Peter Dauvergne's New Book about Japan and Deforestation in Southeast Asia
6/8/97
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Peter Dauvergne's New Book about Japan and Deforestation in
Southeast Asia
Date: 6/8/97
Source: Peter Dauvergne
Department of International Relations
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
__________________________________________________________________________
Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997.
by Peter Dauvergne
June 1997
336 pp. - 1 illus.
ISBN 0-262-54087-8
$22.00 (paper)
ISBN 0-262-04160-X
$45.00 (cloth)
Web site orders:
http://www-mitpress.mit.edu:80/mitp/recent-books/environ/dausp.html
Email order information: mitpress-orders@mit.edu
__________________________________________________________________________
_
"With a thoroughness that is dazzling, Dauvergne has written the missing
chapter in the tragedy of Southeast Asia's forest plunder. Link by link,
Dauvergne constructs previously obscured chains -- from the men with the
chainsaws all the way back to Japan's rapacious appetite for timber and
the
private and public institutions feeding that appetite."
-- Robin Broad, Associate Professor, International Development Program,
American University; co-author, Plundering Paradise: The Struggle for the
Environment in the Philippines
__________________________________________________________________________
_
"I first started poking at problems of the Japanese timber trade in
Southeast Asia in the late 1970s. How I wish there could have been a
Dauvergne-style book available in those far-back days, so that
environmentalists could have marshaled more substantive evidence about the
shenanigans of the trade. The book sets out a wealth of documented detail
that shows how we should be super-sceptical of 'official' business
statistics. This is one of the most illuminating tropical forestry books
of the last decade."
-- Norman Myers
__________________________________________________________________________
_
"Large-scale timber harvests in Southeast Asia began in the 1950's in the
Philippines amidst almost total ignorance of the complex ecology of
tropical forests, an ignorance not at all dispelled by the time these
harvesting practices spread southward into East Malaysia and Indonesia in
the sixties and seventies. Dauvergne's book limns the Japanese role in
this process, first as a near monopsonistic importer of logs, then as
investor in extractive activities, and finally as major importer of
plywood. The book shows that while all parties to tropical deforestation
in the region have learned something from this checkered history, none,
including Japanese corporations and government agencies, have learned very
much."
-- Malcolm Gillis, Professor of Economics, Rice University
__________________________________________________________________________
_
"I am extremely enthusiastic about this book. It has significance in terms
of developing the concepts of patron-client relations and shadow ecology
as useful tools for analyzing a major new issue in international politics.
It also contains a wealth of detailed information that will be immensely
valuable to the researcher on global forest issues as well as Southeast
Asian politics. No one else has taken on this broad set of topics with
this depth and comprehensiveness. The research appears to me to be truly
exhaustive, reflecting the author's research in the field as well as
familiarity with the existing scholarly literature. For these reasons, I
would judge it to be the authoritative scholarly work on the politics of
tropical rainforests for a long time to come."
-- Gareth Porter, International Program Director, Environmental and Energy
Study Institute
__________________________________________________________________________
_
"Peter Dauvergne's remarkable book tells a grim tale about the ties that
bind consumption-hungry industrial societies to far-off patronage
relations in poorer countries - and how these ties have led to
irreversible environmental degradation. Shadows in the Forest demonstrates
the power of social science to open new windows for us on how
international society operates, on how, in this case, Japanese money has
sustained a web of local state-society relations that has scarred the face
of Southeast Asia."
-- Joel S. Migdal, Robert F. Philip Professor of International Studies,
The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of
Washington
__________________________________________________________________________
Peter Dauvergne developed the concept of a "shadow ecology" to assess the
total environmental impact of one country on resource management in
another country or area. Aspects of a shadow ecology include government
aid and loans; corporate practices, investment, and technology transfers;
and trade factors such as consumption, export and consumer prices, and
import tariffs.
In Shadows in the Forest, Dauvergne examines Japan's effect on commercial
timber management in Indonesia, East Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Japan's shadow ecology has stimulated unsustainable logging, which in turn
has triggered widespread deforestation. Although Japanese practices have
improved somewhat since the early 1990s, corporate trade structures and
purchasing patterns, timber prices, wasteful consumption, import tariffs,
and the cumulative environmental effects of past practices continue to
undermine sustainable forest management in Southeast Asia.
This book is the first to analyze the environmental impact of Japanese
trade, corporations, and aid on timber management in the context of
Southeast Asian political economies. It is also one of the first
comprehensive studies of why Southeast Asian states are unable to enforce
forest policies and regulations. In particular, it highlights links
between state officials and business leaders that reduce state funds,
distort policies, and protect illegal and unsustainable loggers. More
broadly, the book is one of the first to examine the environmental impact
of Northeast Asian development on Southeast Asian resource management and
to analyze the indirect environmental impact of bilateral state relations
on the management of one Southern resource.
Politics, Science, and the Environment series, Peter M. Haas, Sheila
Jasanoff, and Gene Rochlin, editors