Global Forest Crisis Accelerating

by Danielle Knight

Recent forest fires in Indonesia and Brazil are symptoms of the global trend of accelerating forest loss, says a report released April 4 by the Washington-based World Watch Institute.

"Half the forests that once covered the earth are gone, and deforestation has been accelerating the last 30 years," warns Janet Abramovitz, a senior researcher with World Watch and author of the report.

As forests have been shrinking, the pressures on them have grown more intense. In the last 35 years, wood consumption has doubled, paper use has more than tripled and each year at least another 16 million hectares of natural forest are cleared, she says, quoting data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Abramovitz accuses logging corporations, encouraged and subsidized by governments, as being the main cause of the large- scale forest exploitation and infrastructure developments in forested areas.

"Subsidies for below-cost logging, processing road building and infrastructure are so large that governments are essentially paying private interests to take the timber and convert the land to other uses," says Abramovitz.

Taxpayers usually don't even know that they are footing the bill for these revenue-losers. Indonesia's timber concessions cost the government $2.5 billion in lost revenues in 1990, according to the report. In the United States, timber sales from national forests lost more than $1 billion from 1992 to 1994, because of subsidies.

Even when a government has forest laws and policies on the statute books, governments often lack the capacity or will to enforce them, the study says.

Brazil, now the world's fourth largest timber producer, estimates that 80 percent of logging in the Amazon is illegal.

Despite this, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso recently vetoed a law that would boost enforcement of environmental regulations. In Russia, the study estimates that as many as 12 million hectares are illegally logged each year, compared to only two million hectares of legal logging.

Government corruption and strong federal ties to logging and timber corporations is another major contributor to forest destruction, according to the report.

In Indonesia, President Suharto diverted money from the nation's reforestation fund to build a paper factory for his personal friend and "timber king" Bob Hasan - who was recently appointed as the Minister of Industry and Trade.

A recent audit by the International Monetary Fund found no money in the fund to fight the devastating forest fires because the money had been diverted to prop up Suharto's son's failing car company.

In Cambodia, the prime ministers and military illegally control the forests and timber trade. According to this study, profits bypass the treasury and fund their factions in the civil war.

Abramovitz also blames the growing push behind economic globalization for the increase in forest destruction.

"The lowering of barriers to international trade and investment, through mechanisms including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, allow corporations to roam the world seeking more profitable forest opportunities," says the study.

Since 1970, the international legal trade in forest products has tripled $142 billion, and substantial amounts of illegal trade go unreported, she says.

The rising demand for forest products, coming especially from industrialized countries, is fueling this boom in legal and illegal trade. Today, less that one-fifth of the world's population living in Europe, the United States and Japan consumes over half the world's industrial timber and more than two thirds of its paper.

Japan alone consumes almost as much paper as the entire nation of China, a country with nearly 10 times as many people, says the report.

Having depleted their domestic forests, many Asian timber companies are now moving elsewhere. The amount of Amazon forest under concession to Asian companies quadrupled in 1996 to more than 12 million hectares, according to Abramovitz. One Malaysian company controls more than 60 percent of the timber concessions in Papua new Guinea.

Despite the increased destruction of forests, Abramovitz is not without hope. Governments, businesses and consumers have been developing new relationships with forests, finding innovative ways to meet demand for forest products while still preserving the long-term values of intact forests.

"People are waking up to the need for change," she says. "The next challenge is to scale up these initiatives fast enough to prevent irreversible damage to the world's forests."

While paper recycling and reducing paper consumption are essential steps, sustainable forestry management is the key, according to the report.

Even though the definition of such forest management is still evolving, the Mexico-based Forest Stewardship Council has developed a set of guiding principles for sustainable management.

The Council's principles include not logging primary forests and other sites of major environmental, social or cultural significance, as well as conserving the biological diversity of the forest and also respecting the ownership of forest by indigenous communities.

With consumers beginning to demand products from sustainably managed forests, which are labeled with an eco-friendly sticker, the Council has already certified more than 6.3 billion hectares in 20 countries.

Some governments are also beginning to change policies to better protect their forests by eliminating subsidies, halting road building in forests and strengthening the enforcement of domestic and international laws.

As it is negotiated further, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Climate Change Convention may also provide incentives to preserve forests for their role in absorbing carbon dioxide.

"By scaling up the efforts already underway, we can begin to turn away from today's destructive relationship," says Abramovitz, "and move towards managing our forests so that all of their benefits and services, from timber and jobs to flood control and climate regulation, are available for generations to come."