conservation the supreme value and logging the absolute enemy, this ideology is discouraging. Few of them still make the trip to Yokohama:“There’s nothing going on here. It’s at the IFF that things are happening,” several of their representatives have told us. Those who believe that sustainable forest management is a delusion lay into the ITTO tooth and nail.32 The major political debates on the future of the forest may well resurface on the ITTO agenda.The renewal of the Agreement, which expired in 1994, was achieved with difficulty. Backed by NGOs, which saw it as the opportunity to revive the global debate on the forest, the producer countries requested that the Agreement be expanded to cover all wood from all sources, including temperate and boreal forests, and that the consumer countries commit to complying with the same guidelines,

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criteria and indicators of sustainable management as the tropical countries. American and Canadian forests were targeted. The ITTO would have ipso facto become the major specialized forest institution, which the Europeans wanted to hear nothing about.To the great anger of the NGOs, a compromise was reached in the form of an introductory statement by the consumer countries and a few allusions to “all forests” slipped into the new text.33 Finally signed in 1996, the agreement was renewed with no trouble four years later. But substantive questions remain. Producer countries feel that all these demands for sustainable management imposed only on tropical countries are intolerably discriminatory, that they will bring about even more conditionalities and pressures from financial sponsors and that they will lose their sovereignty of the use of the forests. For them the Year 2000 Objective is merely indicative and should not be included in any binding provision. Consumer countries wanted the Council to report annually on the progress made by producer countries toward Year 2000 Objective. The tropical countries replied that they would pursue this goal progressively as financial and technological resources were granted to them. Under the impetus of its secretariat and experts, the ITTO displays a certain dynamism and now intends to tackle the most burning political questions facing its industry: illegal cutting and timber smuggling, management of secondary tropical forests, and mainly, certification.To the extent that, for tropical countries, market access and combating any form of discriminatory practice is the ITTO raison d’être and consumer countries are very divided on the subject, the debate is bound to be heated. Unless all parties end up agreeing on minimum certification criteria that will enable them to escape the exacting clutches of the NGOs . . . . It is as if the ITTO, far from the spotlight, one by one took hold of the subjects on which intergovernmental forums have not managed to make progress. In France, the Organization is disparaged:“Why take any interest in it, it’s very small, it’s nothing, the NGOs don’t even go anymore.The organization that matters is the FAO,” we have heard repeated time and again in Paris. A forest expert in Southeast Asia who heads a small unit managing projects financed by the FAO gave us another viewpoint: “The ITTO is very effective as a forum on forest issues. It tells it like it is. People say it’s worthless, but that’s not true. It fulfills roles that FAO used to play. FAO’s Committee on Forestry meets every two years, here it’s every six months.We don’t have to wait two years to deal with things, it’s much more flexible. Of course questions aren’t dealt with thoroughly but they’re on the agenda and resurface.” As for criteria and indicators:“The ITTO has managed to draw up a very complete

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and detailed set of indicators. They’re very difficult to implement, even for developed countries. Developing countries need something more concrete. But the C&I have forced countries to do something, to develop their own regulations.” France has a certain weakness for FAO: for years French foresters had set the tone; the organization is long established; the French are familiar with its inner workings. FAO has made successful internal reforms and drawn lessons from bad experiences. It is the most reliable source of information on the state of the world’s forests and forest products. Early on it decentralized by creating Regional Forestry Commissions for Africa,Asia and the Pacific, North America, the Near East, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe. Its Unasylva journal is unique and its quality remarkable. All this is perfectly true. FAO remains an important information source on forests and trees, provides technical support for improving the health and conservation of forests and forest ecosystems, and conducts research in all areas dealing with the forest, from agronomy to community forestry. Its Forestry Department employs some one hundred experts representing every forest-related discipline, making it the largest permanent interdisciplinary team in forestry on the international scene. It has strengthened its partnerships with all public and private actors working in the sector and has regained widespread esteem. For all these reasons, it is an influential element in the network of world institutions. The image of the World Bank is different. It is easily portrayed as the incarnation of Western dogmatism and arrogance. Criticism comes from all sides: experts who worked there for some time and left, weary of an institution that spends a large part of its energy in self-evaluation in an extremely tense atmosphere; tropical countries that accuse it of interference and lack of respect.A former Congolese environment minister told us: “We worked for months on a forestry project. We met with all the stakeholders in the field, we discussed and we negotiated.We had arrived at a compromise. The Bank representative arrived and spent two days with us. He told us what he didn’t like and left again. Everything we had done had been knocked down. A month later he summoned me to Washington. I refused to go. I have countless examples like that to give you.” Donor country administrations do not speak kindly either: “The Bank does a lot of talking. Now it’s time for it to do something in favor of sustainable management.” The same talk is heard among logging companies. The most common criticism directed at the World Bank is that it storms in where it should not and does not get involved where it is needed.

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Until the late 1980s, the Bank was mainly the target of environmental organizations. They accused it of being caught up in the logic of structural adjustment started by the IMF and thus contributing to weakening social systems in developing countries and increasing their debt. They accused it of encouraging countries to increase their exports and therefore draw on their forest resources.They also accused it of financing heavy infrastructures and numerous projects detrimental to the forest. Pressure from NGOs, particularly American ENGOs, was so strong that a gradual “greening” of the World Bank discourse was noticeable starting in the second half of the 1980s.When it finalized its first Forestry Strategy in 1991, after a lengthy consultation period to which the NGOs were associated more than any other actor, it stated in print that it would no longer finance commercial logging in primary tropical rain forests.34 As for infrastructure projects (mines, roads, dams), they would be financed only if rigorous impact studies proved that they would in no way cause damage to primary tropical forests. The approach was intended to be “multisectoral,” less project-oriented and more oriented toward programs that would integrate forestry issues in a broader framework including demographics, agriculture, employment, and above all, the struggle against poverty, in line with the widespread idea that the poor were primarily responsible for deforestation. This strategy put out a strong signal. It marked a change in course and made one of the most influential international institutions (or reputedly so) responsible for looking after biodiversity, indigenous peoples, and climate change. Twenty countries representing 85 percent of the tropical rain forests were cited in this general policy document as particularly threatened and deserving of special attention.35 Conservation36 was clearly the spirit, it was in the air. Ten years later, in an exercise of self-flagellation that has become customary there, the World Bank asked its Operations Evaluation Department (OED) to conduct a review of this strategy and its implementation. Following several regional consultations bringing together every category of actor involved in the forest sector, the OED published its report, with very instructive conclusions.37 Regarding the consultation process undertaken in 1989–90, the report indicates that attention was primarily focused on NGOs and that the Bank did not obtain sufficient assurance of a consensus among developing countries, the private sector, and civil society (civil society not being defined but probably referring to grassroots communities and indigenous peoples). It nevertheless affirmed that the Bank’s conservation goals enabled environmental organizations to be considerably more

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active in developing countries and had led India (in 1988) and China (in 1998) to voluntarily adopt a policy banning logging in their natural forests (that this was due to the World Bank remains to be shown, in our opinion). Regarding the implementation of the 1991 strategy, the assessors felt that the declared multisector approach was scarcely used, that the arbitrary choice of 20 threatened forests led to neglecting other forests that were just as valuable for their biodiversity. But above all, the cost of conservation and the question of who should assume it were not sufficiently addressed in devising the strategy. The general conclusion was that the Bank should develop a new policy more in tune with the developing countries’ aspirations and more flexible so as to better adapt to a wide variety of situations. The most interesting aspect was that the review called into question fundamental postulates on which the Bank had based its action for the whole decade. The report notes that the Bank’s decision not to finance any commercial logging in tropical forests had no effect on deforestation and the degradation of natural forests. Cutting continued as before. Illegal cuts were as high as ever, often exceeding in volume those of allowable cuts. One paragraph is worth quoting in full, as it would mark a complete turnaround if it were adopted in the new strategy currently being discussed: Developing countries need increased incomes, employment, and exports to meet their development objectives.The “developmental” function served by natural forests in forest-rich countries was underrated by the 1991 strategy. Countries rich in forests but poor in capital and budget resources have tended to use their natural capital to finance development, producing a conflict between national interests and global environmental objectives. Devolution of power to the local level has increased pressure on forests in view of the income, employment, and revenue needs of local governments and their constituents. Most of the costs of forgoing these financial and economic benefits are local and immediate, while the environmental benefits are national/global and long-term. Globalization and liberalization of markets have increased incentives for exports of forest and other natural resource-based products.38 Will the Bank, like the FAO, manage to recognize its errors in judgment? In any case, the change in tone is noticeable and is creating a new stir. Does it presage a reversal of the 1991 policy banning the financing of

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commercial logging projects, which left the Bank totally out of the discussion on sustainable management? For Bank loan officers, the forest sector remains a puzzle: it accounts for 2 percent of their activity, but “98 percent of the headache,” one of them lamented.39 World Bank foresters do not hesitate to underscore the “chilling effect” that the conservationist ideology of the past decade has produced on it. Program officers are so afraid of being accused of all evils by NGOs if they do anything about the tropical forest that they want nothing to do with this sector. Although the Bank’s forest portfolio seems to have remained intact, this is mainly due to large-scale afforestation projects in China and India (these two countries represent 60 percent of the Bank’s forest investments) and aid granted to management of state forests in Central and Eastern Europe. But the Bank has pulled out of all aspects of management and use of the forest in natural tropical forests.There are no operational objectives or additional resources for this sector. In the Bank’s aid strategies to tropical countries, the proportion allotted to forest activities has declined. One of the authors of this indictment has said so publicly: “Over the 1992–2000 period, the Bank has lost technical expertise in the forests sector, and the rate of turnover of task managers in forest projects has been high.”40 This admission of weakness from Bank experts contrasts with the Bank’s strong presence in the definition of forest policies in countries where it is involved in structural adjustment programs (SAP). Not only the World Bank, but also the IMF and other multilateral financial institutions such as the InterAmerican Development Bank are increasingly linking loan disbursements to forest policy reforms: in Cambodia, Cameroon, Indonesia, Surinam, Papua New Guinea, and other countries. As to what constitutes good forest policy in Africa, the Bank forged a doctrine based on a postulate inspired from the golden rules of renewable natural resource management drawn up by environmental economists: more transparency in the granting of logging permits combined with the collection of more tax revenues leads to more rational resource management.41 The buzzwords were therefore auctioning and tax reform. It all proceeded from the irrefutable fact that tropical forest concessions in state-owned and community forests are obviously allocated by mutual agreement according to the incumbent authorities’ discretion and the personal benefit they expected to gain from it. Corruption is rampant and operates at all levels of the political and administrative apparatus.The companies thus favored do not pay the taxes that are due and care little about sustainable management. According to the doctrine of property rights, if they are assured of rights for which they have paid

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dearly, they will necessarily be inclined to manage the resource properly. The solution is obvious: the existing system, politically arbitrary and economically unsound, must be replaced by an auction system for new concessions and vente de coupe licenses.42 The formula is invested with all the virtues: the market will set the value of the resource, which will naturally be high because companies in competition must state the price they are prepared to pay for their supply. The procedure is transparent, because everyone bids on an equal footing and knows ahead of time what allocation criteria to meet. If the auction system is coupled with an increase in annual per-hectare taxes, even the replacement of all taxes by a single tax calculated on the concession area, the cost of resource access will rise.This will incite operators to save by curbing waste while increasing state revenues. Transparency and truth in the market will be insured, forests will be better managed, and logging revenues better distributed.43 And since the implementation of these measures could incite the logging company to harvest even more timber than before to maintain the same level of profitability, concession rights must be conditional upon the submission of a forest management plan. All this is accompanied by the usual politically correct discourse regarding the consideration to be given to local communities. These ideal scenarios conceived by distinguished environmental economists in air-conditioned offices have produced results that cause a bitter laugh in anyone vaguely familiar with Cameroon, the first country where the Bank set about implementing them. In 1996, to answer the spirit of the Bank’s injunctions—increase the fiscal pressure and redistribute to local communities—the Minister of the Environment and Forests (MINEF) introduced in the general conditions of timber sales, the obligation for companies to pay the villagers a 1,000 CFA tax per cubic meter of timber produced. Since a vente de coupe represents 2,500 hectares and production can range from 10,000 to 15,000 cubic meters, an enormous and unexpected windfall was visited upon villages that were not prepared for it.The villages were drunk with joy. Never had so much beer been consumed in Cameroon’s forests as in those years! Another result: villagers who, prior to then, defended their community forests against logging companies rushed to open their forests to benefit from the famous tax.And, due to structural adjustment, the public funds allocated to the MINEF eventually ran out; it has no vehicles to make the necessary inspections, and so illegal cutting has spread. This was in the interest of many: the villagers who got the bonus and the tax-dodging companies that the villagers protected against any

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government attempt to intervene. In addition, it is easy to imagine the jealousies, claims, and local conflicts that such a massive flow of money most certainly caused: “When I went to school, we were 60 per class; now my children are in classes of 120. They don’t even have enough room to write. So as for the forest . . . If we can build schools with this money, that’s fine. But the communes and village chiefs keep it all” (interview with a forester in South Cameroon in 1999). Another disappointment: in July 1996, the MINEF opened up 2.5 million hectares of forest concessions for auction, divided into 42 Forest Management Units (FMUs). Logging companies, furious at the conditions in which this occurred, boycotted the bid. Only five submissions reached the ministry. The auction was cancelled. In 1997, the MINEF auctioned 26 concessions for a total surface area of 1.8 million hectares. One hundred and ninety-six companies answered, many of them prepared to pay three or four times the bottom price: 16 concessions out of 26 were not granted to the highest bidder (for supposedly technical reasons) but to friends of the government, six were awarded to people who did not even make a bid and who turned around and rented them to rather unprincipled outfits.44 It is of course unfair to represent several years of discussion between the World Bank and the Cameroon government using only these few caricatured incidents. But they are what people talk about and what they remember, as well as the fact that for a while the Bank made the disbursement of any further loan installments conditional on transparency in concession allocation, even requesting to be involved in the process. “Intolerable interference” the Cameroon officials cried. For several months all action was suspended.The FMUs were not allocated, the logging companies did not know what the future held in store, logging permits were granted arbitrarily, anarchic and illegal cutting exploded. Never had the pressure on the forest been so heavy or the confusion so great. A World Bank representative whom I asked “They say the Bank is blocking everything and that this is encouraging illegal logging, is this true?” replied:“It is absolutely true, but we’re going to try to stand firm. We are betting on the long term, on the learning process. Cameroon will eventually figure out that it can’t go on this way.” It is difficult to make an impartial judgment on the effect of such a policy, so much does it upset longstanding interests. As it is, the fiscal measures encouraged by the Bank exasperate the French logging companies, which have called on the embassy and the government to intervene and have laid into the Washingtonian institution tooth and nail.

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In general, in the short run, all conditionalities are destabilizing and very unpopular.They are viewed as a form of foreign sponsor control and a totally asymmetrical form of ecological interference, because developing countries have no means of putting pressure on industrialized countries and the damage they wreak on the planet’s environment: greenhouse effect, thinning of the ozone layer, and so on. Conditionalities can achieve positive results if the borrowing state is sincerely determined to reform its forestry policy and if it is gradually convinced of the proposed measures. But in that case, is there any need for conditionalities? If the goals are entirely imposed from outside, the leaders will pretend to subscribe to them, agree to everything and . . . not implement them, with the support of their political clients, their administrations, their local officials, and even their inhabitants, on whom most of the weight of structural adjustment usually falls. Not in Cameroon, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, or in Papua New Guinea has the pressure exercised by the World Bank through structural adjustment loans managed to make profound transformations in the mechanisms of permit allocation and conditions of resource exploitation. In other cases, on the contrary, the sponsors’ involvement has led to reversing the trend of accelerated destruction (Cambodia) or giving a voice to domestic public and private movements working for change (Surinam, the Philippines).45 The lesson is a simple one: as long as inside a country the balance of forces works in favor of industrial logging and local actors on the whole have motives to fell trees, there is nothing an outsider can do.46 Prescriptive discourse, pressure from international organizations and even threats not to disburse loans do not work. On the other hand, when in a country there exists an aspiration to change, a reform movement or parts of the administration that want resource depletion to cease, then international discourse can have beneficial effects and conditionalities can help accelerate the process. A sort of contract is then established between the country and the outside actors which requires of the latter time, mindful comprehension, and respect, three ingredients that they often lack. Speaking before the ITTO in 1997, the Prime Minister of Sabah gave an apt summary of the situation: We have lost 2.5 million hectares of primary forest in 20 years. Our green capital has nearly vanished due to over-logging, illegal cutting and also because there is a high demand for land and our economic needs exceed our natural resources. To undertake forest planning requires a political will.We have it, but it meets with great

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resistance from the rich traditional loggers, the professional foresters working for them and the politicians inside the machine. What international organizations say is very important for us to help overcome this resistance.We have had to transfer civil servants: they are victims of sustainable management! The ITTO’s Year 2000 Objective is important: it is a clear, simple objective that forces governments to act. In the short term, there will be a loss of revenues from the forest in order to insure its renewal in the long run. We have the will, we have the training. What we need is people, we need assistance to set up this sustainable management. It is hard to express better that the impetus for a sustainable forest policy lies in a country’s will and the role of outside actors is to help this will be expressed, then give it the means to be implemented. In this regard, the central role the World Bank has assumed in the international aid and research mechanism tends to irritate countries of the South.They have to deal with the Bank when their development is at stake. It is back on the scene when their environment is in question. The main financial instrument for international environmental action is, in fact, the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The idea goes back to the Brundtland Commission, which in 1987 recommended setting up a mechanism to help developing countries make the necessary investments to preserve their natural resources. The idea was seconded by France and Germany. In September 1989, the two countries asked the World Bank to study the modalities of a financial mechanism that would encourage developing countries to taken into account world environmental protection in their development programs and projects. In November 1990, the GEF came into being under the aegis of three organizations, the UNDP, the UNEP, and the World Bank.47 In 1992, it was designated as the financial mechanism by which to implement the biodiversity and climate change conventions, to the great dismay of developing countries, which would have preferred the United Nations to manage the aid money intended to help them meet their obligations contained in these two Conventions.They feared they would be caught up in the Bank’s rationale and its conditionalities. They were not mistaken.The Bank took total de facto charge of the GEF. Its secretariat is at the Bank, the president of the GEF is the Bank’s environment department director, and the GEF projects work in the same way as the Bank’s. The GEF is a multilateral fund that contributes grants to financing specific projects in four focal areas for the world environment: combating the greenhouse effect, protection of international waters, protection

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of biological diversity, and protection of the ozone layer. Projects having to do with the protection of forest ecosystems can receive GEF subsidies (they are then said to be “geffed”) as mixed projects coming under both protection of biodiversity and combating the greenhouse effect. The GEF budget is not particularly large: $1.2 billion was earmarked for the pilot phase of 1991–94.The GEF disbursed $75 million during that period. States agreed in 1994 to reendow it with $2 billion. GEF resources currently amount to $2.7 billion for the 1999–2002 period, which is little and shows a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the OECD countries, the main donors. As for France, its contribution to the GEF is about $125 million. Since 1994, it also has a bilateral fund, the Fond Français pour l’Environnement Mondial (FFEM, or French Global Environment Facility) which adds its contribution to the GEF and amounts to $63 million for the 1999–2002 period. The key word at the GEF is incremental: GEF resources should only be used to finance the “additional” cost of projects concerning the world environment, in other words the difference between the most lucrative investment and that which best preserves the areas defined as being in the global interest.The GEF is supposed to serve as a catalyst: a “geffed” project has the World Bank’s blessing, it is a guarantee of seriousmindedness that should incite the government of beneficiary countries to make an effort to insure the project’s proper implementation and encourage donors to invest in the operation. As much as its slim budget, it is the GEF’s sectoral approach that is criticized. First, it was Northern hemisphere countries that determined what the focal areas should be and imposed their choice on the Southern hemisphere. Secondly, this approach dissociates the environment and development: the conservation-oriented component of the projects is financed by grants, the aspect more oriented toward local development is financed by loans, which further increases the debt of developing countries. Lastly, this entire rationale tends to overestimate projects declared of global interest and underestimate their local costs, particularly species conservation projects, by not taking into account the overall socio-economic imperatives of development strategies.48 In the forest domain, French policy has sought to distinguish itself from GEF strategy. Contribution to economic and social development is the FFEM’s primary eligibility criterion: programs or activities not related to a development project are not eligible. But in particular, while in accordance with the Bank’s 1991 Strategy, the GEF does not finance any logging projects in primary forests, the French Global Environment Facility supports sustainable management efforts engaged by several

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logging companies in Congo basin countries and contributes funding to their management plans. The FFEM share in cofinancing amounts to about 10 percent of a project’s total cost, the remainder being assumed through loans (at very good terms) by the Agence Française de Développement. This policy is part of a general policy of the French Cooperation to support the “rational optimal valuation of forest ecosystems.”49 Through this bold and deliberately provocative action which we will return to at greater length in the next chapter, France is seeking concretely to improve forest management, which it feels is “the basis for sustainable management.” It also hopes to create a chain reaction among its European partners and perhaps one day the Bank, since projects selected by the FFEM can include GEF resources.A very significant fact: NGOs as important as the WWF and the WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) have participated in the study, implementation, and assessment of these forest management plans on concessions granted to industrial loggers. A taboo seems to be in the process of being lifted. Champions of nature are no longer shying away from the economic enhancement of the rain forest. Salvation through the Market? Some degree of deforestation is inevitable, this must be accepted. Everyone admits it deep down.What no one can accept, however, is the waste and nearly irreversible destruction of the tropical forest with no benefit whatsoever to the community, in disregard for the poorest segment of the population. International endeavors therefore focus on the rational management of the resource. But “rational” according to what criteria? Economic criteria, reply the advocates of cost–benefit analysis, and by making all the forest’s functions marketable. The Merchandising of Functions To encourage tropical countries to take care of their forests, one of the most frequent arguments is that they possess a local and national capital of which they underestimate the value. According to the theory of rational choice, if decision-makers take into account the true costs of destructive practices in the forests and all the benefits to be drawn from sustainable development, they will conduct more rational public policies (see chapter 2). For an influential community of environmental economists, a “rational” policy of forest land management carries two prerequisites: the

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information on the total economic value of the forest must be as compete as possible; this value must be translated into monetary terms and compared to the costs and benefits of a conversion of the forest capital to other uses, such as commercial agriculture, infrastructures, mining, and others. Unless this preliminary valuation is carried out, decisions made to theoretically foster development lead to economic, ecological, and social disasters, as a wealth of examples in recent history demonstrates. The World Bank and financial backers encourage the cost–benefit approach, considering that deforestation is not an evil in itself but that it must be prevented any time it provides no economic benefit, that it poses a serious threat to general environmental stability and that it can lead to social conflicts.50 According to this rationale, it is important to identify all the components of the total economic value of the forest and valuate them one by one, setting a price on each. Theoretically, this should lead to considering all the forest’s functions simultaneously without privileging one over the other beforehand. If it were actually applied, this methodological neutrality would have the advantage of taking into consideration all forest-related goods and services and consequently all the stakeholders using this space. No one would be forgotten, and the practice of participatory management and redistribution to local communities would automatically fall into place. This does not occur in reality, given that implementing this method, difficult as it is in industrialized countries, is systematically biased in the tropics. Viewing the rain forest as a commodity is a widespread and fairly well-accepted practice today. It gives environmentalists an additional argument to campaign for respecting the resource and managing it sustainably: protection of nature is not merely an ethical demand, it also has economic value. It allows the logging companies to justify their activity in response to critics accusing them of all the forest’s ills: a forest that is not exploited is a commodity that loses its market value and will be given over to all sorts of degradation.To the bankrollers, at once courted, feared, and criticized on all sides, it provides legitimate, objective criteria by which to agree or refuse to finance projects: a project with no economic justification does not merit encouragement.To forest economists, finally, it provides research contracts, influence, and the satisfaction of seeing their theoretical discussions have partly concrete results in the real world. Only partly, because a close look at the results of tropical forest valuation reveals a mixed picture to say the least. Our aim here is not to give a detailed explanation of the direct valuation methods used in

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cost–benefit analysis or to expand on the methodological criticisms one can make of it. For that, we refer the reader to the specialized literature.51 We are interested in this approach insofar as it has influenced the world’s image of the forest and continues to have a catalytic effect. The theories and methods aiming to introduce ecological concerns into decision-making processes were developed in industrialized countries in reference to problems posed there.The notion of “willing to pay” that is at the heart of the contingent valuation method used today to value tropical forests52 (see chapter 2) was designed to apply to sources of pollution such as airport noise, the smell of diesel engines, chemical pollutants, damage caused by oil spills, and so on, which rarely occur in dense moist forests. It is interesting to note that, in the studies and handbooks on the economic valuation techniques of tropical forest land, reference is always made to the implementation protocol of the CVM established at the request of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) after the shipwreck of Exxon Valdez.53 The constant threats of encroachment on reserves and national parks (the first of which came about in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century), together with the noted decline of natural forests in the United States and Canada, has led to seeking to rationalize the decision-making process in forest land management in North America. Naturally, preexisting valuation methods were used, to which specific tools for forest land had to be added, in particular to identify the various possible land uses both on the level of the forest area and at the regional level. First designed and applied to temperate forests, this whole research tool has now been transposed to tropical forests. One of the pioneer studies and the best known was done in the 1980s by H. J. Ruitenbeek, at the time a doctoral student at the London School of Economics, with the financial support of the WWF. It focused on the establishment of the Korup National Park in the Southwest province of Cameroon and on projects for national parks in the area bordering the Cross River in Nigeria.54 Both cases analyzed conservation projects designed to curb hunting and gathering activities as well as the conversion of primary forest to farmland over a large stretch of tropical forest while encouraging economic and social development in the areas around the two parks, a classic conservation project configuration. For Korup, the “with project” scenario implied imposing new regulations inside the Park, displacing six communities and setting them up elsewhere, and undertaking a specific land use and development plan all around the park. The “without project” scenario assumed the freely accessible forest would continue to

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A Taxonomy of Tropical Forest Land Use Options Timber Production Natural forest (clear-cutting, or sustained yield) Plantation or silviculture Commercial Agriculture Plantation agriculture Agro-forestry Cattle ranching Subsistence Agriculture Swidden cultivation Collection of Non Timber Forest Products Collection of wild plant or animal products for subsistence and/or commercial purposes Conservation National park Wildlife reserve Protected area Ecotourism Other Human habitat Source:

Adapted from Ruitenbeek and from Bann.

suffer degradation and conversion to other uses. The study concluded that the “with project” scenario presented significant economic advantages due in particular to the direct and indirect benefits drawn from sound management of the ecosystem (water resources, soil protection, fishing, nonwood products) and projected tourism. In this case, the cost–benefit analysis reinforced the conservation movement hypothesis recommending forest management along primarily ecological criteria even if that meant displacing communities (the total cost of which was estimated to represent a tiny percentage of the GDP even including costs involved in setting up new subsistence production for the displaced people). For the Cross River region, on the contrary, the study concluded that the economic and social cost that Nigeria would have to bear to save this particular forest area was far higher than the benefit the country would draw from it. The only economic justification would be if the country received fees from the (hypothetical) exploitation of the genetic reserves in the forest or if the international community agreed

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to compensate the losses due to restrictions on logging and timber harvesting, hunting, and conversion to farmland for a population estimated around 35,000–40,000 inhabitants.55 These studies constitute the first attempt to estimate the total economic value of a tropical forest area. They were followed by many others, in Indonesia, the Brazilian Amazon, the Peruvian Amazon, Cambodia, and Malaysia.The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London is working on this issue in conjunction with the World Bank, which finances a number of studies. The Oxford Forestry Institute and the Overseas Development Institute in London are also very active. In 1993, a specific network was set up for the forests of Southeast Asia, named EEPSEA,56 under the aegis of Canada’s International Development Research Center and several similar institutions in Scandinavia. Its goal is to “to strengthen local capacity for the economic analysis of environmental problems so that researchers can provide sound advice to policymakers.” Numerous studies are underway, often supported by the Asian Development Bank.They are designed on the basis of a Manual for Researchers developed within the EEPSEA framework.57 And since everything circulates and the scientific community of economists valuating the forest is a small one, Ruitenbeek again appears on the scene in 1995 presenting to the EEPSEA the lessons learned from a valuation study of a mangrove zone in Irian Jaya that he undertook for Indonesia’s environment minister four years earlier with Canadian support,58 said to be the only study to have ever influenced a policy decision on regional land use in Indonesia. These studies attempting to set a dollar value on forests present a certain number of problems. From a methodological standpoint, first of all, the data are far from reliable and the choice of functions valuated far from neutral. The valuations strive to set a price on goods and services that are exchanged on the market and are the easiest to measure, in other words direct use values, particularly timber harvests and extraction of nonwood forest products. Even for these, figures are rarely available and production quantities are indefinite due to the insufficiency or even nonexistence of statistical instruments as well as widespread fraud in the regions evaluated. It is difficult to establish the value of forest goods and services actually put on the market, all the more so when attempting to make projections to set a price on these goods in the future. As for option values and existence values, they are usually not taken into account, for they are too difficult to valuate, demand long and costly studies which in any event are totally unsuited where local communities participate in a nonmarket economy in which giving is the preferred

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Total Economic Value of a Tropical Forest Use values

Non-use values

Direct use value

Indirect use value

Option value

Timber production (lumber, fuelwood) Non-timber forest products (fruit, rubber, etc.) Pharmaceutical plants Genetic material

Watershed protection Nutrient cycling

Future direct Intrinsic and indirect uses worth Heritage value

Tourism, education, and recreation Human habitat Source:

Existence value

Micro climatic functions Air pollution reduction Carbon storage Conservation of biodiversity

Adapted from Bann and Bishop.

form of exchange. What is valuated reflects rather the implicit preferences and methodological options of the valuator, a foreigner who comes and applies his own cultural codes on individuals whose preferences he or she is claiming to reveal via a questionnaire.The next criticism is on the theoretical level: imagining that the price set for a given function reveals the preferences of the actors involved is an illusion. Does anyone seriously believe he or she can translate into market and individual terms the conflicting perceptions, opposing interests, and possible compromises between groups that differ on all counts (the small peasant and the fazendeiro, the Dayak and the Madurai, the pygmy and the Bamiléké industrial, etc.)? On the political level, finally, the criterion of economic efficiency as the sole rational criterion is purely ideological. By making the monetary value of forest goods and services the basic value, the entire political debate among users is relegated to the private sphere in favor of the law of the jungle, the exact opposite of political responsibility which is precisely to arbitrate between private interests in the name of the common good.

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Environmentalists, moreover, are wary of an approach that is capable of concluding that from a strictly economic standpoint it is rational to conduct logging on a large scale in a natural forest.The case has in fact occurred. In 1992, for instance, a cost–benefit study on logging in the state of Pará (Brazilian Amazon) concluded that sustainable forest management was not financially viable for the logging companies, whereas the ordinary “non sustainable” cutting practices were extremely profitable.59 That same year, a report on timber extraction and swidden cultivation in the Peruvian Amazon concluded that the conversion of forest land for slash-and-burn agriculture was a rational choice. The peasants had no property title allowing them to plan beyond two years into the future, no other use of the land enabled them to survive, neither fruit nor rubber-tapping provided them with an income comparable to what they could expect from cutting down all marketable timber in one go and then converting the land to farmland.60 This report totally contradicted another study conducted a few years earlier, using the same methods, in the same region, finding that periodic selective cutting combined with a sustained harvest of fruit and rubber was the most profitable land use option.61 This study on the cost–benefit comparison of the various possible land use options was one of the first of its kind, published in a major scientific journal, Nature. It was one of the most frequently cited, which lends the controversy even greater piquancy. In practice, the operational aspect of the cost–benefit approach in tropical countries remains slim, and national political arbitrations use other criteria.This type of study therefore has not done too much damage, and has the secondary merit of perpetuating a scholarly debate and a political argument on the multiple functions of the forest.Therein lies its primary interest. The economic valuation of forest resources is henceforth a fullfledged subdiscipline of environmental economics. It has a corpus, specific models to value each forest land use, a methodology, approximately ten years of experience allowing it to draw lessons from prior studies. Certain great names have emerged, generally from the London School: Barbier, Bishop, Burgess, Markyanda, and so on.62 One of the main contributions of this school is to have helped broaden our image of the tropical forest. Until the 1980s, there seemed to be only a single alternative: either the total preservation advocated by champions of nature, or the extraction of timber advocated by foresters. By claiming to develop a method that can arbitrate between the pure preservation scenario and a rational development scenario, cost–benefit analysis put on paper the list of possible forest land uses in the tropics and tabled it for discussion by public and private decision-makers.

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This reasoning demonstrated that timber was not the only valuable economic resource in the forest and that there were other dimensions to forest economics besides the optimal rotation model that had served as a working basis since 1930.63 The concept of total economic value enables representation of all of the economic, ecological, and social benefits of the forest: direct use values related to goods that can be produced or consumed, indirect use values related to the ecological regulation functions of the forest; immaterial, non-use values related to mere satisfaction at the idea that the forest exists and can be handed down to future generations. This notion has the merit of bringing the complex nature of forest uses into the economic—thus serious and rational—sphere, an obvious fact which until then the other social sciences had proclaimed in vain. By trying to organize this complexity, it draws the attention of serious and rational people to a certain number of advantages procured by the forest, ecological benefits in particular, which were not taken into account in economic calculations. It also tends to give considerable and newfound importance to the value of nonwood forest products (NWFP).This is an interesting shift in approaches to the rain forest.64 The care taken today in calculating the benefits drawn from NWFP is not neutral: it aims to justify the preservation of forest land by emphasizing the contribution of these products to the local economy, community food security, and preservation of biological diversity. We have encountered such a project during a meeting with an NGO official in Brazil working for an environmental research network of the federal university of Pará which answers to the delightful name of POEMA.65 The organization’s goal is to find ways to satisfy the basic needs of poor inhabitants by creating jobs and generating revenues through the sustainable management of natural resources. After having started in the field of water, then that of agroforestry in regions where the forest had already been destroyed by fire, POEMA undertook a new challenge, apparently successfully, and is very proud of it. It involves a small processing industry that establishes a link between the rural communities and a multinational corporation, no less. Coconut fibers are gathered and processed by small farmers to make the stuffing for car seats sold to Mercedes Benz, with whom a contract was signed. Breaking into a new market, encouraging diversification, increasing family income, lessening pressure on the forest, this is all doubtless very fragile.All Mercedes Benz needs to do is sneeze and the project could capsize; however, the community can rightfully boast of creating a dynamic and acquiring new knowledge. The FAO has launched a major NWFP program to make “an accurate appraisal of their true socio-economic contribution to sustainable

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development.” Several public and private international organizations have embarked on huge campaigns to promote and enhance these products. For instance, in conjunction with the European Commission, FAO supports projects to help African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries (ACP countries bound to the European Union by the Lomé Conventions) collect and compile all necessary information on the production and trade of these products with an aim to develop sustainable forest management policies. The ITTO provides assistance in a few specific projects in Thailand, the Philippines, the Brazilian Amazon, and elsewhere, to ensure local communities revenues and subsistence products other than from logging.Training programs have been set up to teach how to harvest NWFP without overtaxing the resource: the subject is particularly sensitive when it comes to resins, rubber, and bark from medicinal trees often collected excessively by cuts that are so deep and so frequent that they scar the tree so badly it cannot heal. The CIFOR has set up a large research program on nonwood forest products in Indonesia: “the ultimate goal is to produce the kind of information that is needed to formulate appropriate policies and other interventions that promote balanced and environmentally sound forest management and land use.”66 Enhancing NWFP requires reintroducing local communities into the forest management equation and in a way, the approach is a protest action. It banks on existing or recently acquired local knowledge and the capacity of the harvesters to ensure the durability of the resource and thereby to manage their space. It plainly raises the issue of land tenure and the distribution of revenues to those who live off its fruits. The Price of Sinks Among the functions attributed to the tropical forest, that of storing and sequestering carbon is the most discussed topic in intergovernmental circles, the only one actually that is subject to political negotiation. If an international market for emission rights were to be established in the coming years, profits from carbon sequestering will have a market value, which will inevitably influence the choice of forest land uses in tropical countries.The whole question is to whom and how these profits will be distributed. Forests account for 80 percent of the annual exchange of carbon dioxide between the earth and the atmosphere.67 They act as reservoirs by trapping carbon in the biomass and soil. When they spread and trees grow, they act as sinks and can absorb part of the carbon released by the combustion of fossil fuels. Conversely, when the biomass burns or

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decays, forests release carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Changes in land use, primarily deforestation in tropical zones, currently account for 20 percent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.68 Forests therefore constitute a major factor in the world carbon cycle.69 Their importance was recognized in the early stages of negotiation on climate change: the functions of sink, reservoir, and source, as we have seen, are written into the United Nations Framework Convention of 1992, which aims to stabilize the concentrations of atmospheric gases. In December 1997, in the Kyoto Protocol, adopted by the third Conference of the Parties (COP3), developed countries and countries in transition to a market economy (known as Annex 1 countries) pledged to reduce their overall greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5 percent below their 1990 level by the 2008–12 period. Among the possible means by which to comply with these quantified commitments, the Protocol expressly provides for the “promotion of sustainable forest management practices, afforestation and reforestation” (art. 2). At the behest of the United States, it was in principle admitted that certain forestry practices helping to slow the accumulation of carbon dioxide could be used to offset industrial emissions. But discussion has stumbled over the precise definition of these practices and accounting methods of carbon storage. Flexibility mechanisms were introduced in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce the cost of emissions reduction measures. The mechanism dealing with tropical forests is known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM, art. 12), which enables developed countries to earn emissions credits in developing countries by investing in forestry projects that limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.The underlying assumption is that a ton of carbon sequestered due to forestry activities in the South will cost far less than a ton of carbon saved by limiting the combustion of fossil fuels in the North. In theory, there are three ways of producing “forest carbon”: absorb and sequester it by planting trees (substitution), keep it and store it in the biomass through sustainable management methods such as reducedimpact logging (storage), or avoid releasing it into the atmosphere through forest conservation and protection (conservation).To qualify for the CDM, a project has to meet the additionality requirement. This means that, to receive funding, the project will achieve measurable emissions reductions that would not be possible without the project. In other words, a conservation project in a national park that is already protected would not be eligible.The CDM should be used to absorb or sequester

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new quantities of carbon and not to finance activities that would have been undertaken in any event. Besides the concept of additionality, the concept of leakage also limits possibilities of recourse to CDM. Here the point is to prevent the funding used to reduce carbon emissions in one place from being used for activities that increase emissions elsewhere. A CIFOR study gives the example of a project that would finance improved forest management, and the concession holder would then use the money saved to log another forest area using unsustainable practices.70 Such a project would not come under the CDM. Emissions reductions resulting from each activity will have to be certified by “operational entities” designated by the Conference of the Parties on the basis of the following criteria: “(a) Voluntary participation approved by each Party involved; (b) Real, measurable, and long-term benefits related to the mitigation of climate change; and (c) Reductions in emissions that are additional to any that would occur in the absence of the certified project activity” (art. 12.5). Several and various difficulties remain to be resolved. From a scientific and technical standpoint, there is little unanimous agreement on the data used to estimate the amount of stored carbon each Party can claim. Annex 1 countries are divided on this topic. On a political level, several large countries of the South, particularly India and Brazil, refuse to allow their forests to be considered as carbon dioxide reservoirs intended to repair that damage to the atmosphere caused by developed countries seeking to have everyone share the burden of a fault they alone committed. On an ethical level, the eventuality that the richest, most polluting countries will in no way change their lifestyle and production methods and instead shun their responsibilities by purchasing emission credits corresponding to the discretionary use of large stretches of land in developing countries is somewhat shocking. From a forestry standpoint, finally, the CDM is not a cure-all. By assigning a market value to the carbon sequestering function of tropical forests, it may encourage countries to better monitor their stock and sustainably manage their forests. It may especially give them the means to finance sustainable forest management. But the sink function is temporary. Once a stage of maturity is reached, a forest emits about as much carbon dioxide as it absorbs: the decaying of dead trees releases practically the same amount of carbon dioxide as that absorbed by tree growth. Fire, disease, and particularly the predicted effects of global warming today considered inevitable are as many phenomena that can transform forest ecosystems into sources of carbon. No forecast can be made with any certainty beyond a few decades.

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The Hague conference in November 2000 was supposed to result in decisions regarding forest activities and land use. It will be remembered as a failure.There was endless debate surrounding what substance to give the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, “3.3” and “3.4” in the jargon of initiates. No scientific certainty won out, and everything was a matter of subjective judgment, resulting in a total deadlock: by limiting the amount of carbon sequestered by their forests and farmland to a certain percentage, the United States claimed to offer an acceptable compromise. The European Union felt that they were using every last leaf of grass to account for their carbon pool.

Kyoto Protocol Article 3 1. The Parties included in Annex I shall, individually or jointly, ensure that their aggregate anthropogenic carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of the greenhouse gases listed in Annex A do not exceed their assigned amounts, calculated pursuant to their quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments inscribed in Annex B and in accordance with the provisions of this Article, with a view to reducing their overall emissions of such gases by at least 5 per cent below 1990 levels in the commitment period 2008 to 2012. 3. The net changes in greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks resulting from direct human-induced land-use change and forestry activities, limited to afforestation, reforestation and deforestation since 1990, measured as verifiable changes in carbon stocks in each commitment period, shall be used to meet the commitments under this Article of each Party included in Annex I. The greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks associated with those activities shall be reported in a transparent and verifiable manner and reviewed in accordance with Articles 7 and 8. 4. Prior to the first session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Protocol, each Party included in Annex I shall provide, for consideration by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, data to establish its level of carbon stocks in 1990 and to enable an estimate to be made of its changes in carbon stocks in subsequent years. The Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Protocol shall, at its first session or as soon as practicable thereafter, decide upon modalities, rules and guidelines as to how, and which, additional human-induced activities related to changes in

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greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks in the agricultural soils and the land-use change and forestry categories shall be added to, or subtracted from, the assigned amounts for Parties included in Annex I, taking into account uncertainties, transparency in reporting, verifiability, the methodological work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the advice provided by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice in accordance with Article 5 and the decisions of the Conference of the Parties. Such a decision shall apply in the second and subsequent commitment periods. A Party may choose to apply such a decision on these additional human-induced activities for its first commitment period, provided that these activities have taken place since 1990. 7. In the first quantified emission limitation and reduction commitment period, from 2008 to 2012, the assigned amount for each Party included in Annex I shall be equal to the percentage inscribed for it in Annex B of its aggregate anthropogenic carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of the greenhouse gases listed in Annex A in 1990, or the base year or period determined in accordance with paragraph 5 above, multiplied by five. Those Parties included in Annex I for whom land-use change and forestry constituted a net source of greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 shall include in their 1990 emissions base year or period the aggregate anthropogenic carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by sources minus removals by sinks in 1990 from land-use change for the purposes of calculating their assigned amount.

A preparatory report by the IPCC prior to the Hague conference listed the issues to be resolved if carbon sequestration strategies applicable to land use, land-use change, and forestry activities were included in the calculation of emissions rights.The list is impressive.71 It begins with problems related to the absence of a definition of basic terms such as forest, afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation and suggests no fewer than seven “definitional scenarios” by showing the estimations of the variations in carbon stocks that would result. It raises questions of temporality: at what point should fixed or released quantities of carbon be calculated? It states the various calculation methods possible: by type of land or type of activity? In sum, the experts still have bright days ahead of them. While waiting for a very hypothetical intergovernmental agreement, several states and companies are making preparations. Costa Rica has already offered investors state-guaranteed carbon certificates and hosts a dozen forestry projects in the form of joint implementation operations.

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Peugeot has undertaken to create “the first major carbon sink” in the Amazon forest: 11 million trees planted in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region. The International Automobile Federation hopes to obtain forgiveness for the 5,500 tons of carbon released into the atmosphere each year during Formula 1 races by planting pines to sequester carbon dioxide in the Chiapas region.72 American Electric Power, which sells coal-produced electricity, cofinances together with BP Amoco and PacificCorp nearly half of the world’s largest forest carbon project in Bolivia.The expansion of the Noel Kempff Mercado National park over 650,000 hectares of forest will allow 7 to 14 million tons of carbon to be stored over a hundred or so years for an investment of $9.5 million, which represents less than $2 per ton. If the Kyoto Protocol enters into force and these companies are asked to reduce the amount of their carbon emissions, they will be able to use 51 percent of the carbon credits obtained by the project, the Bolivian government will be able to do what it likes with the rest and sell it on the carbon emissions rights market. If one considers that the average price of a ton of carbon on the market is currently estimated at between $10 and $30, the operation will have been extremely profitable to all parties involved. Will it have been profitable for the climate, wildlife, or people? The NGOs are divided over this point. For Nature Conservancy, the American association to whom the Bolivian government entrusted the management of the Noel Kempff project, for instance, the CDM is a means of valuing the services rendered by the forest to the benefit of nature but also to the local communities and development in general. For Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, these operations are nothing but encouragements to pollute even more in both rich countries and poor countries.As to the financial benefits, most believe they will go primarily to companies in rich countries and local leaders and apparatchiks and that the rural communities and indigenous peoples will get nothing. If many conditions are fulfilled, implementation of CDMs or their equivalent could result in realizing “double dividend” operations: carbon dioxide emissions reductions and improved forest management.73 The valuation of the sequestration function would be a step toward sustainable management. But is there a universal definition of sustainable management?

CHAPTER

SIX

Conserving the Tropical Forest

The promotion of the rain forest to the status of global common good had the initial effect of allowing anyone to say anything at all. In their haste to act to “save the planet,” media personalities, private associations, and international institutions projected onto this radically new issue already familiar scenarios, selecting among the questions to resolve those that best corresponded to their centers of interest and what they believed they could do best. In a very short time, countless and sundry measures were proposed, if not imposed, on tropical country governments by various standard-setters who were not in agreement and quarreled among themselves with the haughtiness befitting heralds of humanity. Local communities found themselves taken hostage and paid the price of battles waged over paradigms in which they had no say. For the radical preservationists, the solution was simple: exclude any human use of forest land and disregard all political, economic, cultural, and social realities to preserve every last drop of ecosystem biodiversity so that nothing in the forest would change. More experienced conservationists recommended the creation of protected areas according to various categories based on familiar models: national parks, nature reserves, and the like. As to how to proceed, two visions have been in constant conflict: one that advocates dividing up the forest territory through a zoning policy that designates specialized areas and uses, and one that champions the organization and coordination of multiple uses throughout the forest land, including in protected areas. The consequences of each of these options extend far beyond academic and technical debates: they affect the lifestyle of the local inhabitants, the enhancement of the resource base, the nature of conservation projects, and the very viability of these projects.

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It took several years and many failures before creative scenarios adapted to local conditions began to emerge. Pure preservation rationales yielded ground. A more progressive conception of conservation developed that was more sensitive to social dynamics. The protection/ multiuse management dichotomy is still alive and well, but each camp has taken stock of the difficulties of its approach and the tone has become more measured. Disputes regarding legitimate conservation issues have not disappeared, they have changed shape. Unlike the 1990s, the substantive debate no longer hides behind an ethical and theoretical one: arguments have been structured around a certain number of commonly acknowledged principles. By focusing on certification, the conflict over sustainable management has now shown itself for what it really is: a pure conflict of interests in which the principle stake is not forest conservation but money and ideological control. The Social Costs of Conservation The first solution proposed by environmentalists to conserve tropical forests is one that the industrialized countries have used for many years to protect wildlife and outstanding landscapes: to establish protected areas. Huge pressure has been exerted on governments in tropical countries to get them to set up new protected areas, national parks, and biological reserves, and to expand those already established under colonial rule. In 1992, the IUCN recommended that each country designate at least 10 percent of its forest as a national park or give it some other protected area status. In 1997, during the General Assembly special session (Rio ⫹ 5), the WWF put all its energy into getting this goal approved by the nations attending the meeting (Target 2 objective).1 The following year it solemnly concluded an Alliance with the World Bank: the WWF–World Bank Alliance Global Collaboration for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use. In forming this Alliance, the two partners pledged to: ●

●

●

Promote the establishment of an ecologically representative network of protected areas, covering at least 10 percent of each of the world’s forest types by the year 2000. Establish 50 million hectares of new forest protected areas in the Bank’s client countries by 2005. Bring 200 million hectares of forests under independently certified sustainable management by 2005, 100 million hectares being in temperate and boreal forests and 100 million hectares in tropical forest regions.

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Protect, manage, and certify are the magic words in today’s global forest ecopolitics. Protect What and How? At each major meeting on the forest, participants announce ambitious protection projects.The concept is well received, it draws favor and funding. But the reality far from coincides with the stated ambition. In 1999, a study published by the IUCN showed that in ten major forest countries, fewer than a quarter of the areas declared to be officially protected were suitably managed, and most of them were not managed at all.2 Most of the protected areas have a weak, imprecise protection status entailing poorly defined obligations.3 The various management categories recommended by the IUCN are rarely integrated into national legislation and when they are, the countries have trouble giving them adequate substance for lack of funds and especially for lack of conviction. Unless they generate comfortable tourism revenues, protected areas are usually unpopular on the local level. Supporting them is rarely a state’s priority, except when it can use them as an excuse to make recalcitrant communities toe the line in the name of global ecology.According to the WWF, only 8 percent of tropical forests were in protected areas in 1996.

IUCN Protected Area Management Categories Category I: Strict Nature Reserve/Wilderness Area: protected area managed mainly for science of wilderness protection Category Ia: Strict Nature Reserve: protected area managed mainly for science Category Ib: Wilderness Area: protected area managed mainly for wilderness protection Category II: National Park: protected area managed mainly for ecosystem protection and recreation Category III: Natural Monument: protected area managed mainly for conservation of specific natural features Category IV: Habitat/Species Management Area: protected area managed mainly for conservation through management intervention Category V: Protected Landscape/Seascape: protected area managed mainly for landscape/seascape protection and recreation Category VI: Managed Resource Protected Area: protected area managed mainly for the sustainable use of natural ecosystems


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Considerable improvisation was used in establishing protected forest areas in tropical countries. The testimony from the director of a huge trinational conservation project in Africa (Congo, Central African Republic, Cameroon) describing his early days is eloquent: I first started working in the [. . .] region with [. . .] in 1986. He had already started a conservation effort that was based quite simply on forest preservation and wildlife conservation. [. . .] Few conservationists had experience working in forest environments. We had limited experience in developing or managing national parks, particularly in forests with relatively high human population densities or those affected by local logging activities. [. . .]. For us “pristine” meant large tracks of uninhabited forest lands with intact ecosystems and high densities of large mammals including, in particular, elephants and gorillas. (Our emphasis.) Unfortunately, there were indigenous Pygmy communities living in this “ideal” region for a conservation program. The project had to be modified so as to leave the inhabitants the possibility of continuing their hunting and gathering activities.4 Local communities have not all benefited from similar attention from conservation project directors.The protection of sites, flora, and fauna in the name of a certain Western conception of wildlife has caused numerous calamities. Since the creation of national parks and wildlife preserves in Kenya and Tanzania from which Massai stockbreeders were brutally chased, to the extension of the Chitwan National park in Nepal, which led to displacing thousands of peasants, including villages destroyed by flares or grenades in Togo and Indonesia (supra, chapter 3), examples abound of crimes committed in the name of environmental protection which are as many crimes against human rights.5 By definition, protected areas restrict uses over a specific area of land. They deprive communities of rights they have exercised since time immemorial on land they believed was theirs. They destroy traditional spatial organization systems and local exchange and management practices. In the best of cases, projects are accompanied by development and training operations to persuade these communities that they must change their behavior, no longer rely solely on hunting and exploiting the forest for their subsistence, and forget the symbolic associations they always made with the forest and its sacred nature.The trauma suffered is always severe. Deliberate practices of sabotage, fire, killing of animals are not infrequent, exacerbating social tensions and conflicts between the

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community and the authorities. The heavy social costs of conservation are borne by those who live in protected areas or who have been displaced to the periphery, whereas the benefits, purely recreational, go to ecotourists, hikers, and film buffs who have come for enjoyment. In countries where forest destruction has reached proportions verging on national catastrophe, the solution involving logging bans and entrusting the government with responsibility for protecting wooded areas seems self-evident. In practice, it gives mixed results. Since the countries are usually incapable of assuming such a responsibility, the forest ends up de facto freely accessible and given over to illegal logging, as can be seen in Southeast Asia where unhealthy alliances between woodcutters without permits, crooked logging companies, the army and forestry service staff are often denounced (in the Philippines, for instance). Logging bans in one region have also been known to cause illegal logging to shift to another area: the ban on timber production in Thailand’s natural forests led to plundering forests in neighboring countries: Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Most of the time, the goals of protection are unclear. For national parks, the practice is one of command and control: boundaries are established, everything within them is declared to be legally protected, a long list of standards is drawn up ranging from a total ban on harvests to the setting of quotas.This is said to constitute control. Certainly hunting and logging may diminish significantly inside these parks, but then the problem shifts to the outside: animals are slaughtered as soon as they cross park boundaries. Kenya is said to have lost, in this way, half of its wildlife outside of its protected areas in less than twenty years.6 As for logging, it had shifted to other, unprotected and overexploited areas.This points up the importance of creating buffer zones on the edge of parks and reserves to temporize the break between the protected area and the area surrounding it. Properly managed, these zones should permit moderate use of forest resources in a way that satisfies the needs of local communities without upsetting the balance of the ecosystem. How to know what should be protected in a forest reserve?7 The forest changes constantly, trees grow and die, detritus accumulates, transforms, at each stage of vegetation specific forms of plant and animal life develop. Should everything be conserved? Over what spatial area and with respect to what time frame? To answer these questions in tropical forests, which are particularly rich in biodiversity, but where the regeneration mechanisms are still not fully understood, the costs of research and information are enormous. Though no one is willing to assume them, guidelines found in CITES and vague intuitions are relied on to


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define more or less what should be protected. The goals are often too ambitious with respect to the means. Trying to protect too many resources increases the chances of conflict with local interests and intensifies the struggles to seize revenues. In many countries, the designation of large areas to be protected is merely a facade, resulting in what has been called “paper parks.” Protected areas lack staff, equipment, and facilities. One of the largest national parks in Brazil, for instance, the Jau National Park, is located two hours by boat from Manaus. It has three park wardens all told (personal communication). Management is under the responsibility of administrative authorities whose interest in protecting forest resources is inversely proportional to their power to grant, for a fee, logging concessions and forest land use permits. In fact, the only projects likely to function properly are international projects organized by experienced conservation experts working with a well-trained team, independent with respect to local political authorities, backed by a major public or private international institution for a long period of time. And even in these auspicious conditions the likelihood of success is not guaranteed. Governments are reluctant to give up their sovereignty over a large part of their territory for a long period of time. Situations change over time, local actors become more demanding, negotiation is perpetual, and protection is never secured. Projects heads know well that if they leave, the protected area they have created will not survive unless the reserve or national park finds its own means of funding and enduring. And imperceptibly the emphasis switches from protection to the demand for fair management, management by which conservation revenues would be distributed in such a way as to interest the local authorities and communities, and convince them that the project is indeed their own. Conserve for Whom? Conservation is an ideology. It has its fanatics, for whom all species must be protected against human beings and whose ideal would be to see 50 percent of the tropical forest be placed under strict protection. Conservation International, an influential NGO well introduced in international circles, is a good example of this position. But conservation also provides a livelihood. A vast international network has developed through NGOs, the European Union, and the G7 countries, whose very existence and means of subsistence are protected areas.Thousands of European expatriate jobs are devoted to them.

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A sincere commitment and a will to work to protect nature and improve the lives of poor local people goes together with powerful motivations to devise and implement projects, even when their chances for success prove to be less than certain. Experts and researchers find in these projects a field for experimentation, Northern hemisphere NGO staff a gratifying job and responsibilities, jobless students in the region an opportunity to gather together in local NGOs to which tasks are subcontracted, and, on site, the projects cause numerous little industries to develop and thrive: chauffeurs, cooks, household help, craftsmen, beer vendors, and so on. Conservation projects large and small have multiplied, fragmenting the tropical territory into mosaics of conservation and oases of relative prosperity, under the fashionable concept of Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs). The achievements are often unstable, artificial, and not integrated into an overall development strategy for the country. Instead, they compete for financing with many other similar projects the world over. Failures have been many. Other models have had to be found and a basic truth has been “discovered”: since it is impossible to put a park warden behind every tree and every gorilla, the only way to preserve the forest is to acknowledge local people’s usage rights and make them consistent with sustainable resource management.A trend is emerging today demanding an approach to forest conservation that breaks with the typical national parks solution. It is founded instead on the traditional uses local communities make of their land. Gradually, it is being recognized that virgin forests are a myth, that natural forests have always been inhabited by human beings, that these human beings know how to take care of the forest, and that a conservation project is more likely to succeed and endure if local traditions and knowledge are taken into account. The danger is that a new romanticism could develop around these wonderful forest dwellers who supposedly know spontaneously how to save trees and animal species if only they would be left alone and governments not interfere. Just as marked by the white man’s fantasies, this wager on the original innocence of the indigenous people is likely to be lost.There too, disappointments abound. In Paraguay, for instance, Ache communities, who formerly lived by hunting and gathering, had their rights recognized inside a vast perimeter of preserve in 1988. One year later, they had cut down all the trees they could, sold off all marketable species, and used the proceeds from the sales to set up little shops to sell their wares. Clothing, housing, food, games, drinks: it was the age of plenty. Five years later, everything collapsed.The shops were closed, there was nothing left to buy.Their standard of living dropped to even lower

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than what it was in the 1970s. The Ache is decidedly not a rational homo economicus! Not any more than his counterparts in the Brazilian Amazon, many of whom have known the same misfortunes for the same reasons: indigenous peoples’ harmony with their environment is not a foregone conclusion. It is built over time, in relationships of non-monetary exchange of products of labor and local knowledge. The sudden arrival of modernity and the market economy has destroyed this balance. Organizing conservation operations using the knowledge of the various forest users is not an exercise in improvisation. It requires very lengthy preliminary research bringing together several disciplines: cartography to represent the various zones of activity with respect to one another, sociology to pinpoint the uses and the dynamics of timber harvests, forestry and biology to measure the effects of these removals on resource renewal, agronomy and socio-economics to assess the costs and benefits of the various practices, land use management to determine models of exploitation, public administration to establish regulations, coordinate the various uses, and arbitrate when necessary, and so forth. A good demonstration of the enormity of the task can be seen in the very interesting experiment in forest management in the Dimako region in eastern Cameroon, one of the first major French rain forest management projects in Africa.The initial phase was a technical one. It involved a study of timber resources by inventorying the species, determining management parameters by calculating the appropriate rotation, delimiting assiettes de coupe,9 defining minimum harvest diameters, and so on. The second phase set out to determine the modalities of management, its effects on the social fabric, the type of relations it would imply with the local community and the logging companies in the context of Cameroon’s new forest regulations.10 These regulations distinguish between the state’s Permanent Forest Domain, which covers at least 30 percent of the country, devoted entirely to forestry, and a multiple-use forest domain. The Permanent Forest Domain is made up of protected areas for fauna, protected forests, and production forests where logging is permitted and concession allocation is being organized. A zoning plan was established to separate the permanent domain, where logging and agriculture are prohibited, and the multiple-use domain. The risk of specializing the forest area in this way is to dissociate rural development from forest development and to transform practices that were once complementary into “competing demands for a space that has become a stake.”11 Not only do local communities see their traditional land incorporated into the state domain and their agricultural activities banned, but they see rights granted to third parties who will harvest the timber

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and transform the environment: “If traditional uses are excluded from the Permanent Forest Domain that the state has constituted, there is a high risk of removing responsibility from the users and introducing new actors into a now free-access area, who will increase timber removals that will exceed the site’s potentialities.”12 To offset this risk, Cameroon law acknowledges the usage rights of local communities in the permanent forest domain for their personal use, it provides for involving them in any zoning and land use process, and invites them to participate in forest management. Simple in appearance, these regulations raise very thorny questions of implementation: what are the existing rights, how can they be distributed among multiple users with competing interests, how can things be arranged in such a way that their exercise is not incompatible with sustainable management of the forest? The work accomplished in the Dimako region to attempt to answer these questions has been colossal. It required a survey in nearly 70 villages to identify what uses were actually made in the three forest stands studied. These surveys produced a “usage map” identifying the areas of activity in each stretch of forest land and its users. This map is not a mere information tool, it constitutes “an instrument for dialogue among users who will have to defend their uses to the administrating authority and the forest land use planner.”13 An original community forest experience has been undertaken, which requires considerable leadership and training, to establish concerted rules for the taking of animal resources. A system of supervision for the wise use of the famous annual logging tax allocated to the local communities must be set up.The logging concession holder is in the process of developing the forest management plan required by the administration before a long-term logging convention can be granted. It is wholly cooperating in the dialogue with village communities. In short, the experiment is promising. But it requires a considerable energy investment: the result of competition among multiple uses leads more easily to the “tragedy of the commons” than to the spontaneous harmony of interests. After several years devoted to the project, one of its main leaders draws this conclusion: “To preserve the forests, the worst in our opinion would be to leave the stakeholders to their own devices, as they can quickly drift into devastating an environment with which they do not identify and that does not implicate them. Organizing uses and users requires determination, energy, know-how and time.”14 The Dimako experiment has probably created a chain reaction in central Africa.The IUCN and the American agency USAID, which have undertaken an assessment of the protected areas in the countries of the Congo basin, have reached the same conclusions: without implicating


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the stakeholders in the management of protected areas and without deliberate effort to resolve conflicts between interest groups, there can be no real protection.15 But participatory management experiments are only in their infancy. There are not enough local technicians, and outside agents struggle to keep the projects going.Who will take over when the project reaches its term? We have heard the mayor of Dimako express his concern: “The project will end in a few months. We do not have enough trained people to pursue it, the city does not have the necessary budget to finance it.What will happen then?”16 The whole problem of financing sustainable forest management (SFM) is thus posed. What Funding for the Global Common Good? For 20 years international discussion on the tropical rain forests has centered around topics that interest the major Western NGOs: first biodiversity, then the rights of indigenous peoples. They have inspired international aid funds to move toward protection and training projects, and more recently toward plantation and agroforestry projects.The GEF finances the additional costs of projects that affect the world environment, biodiversity, fresh water, and carbon sequestration. Outside of aid to forest protection policies, research and institutional aspects of forestry, virtually nothing has been disbursed for what has, nevertheless, been announced as a major goal: sustainable management of forests by those who use them. It is as if the forest could be treated as a global common good detached from local development, the basic needs of the countries where they are found, the concerns of concession holders and forest owners. This situation has become unbearable, and the international community has found itself with its back to the wall. International Public Aid to Forestry (millions of dollars)

Bilateral outside Europe European Union Multilateral Banks UN Agencies Total Source:

1986

1990

1995

1996

Average increase (%) 1987–96

248 337 232 255 1072

433 606 902 241 2181

456 531 177 176 1340

398 470 148 193 1320

12 4 27 ⫺3 6

Overseas Development Institute, London, April 1999.

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Despite the rhetoric making the tropical forest a commodity of global interest, the subject remains of very marginal concern in world politics. The public nature of positive and negative externalities regarding the use of dense rain forests is readily admitted, but it is just as readily admitted that responsibility for assuming the costs lies with tropical countries or the private sector.The international aid devoted to the forest represents approximately 1 percent of all public development aid. This aid itself is well known to be on the decline and is increasingly earmarked for emergency situations and humanitarian relief. The emotional turmoil that came with the end of the 1980s caused a flurry of activity, which is evident in the figures, but which did not last. All donors have slackened their efforts. The price willingly paid for the loudly proclaimed option and existence values of the forest is apparently not very high. Moreover, international financing of forest activities as it is now practiced does not, it is generally agreed, correspond to real needs of the forest sector. More project- than program-oriented, it is not suited to the long term, which is the time frame of the tropical forest. Distributed through a myriad of donors, each having its own selection and implementation criteria, this funding entails as many constraints imposed from the outside on the “beneficiary” governments as incentives to define an overall forest policy. The example of the PPG7 is significant in this regard. The Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest was undertaken by the G7 countries with the support of the World Bank and the European Union in the great wave of emotion surrounding the Houston summit in 1990. It was designed as a unique example of multilateral cooperation between the world’s largest donors, one of the biggest conservation programs in the world, with a budget of $1.6 billion over a six-year period and the disbursement of the first segment of $250 million for the initial three-year phase.The funding arrangements were brilliant, the subprograms very well thought out, the projects were defined following very long technical meetings with the Brazilian stakeholders. One of the major contributions was the aid granted to the various issues of spatial delimitation, a highly sensitive subject in Brazil: zones reserved for indigenous peoples, delimitation of extractive reserves and national forests, delimitation of parks and preserves, and so on. The chapter on scientific aid was also considerable: aid to leading scientific centers, to strengthening research institutions, for training, and other programs. It also financed projects to strengthen local authorities’ management capacities, create ecological corridors, and so forth. The whole thing constituted a very complete program.


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It was long in getting started. Four years after it was announced, funds still had not been disbursed, negotiations over action proposals and their corresponding budgets had not been finalized. One might think that this long preparation phase was, in fact, a guarantee of seriousness.When the program was finally launched in 1995, the PPG7 was welcomed with immense fervor. It enabled a number of projects to be launched involving the best Brazilian and foreign experts in all areas having to do with the Amazon forest. Local NGOs took part and worked hard. The Brazilian administration undertook reforms and created an environmental ministry. Political, academic, and social mobilization was intense. Rather quickly, unfortunately, it turned out that the PPG7 was a huge white elephant, a bureaucratic machine expending most of its energy to keeping itself going. In 1998, it became obvious that the various donors did not have the same vision of what should become of the Amazon. Everyone did not work in the same way or with the same intensity.The World Bank hired American consultants expounding one view of things, whereas Germany, the main donor and architect of the program, developed another. Disbursements were delayed, the Brazilian government tarried in fulfilling its share of commitments. In short, in 1998, all of the Brazilian respondents we interviewed felt that the PPG7 had really set things rolling, that it had enabled important programs to be implemented, but that, seeing how Germany was the main contributor, “it would be so much easier if it were a bilateral program!” The PPG7 example has nevertheless encouraged a number of experts to propose the systematic creation of consortiums bringing into a partnership all bilateral and multilateral donors to finance forest management in a given country, associating the private sector as well.17 Commitments would be made over a long period, at least ten years, with two- and four-year phases. Subprograms would be developed. The program would be managed jointly by a coordination unit bringing together the cognizant minister of the country, the various donors’ competent agencies, NGOs, and representatives of the different stakeholders. An assessment would be made at the end of each phase before funds were disbursed for the next. This sort of program is currently being implemented in Ghana with $25.7 million for the first phase. It will be interesting to follow its progress. The industrialized countries rejected the creation of a World Forest Fund to which endless IPF/IFF sessions were devoted, but the question of financing SFM remains posed. It costs a great deal of money. In 1997, Brazil created a sensation by presenting an estimate of what it would cost

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to comply with all the international recommendations on the sustainable management of its forests: $14,200 million in the first three or four years, $1,100 million each year afterward. If the entire cycle of a natural forest, about 30 years, were taken into account, that would amount to $43,000 million!18 The ITTO, which had set as a goal that all timber sold on the international market would come from sustainably managed forests (the Year 2000 Objective), asked its producer member countries what they would need in terms of funding to reach this target.The 18 largest countries responded.The amount they announced is staggering by the ITTO’s own admission: $22.5 billion! That such a huge amount could be freed up and devoted to sustainable forestry is unthinkable.The countries in any case are not prepared to absorb it and use it wisely. International aid is insufficient. Poor countries do not have the necessary resources to finance the required adjustments. And time is of essence. It would seem as if the private sector were expected to take charge of SFM. Recommendations come from all sides. In 1997, the IPF urged all countries to “encourage efforts by the private sector to formulate, in consultation with interested parties, and implement voluntary codes of conduct aimed at promoting sustainable forest management through private-sector actions, including through management practices, technology transfer, education, and investment.”19 A large portion of international thinking today focuses on “incentives” that would attract private sector investments to SFM. This ranges from securing usage rights and the optimal duration of concessions, to fiscal measures and certification. But how to convince the private sector that it is worthwhile to engage in a costly process of sustainable management that is hardly profitable in the short term and totally uncertain in the long run?

Sustainable Forest Management: A Conflictual Notion Since the Rio summit, the notion of SFM has taken hold in international discourse. Just like sustainable development, it lacks precision and owes its rhetorical success to this very vagueness: everyone can claim inspiration from it by informing it with the content that suits them. Far from being a harmony-building notion, it on the contrary arouses conflicts in values, cultures, and interests. But since everyone has become accustomed to referring to SFM, it forces people to negotiate. Therein lies its primary virtue.


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An Elastic Content The texts produced by international meetings are disparate and do not help to chart out the discussion in a disciplined fashion. The question remains open, judging from the following three definitions: ITTO, International Tropical Timber Council, 1991: Sustainable forest management is the process of managing permanent forest land to achieve one or more clearly specified objectives of management with regard to the production of a continuous flow of desired forest products and services without undue reduction of its inherent values and future productivity and without undue undesirable effects on the physical and social environment. The above definition is very much a forester’s definition in line with the traditional rationale of sustained yield and perpetuation of forest resources. Rio, 1992, Forest Principles, art. 2b: Forest resources and forest lands should be sustainably managed to meet the social, economic, ecological, cultural and spiritual needs of present and future generations. These needs are for forest products and services, such as wood and wood products, water, food, fodder, medicine, fuel, shelter, employment, recreation, habitats for wildlife, landscape diversity, carbon sinks and reservoirs, and for other forest products. Appropriate measures should be taken to protect forests against harmful effects of pollution, including air-borne pollution, fires, pests and diseases, in order to maintain their full multiple value. The whole spirit of Rio and of sustainable development is contained therein: the list of present and future human needs to satisfy, a catalogue of resources provided by the forests and the dangers it faces, and a vague recommendation made to states to take “appropriate measures” to maintain their full variety. Helsinki, Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe, June 1993: Sustainable management means the stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems.

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Developed in the context of a consultative process on forests in Europe involving 37 countries, this definition has been retained by the European Council in its regulation on Union action in the domain of tropical forests.20 It is a dynamic vision that integrates both the short term and the long term, admits that there are different possible spatial scales for the relevant functions of the forest and relies on proper forest management (“stewardship”) to reconcile use and sustainability. This is, in fact, what is traditionally known in France as aménagement forestier (forest management). A very similar definition of it is found in the 1989 French Memento du Forestier on tropical forestry: Management aims to guarantee over the long term the continuity of forest production in value and quantity, increasing it where possible . . . . The management of forest resources at the national and regional level is also ever mindful of not compromising the continuity of renewable natural resources and ensuring their preservation and a harmonious development for the community’s best interests, in conjunction with other national or regional economic activities which sometimes compete for occupation of wooded land.21 For French foresters, sustainable management is thus a pleonasm. In the discussion of SFM, there is only one consideration common to the various approaches and expressions. It pertains to forest exploitation techniques and is nearly synonymous with silviculture. But it has a modern touch: emphasis on reduced-impact logging methods. In tropical rain forests, as we have seen, an enormous amount of timber is wasted.What are known as conventional logging practices are considered destructive. In a dense forest, tree crowns are bound together by entwined vines; a felled tree brings down several others, and felling damage can be considerable if cutting is not “directed.” Workers are usually poorly trained, badly paid, tired, and more concerned with cutting as fast and as cheaply as possible than with complicating the task at hand by trying to limit the damage. Not to mention places (such as Brazil) where one can still see two bulldozers chained together plowing through the forest crushing everything in their path with a frightening racket: the pioneer front is being opened, but at what cost to the environment! In the Brazilian Amazon, logging is particularly wasteful: “An estimated 300 million trees are felled every year, of which only 5 percent are marketable.The fall of a [tree] 28 meters tall and 70 cm in diameter opens a 400 m2 gap.As for the operating losses (waste), they are estimated at 60 to 70 percent.”22


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A huge effort has been undertaken by the FAO and the ITTO with the participation of a certain number of NGOs to promote reduced impact logging (RIL) techniques, encourage producer countries to incorporate them into their forest regulations, and train crews to these techniques and motivate them. The American NGO Tropical Forest Foundation is conducting a large-scale operation of this sort in Brazil. It is also present in Southeast Asia and is about to expand its activities in Africa. According to the ITTO, thousands of logging crews need to be trained in road building, directional felling, skidding, winching, and harvesting techniques in order to reduce to a minimum the damage inflicted on the residual forest and the environment in general. For Brazil alone, nearly one thousand professional foresters are currently being trained in the implementation of the ITTO Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests. The use of these “environmentally friendly” methods is not selfevident. It presupposes efforts over the long term that require sizeable human and financial means. The measures to be taken are numerous: training tree-fellers and tractor operators, stock survey of standing timber, mapping and marking of trees to be harvested, careful road design and planning of skid trails, planning of cutting operations, directional felling taking into account tiges d’avenir (seedlings and saplings) and the forest’s regeneration capacity, and of course defining the optimal cutting diameter for each tree species according to both ecological and commercial criteria, a maximal per-hectare logging volume and a minimum rotation length.23 The main obstacle is not technical and scientific: professional loggers know very well how to do all that. It lies in the concrete implementation possibilities in the field. In many countries, the forest is logged by small-scale tree-fellers working with chainsaws and rudimentary equipment and know-how. It is hard to see how they can be convinced to alter their practices.As for the large companies, how can they be persuaded to undertake heavy investments in terms of time, men, and equipment? Only governments can create the array of incentives that will constitute a favorable context for SFM.This is in the realm of politics with a capital “P,” involving the state’s basic interests in land use management and economic policy. Despite the implementation difficulties of which everyone is aware, this meaning of SFM is the only one unanimously agreed. It goes beyond the traditional concern in forestry of maintaining production levels of wood resources. For environmentalists, the issue is to conserve the forest status for rain forests, which are too often thinned by overlogging. For professional foresters, the goal is to see that the tropical timber

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trade is no longer a cause of deforestation, even a secondary one, but that it becomes a tool of forest conservation.24 Both sides intersect at the notion of “good forest management,” in other words a set of silviculture practices that respect trees and forest ecosystems. Great confusion reigns when things are taken a step further to include under the notion of SFM the management of multiple products, both wood and nonwood forest products (NWFP), the production of various services expected of the forest, the respect of its ecological functions, the satisfaction of inhabitants’ social needs, all this in a long-term perspective. Things get terribly mixed up: ethics and technology, the goals to attain and the means to do so, and so on. Everyone steps in with his own guidelines.The notion becomes blurred. To Each His Own Truth In 1988, fewer than 1 percent of tropical forests were managed in a sustainable manner. In 2000, according to the ITTO, the situation had improved.25 Yet, on reading the expert report carefully, the progress noted is clearly above all in the administrative, legislative, and regulatory areas.With the help of the World Bank, the FAO, and hordes of specialists, nearly all producing countries have undertaken to define a new forest policy and draw up new codes. Efforts are being made to develop new strategies that integrate SFM in a broader context of land use planning. On the advice of international experts, countries are designating permanent forest domains on land belonging to the state (the most usual case in tropical countries), they ensure greater security of land use rights and titles to private land.“Model” forests and “demonstration” forests are reserved for protection and for original participatory management experiments with the local communities. The concept of sustainable management for tropical forests associated with the Year 2000 Objective has undeniably had a mobilizing effect. No longer does anyone feel comfortable with the dismal situation of official tropical forest management. Countries are aware of the need to implement SFM principles. But in practice, there is a definite lack of real management practices in most tropical countries. Management plans have been developed but are not implemented. In Brazil, besides a few pilot experiments and rare private initiatives to conduct inventories and plan harvests, SFM is virtually nonexistent.26 In Indonesia, despite many changes, much rhetoric, and considerable effort, a new forest strategy is slow in being implemented due to political and social instability, while the ongoing decentralization policy causes great concern to weigh on the way forest concessions will


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be granted and later managed. In Malaysia, there is a large contrast between the peninsular area, probably the most advanced tropical area in the ways of SFM, and the rest of the Federation. In Africa, the situation varies from one place to another: the threshold of overlogging has been long since exceeded in western Africa, but major progress has been made in the Congo basin, which might have a dynamic effect beyond the region if the international community took an interest and went with the flow (see below). The discrepancy between SFM rhetoric and the slimness of actual achievements helps to reinforce the conviction among many international players that SFM cannot be used as a tool for tropical rain forest conservation. Their certainty is based on the idea that reduced-impact logging methods are too costly to be profitable and that forest owners and companies have no vested interest in financing them. Only a very stringent government policy could force loggers to practice sustainable management, but governments do not have the institutional capacity to enforce such restrictions. In such conditions, protection together with a logging ban is still the best conservation technique: it is neither more costly nor more difficult to set up than SFM. In a somewhat milder version that nevertheless reaches the same conclusions, some feel that the best solution is to first authorize logging companies to make a one-time selective cut, then classify the forest stand as a protected area.27 This type of approach has a wide audience in World Bank corridors and the galaxy of ENGOs. The whole philosophy is based on the idea of eviction. To keep the full biological wealth of the forest, eviction is the only answer: evict loggers and evict poor hunter-gatherer-peasants. With respect to the latter category, political correctness has made this position more difficult to defend. But with respect to logging, the taboo remains strong. This is obvious in the assessment the Global Environment Facility (GEF) conducted of its activities to draw lessons from them and refine its strategy. Regarding aid to biodiversity maintenance, the GEF points out that its forest program is the one that has the most projects (81 projects underway for a total GEF funding of $505.92 million and cofinancing in excess of $1.03 billion, and nearly 50 new projects under serious consideration). Most of them are located in tropical moist forests and over 70 percent of these projects are for protected areas.28 The GEF estimates that on the whole they have promoted conservation in these areas and in the buffer zones, but admits receiving more and more requests for sustainable use projects in production areas. The question for the GEF is how to act on the deep causes underlying threats to biodiversity and, therefore, what reforms and policies to conduct in

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production sectors. Its response, for the moment, is that it is prepared to expand its field of intervention beyond protected areas, to reason in terms of programs and overall strategy rather than solely in terms of projects, and to finance actions in production areas dealing with agriculture, fishing, and the forest. But under no circumstances is the GEF willing to be involved in large-scale logging operations. “In view of the uncertainty surrounding the issue of logging, the GEF would not encourage or be directly associated with any endeavors involving largescale production logging until sufficient sustainability in this area is assured.The GEF will, however, play a critical role in providing discrete funding to build the scientific and management basis for this to be pursued.”29 Taboos are great in the world of NGOs.The idea of helping someone cut trees all the better to conserve the forest is an insurmountable contradiction for most environmentalists. All logging, be it reduced-impact or not, alters the forest structure and perturbs the distribution of species, an unbearable prospect. Very slowly, however, mindsets are changing, a dialogue is being established between the logging world and environmental groups. In a study conducted by the Belgian chapter of WWF,30 there is a noticeable change in tone.The authors do not hesitate to strongly recommend that NGOs embark on a constructive partnership with logging companies that wish to become involved in forest management. The paragraph is worth quoting in full: Some investors are beginning to establish industrial-scale certified forest management schemes, based on long-term forest management plans and respecting social and environmental values. NGOs, with their networks of members and access to donors and private capital, should participate in strengthening examples of responsible forest management, especially in the ACP countries where such are badly needed. To this end, NGOs should improve their technical expertise in forest management and timber market issues, and elaborate a coherent approach toward responsible logging and forest management in primary tropical forests.While negative campaigning is needed when countries or companies refuse to cooperate, a constructive and coherent NGO approach is needed toward other countries and investors with a genuine interest in sustainable forest management.31 For the timber-producing countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific whose forest policies the European Union has contracted


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to support,32 this policy of the outstretched hand can only be good news. The French Gamble For lack of the means enabling them to assume the task of forest management themselves, tropical countries are inclined to leave the management of production forests up to the stakeholders themselves. In some countries, these stakeholders are the rural communities. For instance, Madagascar has undertaken a policy of transferring forest resource management by contract to decentralized local authorities and grassroots communities.33 In others, such as Bolivia, forest management tasks are delegated to specialized individuals or firms. In places where most of the forest land is given over to concessions and covered by permits granted to major logging companies (Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.), responsibility for designing management plans is delegated to these companies in part or in full. This privatizing of forestry34 implies new demands and new regulations that force logging companies to engage in environmental protection and local community development. To the extent that sustainable management goes beyond “sustained yield” and involves biodiversity conservation, ecosystem preservation, and taking into account the multiple uses of the forest area by local stakeholders, sustainable management becomes a considerable constraint for those logging companies who decide to cooperate. Not only is designing a management plan a costly process in itself, but taking into account the variety of goals listed in SFM can lead to a reduction in the possible harvest and a loss of earnings, “the level of resource exploitation being significantly lower than that of single-objective exploitation characteristic of sustainable yield practices. Loss of income for the logging company can be all the greater as the goals and players are numerous.”35 Given this state of affairs, the Coopération française took the gamble of encouraging logging companies to go into sustainable management in Africa by financing the startup phase of forest management plans. In concrete terms, this means that the Agence française de développement (French Development Agency—AFD) grants loans to logging companies at attractive rates: 10- to 15-year loans from which the companies take out a long-term credit. AFD participation can amount to as much as 70 percent of the estimated investment. The Fond Français pour l’Environnement Mondial (FFEM)36 steps in to help devise compromises that will respect biodiversity and maintain social harmony: issues

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pertaining to bushmeat, agricultural activity, and so on. It also cofinances projects to institute reduced-impact logging techniques. Its contribution, in the form of grants, amounts to 10 percent of the investment on average.The cost of a management plan today in central Africa is no secret: between 4 and 5 euros per hectare. Out of this, over one-third, sometimes as much as one-half, is spent inventorying the resource over the long term throughout the entire forest concession. For non-initiates this may all seem very abstract, but when one looks at the preparatory documents of a forest management plan, it becomes clear what this means in practical terms.37 For two sustainably managed forest concessions covering 635,000 hectares in Gabon, for instance, the investment is estimated to be over 260,000 euros. To inventory the resource in only one of the concessions (288,000 hectares) required: one planner for three years; inventory, cartography, socio-economic, planning, and project management experts; a full-time expatriate manager in charge of supervising field crews (land use inventory, forest surveys); 45 trained inventory-takers (10 percent of the Group’s forest staff) working full-time for a year; heavy logistics: crates, vehicles, inventory equipment, GPS; state-of-the-art software and cartography equipment, geographic information systems, database management systems, computers, and so on; a cartography technician and a person to perform data entry. To assess the state of the resource, statistical readings were taken to count the species (approximately 300 species, 750,000 trees identified, counted, and measured), to count the tiges d’avenir 10 centimeters and over; and test plots were used to study okoumé regeneration techniques. For biological diversity conservation: signs of gorillas, water buffalos, yellow-backed duikers were noted, 20,000 sightings were done on large fauna, and so on.And this is only in the preparatory phase, all undertaken in the context of a temporary convention, in an uncertain legal framework, because Gabon’s forest law was under discussion for many years and was not passed until Fall 2001. Drawing up a management plan takes approximately three years. The company must then submit the plan and discuss how it is to be implemented with the government in the context of managementexploitation contracts. The French gamble is to help launch a process that will bring logging companies around to engaging in this difficult approach, the only available option if the forest is to renew itself. In this process, the temporal dimension is essential. If companies make the huge investments necessary to conserve the forest for 20 to 30 years through a scientifically established rotation period and harvesting schedule, they expect in return to be able to come through and make another cut so


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that their industries enjoy a sustained supply. This implies obtaining concessions over a large enough area to be able to implement the plan and a timeframe long enough to permit a return on investment.The cost of sustainable management must be compared with the timber production in cubic meters over a period of at least 20 years. The implicit contract is thus as follows: companies make the effort to engage in sustainable management, French government aid and official backing strengthens their position in their dealings with local governments.The initial conventions are temporary and short term (three years), but if a feasibility study and the primary stages of a forest management plan are engaged with the support of the French public authorities, the reciprocal commitment between the company and the host state takes on a totally different dimension. AFD and FFEM involvement “secures the long term” (interview with the AFD). The gamble seems to have paid off. According to the AFD, nearly 4 million hectares are under sustainable management in central Africa, mainly in Gabon but also in the Congo, and Central African Republic (and, apparently, in Cameroon). A dynamic appears to have been set in motion in which all influential actors take part, starting with the big logging companies, which seem to have embarked upon the process. The main European forest industrial groups in Africa are grouped together in the Fondation Européenne pour la Préservation des Ressources de la Forêt Africaine. They have requested their trade association, the ATIBT, to conduct a study on developing a Manual on Sustainable Tropical Forest Management in Africa. “This primarily technical study translates the Association’s will to engage, in conjunction with all its partners (states, grassroots communities, international organizations, and financial sponsors) in sustainable management through the preparation and implementation of forest management plans and adopt forest management as a real technical and economic company management tool.”38 In a very narrowly framed process, industrial timber companies in Africa, in fact, are eager to have a common document defining the essence of a forest management plan and how it should be used. Each will adapt it to the situation depending on the particulars of its concession: volume and composition of the stand, nature of the fauna, and the like, but this jointly discussed and negotiated document will serve as a tool for negotiating with governments, financial backers, and NGOs. The topic of sustainable management is now fully part of European timber industry discourse. An ethic is forming that will replace the harvesting rationale and extraction mentality practiced until now in tropical forests with a logic of managing and conserving the forest potential.

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If this proves to be the case, it will be a considerable change: only a few years ago, when experts in charge of developing a forest management plan in Central African Republic requested an increase in the cutting diameter of sapele over what Central African law stipulated, because the species was in danger of extinction from these forests, a French logger (working for a Malaysian corporation), furious at the serious loss of income that could result, stormed about and threatened the experts with a lawsuit. How will the international system respond to these changing attitudes? The question is an important one as it involves a long-term forest policy, the responsibility for which cannot be left to the private sector alone. In all the tropical forests, the number of concession holders and forest owners involved in the tropical timber trade is not very high.39 It is not impossible to consider engaging a political dialogue with the 70–100 companies that harvest and supply one-third of the timber entering the international market and offer them a bargain: “you stop your predatory practices and in exchange we help you become virtuous.” But who will take the initiative to engage this political dialogue with the Japanese, Chinese, and Sino-Malaysian companies that dominate the market? For the moment, France is the only country to have committed itself financially to aid the industry in developing management plans. To say that this helps French companies secure their supply in Africa would be simplistic and partly unfair. A company’s nationality is difficult to establish these days. Mergers and acquisitions occur at such a rate that the question has become virtually meaningless.40 More than to companies, Coopération française aid goes toward SFM. It happens that SFM is increasingly in private hands and industrial operators are inevitable partners. The French example might be replicated by its partners, particularly Germany.A European pressure group working to establish a dialogue on SFM between public institutions and the industry seems to be taking shape. Moreover, the NGO “We don’t deal with the Devil” attitude might begin to slacken and in turn change the attitude of the World Bank and the GEF. Already the WWF and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have agreed to work on management projects headed by logging companies with the support of the Coopération française. One of the first main projects of this sort, on concessions allocated by Gabon to the Compagnie Equatoriale des Bois (a Thanry subsidiary), has received a favorable ex-post review by WWF experts.41 The WCS is increasingly involved in supporting FFEM actions, particularly for fauna management and anti-poaching provisions.The industry does not have the skills


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and are not equipped to act in the field of biodiversity; it needs the cooperation of conservation organizations. In Europe, all actors have evolved and the various partners have gained mutual credibility. The industry, NGOs, foresters, and public administrations dialogue and collaborate better. This rapprochement around the notion of sustainable management plan did not occur spontaneously. It has been built through the gradual adjustments of mutual interests in a very tense climate. Coopération française determination and the outward willingness of the forest industry have been a reaction to the enormous “green pressure” exerted during the 1992–95 period. The conflict was a serious one, and it is not over. And if the industry and the administration feel that NGOs have become less aggressive, it is also because, on their end, the industry has softened its position in the face of the thinly veiled boycott threat looming behind the drive for certification. Ecocertification and Labeling Schemes For lack of an agreement on a single, straightforward definition of SFM, international actors have sought to develop Criteria and Indicators (C&I) by which a sustainably managed forest area can be identified. While experts and technical ministries met in an endless cycle of seminars, working groups, processes, and forums, some NGOs, finding that all this was not moving fast or far enough, mobilized to set the cat among the pigeons. These self-appointed global standard-setters have declared themselves the only valid authority to define guidelines for responsible management, and they have succeeded in making themselves heard by astutely playing on the three registers of modernity: the media, individualism, and the market. The Round Dance of Criteria and Indicators The International Tropical Timber Organization was the first to enter the race for C&I when it adopted its Criteria for the Measurement of Sustainable Tropical Forest Management in March 1992. These criteria, designed by forestry experts, were basically focused on management for sustained timber production. They were well received by professionals and are considered a reference.42 Other international initiatives rapidly followed: the Helsinki Process published its official list of C&I to protect Europe’s forests in January 1995; the Montreal Process published its own C&I for temperate and boreal forests in February 1995 (Santiago

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Tropical Forests, International Jungle 43

Declaration); the Tarapoto Proposal for the Amazon forest was adopted by the eight signatory countries of the Amazonian Cooperation Treaty (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Surinam, and Venezuela) in February 1995. Criteria identify aspects considered important for SFM and by which success or failure will be assessed.44 Each criterion is accompanied by a set of related indicators. Indicators are quantitative, qualitative, or descriptive attributes that, when periodically measured or monitored, indicate the direction of change in the state of the forest. Yield regulation is a concept also used to calculate the expected yield in terms of species and quantity, and which can also enter into the definition of objectives by which the state of the forest or forest management practices can be assessed.45 (Yield regulation is the calculation that may be harvested, annually or periodically, from a specific area over a stated period, in accordance with the objects of management.) The statements issued by the various processes have expanded the range of criteria and indicators beyond those developed by the ITTO. They relate not only to the constitutive elements of sustainable management—maintenance of biological diversity, preservation of the production capacity of forest ecosystems, maintenance of the forest’s ecological functions, maintenance of socio-economic benefits over the long term to meet the needs of societies—but also to the legal framework, the institutional mechanisms, and the capacity to implement sustainable management.Though not legally binding, these statements were adopted upon the conclusion of intergovernmental discussion involving the political authorities, thereby conferring a certain authority on them. They serve as a reference. Other intergovernmental groupings where discussion takes place on the constitutive elements of SFM pertaining to tropical rain forests must also be mentioned: the Central American Commission for Environment and Development (7 countries) and the African Timber Organization (13 countries) which has developed a set of C&I with an aim to assign a “green label” to African timber. Initiatives increased at the prospect of a race for certification that could be felt to be simmering. The Initiative Tropenwald (ITW), for instance, was taken in 1992, by tropical timber importers and the German timber workers union to draw up C&I applicable to the certification of sustainable tropical forest management. Its president is also the president of the Committee for International Cooperation for Forestry and the Timber Industry in Germany, which takes part in the work of the Intergovernmental Forum of Forests and acts as a consultative body


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to the German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development. A better example of public/private cooperation is hard to find! The Rainforest Alliance (SmartWood Program, 1990) in the United States and the Soil Association (Woodmark Scheme, 1994) in the United Kingdom have also proposed their respective C&I for tropical forests. With all these texts, the international community has a wide array of qualitative and quantitative instruments available to describe, monitor, measure, and assess the progress made in terms of management and this is true with regard to all the possible definitions of SFM.Tools are overabundant, so much so that they need to be compared and harmonized for national governments to find their way among them. Tropenbos (“tropical forests”), a reputable Dutch organization, both an aid-giving ENGO and a renowned research center, has worked toward this end by publishing a comparative study of the main C&I developed throughout the world.46 Currently lacking, however, are feasibility tests and field applications for all these criteria and indicators, an issue that CIFOR, in particular, is tackling.47 This flurry of activity is not only due to the need to develop scientific tools for sustainable management to enlighten political decisionmakers. Only the experts could make such a claim, since they derive part of their legitimacy—and their funding—from holding colloquia all over the planet and providing work for one another. Defining, comparing, perfecting, testing, and harmonizing assessment tools is an endless task. Discussion on criteria and indicators among experts is a selfperpetuating activity for which there is no end in sight. For environmental organizations, producing countries, and the tropical timber industry, the stakes are quite different. The former endeavor to impose a binding definition of sustainable management to ensure conservation of the forest and its resources. For the latter two it is a matter of developing a response to the tropical timber boycott that looms behind the unstoppable certification craze. For all three, the defining of criteria and indicators is a strategic instrument. The Rise in Power of the Forest Stewardship Council In the early 1990s, a call to boycott tropical timbers was sounded loud and clear by the most influential environmental defense organizations (WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth), seconded by a bevy of NGOs (including the French Robin des Bois).To “save the forest,” champions of nature enjoined consumers to reject any wood from “virgin” forests. Amplified by radical political ecologists, the campaign at times took an

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ugly turn. In a little town in eastern Germany, for instance, children were asked by their teacher to make a list of everything in their homes that might be made of tropical timber, and to read it in front of the class and shame their parents (personal communication). Such extremes were short-lived.They would not have saved one square inch of tropical forest. Eliminating the economic value from trees in the forest is, on the contrary, the best way to discourage any sustainable forest management initiative and hasten the conversion of wooded areas to other uses, such as grazing, farming, and the like. The major NGOs soon realized that this position was untenable. The boycott campaign was replaced by a campaign for ecocertification. For a number of years the idea of awarding a seal of respectability to forests or forest products from properly managed sources had been debated in environmentalist circles in England and the United States. Rainforest Alliance started first in 1990: a forest management unit managed according to this organization’s directives was certified a “sustainable source.” Companies marketing tropical wood products from such a source were to become SmartWood Companies.48 This was a mere dry run. The global shockwave began in 1993 with the creation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).This offshoot of the WWF, supported by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and other environmental organizations, pulled off the amazing feat of proclaiming itself the only “credible” system of forest ecocertification49 and convinced many international decision-makers of the fact. The FSC is a non-profit international organization based in Oaxaca, Mexico. Its goal is “to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable” forest management. It boasts that it is the only organization in the world that brings together partners that are not accustomed to working together—environmental and human rights NGOs, representatives of the timber industry and trade, representatives of indigenous peoples and community forestry groups—and thereon bases its legitimate authority to publish globally valid forest management principles and criteria. In fact, NGO experts, particularly those associated with the WWF, play a preponderant role. Timber industry representatives often complain of the little attention they receive during elections to the FSC Board of Directors. The great ingenuity of the FSC lies in not certifying forests itself but in accrediting independent certifiers. These certification bodies assess whether the forests applying for certification are well managed according to the principles and criteria of responsible forest management as defined by the FSC. In this way, the FSC has control over every link in


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the chain: it sets standards, it controls the assessors, it awards its label, it receives money in return. Certification, in fact, costs money. Accredited certifying bodies perform various audits: an initial audit to ascertain whether the forest deserves a certificate and periodic audits to check that FSC principles are indeed respected once the forest has received its certificate (in Indonesia, where at one point there were 72,278 hectares of FSC certified forests, Rainforest Alliance decertified its state-owned forests in March 2001, leaving Indonesia with only a 10,000-hectare private concession with an FSC certificate). These audits are charged to the forest owner, and the certifying bodies remit part of their fees to the FSC.The FSC is also considering developing a licensing fee scheme for the use of its label.The cost of certification to developing countries is difficult to estimate. Depending on the source and the calculation methods, costs can run anywhere between $0.20 and $1.70 per hectare,50 or $1.20 per cubic meter of certified timber.51 In April 2001, the FSC had accredited 11 organizations, all of them European and American except one (located in South Africa). Among the certifiers that most often operate in tropical countries are Rainforest Alliance, a previously mentioned NGO, and a British subsidiary of the Swiss company SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance). The FSC issues two types of labels: one certifies that the forest area or forest management unit is managed in compliance with FSC principles and criteria.The other is a trademark stamped on products guaranteeing that they have been manufactured in sound ecological and social conditions, and come from forests managed according to FSC principles and criteria.This label directly targets consumers, appeals to emotions and is the object of a marketing battle among retail chains. In addition to revenues from accreditation, the FSC is funded by private grants, government aid (Germany’s GTZ in particular), large foundations (Ford,52 MacArthur), environmental associations (WWFNetherlands, IUCN-Netherlands) and the European Commission.53 In 1997, a European MP expressed surprise and submitted a written question to the Commission: “FSC/WWF certification was designed for large forest estates or concessions. It is, however, inapplicable and exorbitantly expensive for European forests, which are extremely fragmented. [. . .] Why [has the Commission] chosen unilaterally to subsidize the FSC when other certification initiatives exist which are better suited to European forests; why [have subsidies] been granted to each of the two associations (WWF and FSC), [. . .] apparently without any invitation to tender being made and without any tangible evidence of the competence of these organizations in the field of sustainable forestry management and in the wood trade?”54 The Commission replied that

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tropical timber certification was one priority under the tropical forest budget line and that contracts signed with WWF and FSC covered activities regarding non-European forests. As to the scientific basis of these activities, its response remained evasive:“it is noted that the various currently available definitions of sustainable forest management are typically based on both accumulated scientific knowledge and private sector processes, and contain many similarities.”55 All this would be fine if FSC principles and criteria were precise, scientific, and applicable to all forests. Some experts maintain that this is not the case.56 The FSC principles and criteria do not figure among the sets of C&I that CIFOR has selected to test to assess their applicability in the field: their overly general nature made it impossible to assess them from a scientific standpoint and left the accredited organizations too much room for guesswork.57 Consequently, one team of experts can make a different assessment than another as regards the state of the forest area or the ecological virtue of a product. The two main criticisms leveled at the FSC standards are that of being performance standards focusing on results rather than on behavior, based on imprecise criteria and favoring large landowners able to recover their investments over large areas to the detriment of small and medium-sized forest owners, who cannot meet FSC demands on their holdings. We will not enter this discussion here. Suffice it to note the facts: on October 31, 2002, the FSC announced that there were 30,852,896 hectares of FSC certified forests. Of all ITTO timber producing countries, 2,798,031 hectares of forests were FSC certified (remembering that the surface area of tropical forests lies somewhere between 1,090 and 1,220 million hectares).58 Not a single African rain forest is on the list. Over 90 percent of the FSC certified forests are temperate and boreal forests. Conclusion: if you feel you must have FSC certified timber, buy Scandinavian, Eastern European, and North American wood, not tropical wood. If that is not a boycott, it bears a close resemblance. The possibility is not a purely hypothetical one. For London’s Millennium Bridge, one of the most beautiful architectural works recently built in England, the architect’s original plan was to use tropical hardwood in its construction.When it turned out that there was not enough certified hardwood available on the market, aluminum, the production of which is well known to be very unecological, was used instead.59 In England and the United States, more and more local authorities have decided not to use tropical timber that is not FSC certified for street furnishings and public works, supposedly to reduce rain forest destruction and prevent an irremediable global disaster, according to the New York City Council.60


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FSC Forest Management Principles Principle 1: Compliance with laws and FSC principles Forest management shall respect all applicable laws of the country in which they occur, and international treaties and agreements to which the country is a signatory, and comply with all FSC Principles and Criteria. Principle 2: Tenure and use rights and responsibilities Long-term tenure and use rights to the land and forest resources shall be clearly defined, documented and legally established. Principle 3: Indigenous peoples’ rights The legal and customary rights of indigenous peoples to own, use and manage their lands, territories, and resources shall be recognized and respected. Principle 4: Community relations and worker’s rights Forest management operations shall maintain or enhance the long-term social and economic well-being of forest workers and local communities. Principle 5: Benefits from the forest Forest management operations shall encourage the efficient use of the forest’s multiple products and services to ensure economic viability and a wide range of environmental and social benefits. Principle 6: Environmental impact Forest management shall conserve biological diversity and its associated values, water resources, soils, and unique and fragile ecosystems and landscapes, and, by so doing, maintain the ecological functions and the integrity of the forest. Principle 7: Management plan A management plan—appropriate to the scale and intensity of the operations—shall be written, implemented, and kept up to date. The long-term objectives of management, and the means of achieving them, shall be clearly stated. Principle 8: Monitoring and assessment Monitoring shall be conducted—appropriate to the scale and intensity of forest management—to assess the condition of the forest, yields of forest products, chain of custody, management activities and their social and environmental impacts. Principle 9: Maintenance of high conservation value forests* Management activities in high conservation value forests shall maintain or enhance the attributes which define such forests. Decisions regarding high conservation value forests shall always be considered in the context of a precautionary approach.

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Principle 10: Plantations Plantations shall be planned and managed in accordance with Principles and Criteria 1–9, and Principle 10 and its Criteria.While plantations can provide an array of social and economic benefits, and can contribute to satisfying the world’s needs for forest products, they should complement the management of, reduce pressures on, and promote the restoration and conservation of natural forests. * Principle 9 was modified in January 1999. The first version, unacceptable to logging companies in tropical countries, stated: “Primary forests, well developed secondary forests and sites of major environmental, social or cultural significance shall be conserved. Such areas shall not be replaced by tree plantations or other land uses.”

Areas of Selected Forests Certified by FSC Accredited Organizations (October 31, 2002) Country Bolivia Brazil Canada Colombia Guatemala Honduras United States Indonesia Malaysia Panama Papua New Guinea Philippines Poland Sweden Note:

Area (hectares) 971,184 1,215,974 1,030,043 20,056 315,043 13,398 3,755,726 157,641 77,242 8,383 4,310 14,800 3,592,160 10,133,240

Tropical timber producer countries are in boldface type.

The FSC made a swift and substantial psychological and political impact. In the space of a few years, this private organization managed to impose the concept of forest certification to the extent of making it a major topic in the international debate on forests. One FSC member, whom I asked how he explained such a strong audience, replied: “Because the FSC came at the right time. It had to be done and it had to be done that way.” This explanation is certainly accurate. The FSC was founded at a time when the world had become aware of the threat to the tropical forest but did not know what to do about it. States were not sending clear messages. Scientists spoke in technical language.


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Millions of Western consumers, moved by what they were seeing on television, wondered what they could do to “save the tropical forest.” The FSC offered the public more subtle proposals than the call for a boycott and dangled simple solutions before their eyes. These were all the more credible since they exploited the basic mechanisms of the contemporary world. The market, first of all. In a world where everything is a commodity, the FSC suggests that proper management of society’s relationships with nature can be profitable. Certification aims to induce timber traders to invest voluntarily in expensive management plans.The FSC label should enable logging companies to increase their market shares in a volatile and competitive sector and improve their image and reputation among the banks and public authorities. The return on investment will be worthwhile.The tropical forest is presented as something that is bought and sold. Never mind if, as we have seen, only a very small portion of tropical timber is put on the world market. Never mind if the future of natural forests depends on many other things besides Western consumer habits.61 The FSC plays on competition and marketing. The cult of the self in the West today provides fertile ground for this line of argument. Certification personalizes an individual’s relationship with the forest. By asking for certified wood, the consumer feels he has an influence on the planet, the logging companies’ decisions, and the purchasing policies of the local authorities.All by himself in his little corner, he can behave as a responsible global citizen. Moreover, the act demands no effort on his part because there are countless substitutes for noncertified wood. How better to soothe one’s environmental conscience? The FSC’s strength lies in its ability to occupy the field.Thanks to the support from the WWF, the real driving force behind it, it has a flexibility, an ability for rapid action, and a remarkable capacity for networking that lend it advantages no international bureaucracy can claim to equal. Their technique of manufacturing demand for certified products is well honed: by dint of persuasion, in conjunction with other environmental movements, the WWF has created “buyers’ groups” in various countries bringing together importers and dealers, DIY chains, retailers, furniture and woodwork manufacturers (i.e. Home Depot, Ikea, B&Q, the largest British DIY chain, Castorama, Lapeyre). These “clubs” or “groups” pledge to support the FSC as the “only credible independent certification and labeling system applicable to all forests” as the accepted phrase goes and also pledge to buy and sell wood and wood products from well managed forests by an agreed date. These agreements are not always very clear (is the purpose to market certified wood or to market only

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certified wood?) but sufficient for each party to get something out of them: stores selling wood products use them as a sales pitch to counter the competition; environmentalists are satisfied to see their action legitimated through recognition in trade practices. Once a buyers’ group is formed, its participants have every interest in orienting consumers toward the certified products they offer and encouraging their regular suppliers to have their wood certified.The wheels of certification begin to turn and rotate around the law of competition. The “buyers’ group” technique was sharpened first at the national level (in the United States and in Europe, then in Australia, and now in Brazil and Japan). Now these buyers’ groups have formed networks: by 2001, Forest and Trade Networks had grouped over 600 companies in 18 countries. This networking strategy is based on very sophisticated communication techniques, also well honed. In June 2000, the WWF organized a huge International Certified Wood Trade Fair in London: from boats to lawn furniture, from paper to hairbrushes, the FSC trademark appears today on over 20,000 products. In the United States, a council on certified forest products has been established (North American Forest and Trade Network). In conjunction with the WWF and the FSC, it held a large conference on certification and an exhibition of certified wood products in Atlanta in 2001. By regularly organizing big rallies with the Prince of Wales as guest speaker, television networks, newspapers, hundreds of delegates from all over the world, as well as representatives of the major wood retailers,WWF and the FSC have managed to convince a vast public that the future of rain forests is in their hands and depends on compliance with criteria they have defined.62 The demand for certified wood products is manufactured using state-of-the-art marketing techniques. How could the European or North American consumer resist such a skillfully formulated appeal and not be in favor of “saving the tropical forest” in the manner suggested? He or she will not buy tropical timber products because there is not enough certified wood on the market. He or she will buy Swedish, Polish, or American timber, in any case timber from temperate forests. Or else he or she will buy polyvinyl chloride (PVC), without thinking that PVC pollutes far more than tropical timber logging. And these well-meaning consumers will line the pockets of big companies because they are unaware that small-scale forest owners nearly everywhere have pulled out of negotiations with the FSC because its rules are not designed for them. They will enrich dealers and retailers who seek out certified wood for its pretty labels, knowing full well they will not find enough to supply their customers, and that they are being somewhat deceptive by playing with words and emotions.


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The FSC claims hegemony. It strives to disqualify all competing certification schemes and gain a foothold wherever national and regional initiatives are taken.To position itself as an obvious partner, it began by publishing its own directives with regard to national and regional initiatives states have taken: FSC Protocol for Endorsing National Initiatives and FSC Process Guidelines for Developing Regional Certification Standards. Wherever its criteria have not made inroads, either because no one showed an interest in certification or because other criteria and indicators were adopted, the FSC or the WWF funds national or regional seminars on forest certification. These seminars lead to the formation of working groups which assign themselves the task of designing criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management. In doing so, they will not neglect to take into account FSC standards. The goal is to prevent countries or regional organizations from agreeing on criteria that are too lax or not constraining enough. The strategy is never to be absent. The desire is to reign supreme. The Battle of Certificates Having come shortly after the boycott campaign that seriously perturbed the tropical timber industry, the entryism of the FSC was viewed as a declaration of war by timber professionals and producer countries. Every facet of FSC initiatives displeased them: FSC standards, which left them in a state of uncertainty in general; Principle 9, which barred any possibility of certification in natural forests (it was later rewritten); the very idea of labeling products, which cast a shadow over the timber trade by implying that all non-certified wood came from doubtful sources; above all, the NGOs’ ascendancy over agenda-setting and their talent for imposing their own criteria as universal by discrediting anything that they did not originate.The initial reaction was to reject anything to do with certification by claiming that consumers were not interested and that there was no market for certified tropical timber. The industry also turned to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that, since the Rio summit, had launched a new series on environmental standards: ISO 14000. ISO also prides itself in grouping a wide array of partners that are not accustomed to working together—large corporations, small companies, governments, NGOs— and thereon bases its legitimate authority to publish norms based on an “international consensus.” In fact, the business world, particularly multinational corporations, plays a preponderant role. Environmental organizations often complain of the little attention paid to them in ISO meetings.

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Whereas FSC standards are performance-based, assessing results (“the FSC certification scheme is a performance-based mechanism”), ISO norms are procedure-based standards assessing management practices (Environmental Management Systems, ISO 14001 and 14004). They are preferred by logging companies not only because the industry’s culture is better represented in ISO discussion bodies than at the FSC, but also because ISO standards are less constraining.They certify good practices, compliance with laws, sound planning, monitoring, and implementation. They do not make vast and vague demands with regard to biodiversity or the development of local forest communities, compliance with which can never be precisely measured. NGOs point out that the two systems have nothing to do with one another and that they should not compete. They are not entirely mistaken, but in that the object of the competition is the gullible consumer prepared to believe in any green label whatsoever that will soothe his conscience, competition is virtually unavoidable, especially if ISO designs an environmental label applicable to forest products (series 14020). A considerable portion of the WWF campaign was devoted to criticizing ISO and its standards, labels, and certificates when series 14001 and 14020 were launched.63 In retaliation to the ISO, it decided to start a world certification monitoring network. In response to the fervor over certification and the decline in tropical timber sales on European markets sensitive to the NGO campaign (in the Netherlands the volume of imported Asian sawn wood dropped by 70 percent between 1990 and 1996),64 some producer countries attempted to propose their own certification scheme, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ghana, and Bolivia, in particular. Indonesia drew up its own set of criteria and indicators in 1998 (LEI, Lembaga Ekolabel Indonesia). A collaboration agreement was immediately signed between the LEI and the FSC to compare the two systems. The FSC and the organization it has accredited train LEI representatives to FSC principles and criteria and forest management. (Anyway, political instability is so great in this country and the pressures on the forest so numerous that the matter of certification is quite secondary at the moment.) For anyone interested in state/NGO relations, Malaysia provides an even more interesting example. Concerned about its drop in sales, Malaysia undertook to develop its own set of criteria and indicators (MC&I) on the basis of ITTO directives. It should be kept in mind that these directives emanate from world-renowned experts and have received international political endorsement. The set of MC&I was tested in 1997. Malaysia became the ITTO’s good pupil, and everything


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was going along fine. Less than two years later, the rumor began to spread:“Malaysia is chasing the FSC label.”65 Indeed, in March 1999, an agreement was made between the FSC and the various parties involved in setting standards in Malaysia. By the terms of the agreement, Malaysia pledged to revise its C&I to bring them in line with the new ITTO directives and the FSC’s principles and criteria. In return, the FSC advised its accredited bodies to take into consideration Malaysia’s MC&I as well as its own. A strange situation indeed in which an NGO benevolently condescends to take into account norms devised by a country to manage its forest resources on its own territory in compliance with the directives of a renowned international organization, stipulating that its own principles be applied as well! But that is not all. At the same time, Malaysia was working bilaterally with the Dutch on its national certification scheme and “urged them” to make this scheme compatible with pan-European standards as well: “. . . if our certification scheme is acceptable in the Netherlands then our timber should also be able to go into England, France or any other European country.”66 Can there be any better illustration that certification is primarily a market instrument? The most significant offensive against the FSC’s hegemonic pretensions has not come from tropical countries but from private landowners in six European countries: Germany, Austria, Finland, France, Sweden, and Norway. In 1998, to counteract the influence of the FSC whose principles they considered discriminatory against small and medium-sized operations, they instigated the Pan-European Forest Certification process (PEFC). Its two principal aims were to create a common framework for all of the members to promote SFM and to assure consumers that the products certified and identified by the PEFC logo come from sustainably managed forests.67 Some fifteen countries subscribed to this initiative. The world timber situation has become chaotic. There are approximately 80 million hectares of forests certified by various schemes today (the FSC claims a little over 22 million). The market provides no clear indication: the demand for certified products is rising, but there is not enough certified wood on the market to make a credible and non discriminatory offer to buyers. Developing producer countries are caught up in a dispute above their heads and are tossed from one system to another. Since the market cannot abide uncertainty, a worldwide movement is taking shape to demand mutual recognition of certification schemes, standards, and procedures. For the moment, the major NGOs are fiercely opposed: the only credible world certification system is the one they have devised, all the others are weak and insufficient. During a meeting

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on certification held in Rome under the auspices of the FAO, the ITTO, and Germany’s GTZ in February 2001, Greenpeace demonstrated outside and made threats inside on the following theme: “We will campaign against all other systems and consumers will be on our side.” Their opponents, a group of forest owners, professional associations, and specialists from the main timber trading countries, are calling for mutual recognition as soon as possible. Some developing countries that have made the effort to devise their own C&I have made the strongest demands (Ghana, Malaysia). Others that have been working with the FSC from the start are worried by the prospect of seeing yet another international system loom on the horizon (Bolivia). Beneath the Conflicts, Ethics? Certification is in the air. Anything and everything is certified: forests like the rest.The genius of the major NGOs was to be the first to catch the wind. Everyone else has followed suit. Is claiming to “save the forest” by allowing consumers in developed countries to purchase an environmental good conscience not just a pretext to make tropical countries once again the playground of the Western world, as they have been in the past? Indicators are tested, criteria assessed, principles revised, opponents confront one another in a more or less courteous fashion. The PEFC is pitted against the FSC, the FSC against everyone else, and the developing countries forced to bow down before the organization that is the most media savvy. Is this really the way to achieve SFM? In substance, the criteria and indicators presented by the various bodies do not differ all that much. Harmonization and mutual recognition would not pose insurmountable problems.This has already been accomplished between the FSC and Indonesia’s LEI or Malaysia’s MC&I, between Canadian standards and the PEFC, and so on.The battle of certificates closely resembles a trade and psychological war in a booming market. Everyone is fighting for his place on the wave so he can gain momentum and not be sucked under. In the contest, the question as to whether certification is beneficial for the tropical forest is no longer even addressed. Everything that is known about the difficulties of implementing SFM is cast aside.To label or not to label, that is the question. Will the urban consumer in rich countries who only wants certified wood save the rain forest single-handedly? Certainly not. He only influences a minute portion of the tropical timber trade and this trade, once again, represents only a minute proportion of the timber harvested.


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The deep causes of forest degradation will not be altered in the least by his gesture. Critics point out that on the contrary, the demand for ecocertification can have adverse effects. Indeed, it absorbs a disproportionate amount of international aid: seminars on C&I, expert missions, certifiers’ fees, and the like drain considerable funds that line the purses of an elite from developed countries instead of being appropriated for aid to sustainable management. This argument is backed by a scientific criticism: applications for the certification of little pockets of forest in the midst of vast, poorly managed zones cause a spatial fragmentation that is incompatible with the notion of sustainable management.The result can only be artificial and temporary. To our mind the most pernicious effect of ecocertification is its distortion of the time factor. Developing a forest policy where there has been none is a long process. Devising the instruments to implement this policy is a long process. Negotiating the necessary social compromises among the numerous actors with conflicting expectations is a long process. E.U. countries took centuries to accomplish this and still must work at it continually.68 Manufacturing the demand for certified products creates immediate expectations—“we want labeled products right now”—and leads consumers to believe that there are simple, swift, and uniform solutions for all of the world’s forests. Nothing is more remote from the time of the forest than this ethics of urgency. Yes, it is indeed a matter of ethics.The fundamental issue beneath the competition surrounding certification is the construction of a rhetoric separating good from evil in setting up SFM.The main contribution of ecocertification is gradually to oblige all the actors to engage in this construction.After the NGOs, intergovernmental organizations and experts, after the consumer countries, the producer countries and the timber trade have become involved in the debate.The IFIA (InterAfrican Forest Industries Association, grouping about 300 logging companies), for instance, is working on a deontological code for the sustainable management of forest concessions in Africa. In Asia, where the demand for certified wood is nearly non-existent, Mitsubishi, long responsible for pillaging the forests of Southeast Asia, has authorized two of its subsidiaries (based in the United States, it is true) to finalize an agreement with the Rainforest Action Network. In Malaysia, it is the timber export companies that have asked their government to reach an agreement with the FSC on sustainable management standards.69 The head of a large logging company operating in Africa whom I asked if he would have the forest concessions he manages certified answered, “The forest, yes, for the ethics. Not the products, that’s

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marketing. I’m not interested.” Sincere or not, the remark is interesting. Certification does not create the conditions for SFM. It comes as an afterthought to reward those who wanted and were able to make an effort. But it helps to keep the question of “good behavior” on the agenda. It maintains a climate, it forces international actors to define their values openly. It fosters an ethics of discussion among all parties, except those to whom fate has obliged to live forever in the rain forest. Their rights are mentioned . . . but others speak for them.

Conclusion

Everyone has his own idea about the tropical forest. In developed countries, the topic leaves no one indifferent. Dreams of a lost garden of Eden, remembrance of colonial times, vague feelings of guilt (precious wood, bois d’ébène),1 the myth of nature untouched, all merge to make the dense moist forest an emotional object.2 Its inevitable shrinking increases the emotional charge. Deforestation continues on a large scale. Brazil lost 22 million hectares of forest in the last decade, the new program of major works Avança Brasil will result in further degradation. Indonesia lost 13 million hectares of forest during the same period. The fragility of its national government and the unpreparedness of the local authorities for the taxation and concession allocation responsibilities they have recently been entrusted with, will encourage an upsurge in destructive exploitation and illegal logging. In war-torn ex-Congo Kinshasa 5 million hectares of forest have been lost in ten years.We should also mention Burma (5 million hectares lost), Mexico (6 million hectares lost), and so on. These figures eclipse some of the good news reported by the FAO, which has for instance noted an increase in the forest cover in China, progress in Vietnam, stability in Gabon.3 The figures in circulation are all debatable and based on fairly unreliable data. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, despite all existing means of observation, the exact state of the dense forests is unknown. But the trend is obvious. Globally, the tropical forest has been constantly receding for a variety of reasons, but these reasons are always political. Disregard for local communities, development choices, armed conflict, predatory behavior on the part of certain companies, misappropriation of forest revenues by political leaders and their clients, poor management, and corruption are the primary causes of the damage.

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These are not to be found on the list of direct or indirect causes of deforestation drawn up by international organizations. But all who work in the area are aware of them and have encountered them in the field. It is impossible for them to file an official report and state what they know in public. First, because it can be dangerous: in many countries, the timber trade is a violent world where disputes are settled with machetes or shotguns. But the fact is, one is obliged to work with the various players and accept them as they are. Nationals fear persecution. Scientists are afraid of not being authorized to return to the field. NGOs are afraid of seeing their projects canceled. Expatriates are afraid of losing their jobs, their status, their lifestyle (and women in the tropics are so beautiful and so enticing). The forest is deep, many games are hidden within, many individual destinies that would have been rather dull take on color there. The underlying causes of the destruction are also maintained by the interplay of interests of outside actors. Bureaucratic interests of such and such international organization that seeks to impose its model though lacking an understanding of the local situation, economic interests of such and such a state ready to turn a blind eye to the pillaging behavior of its timber companies in neighboring regions, or some other state that will encourage its companies in its quest for major public works contracts harmful to the environment, commercial interests of large conglomerates for which logging is only part of their portfolio of activities, private interests of some individual who takes advantage of lucrative clientelistic networks elaborated by the former colonial power in “friendly countries.” Forest land provides multiple resources to various players with contradictory interests.This is true everywhere, but in tropical regions the actors are more numerous, from more disparate origins and of more unequal statuses that in any other region (although, since the dismantling of the Soviet empire, the situation in some boreal forests has now become comparable). To understand how the global ecopolitics of tropical moist forests has developed and how it works, the contemporary approach suggested by the international political sociology (IPS) research program seems to be the best available tool.4 Given the new challenges posed by the emergence of nature as an international political object, the recurrent discussion on the state, power, sovereignty, new actors, institutions, and regimes that have fed international relations conferences for decades is useful but inadequate.Too abstract, too remote from concrete rationales, it provides a means of talking about the world, but not of understanding what is going on in it. The mutability of the games, the volatility of systems, the fundamental anonymity of the actors that Raymond Aron described

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40 years ago, forces us to seek new analytical frameworks. The relevant questions today are those that help understand why and how a global ethical discourse has developed on an object, how these general standards handed down from on high connect with individual interests that are expressed at different levels, where the political spheres of collective action are, what type of action is at issue and what its effects are on the recipient populations. IPS posits that it is time to rethink the polity, look beyond the agent–structure dichotomy,6 and think more in terms of hubs of interaction among actors, the nature of which (public or private?) is becoming less relevant. This assumption is borne out by what we have observed regarding international action on tropical moist forests. A broadly sweeping discourse has developed around this complex object at the international level. The idea that the tropical forest is a “global good” which is part of the “world heritage” has become generally accepted. The two notions are not endorsed by any legal text (it is barely mentioned as a “common concern” in the Convention on Biological Diversity). They respond to a need to speak in new terms about a new political object.The tropical moist forest, in fact, fits into no established category. It is a territorially situated good, subject to intertwined regimes of appropriation. It does not come under the commons,7 which refers to international areas that belong to everyone (the high seas) and goods that cannot be appropriated privately (the atmosphere) the non-regulated use of which can lead to their destruction (the famous “tragedy of the commons”).8 The exploitation of forest resources (wood, game, land, etc.) by some reduces the usage possibilities for others.When the forest deteriorates, most of the functions it fulfills are no longer assured: the forest does not come under public goods, which by definition are neither exhaustible nor the object of rivalry and from which no one can be excluded. It is possible to apply the notion of common-pool resources used to analyze fresh water or fishery management, but it has no international relevance.9 Considering the forest as a set of jointly managed resources is useful in order to recall that a successful sustainable forestry project implies taking into account the specific political and social organization of the space considered, and particularly the mechanisms of conflict resolution. Managing a forest requires an effort of “social engineering” and arbitration that are only effective at the local level. At this level, nothing is ever taken for granted, things must be rethought every time. Until now, the common-pool resources approach has served mainly to draw up the long list of institutions and conditions necessary to make contradictory interests and uses compatible in a single area.10 It cannot be transposed to the global level.

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Despite the lack of precise content or solid theoretical basis, the discourse on the forest as “world heritage” and “global good” has nevertheless caught on. It fulfills several functions. First of all, it makes a statement: to say that the tropical forest is world heritage is tantamount to saying the quality of nature is a universal good.11 To label it a global public good is to acknowledge that its externalities have positive and negatives effects on a global scale, that its future concerns humanity as a whole.12 Such a position deterritorializes and decontextualizes the object and consequently, takes it out of the economic and political sphere.As world heritage and a global good, the forest is no longer a real good that can be appropriated by private concerns and subjected to market forces. It is an immaterial good that subsumes all the values attached to nature: life, beauty, permanence, mystery. The forest is no longer a geographically localized resource from which to draw market benefits to satisfy the actors present but a universal resource of which the positive externalities must be preserved for future generations. Beyond immediate economic and political considerations, which generally act against the tropical forest, the world heritage/global discourse expresses a higher order of justification and defines an ethical objective: the forest must be safeguarded for the well-being of humanity. This ethical discourse first expressed a conservation ideology specific to the North NGOs. It was later adopted by the governments of industrialized countries to implicate developing countries in a worldwide negotiation when an awareness emerged of the threats to the world’s environment. The fraction of local communities that had access to the world discourse (through the North NGOs) used it in turn for a deliberate transcoding operation: in the late 1980s, the best way to rouse international attention and find support in the fight for recognition of one’s social and/or cultural rights was to adopt the rhetoric of the Western NGOs by claiming to be a protector of trees and a guardian of ecosystems. The notions of world heritage and global good express an idea of interdependence and transnational solidarity: human beings are different but their fates are linked, no one can act as if the other did not exist. Used by the NGOs and the industrialized countries for the benefit of tropical countries and their inhabitants, this rhetoric basically means “what is going on in your forests goes beyond your territorial interests.” This broad-sweeping discourse is strategic. It justifies outside intervention in defining management standards that will be implemented by local actors. Since it is a question of saving an immaterial good for the benefit of all human beings and those of future generations, nothing

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stands in the way of international organizations, the G7 countries, environmental organizations, renowned or self-declared experts, and finally every Tom, Dick, or Harry, from expressing their opinion on what is good or bad, or desirable or damnable in tropical forest management. Under the cover of ethics and universal interest, the international discourse on global goods/world heritage is a soothing discourse that evacuates conflict and power struggles. Still, this discourse needs a world authority. Theoretically, the role of international institutions is to provide fora for meetings between the various interests in order to set an agenda that will be imposed on the actors. For the forest, these fora are particularly numerous and varied. In the absence of a global convention, discussion is fragmented. It is scattered among the various “Conferences of the Parties” tied to each major framework agreement: Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Convention on Biodiversity, Convention on Climate Change. The sole body where only the forest, and specifically the tropical forest, is discussed is the International Tropical Timber Organization. But within this organization, the debate takes place among experts and governments alone. NGOs and business take little interest in it.What interests them is elsewhere. The legitimate arena for information, deliberation, and decisionmaking on the moist dense tropical forest is not in intergovernmental bodies. It is located in a much more vast system of actors of which international organizations are merely a component. The constitutive elements of this transnational system that has formed gradually over the past ten years are various: individual experts, research centers, international civil servants, public administrations, industrialists, professional associations, and of course the NGOs. None of these categories of actors is homogenous. None enjoys a lasting dominant position inside the system. None is sealed off.The same individuals can be found in a research consultancy, an academic center, an environmental protection organization, a national administration, an international organization, a company, a professional federation.They can change roles in a very short time.13 All are intertwined, overlapping networks that are in alliance or competition with one another.This fluidity keeps the deliberation process alive: coalitions change, which prevents positions from remaining rigid. A huge body of knowledge has accumulated that circulates instantly through the system and continues to grow thanks to the Internet and distribution lists.The processes of persuasion and change through information and social learning, well known to sociologists, functions admirably: the concepts and repertories of action have evolved over the

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past 15 years, the various participants’ points of view have been toned down, and unthinkable partnerships at the time of the Rio summit have formed, for instance, between the World Bank and the WWF, or between environmental associations and logging companies. The rationale of this system substantiates the argument of those who suggest replacing the notion of International Relations (between states) by the transnational notion of World Politics.14 States do not occupy a decisive place and the game is played mostly outside of their control. But what politics are we talking about? The transnational forest system operates as an autonomous system.15 Interactions between its components are more numerous and significant than the entire system’s exchanges with the outside world. Experts, international organizations, technical ministries, NGOs, professional associations work a great deal, meetings follow meetings at a sustained pace, tons of excellent reports are produced (on recycled paper?). Principles are defined, financial resources are mobilized, major projects are implemented, achievements in forest practices are sometimes recorded.Yet everything goes on as if, first of all, this activity does not lead to politics with a capital “P”; secondly, decisions are made in a sphere that is totally foreign to the millions of people who live in the forests. Among the major industrialized countries, rare are those in which the tropical forest interests the highest levels of government, despite the required paragraph on the forest in the final act closing G7 summits. Germany is an exception. It is the main architect and contributor to the G7 Pilot Program on the Amazon. A few years ago its parliament published a huge and well-prepared report on German policy and the world’s forest.16 Its timber industry is very well organized and closely collaborates with the technical cooperation agency (GTZ). Its NGOs are very attentive and active. The subject is likely to crop up on the domestic political agenda at any time. In France, the attention political officials pay to the tropical forest has long been confused with the very particular personalized relationships that Paris has with its former colonies in Africa. In recent years, Coopération departments have managed to interest the Treasury in sustainable forest management through projects financed by the Fonds Français pour l’Environnement Mondial (French Global Environmental Facility) in the countries of the Congo basin, with the support of the French Development Agency. For years the Foreign Affairs Ministry has been wanting to define a policy for tropical forests. Regarding E.U. members, most action is taken in a community context: aid goes through the Commission and policy discussions take place at the European Parliament. The European Union donates considerable

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funding and technical aid for tropical forestry. As for the United States, they took an interest in the tropical forest in the early 1990s, in that it was an issue in the major worldwide debate on energy (an underlying object of negotiation on the greenhouse effect) and an issue for chemical and pharmaceutical industries interested in access to biodiversity resources in tropical moist forests. Regarding the first point, since the Gulf War, their interest has waned, and President G.W. Bush’s opposition to the Kyoto Protocol is no secret. Regarding the second, the cost of research for new molecules in the tropical forest has discouraged investors, and this argument in favor of a global tropical forest policy has lost its attraction. Lastly, Japan’s political weakness and the little interest its population demonstrates in the fate of the forest and forest communities in countries that supply it with timber, make this country’s foreign policy with regard to tropical forests inversely proportional to the pressure its companies put on Asian forests. As for developing countries, they refuse to see their forests treated as a separate entity from North American rain forests, boreal forests, and even temperate forests. The rhetoric on world heritage and universal significance is not theirs.They are subjected to it without subscribing to it. Leaders in these countries have countless other preoccupations besides the conservation of biodiversity advocated by the major North NGOs and the administrations they have managed to convince. Finances, development, political stability, domestic equilibriums, and foreign security are all more pressing matters. The forest countries of the South sometimes have excellent forest administrations.They take part in the transnational forest system, but rarely is implementation of a sustainable management policy a national priority of the political leaders they come under. In several cases, on the contrary, the priority given to logging for the sole purpose of drawing revenues weakens the national forest departments that have had their means and responsibilities taken away.17 Lacking sufficient representation in the upper political strata, either in the North or the South, the transnational forest system ends up dealing with the tropical forest as a technical problem requiring technical solutions. On a global scale, the subject has become abstract and apolitical. The major international NGOs themselves have become managers with entrepreneurial mentalities.They do not mobilize their members against the deep-rooted causes of deforestation, they do not criticize the way the world works, they do not propose new values.They apply schemas.This posture allows them to participate in the transnational system and leave their mark on it. They also trivialize it: “once, environmentalists called for new public virtues, now they call for better managerial strategies.

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Once, they advocated more democracy and local self-reliance, now they tend to support the global empowerment of governments, corporations and science. Once, they strove for cultural diversity, now they see little choice but to push for a worldwide rationalization of life-styles.”18 Drawing its strength and influence from its technical competence (the very definition of technocracy), the transnational forest system defines concepts (SFM), sets standards (criteria and indicators), develops principles of forest policy that can be implemented on a global scale.The unresolved question is that of the mediation between this system and the myriad of local subsystems with which partnerships must be established to actually work them into forest management. Contrary to what a classical realistic international relations approach would predict, the main obstacle between the global and the local is not the principle of sovereignty, although it figures at the top of all international texts about natural resources. On a theoretical level, a shift in the notion of sovereignty as summa potestas over a defined territory toward a responsibility for the entire planet has occurred in the field of the environment over the past several decades. The Stockholm Declaration (1972) and the Rio Declaration (1992) proclaimed both the sovereign right of states to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and development policies, and their responsibility to ensure that activities exercised on their territory do not “cause damage to the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.” Coming as they do 20 years apart, these written compromises were drafted in the same terms and their meaning has not been challenged. The real debate has to do with the means, not the substance: Should a forest country bear alone the cost of this responsibility? How can it assume the burden when it comes under the developing country category? At what level and by what principles should arbitration take place over the multitude of possible uses of forest land when social reality poses the land question in terms of native soil rather than territory? More than sovereignty, it is the type of government in countries of the South that matters. In so many places, the responsibility for creating the necessary conditions to establish protected forest areas and maintain them is entrusted to international NGOs financed by international sponsors (the European Union, Canada, the United States, etc.). Entire portions of some states’ territory are managed by outside bodies. Implementation of SFM is left to logging companies. Control over timber exports, even tax collection, is handled by private corporations (Switzerland’s SGS, widely present in Africa, for instance). Assessment of “good” forest management is done by certification bodies accredited by

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authorities outside the country. In Cambodia, a British NGO (Global Witness) controls the public controllers placed by the government in charge of investigating crimes committed against the forest. The same NGO has been entrusted, by the Cameroon government, with missions to inspect timber companies. It is a private research organization linked with the World Bank, the World Research Institute, that publishes and disseminates throughout the world the result of concession allocations and other logging licenses in Cameroon.With the government’s assent, the organization has set up a system to monitor logging methods in the country’s forests and surveys the country from the air to identify the exact location of concessions and detect illegal behavior.19 In short, mediation between the international forest system and systems of local actors is part of the phenomenon known as “privatizing the state.” What is going on in the forest sector fully confirms the argument developed by Béatrice Hibou.20 The state is not disappearing. It still makes laws, determines taxes, sets terms and conditions on the logging companies, and creates the general climate in which forest management is done. Its influence over society is still strong (except of course in extreme cases of total civil war), too strong for the liking of certain companies that complain of “too much government.” By entrusting to private foreign organizations certain tasks that it is unable to fulfill, the state finds new possibilities of control: it is easier, for instance, to levy heavy fines or even cancel the concession of a logging company that bestows ample handouts on all the officials from top to bottom of the decisionmaking ladder when this company’s fraudulent behavior is denounced by Global Witness. Delegating powers, which could be analyzed as a renunciation of sovereignty, is also a power strategy used by certain political and administrative actors against other players. More generally, the practice is part of the constant renegotiation of the relationships between “public” and “private” that has been observed in most tropical countries.21 As regards forest management, this process of delegation, either deliberately chosen or more often conducted under international pressure, can produce positive results: for example, the procedures for granting of concessions in Cameroon were better followed in 2000 than in 1997. Although illegal practices remain frequent, the culprits know they are under surveillance and their fraudulent maneuvers are made more difficult and more costly.The same is true in Cambodia. The thorniest question of all remains the mediation between the discourse developed by the transnational forest system in the name of humanity’s higher interests and the perception of local communities, who will be subject to its immediate effects. Sources of misunderstanding are

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numerous. The definitions of conservation are not clear. Not only do local communities not have the same perception of trees and the fauna as do champions of the forest and wildlife, but they also do not have the same perception everywhere of what is sacred: taboos, rites, and magic come into play and differ from one forest area to another. The translation of transnational discourse into a language that is intelligible to those who are supposed to put it into practice is not simply a matter of linguistics! The perception of space and its optimum use is more than anything a source of conflict: the parceling of land brought about by conservation projects, ecotourism, and forest concessions are often at odds with village uses, customary rights, and the symbolic boundaries of the native land. Local communities are not only those dominated and abused peoples that we rediscover periodically through the media.They live, imagine, take initiatives, demand, adapt, and revolt.The case studies all reach the same conclusion: no sustainable forest management is possible without their support and participation. The relations of a society with its natural environment rest on balances that are too subtle to be imposed from the outside according to prefabricated models. So many mediators, experts, NGOs, and civil servants claim to create a link between the forest and the world, between local realities and the international scene. Some of them do and do it well, by maintaining a longterm continuous presence in the field and mobilizing a broad array of skills (in anthropology, sociology, economics, botany, cartography, forestry, etc.), adhering to the social temporality that is the stuff of lasting arrangements. But how many international projects are designed and financed for a duration of more than four years? How many men and women are prepared to spend long months in the heart of the rain forest sharing the lives of its inhabitants? The apparatchiks of the major NGOs are no more capable of it than international bureaucrats.This gap between the international sphere of policy-making where so-called universal standards are set and the field where micro-decisions made by communities whose survival depends on the surrounding environment is unbridgeable. If any progress is made there, it is because many actors in the world forest system have become aware of this, say it out loud and have begun to be heard. The international discourse is a little less peremptory than it was at the time of Rio. In recent years experiments with mediators have been attempted.They are responsible for moderating the dialogue and organizing negotiation to lead to long-term objectives and negotiated management frameworks. Some have been successful, in Madagascar for one.

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The international forest system has no control whatsoever over many occurrences that endanger the forest: regions torn by violence and internal conflicts exclude themselves from it, major conglomerates continue devastating logging practices in cynical disregard for the condemnation of NGOs and experts. The system must also compromise: it must be admitted that a certain part of the forest cover will inevitably be destroyed to promote what is said to be development: roads, mines, dams, grazing, cash crops, and so on. But if one looks back and compares with the prevailing situation in the 1980s, the general evolution of mentalities is striking.Twenty years ago, the dense moist forest was given over to all destructive forces. Controls and monitoring were inexistent.Today, damaging the forest is everywhere considered shameful and reprehensible. States are called to account. The world discourse on sustainable management has produced effects. States feel obliged to define a forest policy. Companies that want to sell their wood in countries sensitive to the question have undertaken management plans.The number of forest stands in the process of coming under sustainable management has increased. Plantation and agroforestry projects conducted with the assent and participation of local communities are underway. Experiments in participatory management are multiplying. Many fail because they require time, attentiveness, very thorough knowledge of how the forest is used by each of the stakeholders, and a real comprehension of modes of social regulation specific to the community involved. But positive examples do exist, and we now know that this is the direction to take. To consider the state of the moist dense forest at a given point in time can produce a desolate image.This image is the most widespread, amply broadcast by the media and NGOs. It is not difficult to find dramatic and violent illustrations of deforestation. They are countless. Beyond these emotion-stirring images that are necessary to keep the issue on the international agenda, the forest must also be considered as a dynamic entity. In this regard, illustrations can be found of recovered equilibriums, reconstituted forests, sometimes on the sole initiative of local communities. And this gives reason to hope. For the children of the children born today, and who apparently will live to the age of one-hundred, there may still be trees for them to see.

Notes

Introduction 1. See Alexandre Dorozynski, “Un système de gestion pour les tropiques,” Cérès, July–August 1978, and FAO estimates by which, in 1990, tropical forests covered 1.76 billion hectares and temperate zone forests 1.64 billion hectares, State of the World’s Forests, 1997, p. 10.According to Henri-Félix Maître of CIRAD-Forêt, the wooded area of tropical countries amounted to 1,805 million hectares “which, at the current rate of deforestation, will drop to 1,650 million in 2010,” Association Technique Internationale des Bois Tropicaux, ATIBT Newsletter, Summer 2000, no. 12, p. 12. 2. FAO estimates note a decrease in the annual rate of deforestation, from 15.5 million hectares for 1980–90 to 13.7 million hectares between 1990 and 1995 and down to 11.5 million hectares for the 1990–2000 period. Environmental NGOs dispute these figures. Though the trend may be decreasing, the rate of loss nevertheless remains substantial. 3. In Critias, quoted by Robert Harrison, Forests.The Shadow of Civilization, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992. English translation taken from Benjamin Jowett, http://classics.mit.edu/ Plato/critias.html. 4. See the special issue of Unasylva on Mediterranean forests, no. 197, vol. 50, 1999. 5. Soustenir was the word in old French, sustainable is the word used today in U.N. parlance. 6. Roland Bechman, Des arbres et des hommes. La forêt au moyen-âge, Paris, Flammarion, 1984, p. 347. 7. We thank Michel Paulin, architect and archeologist in Tunisia and Libya, for drawing our attention to this point by recommending Roland Bechman’s remarkable book, Les racines des cathédrales. L’architecture gothique, expression des conditions du milieu, Paris, 4th ed., Payot, 1996. 8. Argument that was used on us, based on the reading of a book in which the second-hand quotes were not always verified: Luc Ferry, Le nouvel ordre écologique, l’arbre, l’animal et l’homme, Paris, Grasset, 1992. 9. In his book, now a classic, P.W. Richards in 1952 wrote: “Unless determined efforts are made to halt the destruction, the whole of the Tropical Rain forest may disappear in the lifetime of those now living, except for a few inaccessible areas and small ‘forest reserves’ artificially maintained mainly for the production of timber.” The Tropical Rain Forest, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1952, p. 405. 10. Translator’s note: Literally: ebony wood. A derogatory pun in French used to refer to the slave trade in the eighteenth century. 11. From the Latin deciduus, “which falls.” 12. See P. W. Richards, op. cit., 3rd ed., 1996, pp. 389–391 and T. C. Whitmore, An Introduction to Tropical Rain Forests (1989), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1998, ch. 2. 13. The IUCN World Conservation Union sometimes uses the notion of ombrophilous forest as broadly as the concept of tropical rain forest.

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14. Robert Heinzman (an American ecologist), “Visions of the Rainforest,” p. 7 in Suzanna Head and Robert Heinzman, Lessons of the Rainforest, San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1990. 15. The first comprehensive maps were made by The World Conservation Union and the World Conservation Monitoring Center, The Last Rain Forests, London, Mitchell Beazeley Publishers, 1990; J. Sayer et al., The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Asia and the Pacific, London, MacMillan, 1991; The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Africa, London, MacMillan, 1992. 16. Sixty-three percent of the moist dense forests are found in Latin America, 25 percent in Asia, and 12 percent in Africa. Fifty percent of the moist deciduous forests are in Latin America, 7 percent in Asia, and 42 percent in Africa. See European Parliament, EUROFOR, L’Europe et la forêt, 1994, vol. 1, p. 268 and 271. See also the report of the Director of Ghana’s Forestry Research Institute, at the 11th Forestry Congress in Antalya,Turkey, 1997, Doc. 38.5,A. OfosuAsiedu, “Experience and State of the Art in Sustainable Forest Management of the Humid Tropical Forest,” pp. 244–245. 17. The FAO defines a primary forest as “a forest that has never been logged and has developed following natural disturbances and under natural processes, regardless of its age. It is referred to ‘direct human disturbance’ as the intentional clearing of forest by any means (including fire) to manage or alter them for human use. Also included as primary, are forests that are used inconsequentially by indigenous and local communities living traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. In much of Europe, primary forest has a different connotation and refers to an area of forest land which has probably been continuously wooded at least throughout historical times (e.g., the last thousand years). It has not been completely cleared or converted to another land use for any period of time. However traditional human disturbances such as patch felling for shifting cultivation, coppicing, burning and also, more recently, selective/partial logging may have occurred, as well as natural disturbances.” A secondary forest “is a forest that has been logged and has recovered naturally or artificially.” http://www.biodiv.org/programmes/areas/forest/definitions.asp. 18. Sources vary and are imprecise; here only the general trend is given. 19. The notion of natural forest is very vague. Here again, no definition has taken a firm hold. Virgin forest, primary forest, old-growth forests, semi-natural forests are all terms that are used. According to the French definition, a natural forest is characterized by the presence of a stand since time immemorial, exclusively made up of locally native species and having undergone no human disturbance for at least 50 years. A semi-natural forest is characterized by a stand exclusively made up of native species not planted, in the state of a forest for at least 80 years. C. Barthod, La feuille de Sylva, no. 22, July 1997, p. 13. Natural forests can be composed of primary or secondary old-growth forests that have not been logged in the past 50 to 80 years and are defined by opposition to planted forests. Plantations are defined as being “established artificially by afforestation on lands which previously did not carry forest within living memory, or established artificially by reforestation of land which carried forest before, with replacement of the indigenous species by a new and essentially different species or genetic variety” (FAO, State of the World’s Forests 1997, annex 2, p. 174). 20. There are more than 450 species of them, including the famous meranti that alone counts over 30 species. 21. Plants that grow on another, larger plant but that, unlike parasites, derive their nutrients on their own (from the air and rain). 22. Philippe Leroy, Des forêts et des hommes, Paris, Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Presses Pocket, 1991, p. 80. 23. The real proportion may be as high as 75 percent.The uncertainty of the estimates lies in the fact that only 1.7 million species living on earth have been inventoried and scientifically studied up to now, whereas there may well be ten to one hundred times more, particularly in the largely unexplored insect world. 24. World Wide Fund for Nature, one of the largest and most influential federations of environmental protection organizations.

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Notes

25. Survey conducted between December 1996 and January 1997, FAO, Unasylva, 1999, 1, pp. 42–48. 26. Pierre-Charles Dominique, Le Journal du CNRS, November 1995, p. 21. 27. H. C. Pereira, Policy and Practice in the Management of Tropical Watersheds,Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1989, quoted by Ian Calder, “Water-Resource and Land Use Issues,” International Water Management Institute, SWIM Paper, no. 3, 1998. See also Ken Chomitz and Kanta Kumari, “The Domestic Benefits of Tropical Forests, A Critical Review Emphasizing Hydrological Functions,”World Bank, 1998. 28. Sources UNESCO; no. 93, September 1997, p. 22. 29. See Jean-Claude Bergonzini and Jean-Paul Lanly, Les forêts tropicales, Paris, Karthala, 2000, p. 70 ff. 30. Photosynthesis: synthesis with the aid of radiant energy.A chemical reaction caused by sunlight by which plants, using carbon dioxide present in the air or dissolved in water, produce carbohydrates in their chlorophyll-containing tissues. Biomass: the total amount of living matter in a given habitat. 31. Calder, art. cit., pp. 2–3. 32. See the report prepared by the CIDA Forestry Advisers Network for the European Union Trees network, December 1999. 33. German Advisory Council on Global Change, The Accounting of Biological Sinks and Sources under the Kyoto Protocol: A Step Forwards or Backwards for Global Environmental Protection?, Special Report, 1998, http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/climate/ba/perspectives.html. 34. For the various definitions of SFM given by the various international bodies, see Bryan Evans, “Technical and Scientific Elements for Forest Management Certification Programs,” Conference on the Economic, Social, and Political Issues in Certification of Forest Management, Malaysia, May 12–16, 1996. http://www.forestry.ubc.ca/concert/evans.html. 35. Definition circulated by the Brundtland Report in 1987. 36. EUROFOR, op. cit., vol. III, p. 120. 37. See Conservation International, Richard Rice, Cheri Sugal, Ian Bowles, “Sustainable Forest Management: A Review of the Current Conventional Wisdom,” World Bank, Background Document, March 1999. 38. EUROFOR, Ibid., p. 124. 39. ITTO, Tropical Forest Update, 1, 1999, p.1. 40. TFRK in international jargon. 41. Cameroonian expression describing a reality that Jean-François Bayart analyzed in L’Etat en Afrique: La politique du ventre, Paris, Fayard, 1989, translated as Bayart, Jean-François, 1993 [1989], The State in Africa:The Politics of the Belly, London, Longman, 1993. 42. WWF/World Bank press release based on an interesting study conducted by the IUCN on the situation in protected areas of ten major forest counties: Brazil, China, Gabon, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Vietnam, and Russia. The Russian forests are endangered boreal forests for which conservation raises questions similar to those posed by tropical rain forests in many respects, particularly cultural and social. 43. A. G. Jones, Timber Production and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Rain Forests, Cambridge, Cambridge, University Press, 1997. 44. A. Ofosu-Asiedu, art. cit., p. 26. 45. See Michael Cernea (ed.), Putting People First. Sociological Variables in Rural Development, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 307. 46. As was explained to us quite vehemently by a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, exasperated by our sociological approach to the question in a political science seminar in May 1999. 47. Among the most well-known are: R. Rice, R. E. Gullison, and J. W. Reid, “Can Sustainable Management Save Tropical Forests?” Scientific American, 276 (4), 1997, pp. 34–39; David Pearce, Francis Putz, Jerome K.Vanclay, A Sustainable Forest Future, working paper for the Centre for

NOTES

48. 49.

50. 51. 52.

225

Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, 1999, [email protected]. And more recently, Christopher Barr,“Will HPH Reform Lead to Sustainable Forest Management,” excerpted from Banking on Sustainability: Structural Adjustment and Forestry Reform in Post-Suharto Indonesia, CIFOR and WWF-International’s Macroeconomics Program Office, October 2001. World Resources Institute, Global Forest Watch, A First Look at Logging in Gabon,Washington, 2000; An Overview of Logging in Cameroon, ibid., www.globalforestwatch.org. In the 1960s, integration theory made the distinction between subjects of high politics, those having to do with sovereignty, security, and aspects considered to be of strategic importance for the nation, and subjects of low politics that less directly affected national interests. See Steve Smith,“Environment on the Periphery of International Relations: An Explanation,” Environmental Politics, 1993, 2 (4), pp. 28–45. See Robert Boardman,“Environmental Discourse and International Relations Theory:Towards a Proto-theory of Ecosation,” Global Society, vol. 11, no. 1, 1997, pp. 31–44. See William C. Olson and A. J. R. Groom, International Relations Then and Now, London, Harper Collins, 1991, pp. 204–221.

Chapter One

The Construction of a Global Issue

1. See Lamont C. Hampel, Environmental Governance, The Global Challenge, Washington, Island Press, 1996. 2. “Transcoding first involves pulling together scattered pieces of information and treating them as a whole; it also means translating this information into a different register with different rationales, to ensure its dissemination within the social field and outside of it,” p. 22 in: Pierre Lascoumes, L’éco-pouvoir, Paris, La Découverte, 1994. The author likens his idea of “transcoding” to that of “translation” used by Michel Callon, “in that this process relates to an activity that produces meaning via transactions between distinct, even unrelated perspectives,” Idem., p. 24. Michel Callon, “Eléments pour une sociologie de la traduction,” Année sociologique, XXXVI, 1984, p. 169 ff. 3. See John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, New York, Little, Brown and Co, 1984. 4. See supra, p. 3 (note 9). 5. One of the first to report deforestation in the Amazon is William Denevan, “Development and the Imminent Demise of the Amazon Rain Forest,” The Professional Geographer, 25 (2), May 1973, pp. 130–135. 6. The Ramsar Convention, adopted in 1971, in effect since 1975. 7. Also known as the Washington Convention, in effect since 1975. 8. See infra, p. 49 ff. 9. Adrian Sommer, “Attempt at an assessment of the world’s tropical forests,” Unasylva, 28, (112–113), 1976, pp. 5–25. 10. See in particular Alan Grainger, Controlling Tropical Deforestation, Earthscan, London, 1993, p. 127. 11. Ibid., p. 127. 12. Greenpeace, Facing Destruction:A Greenpeace briefing on the timber industry in the Brazilian Amazon, Amsterdam, Greenpeace International Publications, May 1999. 13. Marc Morano and Kent Washburn, televised report, American Investigator, WorldNetDaily, June 26 2000, complacently quoted by a private British journal having authority in the logging companies, Hardwoodmarkets.com., July 2000, p. 10. 14. N. Myers, Conversion of Tropical Moist Forests, Washington, D.C., National Research Council, 1980; J. P. Lanly (ed.), Tropical Forest Resources Assessment Projects (GEMS):Tropical Africa,Tropical Asia,Tropical America (4 vol.), FAO/UNEP, Rome, 1981.

226

Notes

15. N. Myers, Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climate Implications, London, Friends of the Earth, 1989. 16. Norman Myers’ contribution is echoed in one of the first major works on the environment in international relations, “The Anatomy of Environmental Action: The Case of Tropical Deforestation,” in Andrew Hurrell and Benedict Kingsbury, The International Politics of the Environment, Actors, Interests and Institutions, Oxord, Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 430–454. 17. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) at which the Statement of Principles and Chapter 11 of Agenda 21 were adopted, see supra (pp. 14–15). 18. Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations specialized agency created in 1945. 19. An expert meeting on tropical forest management was convened by the UNEP, UNESCO, and the FAO in 1982. 20. UNESCO is involved in the Man and Biosphere (MAB) program for the preservation of ecosystems and is thereby concerned by forest ecosystems. 21. Forest/agriculture relations, forest industries, wood/energy, ecosystem conservation, forest administration, FAO, The Tropical Forestry Action Plan, Rome, October 1985. 22. Created in Washington in 1982, financed by various Western foundations, the WRI’s mission was to research ways of satisfying human needs without depleting natural resources and provoking irreversible changes in the environment. It soon established itself as a top-level center of expertise and it reputedly acts as a research unit for the World Bank. 23. The United Nations Development Program. This agency is central to the multilateral aid mechanism for development projects, and consequently forest projects. 24. For a well-documented narrative of the institutional genesis of the TFAP see David Humphreys, Forest Politics,The Evolution of International Cooperation, London, Earthscan, 1996. 25. For details concerning the institutional mechanisms of the TFAP see Humphreys, op. cit., p. 34 ff. 26. Quoted by Humphreys, op. cit., p. 34. 27. The FAG is an informal group made up of the main donor countries (the European Union, Canada, and Switzerland are part of it), international NGOs (the WRI, the WWF, the IIED), and independent consultants. 28. Nine of them were published in 1990: Peru, Guyana, Tanzania, Nepal, Cameroon, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, and the Philippines. 29. On this evolutionist theory in the spirit of Walt Rostow, see Gilbert Rist, Le développement, histoire d’une croyance occidentale,” Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 1996, p. 153 ff. 30. Ola Ullsten, Salleh Mohammed Nor, Montgue Yudelman, Tropical Forestry Action Plan: Report of the Independent Review, RAO, Kuala Lumpur, May 1990.The two other reports came from the World Rain Forest Movement: Marcus Colchester and Larry Lohmann, The Tropical Forestry Action Plan:What Progress?, World Rain Forest Movement, The Ecologist, 1990, and the WRI: R.Winterbottom, Taking Stock:The Tropical Forestry Action Plan after Five Years,WRI,Washington, June 1990. 31. See Barbara J. Bramble and Gareth Porter,“Non-Governmental Organizations and the Making of US International Environmental Policy,” in Hurrell and Kingsbury, op. cit., p. 313 ff. 32. On these various episodes and the restructuring of the TFAP, see David Humphreys’ very thorough study, Forest Politics, op. cit., p. 44 ff. See also Jean Clément’s testimony,“Le développement de la pensée et des actions forestières tropicales depuis 1946,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 252, 2nd quarter, 1997. 33. In the Philippines, for instance, the forest cover, which spread over 250,000 square kilometers in 1945, was reduced to 55,000 by 1987. 34. The WRM is a network of particularly active individuals and national and international ecological organizations in Asia. As is characteristic of any network, it is linked to everything that exists in its area of concern throughout the world and works in conjunction with the major NGO federations, especially Friends of the Earth. The petition collected three million

NOTES 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

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signatures and was approved by the first congress to bring together Eastern and Western European ecologists just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. See the introduction to Chico Mendes’s last interviews, Mon combat pour la forêt, presented by the Bureau d’Amérique latine and Gilles Perrault, Paris, Seuil, 1990 and the report by New Yorker writer/journalist Alex Shoumatoff, The World is Burning, Morrow/Avon, 1991.The most authoritative work on Chico Mendes’s political battle is a very thorough study by Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season:The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990. Alex Shoumatoff, op.cit., p. 67. Chico Mendes, op.cit., p. 95. A powerful socially oriented London-based NGO. There are plans to pave the part of the highway connecting the state of Acre to the Matto Grosso region. After Rondônia, where the forest was devastated by an influx of immigration, Acre is in danger of falling to a similar fate. See Andrew Revkin, op. cit., p. 202. Andrew Revkin, op. cit., p. 101. Revkin reports a fit of anger before a newscast presenting him as the good ecologist from the Amazon fighting global warming. Chico Mendes is said to have shouted “I’m not protecting the forest because I’m worried that in twenty years the world will be affected. I’m worried about it because there are thousands of people living here who depend on the forest—and their lives are in danger every day,” p. 261 (probably a very toned-down translation!). Altamira, February 1989. Personal discussion with two journalists, one from the French state radio, the other from a local radio. On these points see the references and the work of Luiz C. Barbosa, The Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. Global Ecopolitics, Development and Democracy, Lanham, Oxford, University Press of America, 2000, as well as the fine book by anthropologist and filmmaker Geoffrey O’Connor, Amazon Journal, New York, Penguin, 1997. Veja, April 28, 1993, quoted by Luiz C. Barbosa, op. cit., p. 112. It should be said that Sting has learned a lot since this ostentatious beginning and that the work done by Rainforest Foundation is just as respectable as that of other major foundations. It supports education and health care projects in conjunction with NGOs and local grassroots communities in South America and Africa. His big annual fund-raising concert at Carnegie Hall is accompanied by Hollywood quavers, but whose fault is it that rock singers and actors are the beacons of our time? An incident related by Richard Banegas, editor-in-chief of Politique Africaine. See Serge Bahuchet (dir.), The Situation of Indigenous People in Tropical Forests, European Commission, Luxembourg, Office of Official Publications, 1994. Author’s interview with committee members, editors of its newsletter and JATAN ( Japan Tropical Forest Action Network) activists,Tokyo, December 1997. She quotes Bahuchet’s estimates: 145,359 Amerindians in the Brazilian Amazon, 80,000 in the Colombian Amazon; in the Philippines 79,000 hunter-gatherers for 14 ethnic groups and 1,490,724 swidden cultivators for 38 ethnic groups; in Sumatra, Indonesia 46,100 huntergatherers for seven ethnic groups, 2,225,000 slash-and-burner farmers for five ethnic groups. In Cameroon, the population is 1,424,000 and 22,127,000 in ex-Zaire. Claudine Friedberg, “Forêts tropicales et populations forestières: quelques repères,” Nature-Sciences-Sociétés, 1996, 4 (2), pp. 157–158. Ibid., p. 158. The quote ends “. . . and maintained by North American researchers who thus hope to assuage their guilty conscience with regard to the fate of the Amerindians in their own country.” The statement seems somewhat facile and given the “North American researchers” a little too much credit.

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52. Translated as “riverside communities,” the term refers to rural peoples living in isolated areas along the rivers. 53. Source: Canadian Forestry Advisers Network (CFAN) of the Canadian International Development Agency, “Tropical Forests and Climate Change,” www.rcfa-cfan.org. 54. The forest was mentioned twice in the world Convention on Climate Change adopted in Rio. 55. D. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth, New York, New American Library, 1972; Janine Delaunay, Halte à la croissance? Enquête sur le Club de Rome, Paris, Fayard, 1972.The report was hotly disputed and has turned out to be wrong on a number of counts. It nevertheless caused a considerable stir at a time when the first oil crisis and tension surrounding raw materials lent credence to the notion of an upcoming shortage. 56. Alfred Sauvy, L’Europe submergée: Sud-Nord dans 30 ans, Paris, Dunod, 1987. 57. See Marie-Claude Smouts,“Risque planétaire et sécurité environnementale,” Esprit, May 2001, pp. 133–141. 58. The notion of biosphere was coined by the great Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky, who distinguished it from the geosphere (where the chemical elements of the earth’s envelop circulate) and the noosphere (the sphere of human consciousness). See Vladimir Vernadsky, La biosphère, Paris, Félix Alcan, 1929. For a clear introduction to the definition used by contemporary ecologists, see François Ramade, Le grand massacre; l’avenir des espèces vivantes, Paris, Hachette, 1999. 59. January 3, 1989. 60. See the World Disasters Report published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Geneva, 1991. 61. Preamble, §3. 62. According to Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden quoted by François Ramade, we can expect 60,000 plant species to disappear in the tropical rain forest between now and the mid21st century. Given the fact that there are about 18 insect species per plant species, that would lead to the disappearance of at least 1.1 million insect species,” Ibid., p. 120. It should be kept in mind that there is a high degree of endemism to most species living in these forests and only an infinitesimal percent of species are common to several tropical ecosystems. It is in the Indo-Malaysian and tropical American forests that the greatest number of living species are found, along with the highest degree of endemism and consequently the greatest vulnerability. 63. The Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted on June 5, 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio, coming into force on December 29, 1993. It was ratified by over 168 countries. The United States to date has refused to ratify it. 64. Definition used by the CBD: “variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.” 65. The CBD is a framework agreement that indicates principle orientations. The content of the obligations must be specified during periodic meetings of the signatories, known as the Conference of the Parties. In multilateral jargon these meetings are referred to by their order of succession, COP1, COP2, COP3, etc. 66. Now referred to as the World Conservation Union, it is among the largest of U.N. organizations in terms of budget, number, and diversity of its members and regular collaborators: 76 member states, 111 public institutions, 732 NGOs, some 10,000 experts, and permanent staff of 1,000 people, 90 percent of whom are in the field. 67. See John McCormick, The Global Environmental Movement, London, Belhaven Press, 1989, p. 34 ff. 68. Originally the World Wildlife Fund, the Worldwide Fund for Nature was created by the IUCN leaders to raise private funds to help support IUCN activities, particularly the implementation of its conservation programs.The WWF became independent and has grown to be one of the largest federations of environmental protection organizations. 69. Timothy Swanson, “Why is there a biodiversity convention? The international interest in centralized development planning,” International Affairs, 75 (2), 1999, pp. 307–331.

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70. The World Heritage Convention, adopted in 1972, in force since 1975, ratified by 158 countries. 71. Inclusion on the list can only occur with the agreement of the state concerned and only for property for which an interest has been shown. The state receives international assistance mainly in the form of technical assistance to supplement national conservation programs. Given the disastrous state of the U.N. system finances, resources for the World Heritage Fund (art. 15), consisting of compulsory and voluntary contributions made by the Party States, are far from sufficient to meet the needs. Designation as a World Heritage site nevertheless carries with it a strong symbolic value and incentive to respect the property. 72. Jeff Sayer, Natarajann Ishwaran, James Thorsell, and Todd Sigaty, “The World Heritage Convention as a mechanism for conserving tropical forest biodiversity,” CIFOR, 2000, Ambio, 29 (6), September 2000, pp. 302–309. 73. Large activist groups have formed, including the Ape Alliance (1997) which brings together some 20 wildlife defense NGOs and puts pressure on logging companies active in Cameroon, Gabon, and the Congo (Brazzaville) to get them to tackle the problem. 74. Reference and figures from A First Look at Logging in Gabon, Global Forest Watch, WRI, 2000, p. 13. 75. It is interesting to note that the first volume of EUROFOR’s L’Europe et la forêt, written in the early 1990s, did not mention the convention, whereas Volume II, published in 1998, devotes a long explanation to it along with a table of the tree species annexed to the CITES in 1996. 76. John Lanchbery gives some clues as to unraveling them in “Long-Term Trends in Systems for Implementation Review in International Agreements on Fauna and Flora,” in David Victor, Kal Kaustalia, and Eugene B. Skolnikoff, The Implementation and Effectiveness of International Environmental Commitments:Theory and Practice, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 1998, pp. 57–87. 77. See World Conservation Monitoring Center documentation. The WCMC, located in Cambridge, U.K., manages a data bank on the basis of information provided by the parties to CITES.Theoretically independent, it works under contract for the CITES secretariat in close conjunction with the IUCN. It became part of the UNEP in July 2000, and publishes its Tree Conservation Information Service data on the Internet under the logo Global Trees Campaign (www.wcmc.org.uk/trees/GTC/gtc_ front.htm). A fine illustration of the interpenetration of nongovernmental and international institutions, scientific expertise and activism! 78. Tropical Timbers, March 1997, June 1997, July 1999. 79. Tropical Timbers, May 1997. 80. To follow the case see http://www.traffic.org/mahogany/cites.html.TRAFFIC (Trade Record Analysis of Fauna and Flora in Commerce) is an NGO founded in 1978 in the wake of the IUCN and the WWF which, like the World Conservation Monitoring Center (see note 7), monitors trade in fauna and flora. It draws on a vast network of local NGOs that alert it to the activities of illegal trade and detrimental exploitation. One of its functions is to inform national authorities of these illicit activities. 81. See John Mayhew, ITTO, Tropical Timber Update, 2, 1997, and S.Tillier, “Le mahogany grandes feuilles en Martinique,” Bois et forêts des tropiques, 244 (2), pp. 55–66. 82. Ideas inspired by J. Rondeux’s study, “Inventaires forestiers et biodiversité,” Unasylva, 50 (196), 1999, pp. 35–41. 83. Peter H. Freeman and Robert Fox, Satellite Mapping of Tropical Forest Cover and Deforestation: A review with recommendations for USAID, 1994, http://www.ciesin.org/docs/005–325/005–325.html.

Chapter Two

A Good in Search of a Definition

1. FAO, Forest Resources Assessment 1990. Tropical Countries; State of the World’s Forests, SOFO, 1997. 2. See the unpublished work by an Ecole Polytechnique intern in the framework of the CIRAD under the supervision of Jacques Weber:Tiphaine Tiengou, Déforestation: des points de vue et des méthodes.We thank the former GREEN team at CIRAD, for sharing this research with us.

230

Notes

3. Dense tropical moist forests are a typical example of a “closed forest” defined by the FAO as “vegetation formations where trees occur in single or multiple stories with crowns interlocking, which, in conjunction with the undergrowth, cover a high proportion of the ground (⬎ 40 percent) and consequently do not have a continuous dense grass layer at the ground level” allowing grazing and spreading of fires (such as the cerrado in Latin America and the wooded savanahs in Africa). http://www.fao.org/forestry/fop/fopw/gfss/gfsswp/1/7WP1-APP.HTM#E9E2. 4. TREES:Tropical Ecosystems Environment Observation by Satellite. 5. According to Global Forest Watch, A First Look at Logging in Gabon, op. cit., p. 16. 6. Tiphaine Tiengou, op. cit., p. 5. 7. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000 (FRA 2000).The results of the assessment are regularly published on the internet and subject to international discussion. Site: http://www.fao.org/ forestry/fo/fra/main/pdf/app2.pdf. 8. The U.N.-EEC is a U.N. regional commission based in Geneva that played a significant intermediary role between the East and the West on technical questions during the Cold War. It has a competent and active “Timber Committee” in which the Scandinavian countries play a major role. 9. This is evident in the U.N.-EEC report on boreal and temperate forests, published first (July 2000). 10. Instituto Nacional de Pesquisais Espaciais, INPE. 11. See supra p. 44 and pp. 53–54. 12. Electronic sensors record the numerical value of the electromagnetic rays given off by objects on the earth’s surface.The image obtained by scanning is a series of points or pixels. Each pixel represents a given surface area. Coarse or high spatial resolution of images corresponds to the dimension of the pixels. 13. Explanations can be found on several websites, particularly the FAO site and the U.N.-EEC Timber Committee site. The CIRAD-forêt technical notice published in Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 25 (4), 1996, where GIS is defined as a “computer system that uses various sources to provide a means of gathering and organizing, managing, analyzing and combining, elaborating and presenting geographically localized information, contributing in particular to spatial management.” 14. See Mireille Chiaverini, “Utilisation de la teledétection et des SIG pour la gestion et le suivi des terres forestières tropicales,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 259 (1), 1999, pp. 74–76. 15. Peter H. Freeman and Robert Fox, “Satellite Mapping of Tropical Forest Cover and Deforestation,” art. cit. 16. TREES, Philippe Mayaux, Frédéric Achard, and Jean-Paul Malingreau, “Global tropical forest area measurements derived from coarse resolution satellite imagery: a comparison with other approaches,” Environmental Conservation, 25 (1), 1998, pp. 37–52. 17. A technique that involves creating “interference fringes” from which three-dimensional ground relief images of can be formed by collecting in one sweep the radar beams emitted by two distant antennae reflected by the Earth. 18. “A sibling project of TREES,” according to the European Commission. 19. In the context of FRA 2000 the interpretation involved a multitemporal world sample of approximately 1,000 satellite images.The new FAO world maps have a 1-km resolution. 20. World Commission for the Environment and Development presided by former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, created by the U.N. in preparation for the Rio summit. The Commission held hearings on every continent and in 1987 published the “Brundtland Report” entitled Our Common Future, which officially consecrated the notion of sustainable development. 21. “The Commission is gratified by the leadership, which has already been given by the World Resources Institute in mobilizing other key international non-governmental organizations in the catalytic work required to bring this concept into being . . .” Our Forests, Our Future, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 77.

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22. Cf. supra, ch. 1. 23. Global Forest Watch Newsletter, Summer 2000, www.globalforestwatch.org. 24. An Overview of Logging in Cameroon;A First Look at Logging in Gabon,World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., 2000. 25. Doctrine of President Wilson, who masterminded the League of Nations, according to which well-informed people will necessarily choose cooperation, justice, and peace. 26. National sovereignty; inclusion into national sustainable development policies; requirement for states to enter into planning and programming processes for forest activities; participation of all stakeholders; acknowledgment of traditional and customary rights; guarantee of land use regimes; recourse to the appropriate conflict resolution mechanisms. 27. “Post-Rio discussion forums established by the U.N. IPF, Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, established for two years in April 1995; IFF: ad hoc Intergovernmental Forum on Forests, established for three years in July 1997; UNFF: U.N. Forum on Forests, established as a subsidiary body of the U.N. Economic and Social Council on October 18, 2000 (in our opinion the worst fate that one could imagine for a discussion group, sure to get bogged down in endless babble). 28. See, among others, the special issue of International Organization, “Knowledge, Power and International Policy Coordination,” ed. Peter M. Haas, Winter 1992, 46 (1), now published in book form as Knowledge, Power and International Policy Coordination, Columbia, S.C., University of South Carolina Press, 1997. A thorough bibliography can be found in Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger, Theories of International Regimes, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 149–154. 29. Peter Haas, International Organization, op. cit., p. 3. 30. Regarding the ozone layer, this approach greatly overestimates the influence of scientists. As soon as American consumers were alerted to the problem, the industry quickly requested international regulations. The fact that a large corporation such as Dupont de Nemours had already begun manufacturing CFC substitutes and that discontinuing the use of these gases only affected a small number of firms in a highly concentrated chemical sector explains why negotiation was concluded so rapidly. 31. See for instance Philippe Le Prestre, Ecopolitique internationale, Montréal, Guérin Universitaire, 1997, pp. 314–320; Andreas Hasenclever et al. op. cit., pp. 152–154. 32. International agreement signed in 1987 that banned CFC emissions and established a schedule to phase them out. 33. Allan O’Neil, president of a scientific conference in Buenos Aires attended by some 300 climate specialists in December 2000 (Financial Times, December 4, 2000, p. 1). 34. Interview with a French IPCC member, an expert on the interministerial commission on the greenhouse effect, who has been following the negotiations since 1988. 35. Jean-Charles Hourcade and Emeric Fortin,“Impact économique des politiques climatiques: des controverses aux enjeux de coordination,” Economie Internationale, 82, 2nd quarter 2000, p. 46. 36. Nature, November 9, 2000. 37. Reuters, November 9, 2000. 38. AFP, November 9, 2000. 39. The origin of this error appears to be an article published in the Spring 2000 issue of the New Scientist, which certain NGOs picked up on, although it was later refuted on several occasions, particularly by a group of 16 scientists taking stock of greenhouse gases emissions and absorption by the marine and terrestrial ecosystems (“The Global Carbon Cycle: a Test of Our Knowledge of Earth as a System,” Science, 290, October 2000). 40. We thank Alain Karsenty for drawing our attention to this fine example of misinformation and for his comments and references on the state of scientific knowledge in this domain. 41. Bernard Saugier, art. cit. 42. Climate Action Network, quoted in Le Monde, November 18, 2000. 43. Part of the sun’s light is immediately reflected into space, mainly by deserts, glaciers, and clouds. The index of reflectivity is called “albedo.” Forests have a different albedo depending on their

232

44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59.

Notes

latitude. It is low in cold countries where forests absorb more of the sun’s rays than low, snow-covered vegetation. The scientific controversy is focused on deciding whether the increase in carbon dioxide, which will stimulate forest growth, will exceed these forests storage capacity in the upper latitudes. In tropical latitudes, the problem is posed in different terms. C. Barthod, “La conférence des Nations unies sur l’environnement et le développement et la forêt,” Courrier de l’environnement, September 20, 1993, pp. 37–48. For instance Duncan Poore’s research conducted under the auspices of the International Tropical Timber Organization published in 1989, No Timber without Trees, and in 2000 the Review of Progress towards the Year 2000 Objective (with Thang Hooi Chiew) were mainly used by the ITTO to buttress its legitimacy with respect to the FAO, and by producing countries and the wood industry to report on the progress made in implementing sustainable development strategies. Despite the reservations made by the authors in writing:“there is not yet strong evidence that the strategies are being acted upon,” the ITTO journal as well as the British tropical timber industry information bulletin still headlined the “considerable progress” made in tropical country forest practices. See Tropical Forest Update, 10 (2), 2000; Hardwoodmarkets.com, 15 (7), July 2000. Presided by Maurice Strong, major figure in the international system for anything having to do with the environment. http://www.cgiar.org/who/wwa_history.html#top. www.cifor.cgiar.org. Author’s interview with a Foreign Affairs ministry official who was involved in these negotiations. CIFOR is an international research organization whose authority is recognized worldwide. Its strong point is an ability to find, draw, solicit, and publish the best studies on every aspect of forestry. It is an invaluable source of information and reflection, thanks particularly to the critical work conducted by D. Kaimowitz and the Polex distribution list to which this book owes considerable thanks, polex@ cgnet.com.We also wish to thank Robert Nasi for the French language distribution list of the Famille Thématique Forêts. adie_ [email protected]. Deutsch Gesellschaft für technishe Zusammenarbeit, German technical cooperation. FAO, State of the World’s Forests, 1999, p. 76. Jean Clément: former employee of the Centre Technique Forestier Tropical (forerunner of the Cirad), the Cooperation Ministry and the FAO; E. F. Bruenig: former forestry department chair at the University of Hamburg, associate member of the prestigious Oxford Forestry Institute; Jeffrey Sayer: director-general of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) until Spring 2001. Author’s interview with a Bank forester in March 1999.The accuracy of the figure is perhaps less important than our informant’s perception of it. See Olivier Thibaud, “Entre écologie, économie et sociétés: la question de l’utilisation ‘rationnelle’ des ressources vivantes,” Nature, Sciences, Sociétés, 5 (1), 1997, pp. 72–77. On these notions see Sylvie Faucheux and Jean-François Noël, Economie des ressources naturelles et de l’environnement, Paris, Armand Colin, 1995, especially chs. 6 and 8. Use-value of a good in economic terms: capability of a good to satisfy a need. For an extensive bibliography and an exhaustive critical presentation of the London School approach together with a remarkable field study aimed to test the tools of the contingent valuation method empirically, see Guillaume Lescuyer, Evaluation économique et gestion viable de la forêt tropicale. Réflexion sur un mode de coordination des usages d’une forêt de l’est-Cameroun, Doctoral dissertation defended at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, December 18, 2000. See also the special issue on the contingent valuation method in Nature, Sciences, Sociétés, 2, 1999, pp. 33–57. Camille Bann, The Economic Valuation of Tropical Forest Land Use Options.A Manual for Researchers, EEPSEA publications, November 13, 1999, p. 28. (our emphasis). Site: www.eepsea.org/ publications/specialp2/ACF30F.html.

NOTES

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60. A Swiss, Bruno Manser, devoted his life to roaring out the cause of the local populations in Borneo, particularly the Penan and Dayak of Sarawak. Numerous poignant testimonies are gathered in Bruno Manser, Voices from the Rainforest. Testimonies of a Threatened People, Bruno Manser Foundation, Basel, 1996. 61. Steven Gartlan, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All: History, Social Science, and the Conservation of Nature,” in H. Eves, R. Hardin, and S. Rupp (eds), Resource Use in the Trinational Sangha River Region of Equatorial Africa: Histories, Knowledge Forms, and Institutions, New Haven (Conn.),Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Bulletin 102, 1998, pp. 236–237. 62. See Michael M. Cernea (ed.), Putting People First. Sociological Variables in Rural Development,World Bank, 1985. 63. Theory based on what is known as the R. Coase theorem developed by J. H. Dales, see D. W. Bromley, Environment and Economy, Property Rights and Public Policy, Cambridge, Blackwell, 1991. 64. See Etienne Le Roy’s general introduction to the collective work L’appropriation de la terre en Afrique noire, op. cit., pp. 11–23 as well as the chapter by Philippe de Leener and Alain Bertrand entitled “Le foncier de l’arbre et les fonciers de la forêt,” pp. 97–108. 65. See Oran Young,“Gérer les biens communs planétaires,” Critique internationale, 9, October 2000, pp. 147–160. 66. See infra, ch. 6. 67. Serge Bahuchet (ed.), The Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Tropical Forests, European Commission, Luxembourg, Office of Official Publications, 1994. 68. European Union “Actions is financed by budget line B7/5041 and administered by several Commission directorates-general including DG VIII-Development, DG XI-Environment and DG I-External Relations.”

Chapter Three

Deforestation: an Endless Debate

1. The Avança Brasil program has planned major construction projects over the next 20 years to build roads, highways, hydraulic power stations, pipelines, high tension lines, and utility infrastructures that will cause lasting degradation of the Amazon forest. See William F. Laurance et al., “The Future of the Brazilian Amazon,” Science, January 19, 2001, pp. 438–439. 2. As regards deforestation in South America, the TREES II project thus lists the ten main causes of deforestation: selective or intensive cutting; itinerant agriculture; spread of periurban agriculture; cash crop agriculture, family farming or plantation agriculture; spread of non agricultural economic activities, such as industry, tourism, etc.; ranching; exploitation of nonrenewable resources; exploitation of charcoal; human establishments; hydroelectric dams. 3. Jean Clément, “Le développement de la pensée et des actions forestières tropicales depuis 1946,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 252, p. 22. 4. FAO, COFO-2001, http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/index.jsp. FAO figures are disputed from various sides, particularly WWF and the WRI, which feel on the contrary that tropical deforestation was greater in the 1990s than in the 1980s and that it is in the neighborhood of 16 million hectares per year. 5. Cited by Arild Angelsen and David Kaimowitz, “Rethinking the Causes of Deforestation: Lessons from Economic Models,” The World Bank Research Observer, 14 (1), February 1999, p. 74. 6. The Angelsen and Kaimowitz study is captivating in that it summarizes 140 economic models that analyze the causes of tropical deforestation and takes stock of what scientists agree on and what they do not. 7. James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, “Reconsidering the extent of deforestation in twentieth century West Africa,” Unasylva, 49 (192), 1998/1. By the same authors see Reframing Deforestation, Global analysis and Local Realities: Studies in West Africa, London, Routledge, 1998.

234

Notes

8. Marchés tropicaux, September 17, 1999. 9. See Nigel Dudley, Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, and Francis Sullivan, Bad harvest? The Timber Trade and the Degradation of the World’s Forests, London, Earthscan, 1996;The Rainforest Foundation et al., Life after Logging: The Impacts of Commercial Timber Extraction in Tropical Rainforests, June 1999; Greenpeace, Buying Destruction. A Greenpeace report for corporate consumers of forest products, Greenpeace International Publications, August 1999. 10. Michael M. Cernea (ed.), Putting People First, op. cit., p. 307. 11. We thank Alain Bertrand, specialist on Madagascar, for having drawn our attention to this point. See Alain Bertrand, Jesse Ribot, and Pierre Montagne, “Origines historiques de la déforestation et politiques forestières en Afrique francophone: de la peur incantatoir e à la réalité?”, Cirad-forêt (personal communication). 12. James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, “Reconsidering the extent of deforestation in twentieth century West Africa,” art. cit. 13. FAO State of the World’s Forest 2001. 14. “World Bank Involvement in Sector Adjustment for Forests in Indonesia: the Issues,” Washington, D.C., 1998. 15. “A Review of the World Bank’s 1991 Forest Strategy and Its Implementation,” January 2000. The Bank quotes this estimate but does not claim responsibility for it. 16. Ibid., p. 25. 17. Global Forest Watch, An Overview of Logging in Cameroon, op. cit. 18. See Gérard Buttoud, La forêt et l’Etat en Afrique sèche et à Madagascar, Paris, Karthala, 1995. 19. See P. Corte, J. Doat, and Ph. Girard, “Le bois-énergie hier et aujourd’hui,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 252, 1997, pp. 55–63. 20. Ibid., p. 58. 21. This is also the experience of Alain Karsenty, Cirad socio-economist specialized in forest tax systems. 22. See Alan Grainger, Controlling Tropical Deforestation, London, Earthscan, 1993. 23. For an illustrated technical report, see Bernard Sellato,“La tradition du brûlis n’est pas responsable des incendies,” Géo, November 1997, pp. 164–165. For a scientific account, see P. Levang, G. Michon, and H. de Foresta, “Agriculture forestière ou agroforesterie,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 251, 1997, pp. 29–41. 24. See Frédéric Durand, Les forêts en Asie du Sud-Est. Le cas de l’Indonésie, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1994. 25. These figures are quoted from a splendid book with a thorough bibliography, maps and superb illustrations accompanying an in-depth and very informative case study on farming resettlement in southern Sumatra: Muriel Charras and Marc Pain (eds.), Migrations spontanées en Indonésie, Orstom/CNRS, 1993.We thank Marc Pain for his gift of this precious work. 26. Ibid., p. 24. 27. A list of these abuses in the years 1988–90 and the way they were reported in the Indonesian press can be found in Migrations spontanées en Indonesie, op. cit., pp. 313–318. 28. Ibid., p. 311. 29. Levant et al., art. cit., p. 35. 30. Migrations spontanées en Indonésie, op. cit., p. 347. 31. Ibid., p. 311. 32. Ibid., p. 292. 33. See Harold Brookfield (dir.), Transformation with Industrialization in Peninsular Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. 34. See Harold Brookfield, Lesley Potter, and Yvonne Byron, In Place of the Forest. Environment and Socio-economic Transformation in Borneo and the Eastern Malay Peninsula, Tokyo, United Nations University Press, 1995. 35. The World Bank, The Jengka Triangle Projects in Malaysia, Impact Evaluation Report, Washington, D.C., 1987. 36. See François Grison, “Le paradigme forestier,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 260, 1999, p. 53.

NOTES

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37. Philip Hirsch, “Deforestation and Development in Thailand,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 8, 1987, pp. 129–138; Seeing Forests for Trees. Environment and Environmentalism in Thailand, Chiang Mai, Silkworm Books, 1997, pp. 15–36. 38. See Alain Bertrand, Jesse Ribot, and Pierre Montagne,“Origines historiques de la déforestation et politiques forestières en Afrique francophone,” Cirad-Forêt, art. cit.; Eric Léonard, Jonas Ibo, “Appropriation et gestion de la rente forestière en Côte d’Ivoire,” Politique africaine, 53, 1994, pp. 25–36. 39. David M. Kummer, Deforestation in the Postwar Philippines, Manila,Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992, p. 27. 40. Marie-Françoise Fleury, “Différents aspects de la filière bois en Amazonie brésilienne,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 259, 1999, p. 59. 41. Pascal Delisle, Colonisation agricole et développement soutenable en forêt tropicale: pour une approche multidimensionnelle. Le cas de l’Amazonie colombienne, Doctoral dissertation in economics, University of Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1999. 42. Nigel J. H. Smith, Emanuel A. S. Serrao, Paulo T.Alvim, and Italo C. Falesi, Amazonia, Resiliency and Dynamism of the Land and its People, Tokyo, United Nations University Press, 1995, “The Myth of Virginity,” p. 15. 43. The Amazon is the world’s largest river with a basin of over 6 million square kilometers, in other words, nearly 5 percent of the land on earth. 44. Area of the Amazon defined by a legal text that determines the region eligible to receive subsidies from the Amazon Superintendence (SUDAM).The estimate is given by Nigel J. H. Smith et al., op. cit., p. 49. 45. V. de Reynal, M. G. Muchagata, O.Topall, and J. Hébette, Agricultures familiales et développpement en front pionnier amazonien, LASAT/CAT-GRET-DAT/UAG, Paris-Belém-Pointe-à-Pitre, 1997, p. 3, as well as Hervé Théry (ed.), Environnement et développement en Amazonie brésilienne, Paris, Belin, 1997, p. 77. 46. Figures given on the basis of official Brazilian sources by A. L. Hall, Developing Amazonia. Deforestation and Social Conflict in Brazil’s Carajas Programme, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996, pp. 145–150. They are also found in Richard Pasquis’ article “La déforestation en Amazonie brésilienne et son impact sur l’environnement,” Bois et Forêts des tropiques, 260, 1999, p. 57. For the 1966–75 period, Hall ranks the causes of deforestation as follows: 38 percent due to cattle-raising (subsidized at 90 percent); 30 percent due to peasants (17 percent in the context of official resettlement, 13 percent spontaneous); 27 percent due to road building; 4 percent due to timber extraction; cited by Ans Kolk, Forests in International Environmental Politics. International Organizations, NGOs and the Brazilian Amazon, Utrecht, International Books, 1996, pp. 68–72. 47. Owners of fazendas, large estates usually given over to extensive cattle ranching. 48. Richard Pasquis, art. cit., p. 58. 49. A middleman between the logger in the forest and the sawmill located in a regional center, with a reputation of being trigger happy and proud of it. 50. On these various issues, see Philippe Léna,“La forêt amazonienne: un enjeu politique et social contemporain,” Autrepart/Les Cahiers des Sciences Humaines, 9, 1999, pp. 97–120. 51. Financial Times, September 26, 2000. 52. Richard Pasquis, art. cit., p. 58. 53. Robert Faris, “Deforestation and Land Use on the Evolving Frontier: An Empirical Assessment,” Harvard Institute for International Development, February 1999. 54. Sven Wunder, The Economics of Deforestation, the Example of Ecuador, London, Macmillan, 2001. 55. Arild Angelsen and David Kaimowitz, “Rethinking the Causes of Deforestaion: Lessons from Economic Models,” The World Bank Research Observer, 14 (1), February 1999, pp. 73–98. 56. Ibid., p. 88. 57. William D. Sunderlin, “Crise économique et changements politiques en Indonésie. Premiers effets sur le secteur forestier,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 260, 1999, pp. 80–83.

236

Notes

58. Agir ici-Survie, Le silence de la forêt, réseaux, mafias et filière bois au Cameroun, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2000.This little book is full of information, most of which unfortunately cannot be used given that it is incomplete and the sources are not quoted.The Geovic affair has raised public outrage, and the way it is related in this pamphlet concurs with widely circulated information that we have been given elsewhere, while taking into account the rumor factor, all the greater in Cameroon since the political-economic system is totally opaque. 59. Once flooded, the vegetation decomposes and releases gases harmful to human health; moreover, the resulting acidity of the water corrodes the turbines. 60. A. Grainger, Controlling Tropical Deforestation, op. cit., pp. 66–67. 61. See Philippe Léna, art. cit. 62. For a very well-balanced assessment of the role of forest roads in economic development and their danger to the environment of forest ecosystems, see ATIBT/FAO, Road Infrastructures in Tropical Forests. Road to Development or Destruction?, Paris, Rome, 1999. 63. M. Cárdenas, Director of the Ecuadorian Forest and Natural Resources Institute,ATIBT/FAO, Ibid., pp. 29–30. 64. D. Kaimowitz, Ibid., p. 41. 65. Tropical Timber, 14 (8), August 1999. 66. Reported by the Financial Times, August 14, 2000: “The government says that in recent decades the fires have destroyed a total of 20.1 million hectares of forest, out of a national total of 40.1 million hectares. Indonesia is second only to Brazil in the size and expanse of its tropical rainforests.” 67. Down to Earth, October 31, 1997, p. 34; Asiaweek, March 13, 1998, p. 48. 68. World Bank, The Challenges of World Bank Involvement in Forests: An Evaluation of Indonesia’s Forests and World Bank Assistance,Washington, D.C., January 6, 2000, p. viii.

Chapter Four The Timber Trade: Guilty Party and Scapegoat 1. See FAO’s State of the World’s Forests report, 1997. Recently FAO’s line has changed slightly, putting “overharvesting of industrial wood” on the same level as fuelwood, ahead of overgrazing, disease, and other causes of deterioration, but commercial logging always comes after conversion of forestland to agriculture and the building of large-scale infrastructures. 2. Nigel Dudley, Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, and Francis Sullivan, Bad Harvest? The Timber Trade and the Degradation of the World’s Forests,WWF, Earthscan, London, 1995, p. 16, and Greenpeace, Buying Destruction, a Greenpeace Report for Corporate Consumers of Forest Products, Greenpeace International Publications, August 1999. 3. Frontier forests:“large tracts of ancient forest which are large enough to sustain viable populations of all native plant and animal life,” Greenpeace (from WRI), op. cit. 4. WRI, An Overview of Logging in Cameroon, op. cit., p. 12. 5. WRI, A First Look at Logging in Gabon, op. cit. 6. Agence Française de Développement. 7. For those interested in trees, we will mention Padouk and Kevazingo, the production of which has surpassed that of traditional Ozigo in Gabon, and Moabi is rising rapidly. 8. ATIBT (International Technical Tropical Timber Association), La Lettre de l’ATIBT, Summer 2000, 12, p. 38, our emphasis. 9. Interview with Francis Rougier, CEO of Groupe Rougier, Marchés Tropicaux, May 26, 2000, p. 374. 10. “Market Creation,” Tropical Timbers, April 1997. 11. The often decried kon pane plywood used in construction. Concrete molding uses huge quantities of wood which is discarded afterward, a patent example of the waste of tropical timber criticized by ecologists.

NOTES

237

12. We are very grateful to Jean-Marc Roda from Cirad-Forêt who drew our attention to this point and gave us, prior to publication, all the data he had collected and analyzed on the economic situation of tropical timber on the basis of FAO and ITTO sources. 13. See Gérard Buttoud,“L’évolution du commerce mondial des bois tropicaux: enjeux, stratégies, poltiques,” Economie Rurale, July–August 1995, pp. 3–10. Alain Karsenty, “Forêts tropicales et mondialisation. Les mutations du marché international des bois,” Autrepart/Les Cahiers des sciences humaines, 9, 1999, pp. 125–135. 14. Hardwoodmarkets.com, October 2000, p. 1. 15. Sapele, Iroko, Sipo, Movingui, Moabi, Bibolo, Padouk, Doussié, Ceiba. 16. For instance, in Sabah (which practically doubled its log exports in 1999), a yard furniture manufacturing lobby managed to obtain a ban on log and sawn wood exports from Selangan Batu because these manufacturers were no longer able to purchase their supply at world prices (Hardwoodmarkets.com, October 2000, p. 7). 17. Taking into account world timber consumption, 50 percent is used for energy, 25 percent for lumber, 17 percent for paper pulp, and 8 percent for “composites,” figures given by Olman Serrano, FAO, quoted by Marchés Tropicaux, May 26, 2000, p. 971. 18. Christian Sales, “Le commerce international des bois tropicaux est-il l’une des causes de la déforestation en zones tropicales?” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 260, 1999, p. 69. 19. Petteri Pihlajamäki (vice-president of a major Finnish consulting firm for wood products and fiber resources), “Pacific Rim Wood Fibre Demand and Supply Prospects. Will There be a Shortage of Wood?” Paper Delivered at the 11th World Forestry Congress in Antalya, Turkey, October 13–22, 1997. http://www.fao.org/forestry/foda/wforcong/publi/v5/t33e. 20. Jean-Marc Roda, Etat de l’économie des bois d’œuvre tropicaux 2000, CIRAD, Montpellier, 2000. 21. Ibid. 22. Peeling involves cutting the wood in a spiral closely following the growth rings. The wood grain is flat and has a handsome aspect. Most peeled veneer is used to make plywood.The best quality wood is reserved for the outer panel. Rare and precious wood veneers are used in the manufacture of high quality furniture and ornaments. See Dominique Coutrot, Le bois et ses industries, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, “Que sais-je?” 1997. 23. Panels made of wood sheets glued using various processes that require skill and a certain degree of industrialization: driers, gluers, multi-story presses, etc. 24. The following data are borrowed from Jean-Marc Roda and supplemented by data from ITTO 2000 commented in Marchés Tropicaux, November 3, 2000, pp. 2163–2167. 25. Jean-Marc Roda, op. cit. 26. Ibid. 27. ITTO Secretariat, Steven Johnson,“Success and Responsibility in the Tropical Timber Market,” Tropical Forest Update, 10 (3), 2000. 28. On these points, see the accounts of European industrials at the ATIBT Forum held in Istambul in May 2000, published by Marchés tropicaux, May 26, 2000. 29. Polyvinyl chloride, or more simply, plastic. 30. La feuille de Sylva, 22, 1997. 31. On this whole issue, see Alain Karsenty, “Forêts tropicales et mondialisation,” art. cit. 32. Rotation: the time elapsed between two cutting cycles in the rationale of sustainable management (sustained yield). 33. Autrepart, art. cit., p. 123. 34. Marchés Tropicaux, September 17, 1999. 35. Interview with Francis Rougier, Marchés Tropicaux, May 26, 2000. 36. Marie-Françoise Fleury, art. cit. 37. Jim Douglas and Juergen Blaser (World Bank) quoted by Greenpeace, Buying Destruction, op. cit., p. 14.

238

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38. The data quoted here come from a Worldwatch Institute study authored by Janet Abramovitz and Ashley Matton, Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape Worldwatch Paper, 149, December 1999, http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/paper/149.html. This study summarizes information and statistics supplied by international organizations and the economic studies published by private organizations in the pulp and paper sector. 39. For packaging: 48 percent; for writing and printing: 30 percent; for the press: 12 percent; for sanitary and domestic use: 6 percent (Paper Cuts, op. cit.). 40. As usual, the consumption gap between rich countries and poor countries is considerable: 335 kg of paper on average is used per year and per person in the United States, less than 6 kg on average for all of Africa; 164 kg in industrialized countries, 18 kg in developing countries, and less than 1 kg in some twenty African countries (ibid., p. 11). 41. Source: Paper Cuts, op. cit. 42. Financial Times, November 24, 2000. 43. Alain Karsenty points out that whereas no Western group has ever built a mill exceeding 500,000 tons of pulp per year, the Aracruz mill in Brazil produces practically a million tons per year, Malaysia has built a similar facility in Sarawak, “L’adieu au meranti?” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, no. 249, 1996, p. 75. In Indonesia, the leading producer, Asia Pulp and Paper (subsidiary of Sinar Mas based in Singapore) owns the country’s two largest mills, one of which being the Inda Kiat that has a capacity of 1.7 million tons per year.These three countries have the largest production units in the world. 44. From a report drafted jointly for CIFOR and WWF Macroeconomics Program Office by Chris Barr, Profits on Paper: the Political Economy of Fiber, Finance, and Debt in Indonesia’s Pulp and Paper Industries, CIFOR and WWF Macroeconomics Program Office, Bogor, Indonesia, November 30, 2000. 45. Remark noted by Chris Barr during his investigation in the course of an interview with the wood supply manager of one of the major pulp producers in Indonesia (Profits on Paper, op. cit., p. 11, note 14). 46. See Jean Coussy, “International Political Economy,” in Marie-Claude Smouts (ed.), The New International Relations, London, Hurst & Co./CERI 2001, pp. 140–154. (orig. French edition: Les nouvelles relations internationals, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1998.) 47. Global Witness,“Cambodia,Where Money Grows on Trees. Continuing Abuses of Cambodia’s Forest Policy,” A Briefing Document, October 10, 1996. 48. See Alain Karsenty,“Le boom des exportations africaines de bois,” Marchés Tropicaux, November 24, 1995; “Les ambitions asiatiques en Afrique centrale,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 248, 1996, p. 78; “Evolution de la production et des échanges des bois tropicaux en 1995,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 250, 1996, p. 75. 49. Rimbunan Hijau, WTK, Idris Hydraulic (Malaysia), Samling (Malaysia/South Korea), Eidai (Japan, very well established in Brazil), Prime Group (Singapore). 50. Glunz (Germany), Rougier (France), CFG (Gabon, France, the Netherlands),Thanry (France). 51. Jean-Jacques Landrot, “L’OIBT et le marasme des marchés,” La Lettre de l’ATIBT, 8, Summer 1998. 52. See Peter Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest, Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1997; “Corporate Power in the Forests of the Solomon Islands,” Pacific Affairs, 71 (4),Winter 1998–99, pp. 524–546;“Globalization and Deforestation in the Asia-Pacific,” Environmental Politics,Winter 1998, pp. 114–135. 53. Reports cited by Peter Dauvergne, “Corporate Power in the Forests of the Solomon Islands,” art. cit., p. 533. 54. Laurent Debroux and Alain Karsenty, “L’implantation des sociétés forestières asiatiques en Afrique centrale,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 254, 1997, pp. 80–85. 55. Idem, p. 84.They are also increasingly interested in Russia’s natural forests where, for instance, Malaysian giant Rimbunan Hijau (in English, “Ever Green”!) has been granted a forest

NOTES 56. 57. 58. 59.

60.

61. 62.

239

concession in the Khabarovsk region in far eastern Russia, thus following the example of Japan, China, and South Korea. For a study on the activity of foreign companies in old-growth forests by country and by company, see Greenpeace’s well-documented report, Buying Destruction, op. cit. Interview with the director-general of the Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB), Marchés Tropicaux, November 3, 2000, p. 2168. AFD interview. Global Witness is an NGO that fights for human rights through environmental protection. It investigates timber trafficking and more recently, diamond trafficking. A competent and respected organization, it has done remarkable investigative work since 1995 and denounced both the corruption of elites and the control of foreign companies over Cambodia’s forests. Italy, 19.17 percent; Turkey, 15.07 percent; China, 7.77 percent; Indonesia, 6.31 percent. Figures from the Liberian Forestry Development Authority quoted by Global Witness in its brief to the Security Council, January 17, 2001. Site: http://www.oneworld.org/globalwitness/press/ gwliberia.htm. Financial Times, December 17, 1999; Tropical Timbers, January 2000. See Tropical Forest Update, 10 (3), 2000,Table of Tropical Log Trading in 1998, p. 19.

Chapter Five

Ecopolitics Inch by Inch

1. The notion of international ecopolitics was suggested by Philippe Le Prestre and refers “not only to the set of political dimensions involved in identifying and resolving environmental questions but more specifically, to the attempts by international actors to impose their definition of security with regard to nature and the quality of life of societies [and to use new deficiencies to their benefit.], “L’Ecopolitique internationale, op. cit., p. xxvii. According to Denis Pirages, ecopolitics “represents the emergence of border ecological, ethical, and economic issues and conflicts in international politics as a partial substitute for the narrower military power issues typical of the international politics of the industrial era.” The New Context for International Relations: Global Ecopolitcs, Belmont,Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1978, p. 30. 2. For the theory of justification, see Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, La Justification. Essai sur les économies de la grandeur, Paris, Gallimard, 1991. 3. Ernst Haas, When Knowledge Is Power: Three Models of Change in International Organizations, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1990. 4. Regarding this approach see Javier Santiso: “Diffusion of Ideas and International Relations,” in Marie-Claude Smouts (ed.), The New International Relations: Theory and Practice, London, Hurst & Co., 1998, pp. 126–132. (orig. French edition: Les nouvelles relations internationals, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1998.) 5. This fact has been well understood, for instance, by the ATIBT (Association technique internationale des bois tropicaux) president, Jean-Jacques Landrot, who dutifully attends every important meeting to give the timber industry’s viewpoint and travels the world over, with a conspicuous expense of energy. 6. On all the initiatives taken during this period see David Humphreys, Forest Politics, op. cit., pp. 84–90. 7. See Ch. Barthod, “La Conférence des Nations Unies sur l’Environnement et le Développement,” Revue forestière française, 45 (1), 1993, pp. 7–23 as well as EUROFOR, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 818 ff. 8. See supra, Introduction, pp. 14–15. 9. These groups are not expert bodies but open-ended intergovernmental organizations. All countries may participate, either as members or observers, as can the international organizations and representatives of those the Rio Conference designated in Agenda 21 as “major groups” associated with sustainable development: women, youth, indigenous peoples, workers and their

240 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

Notes

unions, farmers, scientists, teachers and teacher trainers, businesses, local communities, and non-governmental organizations. These arguments, followed by proposals for another policy, were outlined in a manifesto distributed during Rio ⫹ 5 under the title International Citizen Declaration against a Global Forest Convention, July 1997. Interview conducted in Yokohama in December 1997 in the delegates lounge of the ITTO Council. The IFF was funded by voluntary extra-budgetary contributions under the aegis of the CSD, itself not terribly hale and hearty. Economic and Social Council, E/2000/L.32, October 18, 2000. The last meeting was held in Ottawa in December 1999, six weeks before IFF-4. In the field of European studies there is a sub-discipline called “comitology.” Subsidiary Body on Scientific,Technical, and Technological Advice. See in particular the report entitled “Forest-related work on international and regional organizations,” E/CN.17/IFF/1998/5, June 19, 1998. Ibid., §52, table 1. In 1976 UNCTAD, had adopted the Integrated Program for Commodities, which listed 19 commodities for which trade agreements should be reached. Only three new agreements have been signed since 1976: on rubber, jute, and tropical timbers. Tropical Forest Update, 10 (3), 2000, p. 19. Ibid. The Agreement was negotiated over a period of seven years. Finalized in 1983, it came into effect two years later. It took another eighteen months of intense debate before the location of its headquarters was decided and an executive director was appointed. Report published in 1989, compiled by Dr. Duncan Poore, an IIED consultant. Tropical Timbers, July 1997. Ibid., October 1997. In April 2002, the ITTO had 31 producer countries and 26 consumer countries, including the fifteen members of the European Union. It is not by chance that the ITTO’s first executive director came from Malaysia and was succeeded by a Brazilian. If we quote this example it is because Jürgen Blaser’s biography was published officially in ITTO documents.We had the privilege of meeting him in the field in Cameroon in 1998. For a detailed study of the workings of the ITTO, see Fred P. Gale, The Tropical Timber Trade Regime, London, Macmillan Press, 1998. At the Council’s 29th session in October/November 2000, of a total of 6.94 million dollars, voluntary contributions were distributed as follows: Japan, $4.81 million; Switzerland, $890,000; the United States, $104,000; Australia, $50,000; South Korea, $30,000; Sweden, $9,500.The other amounts are so small that we have given up the search for them. ITTO. Ten Years of Progress, brochure published by the secretariat in 1996 (p. 9). See for instance Marcus Colchester,“The ITTO, Kill or Cure for the Rainforest?” Transnational Associations, 4, 1991, pp. 336–234. For a report on the negotiations from the NGOs’ standpoint and the reactions from Friends of the Earth-US, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club and the WWF, see Environment & Development File, United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service, File Treaty Series, no. 8, March 1997, pp. 1–7. The Forest Sector: A World Bank Policy Paper, 1991. Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela in Latin America and the Caribbean; Cameroon, the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Madagascar, Central African Republic, and Zaire in Sub-Saharan Africa; India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines in Asia.The fact that the Congo, Gabon, and even Zaire were placed on the list of countries with threatened forests raised a certain bitterness among the French.

NOTES

241

36. We deliberately refuse to get into the dispute over terms regarding the difference between conservation and preservation. The background of this quarrel is found in accusations against ecologists according to their degree of attachment to the rights of trees and animals (deep ecology). Being a “preservationist” is allegedly worse than being a “conservationist” (or is it the other way around)? 37. A Review of the World Bank’s 1991 Forest Strategy and Its Implementation, January 13, 2000. 38. Ibid., p xii. 39. WRI, The Right Conditions. The World Bank, Structural Adjustment and Forest Policy Reform, Washington, 2000, p. 11. 40. Jim Douglas, chief World Bank Forestry Advisor, “Financing Sustainable Forest Management: Doing more with (probably) less.” Paper delivered at the International CIFOR workshop of experts on financing sustainable forest management, Oslo, Norway, January 22–25, 2001. 41. Michael Grut, John A. Gray, and Nicolas Egli, Forest Pricing and Concession Policies,World Bank, 1991. 42. Translator’s note: Sale of standing volume, a type of logging right (definition from GFW, An Overview of Logging in Cameroon, op. cit.). 43. For an in-depth study of the advantages and drawbacks of such an approach, see Alain Karsenty, Les instruments économiques de la forêt tropicale; le cas de l’Afrique centrale, Paris, Maisonneuve et Larose, Cirad, 1999. For an opposite viewpoint, see Jean-Christopher Caret, La réforme de la fiscalité forestière au Cameroun; Contexte, bilan et questions ouvertes, Paris, Centre d’économie industrielle, Ecole nationale supérieure des mines de Paris (CERNA), study commissioned by IFIA (Interafrican Forest Industries Association), 1998. 44. Verbal sources: interviews with economist specialized in Cameroon and French industrial who drew my attention to this case. Written sources: J. C. Carret, op. cit., p. 65; WRI, The Right Conditions. The World Bank, Structural Adjustment and Forest Policy Reform, Washington, 2000, pp. 68–69. 45. The WRI study, The Right Conditions, op. cit., provides a good comparative study of the effects of conditionality in various countries, showing what has not worked and why. 46. Michael Ross,“Conditionality and Logging Reform in the Tropics,” in Robert O. Keohane and Marc A. Levy (eds), Institutions for Environmental Aid. Pitfalls and Promises, Cambridge (Mass.), The MIT Press, 1996. 47. Shalendra D. Sharma, “Building Effective International Environmental Regimes: The Case of the Global Environment Facility,” Journal of Environment and Development, 5 (1), March 1996, pp. 73–86. 48. These criticisms are developed in particular by Indian environmentalists:Vandana Shiva, Avijit Gupta, Aril Agarwal et al. 49. Agence Française de Développement Group, FFEM secretariat, Le FFEM et les forêts, Paris, November 2000. 50. See Jürgen Blaser, Senior Forester,World Bank and Jim Douglas, Senior Forest Advisor,World Bank, “A Future for Forests? Issues and implications for the emerging forest policy and strategy of the World Bank,” Tropical Forest Update, 10 (4), 2000, p. 12. 51. See Chapter 2, p. 79, notes 58 and 59 as well as Philippe Bontems and Gilles Rotillon, Economie de l’environnement, Paris, La Découverte, 1998. 52. See Sylvie Faucheux, Jean-François Noël: “What the respondent does in answering the questions is to evaluate what the increase (or decrease) in price would be if a commodity existed for the commodity in question, wherefore the term ‘contingent market’ ” (op. cit., p. 228). 53. Kenneth Arrow, Robert Solow et al., “Report of the NOAA Panel on Contingent Valuation,” US Federal Register, 1993, 58 (10), pp. 4602–4614. Also mentioned by Camille Bann, op. cit. as well as Joshua T. Bishop, Valuing Forests. A Review of Methods and Applications in Developing Countries, International Institute for Environment and Development, London, July 1999, World Bank website, Environmental Economics and Indicators Department.

242

Notes

54. H. J. Ruitenbeek, Social Cost–benefit Analysis of the Korup Project, Cameroon, prepared for the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Republic of Cameroon, 1989; Economic Analysis of Issues and Projects Relating to the Establishment of the Proposed Cross River National Park (Oban Division) and Support Zone, prepared for the WWF for Cross River National Parks Project, Nigeria, 1989. See also Evaluating Economic Policies for promoting rainforest conservation in developing countries, Ph.D. dissertation, London School of Economics, London, 1990. 55. See the summary of these studies presented by Joshua T. Bishop, op. cit., part 2, pp. 121–124. 56. Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia, www.eepsea.org. 57. Camille Bann, op. cit. 58. H. J. Ruitenbeek, “Modelling Economy–Ecology Linkages in mangroves: Economic Evidence for Promoting Conservation in Bintuni Bay, Ecological Economics, 10 (3), 1994, pp. 233–247. 59. A.Veríssimo,A. Baretto, P. Mattos, M.Tarifa, R. and C. Uhl,“Logging Impacts and Prospects for Sustainable Forest Management in an Old Amazonian Frontier: The Case of Paragominas,” Forest Ecology and Management, 55, 1992, pp. 169–199; see the summary in Bishop, op. cit., pp. 141–142. 60. M. Pinedo-Vasquez, D. Zarin, and P. Jipp, “Economic Returns from Forest Conversion in the Peruvian Amazon,” Ecological Economics, 6, 1992, pp. 163–173. 61. C. Peters,A. Gentry, and R. Mendelsohn,“Valuation of an Amazonian Rainforest,” Nature, June 1989, pp. 655–656. 62. See G. Lescuyer’s lengthy bibliography (op. cit.) as well as the report by J. T. Bishop (op. cit., part 3) and C. Bann’s manual (op. cit.). 63. Known as the Fisher model, described by Sylvie Faucheux and Jean-François Noël, op. cit., p. 161 ff. 64. The FAO defines NWFP as “products of biological origin other than wood, derived from forests, other wooded land and trees outside forests. NWFP may be gathered from the wild, or produced in forest plantations, agroforestry schemes and trees outside forests” (http://www.fao. org/forestry/FOP/FOPW/NWFP/new/nwfp.htm). They are immensely numerous and varied: medicinal plants, natural dyes and tints, resins, aromatic plants, edible nuts, mushrooms, herbs, fibers, honey, gums, essential oils, rattan, cork, etc. 65. Programa Pobreza e Meio Ambiente na Amazônia, Program Poverty and Environment in Amazonia. 66. See “Fruits of the Forest,” Tropical Forest Update, 9 (1), 1999, p. 12. 67. Richard Tipper, “Update on Carbon Offsets,” Tropical Forest Update, 8 (1), 1998, p. 2. 68. Source: FAO, Committee on Forestry, COFO-2001/9. 69. See Bruno Locatelli, Forêts tropicales et cycle du carbone, Montpellier, Cirad, 1996. 70. Nigel Asquith,“The Kyoto Protocol, ITTO and Tropical Forests,” Tropical Forest Update, 10 (3), 2000, p. 9. 71. Special Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry, September 2000, www.ipcc.ch/pub/srlulucf-e.pdf. 72. Financial Times, November 11–12, 2000. 73. See Alain Karsenty, Les instruments économiques de la forêt tropicale, op. cit., pp. 93–99.

Chapter Six

Conserving the Tropical Forest

1. A motley assortment of countries subscribed to this objective, some of which are not known to have a particularly extensive forest area (Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Canada, Chili, China, Colombia, Greece, Lithuania, Malawi, Mozambique, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Romania, Sakha Republic (former Yakut Republic), Slovakia, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan) whereas some countries were remarkably absent: Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cameroon, and Gabon.

NOTES

243

2. The ten countries mentioned are by no means the least significant: Brazil, China, Gabon, Indonesia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia,Tanzania, and Vietnam. 3. See the substantial study by C. Doumenge et al.,“Conservation de la biodiversité forestière en Afrique centrale atlantique: le réseau d’aires protégées est-il adéquat?” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 268, 2nd quarter 2001, pp. 5–23. 4. J. Michael Fay,“Development of a Trinational System of Conservation:A Ten-Year Perspective,” Yale Forestry and Environmental Studies Bulletin, 102, pp. 253–258. 5. On this topic see the accounts and bitter criticism of Georges Rossi, L’ingérence écologique. Environnement et développement rural du Nord au Sud, Paris, CNRS Editions, 2000, pp. 59–72. 6. M. Norton-Griffiths,‘The Economics of Wildlife Conservation Policy in Kenya,” pp. 279 ff, in E. J. Milner-Gulland, Ruth Mace (eds), Conservation of Biological Resources, Oxford, Blackwell, 1998. 7. On this question see the beautiful book written by forestry, biology, and environmental experts (ed.) Malcolm L. Hunter, Maintaining Biodiversity in Forest Ecosystems, Cambridge University Press, 1999. 8. K. Hill and A. M. Hurtado, Ache Life History, New York, Aldine de Gruyter, 1996, quoted by Milner-Gulland, op. cit., pp. 39–40. 9. Translator’s note: Subdivision of a logging concession indicating the surface area to be cut in a particular year (definition from GFW, An Overview of Logging in Cameroon, op. cit.). 10. First called Aménagement Pilote Intégré (1992–1996), the project became Forêts et Terroirs in the second phase. It was to end in Summer 2001. A description can be found in the Cirad-Forêts reports, a summary in Bergonzini and Lanly, op. cit., pp. 148–149 and a detailed report of the second phase by Ph. Collas de Chatelperron, Forêts et Terroirs project coordinator,“Vers la coordination des usages forestiers dans les forêts permanentes de l’Est Cameroon,” Cirad, discussion forum, International Agriculture Show, Paris, February 19, 2001, presentation. 11. Alain Karsenty, “Jeux à sommes nulles sur les massifs forestiers?” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, no. 247, 1st quarter 1996, p. 73. 12. Ph. Collas de Chatelperron, art. cit., p. 4. 13. Ph. Collas de Chatelperron, art. cit., p. 1. 14. Ibid., p. 8. 15. See B. A. Byers,“Review of donor strategies and approaches for biodiversity and forest conservation in the Congo Basin,” unpublished report for USAID’s CARPE (Central African Regional Program in the Environment), 2000, as well as C. Doumenge et al., art. cit., p. 23. 16. Cirad discussion forum, February 19, 2001. 17. See the papers prepared for the International Workshop on Financing Sustainable Forest Management, Oslo, January 22–25, 2001 particularly that of Frank S. Kufakwandi, Principal Forestry Officer, African Development Bank, “Consortium Funding for Sustainable Forest Management:African Perspectives and Priorities,” as well as Barin N. Ganguli,“Global Forestry Funding-Exploring Consortium Financing of Sustainable Forest Management.” www.cifor. cgiar.org/OSLO/IV. 18. Tropical Timbers, 12 (8), August 1997, pp. 1–2. 19. CSD, 5th session, April 7–25, 1997, E/CN.17/1997/12, §69(a). 20. Council Regulation (EC) No. 3062/95 of December 20, 1995. OJ L 327 of December 30, 1995. 21. Cited by Alain Bertrand, Didier Babin, and Robert Nasi in “Evolution et diversité du concept d’aménagement forestier,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 260 (2), 1999, p. 35. By the same authors see “L’adaptation de l’aménagement forestier à des situations diverses,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 261 (3), 1999, pp. 39–48 and “Les composantes de l’aménagement forestier et leurs incidences financières,” ibid., pp. 51–57. 22. Richard Pasquis, “La déforestation en Amazonie brésilienne . . .,” art. cit., p. 60.

244

Notes

23. See René Catinot, L’aménagement durable des forêts denses humides, Paris, ATIBT, Scytale, 1997 as well as Bernard Dupuy, Luc Durrieu de Madron and Yann Petrucci, “Sylviculture des peuplements naturels en forêt dense humide africaine. Acquis et recommandations,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 257 (3), 1998, pp. 5–19; B. Dupuy, H. F. Maître and I. Amsallem, Technique de gestion des écosystèmes forestiers tropicaux: Etat de l’art, Cirad/FAO, Working paper FAO/FPIRS/05, Rome, 1999. 24. ITTO, Ten Years of Progress, op. cit., p. 30. 25. Report by Duncan Poore and Thang Hooi Chiez, Review of Progress toward the Year 2000 Objective, op. cit. 26. In the Brazilian Amazon, by law, half the area of a land holding must be preserved as an official reserve and cannot be converted to farming. For large properties (over 1,000 hectares), this percentage can be as high as 80 percent. Sustainable management theoretically applies to these forest lands.The main obstacle has to do with a lack of actual control over these forest reserves, in reality often converted to agriculture and ranching, and the competition between timber from sustainably managed sources and illegally logged timber. 27. See Richard Rice, Cheri Sugal, and Ian Bowles,“Sustainable Forest Management:A Review of the Current Conventional Wisdom,”Washington, Conservation International, 1998. 28. Areas classified in internationally recognized categories—national parks, biosphere reserves, world heritage sites, Ramsar sites—as well as national designations: natural reserves, wildlife preserves, etc. 29. Memo from the Global Environment Facility, The Global Environment Facility—Experiences and Trends: Lessons for Sustainable Forest Management, Document circulated at Oslo during the workshop on financing SFM, January 2001 (see note 17). 30. Nigel Sizer and Dominiek Plouvier, Increased Investment and Trade by Transnational Logging Companies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific: Implications for the Sustainable Management and Conservation of Tropical Forests, EC-Project B7–6201/96–16/VII/FOR, Brussels, 2000. 31. Recommendation no. 13. 32. The Lomé Convention, which the Cotonou Agreement now replaces, includes a section on the forest. 33. See Rivo Ratsimbarison’s talk at the Cirad discussion forum on February 19, 2001, “La politique de gestion locale des forêts à Madagascar,” as well as A. Bertrand et al., “L’adaptation de l’aménagement forestier à des situations diverses,” art. cit., pp. 41–45. 34. See Natasha Landell-Mills, Jason Ford, Privatising Sustainable Forestry; A Global Review of Trends and Challenges, IIED, London, 1999, [email protected]. 35. A. Bertrand et al., “Les composantes de l’aménagement forestier . . .” art. cit., p. 54. 36. The French arm of the GEF. 37. We thank Francis Rougier for having kindly allowed us to examine the documents his group presented during the colloquium “Quel avenir pour le secteur forêt et environnement au Gabon?”Association France-Gabon, February 2001, and for explaining to us in concrete terms what sustainable management meant for his company. 38. Jean Estève, president of the ATIBT forest commission, ATIBT Newsletter, January 2001, 13, p. 2. 39. Michael Adams, “Resources Needed but Directed Where?” Tropical Forest Update, 7 (3), 1997, pp. 19–20. 40. The Cameroon branch of the Thanry group with which the AFD organized its first sustainable management project in Gabon was recently bought out by the Hong-Kong based Chinese group VicWood. 41. Source: AFD, L’évaluation des projets, 1999, p. 30. 42. A revised version was published in 1998 under the title Criteria and Indicators for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests. 43. Twelve countries belong to the Montreal Process: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chili, China, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the Russian Federation, the United States, and Uruguay. This represents 90 percent of the world’s boreal and temperate forests (but also tropical forest

NOTES

44.

45. 46.

47.

48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

245

zones) and 60 percent of all the forests on the planet.The diversity of the participants, the size of the forest areas represented and the regularity with which the Working Group meets all make the work of this body particularly noteworthy. In Canada it apparently serves as a central aspect of its forestry policy abroad. Examples: The ITTO’s seven criteria are (1) enabling conditions for sustainable forest management, (2) forest resource security, (3) forest ecosystem health and condition, (4) flow of forest produce, (5) biological diversity, (6) soil and water, (7) economic, social, and cultural aspects. The twelve Tarapoto Proposal criteria are, at the national level: (1) socio-economic benefits, (2) policies and legal-institutional framework for sustainable development of forests, (3) sustainable forest production, (4) conservation of forest cover and biological diversity, (5) conservation and integrated management of water and soil resources, (6) science and technology for the sustainable development of forests, (7) institutional capacity to promote sustainable development in Amazonia; at the forest management unit level, (8) legal and institutional framework, (9) sustainable forest production, (10) conservation of forest ecosystems, (11) local socio-economic benefits; at the global level, (12) economic, social, and environmental services. It should be noted that the Montreal Process uses as criteria 5: maintenance of forest contribution to global carbon cycles. ITTO. The definitions of criteria and indicators are inspired by the Helsinki Process. That of yield regulation is borrowed from CIFOR. Erik Lammerts van Bueren and Esther Blom, Principles, Criteria and Indicators: A Hierarchical Framework for the Formulation of Sustainable Forest Management Standards,Tropenbos Foundation, Wageningen, 1997. Since 1995, CIFOR has been conducting a comparative and interdisciplinary test of the various sets of C&I with forestry experts from Austria, Brazil, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Germany, Indonesia, and the United States. The results show international agreement on a number of principles and criteria, but a great difference in their ranking depending on the forest area. CIFOR has put together “toolboxes” for the various C&I and the means to assess and weight them depending on the forest conditions and issues raised. These toolboxes are available to states to help them certify their forests. For two good summaries of the various C&I and certification initiatives see Bryan Evans, “Technical and Scientific Elements of Forest Management Certification Programs” and Rachel Crossley, “A Review of Global Forest Management Certification Initiatives: Political and Institutional Aspects,” paper presented at the Conference on Economic, Social and Political Issues in Certification of Forest Management, Manila, May 12–16, 1996. www.forestry.ubc.ca/ concert/crossley. “FSC is the only organization offering a credible worldwide timber certification scheme for all forest types and plantations,” FSC’s presentation on its website, www.fscoax.org. WWF, 1998, cited by Pearce et al., art. cit. Personal communication. Since 1993, the Ford Foundation has given $987,000 to the FSC and has announced a grant of 10 million dollars over five years, half of which was paid in 2001. In 1997, the FSC obtained a grant of 708,232 ecus (former name of the euro, having the same value) and the WWF received 1.5 million ecus to promote SFM and certification in the countries of the Congo basin. Official Journal of the European Communities, April 16, 1998, C 117/14. Ms. Bjerregaard, ibid., C 117/15. See Hervé Brédif and Pierre Boudinot, Quelles forêts pour demain?, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2001. Alain Karsenty,“Certification et gestion durable des forêts: entre commerce et recherche,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, no. 251 (1), 1997, p. 76. According to the FAO, COFO-2001, 2.2 million hectares of forest are certified according to FSC norms in all of the tropical countries. Making aluminum out of bauxite consumes vast amounts of energy.

246

Notes

60. La Lettre de l’ATIBT, no. 8, Summer 1998, p. 7. 61. It has been calculated that if 100 percent of the European and American markets (the only ones sensitive to a “green” demand) demanded certified wood, this would affect 13.2 million hectares of tropical forest, or 0.75 percent of the total and 4.2 percent of the producing tropical forest. ITTO secretariat, 1996. 62. A movie star camps a martial figure for the WWF advertisement with this caption: “Words are not enough . . . . Look for the Forest Stewardship Council label when [buying] garden furniture, paper, flooring, timber and other products made from wood.” 63. ISO Inside Out: A Summary,WWF, Godalming, 1996. 64. Tropical Timbers, April 1997, vol. 12, no. 4. 65. Title in Tropical Timbers, September 1999. 66. Statement made by a senior Malaysian official, Tropical Forest Update, 10 (4), 2000, p. 8. 67. http://www.pefc.org/about.htm. 68. See Gérard Buttoud, Les politiques forestières, Paris, PUF, Que sais-je?, 1998. 69. Far Eastern Economic Review, January 14, 1999, pp. 20–23.

Conclusion 1. See note 10, Introduction. 2. The issue of dry forests and desertification is a separate matter not treated in this work. 3. The figures quoted here come from the latest FAO report, State of the World’s Forests, Rome, March 2001. 4. See Didier Bigo’s presentation supporting the creation of a new section entitled International Political Sociology (IPS) in the American International Studies Association (ISA), Implications for a new research program, ISA, Minneapolis, MN, February 1999. Website: http://conflicts.org/ ips.htm. 5. By design, this book does not succumb to the common practice by which every international relations study begins with a review of the existing literature and glosses upon glosses. 6. See Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999. 7. John Vogler, The Global Commons: A Regime Analysis, Chichester, Wiley, 1995; Susan Buck, The Global Commons: An Introduction, London, Earthscan, 1998. 8. Hardin, art. cit. 9. Elinor Ostrom, “Institutions and Common-pool Resources,” Journal of Theoretical Politics, 4 (3), July 1992, pp. 243–367; Elinor Ostrom, James Walker, and Roy Gardner, Rules, Games and Common-pool Resources,Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1994; R. O. Keohane, and E. Ostrom, Local Commons and Global Interdependence: Heterogeneity and Cooperation in Two Domains, London, Sage, 1994. 10. See Clark C. Gibson, Margaret A. McKean, and Elinor Ostrom, People and Forests: Communities, Institutions and Governance, Cambridge (Mass.),The MIT Press, 2000. 11. Mentioning the world rhetoric regarding the tropical forest as heritage, we remain on the mere discursive level.We do not broach here the very rich and very fruitful French approach to the patrimonial management of natural resources developed in particular by Henri Ollagnon,“Une approche patrimoniale de la qualité du milieu naturel,” in N. Mathieu and M. Jolivet (eds.), Du rural à l’environnement. La question de la nature aujourd’hui, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989, pp. 258–268 and in his doctoral dissertation, L’approche patrimoniale de la gestion de la qualité: une application à la nature, defended in 1999. 12. For a very broad definition of the notion of public goods and its application in international relations, see Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc A. Stern, Global Public Goods. International Cooperation in the 21st Century, Oxford University Press, 1999; Jean-Michel Severino,

NOTES 13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

247

“Refonder l’aide au développement au XXIème siècle,” Critique internationale, 10, January 2001, pp. 75–99. Which has caused an expert in social management of natural resources to comment: “They change hats all the time but in the field they are still dealing with the same local apparatchiks” (Jacques Weber, personal communication). John Macmillan, Andrew Linklater, Boundaries in Question. New Directions in International Relations, London, Pinter, 1995; John Baylis and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics, Oxford, Clarendon, 2001. In the language of international systems, a differentiation is made between “autonomous” systems in which exchanges inside the system are more important than those of the system with its environment and “penetrated” systems in which exchanges with the elements of the surrounding environment are more important than those among the system’s elements. “Protecting the Earth’s Atmosphere,” Commission enquiry by the German Bundestag (ed.), Protecting Our Green Earth, Bonn, Economica Verlag, 1995. See the study on the Philippines, Sabah, Sarawak, and Indonesia by Michael Ross, Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdown in Southeast Asia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Wolfgang Sachs, Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict, London, 1993, Zed Books, p. xv, quoted by Matthew Paterson,“Green Politics,” p. 263 in: Scott Burchill,Andrew Linklater, Theories of International Relations, London, Macmillan Press, 1996. Global Forest Watch. Béatrice Hibou (ed.), La privatisation des Etats, Paris, Karthala, 1999. Translated by Jonathan Derrick under the title Privatising the State (London, Hurst, forthcoming); “Retrait ou redéploiement de l’Etat?”, Critique internationale, 1, Fall 1998, pp. 151–168. This phenomenon is at the center of Béatrice Hibou’s demonstration.

Appendix: Briefing on ITTO’s Project Work The projects and pre-projects described below were financed at the 32nd session of the International Tropical Timber Council held in Bali, Indonesia in May 2002

APPENDIX

249

LIST

OF

ABBREVIATIONS

ACP (countries) African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States AFD Agence Française de Développement (French Development Agency) ATIBT Association Technique Internationale des Bois Tropicaux (International Technical Tropical Timber Association) CBD Convention on Biological Diversity CFDT Committee on Forest Development in the Tropics CDM Clean Development Mechanism CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research CIB Congolaise Industrielle des Bois CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research CIRAF Centre International pour la Recherche en Agroforesterie (Center for International Agroforestry Research) CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Washington Convention) COFO FAO Committee on Forestry COP Conference of the Parties DC developing countries DESA Department of Economic and Social Affairs (United Nations secretariat) ECOFAC Conservation and Rational Use of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa EEC European Economic Commission

LIST FAG FAO FFEM FMU FNUAI FSC GEF GIS IBAMA IFF IFIA IFIR IIED IMF INCRA IPCC IPF ISO ITTO IUCN IUFRO JATAN LEI MAB MINEF NFAP NGO NOAA NWFP OED OTC PEFC PPG7 SAP SBSTTA SFM SGS

OF

ABBREVIATIONS

251

Forestry Advisers Groups Food and Agriculture Organization French Global Environment Facility Forest Management Unit National Indian Foundation (Brazil) Forest Stewardship Council Global Environment Facility Geographical Information System Brazilian Environmental Agency Intergovernmental Forum on Forests Interafrican Forest Industries Association International Forest Industry Roundtable International Institute for Environment and Development (London) International Monetary Fund Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform, Brazil) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Intergovernmental Panel on Forests International Organization for Standardization International Tropical Timber Organization World Conservation Union International Union of Foresty Research Organizations Japan Tropical Forest Action Network Lembaga Ekolabel Indonesia Man and Biosphere (program) Ministry for Environment and Forests (Cameroon) National Forestry Action Plan non-governmental organizations National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration nonwood forest products Operations Evaluation Department (World Bank) Oriental Timber Company Pan-European Forest Certification Scheme Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest Structural Adjustment Program Subsidiary Body on Scientific,Technical and Technological Advice sustainable forest management Société Générale de Surveillance

252

List of Abbreviations

TFAP Tropical Forestry Action Plan TRAFFIC Trade Record Analysis of Fauna and Flora in Commerce TREES Tropical Ecosystems Environment Observation by Satellite UN United Nations UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNDP United Nations Development Program UNEP United Nations Environment Program UNFF United Nations Forum on Forests USAID United States Agency for International Development WCMC World Conservation Monitoring Center WCS Wildlife Conservation Society WRI World Resources Institute WRM World Rainforest Movement WWF World Wide Fund for Nature

LIST

1. 2. 3. 4.

OF

MAPS

Distribution of Tropical Ombrophilous Forests Ombrophilous Forests of Central and Western Africa Ombrophilous Forests of Asia and Melanesia Ombrophilous Forests of the Amazon Basin and the Atlantic Coast of Brazil 5. Principal Trade Routes of Tropical Logs

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NAME

Abramovitz ( Janet) 238 Achard (Frédéric) 230 Adams (Michael) 244 Agarwal (Aril) 241 Allegretti (Maria Helena) 38, 39 Alvim (Paulo T.) 235 Amsallem (I.) 244 Angelsen (Arild) 101, 233 Aron (Raymond) 212 Arrow (Kenneth) 241 Asquith (Nigel) 242 Babin (Didier) 243 Bahuchet (Serge) 11, 227, 233 Banegas (Richard) 227 Bann (Camille) 161, 163, 232, 241, 242 Barbier (E. B.) 79, 164 Barbosa (Luiz C.) 227 Baretto (A.) 242 Barr (Christopher) 119, 225, 238 Barthod (C.) 223, 232, 239 Bayart ( Jean-François) 224 Baylis ( John) 247 Bechman (Roland) 247 Bergonzini ( Jean-Claude) 24, 243 Bertrand (Alain) 233, 234, 235, 243, 244 Bigo (Didier) 246 Bishop ( Joshua T.) 163, 164, 241, 242

INDEX

Bjerregaard (Mme) 245 Blaser ( Jurgen) 146, 237, 240, 241 Blom (Esther) 245 Boardman (Robert) 225 Boigny (Houphouet) 96 Boltanski (Luc) 239 Bontems (Philippe) 241 Boudinot (Pierre) 245 Bowles (Ian) 224, 244 Bramble (Barbara J.) 226 Brédif (Hervé) 245 Bromley (D.W.) 233 Brookfield (Harold) 234 Bruenig (E. F. ) 77, 232 Brundtland (Gro Harlem) 65, 230 Burchill (Scott) 247 Burton ( John) 25 Buttoud (Gérard) 234, 237, 246 Byers (Bruce A.) 243 Byron (Yvonne) 234 Calder (Ian) 224 Callon (Michel) 225 Cárdenas (M.) 236 Carret ( Jean-Christophe) 241 Catinot (René) 244 Cernea (Michael M.) 224, 233, 234 Charras (Muriel) 234 Chiaverini (Mireille) 230

256

Name Index

Chomitz (Ken) 224 Clément ( Jean) 77, 224, 232, 233 Coase (R.) 233 Colchester (Marcus) 226, 240 Collas de Chatelperron (Ph.) 243 Cotte (P.) 234 Coussy ( Jean) 238 Contrer (Dominique) 237 Cowell (Adrian) 39 Crossley (Rachel) 245 Dales ( J.H.) 233 Dauvergne (Peter) 238 Debroux (Laurent) 238 Delaunay ( Janine) 228 Delisle (Pascal) 235 Denevan (William) 225 Derrida ( Jacques) 25 Doat ( J.) 234 Dominique (Pierre-Charles) 224 Dorozynski (Alexandre) 222 Douglas ( Jim) 237, 241 Doumenge (C.) 243 Dudley (Nigel) 234, 236 Dupuy (Bernard) 244 Durand (Frédéric) 234 Durrieu de Madron (Luc) 244 Egli (Nicolas) 241 Estève ( Jean) 244 Evans (Bryan) 224, 245 Eves (H.) 233 Fairhead ( James) 233, 234 Falesi (Italo C.) 235 Faris (Robert) 235 Faucheux (Sylvie) 232, 241, 242 Fay ( J. Michael) 243 Ferry (Luc) 222 Fleury (Marie-Françoise) 235, 237 Ford ( Jason) 244 Foresta (H. de) 234 Fortin (Emeric) 231 Foucault (Michel) 25

Fox (Robert) 229, 230 Freeman (Peter H.) 229, 230 Friedberg (Claudine) 42, 227 Gale (Fred) 240 Gardner (Roy) 246 Gartlan (Steve) 233 Gentry (A.) 242 Gibson (Clark C.) 246 Girard (Ph.) 234 Grainger (Alan) 225, 234, 236 Gray ( John) 241 Grison (François) 234 Groom (A. J. R.) 225 Grunberg (Isabelle) 246 Grut (Michael) 241 Gullison ( J.W.) 224 Gupta (Avijit) 241 Haas (Ernst) 239 Haas (Peter) 68, 69, 70, 231 Hall (A. L.) 235 Hampel (Lamont C.) 225 Hardin (R.) 233, 246 Harrison (Robert) 222 Hasenclever (Andreas) 231 Hassan (Bob) 104 Head (Suzanna) 223 Hébette ( J.) 235 Heinzman (Robert) 223 Hibou (Béatrice) 219, 247 Hill (K.) 243 Hirsch (Philip) 235 Hooi Chiew (Thang) 232, 244 Hourcade ( Jean-Charles) 231 Humboldt (Alexander von) 8 Humphreys (David) 226, 239 Hunter (Malcolm L.) 243 Hurrell (Andrew) 226 Hurtado (A.M.) 243 Huxley (Sir Julian) 47 Ibo ( Jonas) 235 Ishwaran (Natarajan)

229

NAME INDEX Jeanrenaud ( Jean-Paul) 234, 236 Jipp (P.) 242 Johnson (Steven) 237 Jolivet (M.) 246 Jones (A. G.) 224 Kaimowitz (David) 101, 232, 233, 235, 236 Karsenty (Alain) 231, 234, 237, 238, 241, 242, 243, 245 Kaul (Inge) 246 Kaustalia (Kal) 229 Keohane (Robert O.) 241, 246 Kingdon ( John) 225 Kingsbury (Benedict) 226 Kolk (Ans) 235 Kufakwandi (Prank S.) 243 Kumari (Kanta) 224 Kummer (David M.) 235 Lammerts van Bueren (Erik) 245 Lanchbery ( John) 229 Landell-Mills (Natasha) 244 Landrot ( Jean-Jacques) 238, 239 Lanly ( Jean-Paul) 224, 225, 243 Lascoumes (Pierre) 26, 225 Laurance (William F.) 233 Leach (Melissa) 233, 234 Leener (Philippe de) 233 Léna (Philippe) 235, 236 Léonard (Eric) 235 Le Prestre (Philippe) 231, 239 Le Roy (Étienne) 233 Leroy (Philippe) 223 Lescuyer (Guillaume) 232, 242 Levang (P.) 234 Levy (Marc A.) 241 Linklater (Andrew) 247 Locatelli (Bruno) 242 Lohmann (Larry) 226 M’Bow 34 Mace (Ruth) 243 Macmillan ( John) 247

257

Maître (Henri-Félix) 222, 244 Malingreau ( Jean-Paul) 230 Manser (Bruno) 233 Markandya (A.) 79 Mathieu (N.) 246 Matton (Ashley) 238 Mattos (P.) 242 Mayaux (Philippe) 230 Mayer (Peter) 231 Mayhew ( John) 229 McCormick ( John) 228 Mckean (Margaret A.) 246 Meadows (D.) 228 Mendelsohn (R.) 242 Mendes (Chico) v, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 227 Michon (G.) 234 Milner-Gulland (E. J.) 243 Montagne (Pierre) 234, 235 Morano (Marc) 235 Muchagata (M. G.) 235 Myers (Norman) 29, 31, 225, 226 Nasi (Robert) 232, 243 Noël ( Jean-François) 232, 241, 242 Nor (Salleh Mohammed) 226 Norton-Griffiths (M.) 243 O’Connor (Geoffrey) 227 O’Neil (Allan) 231 Ofosu-Asiedu (A.) 223, 224 Ollagnon (Henri) 246 Olson (William C.) 225 Ostrom (Elinor) 82, 246 Pain (Marc) 234 Pasquis (Richard) 235, 243 Paterson (Matthew) 247 Paulin (Michel) 222 Paiakan 36, 41 Pearce (David) 79, 224, 245 Pereira (H. C.) 224 Perrault (Gilles) 227 Peters (C.) 242

258

Name Index

Petrucci (Yann) 244 Pihlajamäki (Petteri) 237 Pinedo-Vasquez (M.) 242 Plouvier (Dominiek) 244 Poore (Duncan) 232, 240, 244 Porter (Gareth) 226 Potter (Lesley) 234 Putz (Francis) 224 Ramade (François) 228 Raoni 36, 40, 41 Ratsimbarison (Rivo) 244 Raven (Peter) 228 Reid ( J.W.) 224 Revkin (Andrew) 39, 227 Reynal (V. de) 235 Ribot ( Jesse) 234, 235 Rice (Richard) 224, 244 Richards (P.W.) 28, 222 Rist (Gilbert) 226 Rittberger (Volker) 231 Roda ( Jean-Marc) 113, 237 Rondeux ( J.) 229 Ross (Michael) 241, 247 Ross (Tony) 38 Rossi (Georges) 243 Rostow (Watt) 226 Rotillon (Gilles) 241 Rougier (Francis) 236, 237, 238, 244 Ruitenbeek (H. J.) 160, 161, 162, 242 Rupp (S.) 233 Sachs (Wolfgang) 247 Sales (Christian) 237 Santiso ( Javier) 239 Saouma (Édouard) 34 Sauvy (Alfred) 228 Sayer ( Jeffrey A.) 223, 229, 232 Schimper (A. F. W.) 4 Sellato (Bernard) 234 Sen (Hun) 126 Serrano (Olman) 237 Serrao (Emanuel A. S.) 235 Severino ( Jean-Michel) 246

Sharma (Shalendra D.) 241 Shiva (Vandana) 241 Shoumatoff (Alex) 227 Sigaty (Todd) 229 Sizer (Nigel) 244 Skolnikoff (Eugene B.) 229 Smith (Nigel J. H.) 235 Smith (Steve) 225, 247 Smouts (Marie-Claude) 228, 238, 239 Solow (Robert) 241 Sommer (Adrian) 225 Stern (Marc A.) 246 Sting 40, 41, 227 Strong (Maurice) 232 Sugal (Cheri) 224, 244 Suharto 91, 103, 104, 118, 225 Sullivan (Francis) 234, 236 Sunderlin (William D.) 235 Swanson (Timothy) 228 Tarifa (M.) 242 Taylor (Charles) 127 Thang Hooi Chiew 232 Théry (Hervé) 235 Thévenot (Laurent) 239 Thibaud (Olivier) 232 Thorsell ( James) 229 Tiengou (Tiphaine) 229, 230 Tillier (S.) 229 Tipper (Richard) 242 Topall (O.) 235 Turner (Ted) 41 Uhl (C.) 242 Ullsten (Ola) 226 Vanclay ( Jerome K.) 224 Veríssimo (A.) 242 Vernadsky (Vladimir) 228 Victor (David) 229 Vogler ( John) 246 Walker ( James) 246 Washburn (Kent) 225

NAME INDEX Weber ( Jacques) 229, 247 Wendt (Alexander) 246 Whitmore (T. C.) 222 Wilson 231 Winterbottom (R.) 226 Wunder (Sven) 235

259

Young (Oran) 233 Yudelman (Montagne) Zarin (D.)

242

226

SUBJECT

Actors (in the forest system) 19–20, 26–27, 67–68, 88, 129–130, 140, 180, 209 Afforestation 61, 152 African Timber Organization (ATO) 196 Agence française de développement (AFD) 158, 191, 193, 216 Agenda 21 14 Agricultural paradigm 94–95, 97 Agroforestry 17, 165, 221 Albedo 73n, 231–232 Alliance of Forest Dwellers 42–43 Amazon 5, 8, 11–12, 20–21, 44, 63, 82, 97–98, 116, 216 Asia 5–6, 106, 112–114, 117–119, 121–125, 206–207, 217 Asian Development Bank 82, 126, 162 Asian Conglomerates 118, 123, 212 Association technique internationale des bois tropicaux (ATIBT - International Technical Tropical Timber Association) 193, 222, 228, 236, 237, 239, 244, 250 Bali Declaration 17 Biodiversity 8, 9, 10, 16, 17–19, 24, 33, 43, 46, 48, 51, 53, 55, 61, 76, 79, 91, 94, 107, 119, 132–135, 137, 139,

INDEX

150, 156–157, 163, 181, 189, 191, 195, 206, 215, 217, 224, 228 Biomass 12, 17, 44–45, 59, 72, 90, 136, 166–167, 224, 229, 243 Biosecurity 27, 47 Biosphere 11, 23, 26, 46, 48, 226, 228, 244, 251 Bolivia 51, 82, 171, 191, 196, 202, 206, 208, 210, 212 Boreal forests 111, 119, 147, 173, 195, 200, 211, 217, 224 Borneo 7, 44, 90, 94, 233, 235 Boycott 42, 51, 110, 137, 195, 197–198, 200, 203, 205 Brazil 7, 18, 28, 32, 35, 36–44, 51–52, 60, 64, 97–102, 108–112, 114–115, 116 Brazilian Amazon 12, 99–100, 101–102, 116, 118, 120, 121, 123, 137, 145–146, 165, 168, 171, 177, 182, 183, 186, 187, 188, 196, 202, 204, 211, 224, 235, 236, 238, 240, 242, 243, 245, 251 Brundtland (Commission and report) 65, 156, 224, 230 Buyers’ groups 204 Cambodia 11, 66, 94, 112, 115, 123, 126, 128, 152, 155, 162, 176, 219, 238, 239

SUBJECT INDEX Cameroon 6, 22, 29, 49, 66, 68, 82, 88, 89, 101, 106, 109, 110, 112, 116, 121–125, 128, 152–155, 175, 179, 180, 191, 193, 219, 225, 226, 227, 229, 231, 234, 236, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 251 Canada 23, 44, 58, 63, 65, 72, 110, 118, 119, 160, 162, 202, 218, 226, 242, 244, 245 Canopy 8, 57 Cash crops see Agroforestry Central Africa 6, 55, 61, 63, 65, 82, 89, 106, 121, 180, 192, 193, 250 Central America 5, 6, 51, 63, 100, 103, 146 Central American Commission for Environment and Development 196 Certification see Ecocertification CGIAR 74, 75, 232, 243, 256 China 5, 10, 11, 73, 106, 109, 112, 114, 117, 120, 121, 126, 139, 151, 152, 211, 224, 239, 242, 243, 244 CIFOR 74, 75, 143, 166, 168, 197, 200, 225, 229, 232, 238, 241, 243, 245, 250 CIRAD 56, 76, 113, 222, 229, 230, 232, 234, 235, 237, 241, 242, 243, 244 CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) 28, 49–53, 88, 108, 133, 176, 229, 250 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) 167–168, 171, 250 Climate 4, 12, 13, 44, 45, 53, 54, 62, 70, 72, 133, 134, 137, 150, 156, 167, 168, 171, 215, 231 Codes of conduct 145, 184 Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development 65 Commons 180, 213, 246 Community forests 76, 152, 153 Conditionalities 154, 155

261

Conflicts (of use) 55, 61, 64, 79, 83, 88, 164, 172, 179–181, 188 Congo 6, 49, 82, 84, 116, 117, 193, 229, 240 Congo Basin 12, 20, 88, 107, 116, 158, 175, 180, 189, 216, 243, 245 Conservation 14–17, 32, 33, 35, 47, 48–50, 52–53, 76, 79, 81, 82, 91, 133, 134–136, 145, 147, 150, 151, 157, 160, 172–180, 188, 189, 214, 220 Conservation International 177, 190, 224, 244 Conservationism 137 Contingent valuation method 79, 160, 232 Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples 133 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 46–47, 133–135, 142, 143, 228 Convention on Climate Change 134–136, 215, 228 Convention to Combat Desertification 136 Conversion (of forest land) 11, 78, 89, 92, 94, 115, 116, 159, 160–164, 198, 236, 242 Costa Rica 51, 100, 141, 170 Cost-benefit analysis 78–80, 159–163 Criteria and Indicators of sustainable management 13, 19, 43, 132, 141, 145, 148, 195–198, 205, 206–209, 218, 244, 255 CSD (Commission on Sustainable Development) 65, 240, 243 Dams 40, 84, 102, 150, 211, 233 Dayaks 42, 90 Debt 119, 150, 157 Deep ecology 3, 241 Deforestation 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19, 24, 33, 35, 46, 55 assessment techniques 28–30, 60–63, 70, 219

262

Subject Index

Deforestation – continued causes 21, 28, 32–35, 81, 83, 84, 87–104, 107, 116, 119, 128, 167, 188, 212 definitions 19, 27, 56–57, 59, 170 extent 1, 30, 53, 74, 85–86, 211, 222, 226, 233 Democratic Republic of the Congo (ex-Zaire) 6, 50, 84, 211 Demographics (population pressure) 3, 45, 88, 101, 117, 150 Dense moist forest (definitions) 186, 212 see Ombrophilous forests see Rain Forest Desertification 46, 136, 246 Developing countries 1, 47, 56, 58, 64, 68, 72, 74, 75, 76, 109, 110, 149–151, 155, 157, 167, 168, 199, 208, 214, 217, 251 Development 3, 14–15, 32, 46, 75, 78, 81, 87, 92, 95, 101, 105, 137, 151, 156–157, 159, 164, 171 Diaspora 123 Dimako 179–181 Ecocertification 16, 19, 20, 132, 134, 138, 148, 173, 184, 195–210 ECOFAC 82, 250 Ecopolitics 69, 129, 130, 212, 239 Ecotourism 17, 161, 220 Ecuador 5, 100, 102, 196, 235, 240 Empate 37–39 Environment 24–25, 45, 50 Environmental economics 164, 241 Environmental security 45 Epistemic community 19, 68, 70–73, 77, 80 Ethics 76, 188, 208–210 EUROFOR 223, 229 Europe 1, 5, 7, 9, 33, 35, 44, 54, 62, 63, 109, 110, 112, 115, 121, 185–186, 195, 204, 223 European Commission 76, 82, 146, 166, 199

European Union 51, 62, 72, 77, 83, 112, 133, 139, 145, 146, 166, 169, 177, 181, 182, 191, 216, 218, 224, 226, 233 Existence value 9, 79–80, 163 Expertise 171, 177, 190, 193, 195, 197–198, 209, 215, 216, 220 Extractivism 40 FAO

28, 29–34, 54, 56–65, 75, 85, 96, 103, 105, 137, 143–144, 148–149, 165, 166, 187, 208, 211, 223 Floods 10–11 Fonds français pour l’environnement mondial (FFEM) 157–158, 191–194, 211, 216, 251 Forest (definitions) 56–58, 223 Forest Convention 136–140 Forest degradation (definition) 59 Forest engineers 20, 71, 74, 76, 78, 139 Forest fires 2, 40, 44, 45, 59, 62, 90, 103–105, 110, 136, 185, 230, 236 Forest industry 14, 132, 146, 195, 251 Forest management plan 133, 153, 180, 192–194 Forest paradigm 95 Forest resource assessment 65 Forest roads 48, 58, 102, 103, 127, 236 Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) 198–208 Forest system 216–220 Forest uses 78, 100, 165 FRA 2000 58, 59, 85, 230 France 2, 6, 9, 16, 70, 74, 75, 76, 108, 110, 115, 127, 139, 148, 149, 156, 157, 158, 186, 194, 207, 216 French Guiana 6 Friends of the Earth 30, 41, 50, 51, 91, 133, 138, 171, 197, 198, 226 Fuelwood (firewood) 14, 17, 19, 20, 81, 88–90, 105, 108, 110, 111, 136, 163, 236 Functions (of the forest) 6, 14–18, 20, 25, 78–79, 132, 158–159,

SUBJECT INDEX 162–164, 166–167, 185, 188, 196, 201, 213 Funding for research and forest management see Public aid to forestry G7–G8 142, 216 Gabon 6, 22, 49, 66, 67, 82, 84, 106, 109, 111, 112, 116, 125, 140, 191, 192, 193, 194, 211, 224 Geographical Information System (GIS) 61, 62, 230 Germany 9, 75, 76, 124, 137, 139, 142, 156, 183, 194, 196, 199, 207, 208, 216, 238 Ghana 112, 183, 191, 206, 208 Global common good 25, 33, 163, 173, 181 Global Environment Facility (GEF) 133, 156–158, 181, 189, 190, 194, 244 Global Forest Watch 65–67, 225 Global Public Good 70, 214 Global Witness 66, 126, 127, 219, 238, 239 Globalization 25, 27, 66, 95, 121, 151, 228 Grassroots communities 35, 65, 150, 191, 193, 227 Greenhouse effect 12–13, 26, 43–45, 61, 71–73, 134, 136, 156, 157, 167, 169–170, 217, 231, 232 Greenpeace 29, 70, 73, 127, 128, 138, 171, 197, 198, 208, 225, 234, 236 GTZ (German Technical Cooperation Agency) 199, 208, 216 Guinea 121, 128 Helsinki Process 195, 245 Heritage of mankind 47 Hunting 17, 18, 49, 100, 102, 106, 133, 160, 162, 175, 176, 178 Hydraulic 10, 11, 102, 233

263

IFF (ad hoc Intergovernmental Forum on Forests) 139, 141, 142, 147, 183, 231, 240, 251 Illegal logging 18, 22, 154, 176, 211 Illegal trade 52, 128, 229 India 5, 64, 73, 112, 117, 139, 151, 152, 168, 240 Indigenous peoples 14, 43, 178, 227 Indonesia 5, 18, 29, 51, 67, 74, 82, 88, 92, 94, 95, 99, 103, 106, 108–114, 118–120, 122, 128, 139, 142, 145, 152, 155, 162, 166, 175, 188, 191, 199, 202, 206, 208, 211, 224 Intellectual property rights 43 InterAfrican Forest Industries Association (IFIA) 209, 241, 251 InterAmerican Development Bank 152 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 70, 170, 231, 241 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) 31, 162, 226, 240 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 109, 126, 150, 152, 251 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 205–206, 246 International political sociology 23, 25, 212, 246 International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) 17, 34, 56, 89, 128, 143–148 International Union of Forestry Research Organizations 74, 251 International agenda 24, 27, 221 International forest system 144, 216, 217–219, 221 International law 23, 140 IPF (Intergovernmental Panel on Forests) 139, 141, 142, 183, 184, 231, 251 Irian Jaya 90, 91, 117, 162

264

Subject Index

IUCN (World Conservation Union) 31, 35, 47, 49, 173, 174, 180, 199, 222, 224, 228 Ivory Coast 57, 84, 85, 86, 96, 112, 115, 116, 121, 240 Japan 34, 42, 63, 72, 73, 96, 107, 109, 112, 114, 117, 120–122, 126, 139, 143, 145, 146, 204, 217 JATAN ( Japan Tropical Forest Action) 227 Jungle 8 Kayapos 40–41 Kyoto Protocol 167, 169, 171, 217, 242 see Clean Development Mechanism Labeling 195, 203, 205 Liberia 121, 126–127 Local communities 11, 16, 18, 20, 21, 32, 35, 48, 74, 83, 118, 122, 124, 125, 132, 135, 136, 147, 153, 159, 162, 166, 171, 172, 175–180, 188, 201, 211, 214, 219–221 Logging companies see Timber industry, Asian conglomerates Madagascar 6, 85, 146, 191, 220, 234, 240 Major groups 137, 141, 239 Malaysia 5, 20, 34, 35, 42, 43, 82, 94, 95, 110–115, 118, 120, 121, 125, 128, 137, 139, 145, 162, 189, 191, 202, 206–207, 208, 224, 238 Mediation 218–219 Mediterranean forests 2, 222 Melanesia 93, 95, 122 Montreal Process 195, 244, 245 Multifunctionality 13, 17–18 Multiuse management 16, 17, 173 Natural forests 57, 73, 83, 105, 107, 115, 116, 118, 119, 151, 160, 178, 202, 203, 205, 223, 238

National parks 9, 44, 160, 167, 171, 173, 174, 175, 177 Neo-functionalism 131 Neo-institutionalism 21, 25, 82 Networks 27, 35, 49, 68, 110, 123, 125, 128, 190, 204, 212, 215 NFAP (National Forest Action Plans) 32, 251 NGO 23, 77, 139, 178, 190, 194, 198, 206–207, 226 Nicaragua 101, 242 Noel Kempff Mercado 171 Non-wood forest products (NWFP) 165, 166, 188, 242 North American rain forests 58, 120, 217 Ombrophilous forests 4, 10 Option value 79–80 Overseas Development Institute 162, 181 Oxfam 38 Oxford Forestry Institute 76, 162, 232 Pan-European Forest Certification 207–208, 251 Paper pulp 104, 108, 117, 237 Papua New Guinea 6, 82, 91, 101, 106, 112, 120, 122, 152, 155, 202, 224, 226, 240, 243 Participatory management 81, 159, 181, 188, 221 Patrimonial management 246 Peugeot 171 Philippines 5, 42, 82, 94, 96, 106, 112, 114, 115, 122, 155, 166, 176, 202, 226, 235, 240, 247 Photosynthesis 12, 44, 72, 224 Plantations 14, 57, 58, 72, 73, 94–96, 104, 108, 115, 118, 119, 120, 161, 181, 202, 221, 223 POEMA 165–166 Political ecology 4 see Transmigration Poverty 16, 82, 88, 92, 94, 99–101, 150

SUBJECT INDEX PPG7 182–183, 251 Precautionary principle 70, 134, 201 Privatization of forests 191 Privatization of the state 219 Production 16–17, 18, 32 Property rights 43, 81, 152, 233 Protected areas 16, 18, 46, 47, 83, 126, 133, 134–135, 143, 161, 172–181, 189–190, 224 Protection 16–18, 32–33, 46, 47, 48, 49, 91, 101, 133, 134–135, 142, 156, 157, 159, 167, 173, 174–178, 181 Public aid to forestry 181 Rain Forest (definitions) 4 see Dense moist forest Rainforest Foundation 40, 227 Ramsar Convention 48, 49, 132, 225 Reduced-impact logging 19, 76, 117, 167, 186, 189, 190, 192 Reforestation 6, 13, 18, 19, 31, 167, 169, 170, 223 Reserves 46, 48, 160, 172, 173, 176, 244 Reservoir (carbon) 13, 44, 134, 167 Rio Summit (United Nations Conference On Environment And Development) 14, 42, 46–47, 65, 133, 134, 137, 185, 218, 228 Statement of Forest Principles 14–16, 73, 185, Rio+5 74, 138, 140, 173 Risk (environmental) 26, 27, 147 Robin des Bois 197 Rotation 116, 120, 165, 179, 187, 192, 237 Rural communities 89, 165, 171, 191 Russia 11, 65, 73, 114, 119, 224 Sabah 94, 95, 106, 122, 128, 155, 237, 247 Solomon Islands 106, 122, 155, 238 Santiago Declaration 195–196 Sarawak 20, 41, 42, 95, 106, 117, 122, 233, 238 Satellite images 61–63, 104, 230

265

SBSTTA (Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice) 142 Scandinavian countries 114, 118, 200, 230 Secondary forests 56, 86, 120, 202 SGS (Société générale de surveillance) 199, 218 Sierra Leone 127 Sinks (carbon) 13, 44, 72, 134, 167, 168, 171 Smart Wood Program 197, 198 Source (of carbon) 13, 44, 134, 167, 170 South Korea 107, 112, 114, 120, 122 Southeast Asia 5, 35, 61, 63, 65, 115, 116, 119, 122, 146, 162, 176, 187, 209, 238 Sovereignty 23, 25, 30, 47, 138, 148, 177, 212, 218, 219, 220, 225, 231 Stakeholders 18, 20, 27, 149, 159, 180–183, 191, 221, 231 Stockholm Conference 28 Survival International 41 Sustainable development 15, 17, 43, 48, 65, 74, 132, 134, 136, 158, 184, 185, 230 Sustainable forest management (SFM) 15, 18, 181, 183–188, 190, 196–198, 207–210, 218, 224 Sustained yield 19, 22, 32, 76, 144, 161, 185, 191 Swidden agriculture (shifting agriculture, slash-and-burn agriculture) 80, 83, 87–91, 95, 164, 223 Swietenia macrophylla (big-leafed mahogany) 50–53 Switzerland 139, 226, 241 Taiwan 112, 120, 121, 123 Tarapoto Proposal 196, 245 Technology transfer 15, 47, 77, 88, 141, 184 Temperate forests 2, 8, 10, 12, 17, 204, 217, 230

266

Subject Index

TFAP (Tropical Forestry Action Plan) 30–35, 226 Thailand 42, 94, 96, 112, 114, 115, 125, 126, 166, 176, 235 The Hague Conference (CoP 6) 72, 169, 170 Timber industry 11, 33, 34, 49–51, 59, 76, 97, 112, 116, 117, 124, 125, 128, 129, 132, 137, 138, 139, 145, 193, 196, 197, 199, 205, 216 Togo 92, 175 Total economic value 159, 162, 163, 165 Trade in forest products and services 14, 105–126, 137, 141 Traditional Forest-Related Knowledge (TFRK) 17, 43, 141, 224 Transcoding 26, 36, 39, 214, 225 Translation 32, 43 see Transcoding Transmigration 91–92, 95, 99, 105 TREES (Tropical Ecosystems Environment Observation by Satellite) 57, 62, 63, 230, 233 Tropenbos 197, 245 Tropenwald (Initiative, ITW) 196 Tropical forest (definition) 4–5 Tropical timber (production-international trade) 105–126 UNDP (United Nations Development Program) 75, 143, 156 UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) 29, 30, 41, 142, 143, 156 Unesco 11, 30, 34, 47, 226 Unesco World Heritage Convention 48, 133 UNFF (United Nations Forum on Forests) 231 United Nations European Economic Commission 58 United States 13, 23, 24, 34, 35, 39, 40, 44, 51–52, 58, 61, 63, 72, 73, 100, 110, 112, 114, 118, 120, 121, 127,

139, 145, 146, 160, 167, 169, 200, 202, 204, 217, 218, 228, 238, 240, 244 Usage rights 21, 82, 134, 178, 180, 184 Virgin forest

83, 97, 223

Washington Convention 225 see CITES West Africa 85, 87, 233 Wildlife 47, 48–49, 78, 83, 161, 173, 175, 176, 185 Wildlife Conservation Society 158, 194, 220, 229, 244 Woodmark Scheme 197 World Bank 15, 16, 31, 33, 34, 35, 56, 74, 75–80, 82, 87, 94, 104, 107, 124, 126, 140, 142, 143, 150–159, 162, 173, 182, 183, 188, 189, 194, 216, 219 World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development 65 World Conservation Monitoring Center 50, 223, 229 World Forestry Congress 29, 31, 142, 223, 237 WRI (World Resources Institute) 31, 33, 65, 66, 225, 226 WRM (World Rainforest Movement) 33–35 WWF (World Wildlife Fund for Nature, World Wide Fund for Nature) 16, 19, 31, 33, 52, 72, 81, 138, 158, 160, 173, 174, 190, 194, 197, 198–200, 203–206, 216, 224, 226 Yanomami 41 Year 2000 Objective 17, 145, 148, 156, 173, 184, 188, 232 Yield regulation 196, 245 Zaire 6, 83, 84, 126, 227, 240 see Democratic Republic of the Congo

Tropical Forests, International Jungle: The Underside of Global Ecopolitics

Tropical Forests, International Jungle: The Underside of Global Ecopolitics

Tropical Forests

Tropical Forests and Global Atmospheric Change

Tropical Forests (Ecosystem)

Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests

Extreme Conflict and Tropical Forests (World Forests)

Tropical Rain Forests (Biomes of the Earth)

Underside

Underside

The Underside

Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests

Tropical trees and forests: An architectural analysis

Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests: Ecology and Conservation

Green Phoenix: Restoring the Tropical Forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica

HYPERSPECTRAL REMOTE SENSING OF TROPICAL AND SUBTROPICAL FORESTS

Valuing tropical forests: methodology and case study of Madagascar

Forests of the Heart

Forests of the Night

Forests of the Night

The Forests of Gleor

Forests of the Night

Forests of the Dragon

Forests of the Night

Forests Of The Heart

Law of the Jungle

Law of the Jungle

Forests

Law of the Jungle

Law of the Jungle

Gods of the Jungle

Tropical Forests, International Jungle: The Underside of Global Ecopolitics