Top Level Commission: Forest Crisis Can Be Reversed

WASHINGTON, DC, April 20, 1999 - The forests of the world have been
exploited to the point of crisis and major changes are needed in
global forest management strategies if the devastation is to be
halted. This is the conclusion of the World Commission on Forests and
Sustainable Development, a group made up of top world leaders, which
Monday released its report "Our Forests...Our Future."

The report suggests that at this point a change in direction is still
economically and politically possible. But the costs will become
overwhelming, the longer we delay taking action. To facilitate this
change, the Commission advocates radical reform of policies, calls
for a new political agenda, greater civil society involvement and
more science in policy-making.
After conducting public hearings on all five continents, the
Commission found that from Siberia to Haiti, the world's forests are
being destroyed far beyond their ability to reproduce. Nearly 75
percent of West Africa's tropical forests have been lost since 1950.
Thailand lost a third of its forests in just 10 years, during the
1980s. Forests face an even shakier future with the global population
expected to grow 50 percent in the next 50 years.

"Fixing the forest crisis is basically a matter of politics," said
Ola Ullsten, former Swedish Prime Minister who co-chaired the
Commission with Dr. Emil Salim, former Indonesian Minister of
Population and Environment. "It is about governments assuming their
mandate to protect their natural resources - including forests - for
the long term benefit of their citizens."

The Commission's Report challenges the handful of countries with some
85 percent of the world's forests to exercise leadership through a
Forest Security Council, modeled partly on the G8 summits but also
involving the science, business and NGO communities.

The Commission sought out the opinions of those whose lives are
directly connected with forests through five public hearings held in
Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North
America.

The co-chairs described their work. "We met with forest dwelling and
other local communities in developing countries who are directly
dependent on forests for their economic, social, cultural and
spiritual well-being. We listened to farmers from countries in the
North and South who rely on forests for agricultural productivity and
sustenance. We heard executives from forest industries in different
parts of the world and their employees who supply wood products to
society. We took careful note of what scientists, economists,
foresters, government officials and other specialists involved in
national and international forest policy had to say."

The Commission concluded that people can "satisfy the world's
material needs from forests without jeopardizing their ecological
services."

The key is "a set of global, national and local level arrangements to
involve people in all decisions concerning their forests" called
ForesTrust with four components:

Forest Watch - A network connecting ordinary citizens with decision
makers. Forest Watch would also gather, analyze and disseminate
information on forests.

Forest Management Council - An institution to standardize sustainable
practices including eco-labeling of forest products and
certification.

Forest Ombudsman - A network of officials to identify and pass
objective non advocacy judgements on corruption, inequity and abuse
in forest operations.

Forest Award - A way to recognize and reward good performance in
sustainable forest management.
"There is clear link between degraded forests and poverty," said Dr.
Salim. "We estimate that one billion of the world's poorest people in
about 30 heavily deforested countries would be alleviated from
poverty if given government support for managing neighboring public
forest land and sharing the benefits within their communities."
Today, virtually the only economic value officially assigned to
forests is in timber. The report suggests the introduction of a
Forest Capital Index. This measure would take into account forests as
the largest reservoir for plants and animals on land, their role in
maintaining supplies of clean water, in creating and retaining soil,
in contributing to the productivity of fisheries and agriculture, and
helping to regulate climate.

To accommodate a growing population's need of more land for food
production the report recommends making better use of the millions of
hectares of degraded land left behind both by poor agriculture
practices and mismanaged forests through an "Evergreen Revolution."

"Despite unintended environmental consequences of the Green
Revolution, it not only saved millions of people from starvation but
also millions of hectares of forests from encroachment by
agriculture," said Dr. M.S Swaminathan, of India, a Commission member
and one of the architects behind the agricultural Green Revolution of
the sixties. "Now it is critically important for the world to take
the best of that era's accomplishments and merge them with a new
generation of ideas through an Evergreen Revolution."

"The Forests have a role in supplying the world with timber and
fiber," said Commission member Dr. George Woodwell of the Woods Hole
Research Center, USA. "But while those products can be partly
substituted, the forests' ecological services for a functioning world
cannot. That is what the forest crisis is all about."

Klaus Toepfer, World Commission member and executive director of the
United Nations Environment Programme said through its public hearings
the Commission has "given a voice to people who live in the forests,
who make a living from the forests, and to every other group of
people who have a stake in the future of the forests."

"The report is leaving nobody in any doubt that there is a forest
crisis. The loss of millions of hectares of forest cover every year
is serious because of the ecological services forests provide: for
the hydrological cycle, for soil conservation, for biological
diversity and for its control of weather patterns," said Toepfer.

"Most importantly, the report offers a way out of this crisis. It
specifies reforms needed from abandoning subsidies and tax incentives
that provoke forest destruction to more openness in timber allocation
procedures and landscape planning," Toepfer said.

THE COMMISSION'S TEN RECOMMENDATIONS


Stop the destruction of the earth's forests: their material products
and ecological services are severely threatened.

Use the world's rich forest resources to improve life for poor people
and for the benefit of forest-dependent communities.

Put the public interest first and involve people in decisions about
forest use.

Get the price of forests right, to reflect their full ecological and
social values, and to stop harmful subsidies.

Apply sustainable forest management approaches so we may use forests
without abusing them.

Develop new measures of forest capital so we know whether the
situation is improving or worsening.

Plan for the use and protection of whole landscapes, not the forest
in isolation.

Make better use of knowledge about forests, and greatly expand this
information base.

Accelerate research and training so sustainable forest management can
become a reality quickly.

Take bold political decisions and develop new civil society
institutions to improve governance and accountability regarding
forest use.

© Environment News Service (ENS) 1999. All Rights Reserved.





________________________________________________

R A I N F O R E S T R E L I E F

Dedicated to the Preservation of the World's Rainforests

Rainforest Relief works to protect the world's remaining
tropical and temperate rainforests by reducing the demand
for the products and materials of rainforest destruction
such as timber, plantation agricultural products such as
bananas, beef, coffee, chocolate, and cut flowers, and
mining products such as oil, gold, and other metals.

Portland, OR phone: (503) 236-3031
Brooklyn, NY phone/fax: (718) 832-6775

Email: rainrelief@hotmail.com (Portland)
relief@igc.apc.org (Brooklyn)
http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/rainrelief

P.O. Box 14131, Portland, OR 97293, USA
P.O. 150566, Brooklyn, NY 11215, USA