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ENVIRONMENT: U.N. Minimising Tropical Deforestation – Report

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Sep 22 2003 (IPS) - Scientists at a world meeting on forests are reporting that tropical deforestation is much worse than the most recent surveys from the United Nations show.

But the cause of the growing problem is not new, they add – corruption.

”Tropical deforestation is continuing as it did in the 1970s, if not at a higher pace,” according to Matti Palo, professor of forest economics at the Finnish Forest Research Institute.

He says the world community is trying to hide the situation by changing the definition of ”tree” and ”forest” used in the forest assessments conducted by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

”As a scientist I’m worried at these attempts to try to hide the real situation because most of the remaining biodiversity in this world is in tropical forests,” Palo told IPS in an interview.

Many environmental and conservation groups had similar complaints when the FAO’s ‘Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000’ study was released in 2001.

Considered the most comprehensive such survey ever undertaken and largely based on information provided by more than 200 countries, it found the world’s forests had increased by nearly 500 million hectares, from 3.4 billion ha in a 1990 FAO assessment to 3.96 billion in 2000.

The Washington-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) World Resources Institute (WRI) analysed the 2000 survey and also strongly criticised the FAO for under-representing the rate of deforestation.

Rather than deforestation slowing to nine million ha per year in the 1990s as reported by the FAO, the ”real” average was closer to 16 million ha a year, the WRI found.

The difference lies in how a forest is defined.

Between the two assessments the FAO made many changes to its survey, Peter Holmgren, project director of the FAO assessment, told IPS from the World Forest Congress in Quebec City.

For example, in 1990 many countries used 20 percent crown cover (the amount of land covered by trees’ foliage) as their definition of a forest, but the FAO subsequently asked countries to use 10 percent.

”That change alone made meant a big increase in the forest area of Australia for the purposes of the assessment," said Holmgren.

Other changes included decreasing the minimum forest size from 100 ha to 0.5 ha and the height of a mature tree from seven m to five m, he added.

Even more contentious is that the FAO defined tree plantations as forest. While the forest industry considers a monoculture of one specific species a forest, many experts like Palo do not, citing the enormous differences in biodiversity when compared to a natural forest.

Holmgren defends the practice, saying the FAO report separates out figures for natural forests and plantation forests.

A great deal of debate occurred before countries agreed to the new set of definitions, he adds, which will not change for the 2005 interim assessment.

Holmgren says the FAO is hiding nothing. "It’s no secret … If you want to say that the natural forests of the world are rapidly decreasing, yes you can say that."

Battling statistics aside, what incenses Palo and others is that the FAO’s global numbers have been widely reported as showing that the rate of deforestation is slowing.

”The situation is getting worse. I’m rather pessimistic,” says Palo.

State ownership and corruption are two of the main reasons for the worsening deforestation, according to a summary report released today at the Congress by the World Forests, Society and Environment (WFSE) research project.

The WFSE involves 149 scientists from northern and southern countries and was initiated in 1996 by the Finnish Forest Research Institute (METLA), the United Nations University/Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU/IAS) and the European Forest Institute (EFI)..

Four-fifths of the world’s forests are under public ownership. Where state ownership prevails, sales of standing timber, or stumpage sales, are priced lower than the competitive price level in most countries of the world, the report found.

For example, Russia is the largest forest owning country in the world and prices its standing timber at an average of one dollar per cubic metre when the competitive market price in Finland is 25 dollars.

Other countries with similar practices include Brazil, Canada, Indonesia and Malaysia. Canada recently lost a bitter 20-year trade dispute with the United States over its under pricing of timber in publicly owned forests.

According to WFSE research, under-pricing creates incentives for continued deforestation and forest degradation, undermining the profitability of forest management. In developing countries it can also provide a financing source for corrupt government officials, which the report says is a prime cause of tropical deforestation.

”There is a kind of iron circle in developing countries of state forest ownership leading to under pricing, leading to corruption and deforestation,” says Palo, a WFSE researcher who has spent years in different countries studying the underlying causes of deforestation.

When countries such as Indonesia, for example, used the courts to enforce penalties for illegal logging activities, the offenders were protected by sectors of government or the military, he says.

This is not uncommon in other countries and the only way to change it is if international aid organisations, environmental NGOs, and bodies like the World Bank and FAO pressure nations to reform, Palo says.

Requiring independent assessments of nations’ standing timber pricing by countries that import lumber and wood products is another tool to fight corruption, he adds.

WFSE favours decentralisation and privatisation of forests, but only where a nation has eliminated systemic corruption. Otherwise the move could increase deforestation.

Palo says this is currently happening in Indonesia, where the central government ceded forest management to 300 local governments, which has only dramatically increased the number of people involved in corruption.

Deforestation is less about "forestry" than it is about economic policy, and controlling it depends on reliable, up-to-date assessments, the WFSE report concludes.

And yet deforestation is not a major topic at this week’s Congress, the world’s largest and most important gathering of forest experts and officials, which is held every six years.

Nor has it been highlighted at the two previous meetings in Turkey in 1997 and Paris (1991), says Palo.

”Yes, it is surprising," he adds.