- Cute, clever, incorrect.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations’s Forest Resource Assessment for 2005 uses the word “alarming” 20 times to describe the trend lines for deforestation. And, a commonplace inference is that forests are rapidly disappearing due to logging.
Yet deforestation is not necessarily the result of logging (illegal or otherwise). About half of the wood consumed in the world is for heating or cooking [Global Forest Resource Assessment 2010 – Key Findings] with much greater fire and fuelwood consumption rates in Africa and Asia. The culprit is primarily conversion to agriculture followed by wood for heating and cooking. Fires, slash and burn agriculture, mining, and hydro-electric projects also cause deforestation
It’s often done by people trying to eke livings from the land. A 1996 report by the Consultative Group on International Research (CGIAR) report states that:
[T]he main threat to tropical forests comes from poor farmers who have no other option to feeding their families other than slashing and burning a patch of forest and growing food crops until the soil is exhausted after a few harvests, which then forces them to move on to a new patch of forest land. Slash-and-burn agriculture results in the loss or degradation of some 25 million acres of land per year (10 million hectares).
“Some 350 million people in tropical countries are forest dwellers who derive half or more of their income from the forest. Forests provide directly 10 percent of the employment in developing countries,” says Jeffrey Sayer, Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), based in Bogor, Indonesia, which researches better ways to manage and preserve existing forests. CIFOR is one of two CGIAR research institutes that specialize in tropical forestry.
Once the primary causes of deforestation are obvious, it becomes equally obvious that lowering the demand for wood (by using less wood or substitutes) will not make a difference in lessening world deforestation. It’s not the demand for lumber or paper that drives the cutting. It’s the demand for farm or pasture land, or the demand for heat from burning.
What’s the answer? More efficient stoves will help those using wood for heating and cooking to lower demand. As I’ve noted before, fuel-efficient Patsari stoves use 70% less firewood than open fireplaces, according to the Ecolife Foundation. (In Mexico, Ecolife installs $120 stoves and works with locals to help maintain the forest for the winter grounds of the monarch butterflies). Stopping slash and burn farming means finding better opportunities for employment. This may mean microloans to these subsistence farmers.
Nullius in Verba 
A good deal of pressure on forests in this part of the world (I live in Singapore) is created by illegal logging by big business that is motivated by:
– the value of tropical hardwood
– opportunity from palm oil production
You might be interested in looking at this estimated comparative ROI between a REDD scheme and palm oil: http://bit.ly/du5Iw5
You’re absolutely right about forests being renewable and also supplying value income either through responsible management or preservation like a REDD scheme.
Either way recognising and protecting these assets is important. An interesting approach is to use the DNA of the trees: http://bit.ly/d11d6g
Using DNA to track illegal logging looks fascinating. I’d heard of bar codes and RFID coding, but this is new and quite exciting to me. I’ll read your links and get back to you in an email. I’d like to write this up for the blog and for the column in my local paper.
Tropical hardwood is often felled in very inaccessible parts of the world, then dragged, rolled and perhaps floated a few hundred kilometres down a river. Barcodes and tags work in supermarkets, but in the rough and tumble of commercial timber its just not practical nor affordable.
Also, if you are talking about a conservation area is protected because its generating carbon credits (perhaps an area a few times the size of Belgium) its not really feasible to go and tag every tree. Genetics is quite affordable these days and we use proven sampling techniques to identify and secure very large areas – thankfully trees dont move around a lot.
This is a useful reference if you’d like to do more,
Or feel free to write to us if you’d like to do an interview. We’d love to get your and your readers perspective on this.
The situation is slightly more complex and variable than poverty is the main cause of deforestation. People relying on wood for heating and cooking, mostly living in developing countries, do have a large effect on forest degradation. However, this situation varies a lot from country to country.
In Brazil, for example, there is a lot of forest due to the expansion of large scale agriculture (e.g. soy and sugar cane) that is conducted by large companies. This is compounded by small-scale agricultural activities in a real wild-west environment in the Northern part of the country. As pointed out by another commenter, there are companies involved in large scale deforestation in South East Asia. I will not dignify palm oil crops with the word forestry. Again, there is an issue of governance and environmental standards.
Researchers tend to offer technical ‘solutions’ to the deforestation problem. Let’s tag, microchip, sequence every tree. Yes, there is a need to establish a chain of custody but, again, property rights and decent governance would go a long way. Forestry is certainly not the main cause of deforestation, although it has played a role sometimes. However, the world needs properly done forestry to help reduce the deforestation problem.
This according to Nigel Calder on the Amazon Rainforest:
Then he points to the primary cause of the Amazon’s deforestation, citing Chatham House.
Which was pretty much my point. In most places forestry companies are not the main culprits of deforestation, although they do play a role sometimes (depending on the country). In the case of Brazil, large agricultural companies planting soy (for animal feed) and sugar cane (for ethanol production), together with ranching do play a major role.
In many cases the lack of clear property rights makes controlling the problem of deforestation very difficult. There is an interesting article on the Peruvian Amazon (The Peruvian Amazon is not Avatar) explaining some of the economic issues behind the problems of conserving the Amazon.
Absolutely.
Property rights, laws and rules that provide ground rules for markets (without being bottlenecks), and a fair legal system; these would help Brasil, Peru, Indonesia, Tanzania and other places immeasurably.
Great article.
I live just north of the Napa Valley and its vineyards. Many of the local vineyards are the products of deforestation. Yet, the winemakers wouldn’t care if the logs were sold or just bulldozed and burned. The trees are impediments to their profits. So, while the foresters and loggers make some cash liquidating the parcel (something we both agree they are loathe to do), it’s not the demand for the wood that drives the harvest, it’s the demand for other goods. As Ronald Bailey, science writer for Reason Magazine, says [Got Environmental Problems? Think Government],