Subject: 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."


(Photos courtesy World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development)
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.
 Link: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/apr99/1999L-04-20-03.html/Monograph.htmlhtmlx.html
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