Forest Politics

The Evolution of International Cooperation

David Humphreys

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317971740
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Technology & Engineering

'An important and timely book' from the Foreword by Stanley Johnson

'A complete and absorbing history of a decade of intense international politics offers many insights for future negotiators of sustainable solutions' Stephen Bass, International Institute for Environment and Development

'Skillfully navigates the jungle of forest politics, leaving us in no doubt that the verbal commitment to save the world's forests has yet to be translated into action on the ground. The way forward must clearly lie in political commitments and international cooperation if forests are to continue to preserve life on Earth' Francis Sullivan, World Wide Fund for Nature

Global deforestation and its attendant processes - including soil degradation, climate change and the loss of biological diversity - emerged as international political issues during the 1980s, prompting politicians to seek consensus on programmes and policies for the conservation and sustainable management of forests. Yet global initiatives have been bedevilled by tensions between the North and South and between governments, industry, local communities and indigenous peoples. Meanwhile, rates of deforestation in the tropics are increasing, and international political efforts are demonstrably failing.

Forest Politics carefully traces the evolution of international cooperation on forests, from the inception of the controversial International Tropical Timber Organization and the failed Tropical Forestry Action Programme in the mid-1980s, to the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests in the mid-1990s. The book also provides a detailed analysis of the negotiating stances of the parties involved in the divisive negotiations that rook place prior to the 1992 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janeiro and the equally factious negotiations for the International Tropical Timber Agreement of 1994. It provides a fascinating insight into the nature of such processes, illustrating the difficulties that arise when concepts such as 'global commons' come into conflict with national sovereignty.

Complete with annexes of important political documents, and making extensive use of primary source material and interviews with participants. Forest Politics presents case studies of all the major forest negotiations over the last 13 years. It is an essential reference point for policy makers, environmental campaigners and students, and required reading for all those who care about the future of the world's forests.

David Humphreys is Research Fellow in Global Environmental Change at the Open University.

Originally published in 1996

Chapter 1

Deforestation as a Global Political Issue

THE POLITICAL COMPLEXITY OF DEFORESTATION

Deforestation as an issue has assumed a global prominence in the past decade. In Africa, the Amazon and Asia tropical forests have been disappearing at an alarming rate. The problem is by no means confined to the tropics, and deforestation of temperate forests has accelerated in recent years in, to name just two areas, British Colombia and Siberia. This chapter will examine the problem of deforestation as a political issue. Why is deforestation important? Who is it important to? Why does it occur? And who are the political actors that contest the issue? Deforestation can be defined as the conversion of forests to other land uses. It is necessary to distinguish between deforestation and forest degradation. The United Nations has defined deforestation as occurring when ‘a forest is cleared to give way to another use of the land’. Forest degradation refers to changes in forest quality and occurs ‘when the species diversity and the biomass are significantly reduced through, for instance, unsustainable forms of forest utilization’.¹ Myers refers to deforestation as ‘the complete destruction of forest cover … [so] that not a tree remains and the land is given over to non-forest purposes’.² Tropical deforestation became a source of international concern in the early 1980s, whereas deforestation of temperate and boreal forests received high-level international attention only in the early 1990s. Indeed the destruction of non-tropical forests has only recently assumed the same prominence as tropical deforestation on the international agenda.

Deforestation is an intrinsically complex global issue. This complexity arises from two broad factors. First, deforestation introduces a wide range of political actors, from government and international civil society, with a direct or an indirect stake in forest use. These actors include: government departments; private profit-making companies, including transnational corporations (TNCs); UN programmes, such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), including UN specialized agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and IGOs operating outside of the UN system, such as the parties to the Amazonian Cooperation Treaty; and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as conservation groups and research fora, operating at the international, national and local levels. Local government structures, community institutions and traditional authorities may also be key political actors at the local level. In addition, various hybrid and ad hoc fora with an interest or a stake in the forests may emerge from time to time. Hence a diverse range of frequently competing actors are involved in forest politics, although the specific actors do, of course, vary from area to area.

Second, the complexity of deforestation arises from its linkage to other issues. As we shall see below, deforestation is both an outcome and a causal factor. As an outcome, deforestation is the end product of an array of political, economic and social dynamics arising at the international and national levels. These dynamics seldom act in isolation; rather they interact in dense and complex ways. As a causal factor, deforestation contributes to other environmental problems, such as global warming, soil erosion and the destruction of biological diversity (biodiversity).

The sections that follow will examine the causes and effects of deforestation, the reasons for the emergence of deforestation as an international political issue, and the defining features of deforestation as a global political problem.

THE CAUSES OF DEFORESTATION

In order to consider the causes of deforestation it is necessary first to distinguish between cause and agency. Agents of deforestation always operate at the local level; to cut down a tree or to burn an area of forest is a highly localized act, often performed by local people. Yet these people are frequently agents acting on behalf of wider economic interests, often outside the country in question, so that the causes of deforestation frequently have their loci in complex global economic processes. To arrest deforestation it is therefore necessary to call into question the functioning of the global economic system.

The causes outlined below are particularly relevant to tropical forests, although they may also apply to other forest types. Ten categories of causal process will be explored. The degree to which these processes operate varies from region to region, country to country, and between forest types. The processes are distinguished here for analytical purposes, and should not be seen as separate in the real world. In practice they interact and sustain each other. It should also be noted that the acceleration of forest removal in the tropics over the last half century has, in almost all instances, been deliberate and viewed by many political and economic élites as a ‘progressive’ way to advance economic development by, for example, increasing food security or earning hard currency through the exports of cash crops and timber.

Internationally-sponsored development

National development and infrastructure projects have often been funded by international capital channelled through multilateral and bilateral agencies. Many of these projects, such as the Grande Carajás programme in the Brazilian Amazon, have attracted criticism for environmental destruction, including deforestation.³ The use of international capital to build roads has been widely condemned by environmental NGOs. The most infamous example here is the case of the BR–364 (Polonoroeste) highway through the Brazilian Amazon to Peru, funded in part by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.⁴ Plans to complete the construction of the Pan-American Highway will lead to forest clearance in Colombia and Panama. International capital has also played a role in the construction of dams for hydroelectric power in, for example, the Amazon and in Malaysia.⁵

By 1987, the inhabitants of the Amazon, including indigenous forest peoples and rubber tappers, were organizing themselves to attempt to stop the World Bank and other multilateral agencies from funding infrastructure causing deforestation and the displacement of Amazonian inhabitants. The World Bank, responding to charges that its projects have degraded the environment, created an Environment Department in 1987 and claims that it now integrates environmental criteria in its decision-making procedures.⁶ In 1991 the World Bank published a Forest Sector Policy Paper which included the commitment that it ‘will not under any circumstances finance commercial logging in primary tropical moist forests’.⁷ However, in 1992 Friends of the Earth found that a World Bank project in Gabon — the first major Bank intervention in central Africa after the publication of this policy — would lead to logging of primary forests. They recommended a major project review.⁸ The role of international capital, especially when channelled through the World Bank,⁹ remains a fundamental concern for environmental campaigners.

External debt and structural adjustment programmes

An oft-cited example of a cause of deforestation that has its locus in the structure of global economic relations is external debt, much of it accrued from loans to finance development projects. The debt crisis erupted in August 1982 when Mexico defaulted. Some governments from the South, including Brazil, have accumulated large debts, but a report by the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations concluded that competition among the transnational banks to secure loans led to overlending in the developing countries and was a major contributory factor in the evolution of the debt crisis.¹⁰

The World Commission on Environment and Development noted a link between deforestation and debt, and concluded that the need for foreign exchange encourages ‘many developing countries to cut timber faster than forests can be regenerated’.¹¹ A study for the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) noted that the large external debts of many African countries lead to ‘pressure on the forestry sector not only to generate foreign currency, but also to relinquish forest fees and taxes in principle designated for forest resource management to the general state budget’.¹² In recent years, interest and repayments accruing from debt have exceeded North-to-South aid with the result that there now exists substantial net financial flows running from the South to the North.¹³ However, the linkage between debt and deforestation is a contested one, and it is important that correlation is not mistaken for cause. Hurrell notes that in the Brazilian Amazon ‘the main policy decisions facilitating large-scale development were taken well before the emergence of the debt crisis’.¹⁴ Hecht and Cockburn argue that the claim that Brazil’s indebtedness to the banks led to overexploitation of the Amazon ‘is difficult to substantiate’.¹⁵ But such views are not shared by all analysts. Diegues argues that the Brazilian government targeted the Amazon and established export-oriented mining and livestock projects in order to help in the solution of the country’s foreign exchange problems.¹⁶ George notes two debt–environment connections: first, the act of borrowing, often to finance projects that are environmentally destructive; and second, paying for them by ‘cashing in’ natural resources.¹⁷ She emphasizes that the relationship between debt and the environment is one of feedback, and not one of linear connections.¹⁸

Patricia Adams forwards the view that a large debt burden can help save the environment. External debt was accumulated from borrowing for large environmentally destructive industrial development policies. With the debt crisis, many creditors are no longer willing to lend money, so that it is no longer possible to fund such projects.¹⁹ Adams’s argument is more of an indictment against the destructive effects of transnational capital rather than an argument in favour of permanently high debts in the South.

The fact that a linkage has been asserted between debt and deforestation has led to the emergence of debt-for-nature swaps. This idea was first proposed by Thomas Lovejoy of WWF–US in 1984.²⁰ Opinion is divided on the subject of debt-for-nature swaps among NGO activists. Some support the concept as a means of conserving forests.²¹ However, others such as Mahony oppose swaps on the grounds that only commercial banks and other financial institutions benefit, that swaps do nothing to improve the conditions of local peoples, and that they deflect attention from crucial issues such as land tenure.²² Tropical forest governments may be critical on the grounds that such arrangements are an infringement on sovereignty. The WWF continues to favour debt-for-nature swaps; it notes that the ‘swaps carried out to date are too small to reduce indebtedness but they can be an effective tool for financing conservation activities’.²³ The UK branch of Friends of the Earth, like George, argues that there is a correlation between debt and deforestation and favours debt cancellation as opposed to debt-for-nature swaps.²⁴ It is also necessary to note the recent advent of ‘debt-for-timber’ swaps, whereby debt swaps become a mechanism that destroys, rather than conserves, tropical forests. In 1994 the government of France agreed to cancel approximately half of Cameroon’s external debt in exchange for a guarantee that French timber companies be given access to Cameroon’s tropical forests.²⁵

The debt crisis resulted in intervention in the economies of indebted countries by the imposition of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). Formerly called austerity programmes, SAPs are intended to curb inflation, promote economic growth and prune government spending thus restoring a country’s balance of payments equilibrium. However, a criticism of SAPs is that the export-oriented growth strategy they aim to promote has damaged environments. Research by Friends of the Earth concludes that the link between SAPs and deforestation is generalized in nature.²⁶ To Susan George, the model of growth advocated by the IMF and the World Bank ‘is a purely extractive one involving more the “mining” than the management — much less the conservation — of resources’.²⁷ Berthoud sees SAPs as putting economic efficiency above social justice; they are ‘the attempts of the IMF and the World Bank to impose liberalism on a worldwide scale’.²⁸

Export-led industries and the role of TNCs

According to this view, global consumption imperatives lead to the growth of export-led industries, which in turn leads to deforestation. Brief consideration will be given to four such industries, namely gold, beef, oil and timber. Gold prospecting in Brazil has resulted in forest clearance in the Amazon, especially in Roraima, by garimpeiros (independent mineral prospectors). The present Amazonian gold rush began in 1980, with the garimpeiros clashing with the interests of the established Brazilian mining companies. Some gold prospecting by garimpeiros has taken place on Indian reserves leading to intense conflict with local Indians. The small placer mines in Amazonia, worked by the garimpeiros, were generating almost US$ 1 billion a year by 1989.²⁹

A second export-led industry that has led to deforestation is cattle ranching. According to the ‘hamburger connection’ view, forests in Central and South America have been cleared to provide rangelands to breed cattle for the Northern beefburger market.³⁰ Deforestation for cattle ranching is a cumulative process. Approximately two years after forest clearance the soil is no longer suitable for pasture, with the result that further deforestation occurs. In the Brazilian Amazon, 30 per cent of government-assisted cattle ranches have been abandoned,³¹ with the agricultural frontier steadily expanding into the Amazon.

There is controversy as to how valid the ‘hamburger connection’ is as a cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Hecht argues that deforestation for livestock grazing has its origins not in the international demand for beef, but in Brazilian speculators seeking to acquire land and financial benefits such as tax holidays and fiscal incentives.³² Harrison also notes the importance of state subsidies to cattle ranchers, and agrees with Hecht that there is no international hamburger connection in Brazil because most beef is produced for the home market.³³ Howeve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Stanley Johnson
• Introduction
• 1 Deforestation as a Global Political Issue
• 2 The Tropical Forestry Action Programme
• 3 The International Tropical Timber Organization
• 4 The Forest Negotiations of the UNCED Process
• 5 The Negotiation of the International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1994
• 6 The Global Politics of Forest Conservation Since the UNCED
• 7 Conclusions
• Notes
• Annex A: Possible main elements of an instrument (convention, agreement, protocol, charter) for the conservation and development of the world’s forests
• Annex B: Non-legally binding authoritative statement of principles for a global consensus on the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests
• Annex C: International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1994
• Annex D: Draft text for a Convention for the Conservation and Wise Use of Forests
• Recommended further reading
• Acronyms
• Index