Sustainable Tropical Forestry: Can it be Sustainable

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Sustainable Tropical Forestry Can it be
Sustainable?

• Lloyd C. Irland
• College of the Atlantic,
• Bar Harbor, ME
• Jan 22 2007

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Outline

• Geographic Overview
• Parks/Reserves/Hotspots
• Natural Forests
• Fastwood Plantations
• Sustainable what does it mean?
• Concluding remarks

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I. OVERVIEW
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http//earthtrends.wri.org/maps_spatial/maps_detai
l_static.php?map_select221theme7
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Sample of 50 Tropical Countries

• Larger than 2.5 MM ha forest nonarid.

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All have gt 10 MM Ha
All forest area data from FAO, GFRA, 2005. See
website.
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Lower income countries are losing forest
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Lower Income countries are cutting harder
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Total 1.2 Billion ha
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Consumption Strongly related to income for
paper, not so for Lumber
Median paper/board cons. is Less than 10 kg per
person per yr
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Fuel is a leading use of wood and not just in
low income nations
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II. Protecting Forests
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Global Conservation Hotspots
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http//earthtrends.wri.org/maps_spatial/maps_detai
l_static.php?map_select482theme7
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Paper Parks

• Unmarked Boundaries
• Previous local users ignored/local opposition
• Corruption
• Inadequate staffing
• Poor/nonexistent reserve design
• Poverty/population pressure/war

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III. Managing The Natural Forest
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Forces Natural Forest Mgt

• Slow Growth
• Low proportion of valuable species
• Access logging costs
• Low silvicultural knowledge
• Unresolved use rights/tenures
• Faulty concession policies
• Governance leaves something to steal!

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Is Sustainable Management Sustainable? Dont know
its hardly been tried! Africa
6.1 Asia-Pacific 15.0 Latin America 3.5
0 or dont know
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Growth Rates m3/ha/yr Natural
4-6 Plantation Indonesia ave 12
top 35 Brazil
18 Uruguay 18 Result
sawlog in 10 yr In US, 19 of softwood cut is
from plantations.
IV. Plantations Experimental eucalyptus 4-5 yr
old
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Fastwood Plantations

• Est. 10 MM ha in developing world
• Expanding rapidly
• Growing share of world wood supply
• Intensively cultivated fiber farms
• Most support paper mills

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Plantations for Oil Palm Rapidly Expanding In
Riau, OP 4X Acacia
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V. Sustainable What does it Mean?

• Numerous definitions
• Most useless
• E.g. many, if not most, scientific ones
• Often a Labelling exercise
• --If I dont like it, its unsustainable
• Easy to see at the extremes
• Not hard to see incremental changeright
  direction or not?

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Kinds of sustainability

• Economic (financial) sustainability
• Yield sustainability
• (fertilizer is OK)
• Cliché sustainability
• (fertilizer is BAD)
• Ecological sustainability
• Whats left for the Sumatran tiger?
• Political/legal sustainability

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Conditions for Sustainability

• Population stability
• Rule of law and tenure security
• Including neighbors
• Provision for needs of neighbors
• Sound or at least improving governance
• Macroeconomic stability
• Perceptions of improving prosperity

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Forces Economy/Society

• Inflation
• High interest rates
• Banking, equity markets flaky or worse
• Capital controls/other regulations
• All means high risk costly capital
• Crony capitalism
• Extreme poverty

1992
2005
http//www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2005/20050215.html
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Source Word Bank Atlas
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Forces

• Weak/dysfunctional to absent Governance
• Corruption
• Flawed property rights
• License Raj
• Warfare or civil conflict
• Political instability/risk of confiscation/nation
  alization
• ( country risk)

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Source, Kauffmann Kray, and Mastruzzi, World
Bank 2006
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CNN. Com
World Bank governance website, sorted for
tropical countries.
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Source, Kauffmann Kray, and Mastruzzi, World
Bank 2006
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World Forest Area, 2000, by Level of
Corruption According to TI.
Scale is 1 to ten, ten being least corrupt.
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World Population Growthbillions
Less Developed Regions
More Developed Regions
Source United Nations, World Population
Prospects The 2004 Revision (medium scenario),
2005.
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Shifting Cultivation? I doubt it
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2006 fires in Borneo and SumatraSmoke from
agricultural and forest fires burning on Sumatra
(left) and Borneo (right) in late September and
early October 2006 blanketed a wide region with
smoke that interrupted air and highway travel and
pushed air quality to unhealthy levels. This
image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Aqua
satellite on October 1, 2006, shows places where
MODIS detected actively burning fires marked in
red. Smoke spreads in a gray-white pall to the
north. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth
Observatory, using data provided courtesy of the
MODIS Rapid Response team.
http//news.mongabay.com/200
6/1015-indonesia.html
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Some things you can put out of mind
Some you cant.
Singapore, from 50th floor, early Oct. 2006.
Shortly after, airports were closed!
Riau Province
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Questions

• What is the counterfactual?
• Do we have sustainable alternatives?
• Role of self-sufficiency?
• Is shifting cultivation sustainable when 40 of
  Indonesias population is in poverty?
• Is haze in Singapore, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur
  sustainable?
• Is negative economic growth sustainable?
• Is doing nothing sustainable? Not always.

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Forest Carbon Debate

• Kyoto
• CDM
• Avoided deforestation
• Will Kyoto help?
• Does not look likely at moment
• Key initiative replace fuelwood with gas(!)

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Can Tropical Forestry be Sustainable?

• Yes, by some Definitions
• But ONLY if preconditions are met
• So, no single answer
• Generally, progress on preconditions
• is going to be slow and uneven
• Some places likely to go backwards

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Implications

• Challenges Immense
• Paper Parks
• Inability to manage natural forests
• Fastwood plantations agriculture
• Rooted in social/economic conditions hard to
  change
• Important natural values at stake
• Livelihoods/lifeways at stake
• Outlook for tropical forest is grim

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Questions and discussion?