BOLIVIA: Sustainable forests management for all
Copyright 2001 WWF International
October 19, 2001
By Darron Asher Collins
Isolated communities in Bolivia may not seem to be suitable targets for FSC Certification. A WWF Project is proving that sustainable forest management is one avenue by which small, indigenous communities can meet their own needs and wants while safeguarding the world's forested ecosystems for centuries to come.
Ichilo River, Bolivia: On a Wednesday night in August, my traveling companion Nils Hager and I were flattened out in the bottom of a 15-foot long dugout canoe in the middle of the Ichilo River. The Ichilo is a wide, brown, sluggish river that festers its way through the lowland forests of Bolivia, eventually dumping its waters, sediments, and forest debris into the even wider, browner, and more sluggish Rio Mamore.
The words "August," "lowland Bolivia," and "Amazon" conjure up images of intense heat and humidity, but at that particular moment I couldn't remember a time when I had been colder. The surazo was blowing. The surzao, literally "the big south," are cold blasts of Antarctic wind that manage to find their way to the Bolivian lowlands for two to three weeks of the year - usually in July or August. Combine these jets of climatic frost with the drenching sprays of the outboard motor-powered canoe, and the lack of sun, and you get pretty miserable conditions.
Nils Hager is the Swedish-born Forest Officer for the conservation organization WWF Bolivia Programme Office in Santa Cruz, and is in charge of managing a project dedicated to helping 17 small community forest projects throughout Latin America attain certification through the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
The FSC, since its inception in 1993, has championed the sustainable management of the world's productive forests by administering "green seals" recognizing forests managed in ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable ways. Nils and I were visiting one of those 17 communities, known as the TCO Yuqui, in order to promulgate the idea of forest certification.
In December of last year, two representatives of Smartwood, an auditing body accredited by the FSC, made an initial visit to the TCO Yuqui in order to determine what changes were needed in the community's forest management practices in order to become certified. After reviewing the document written by the Smartwood auditors I must admit asking myself, "How could such a small settlement, so isolated from everything, with so few resources, ever reach certification?" Our simple canoe trip hoped to shed light on that question.
Less than ten years ago there would have been no way any forestry operation in Bolivia could have reached certification. The forestry sector was essentially dominated by an informal sector that exploited the natural heritage of Bolivian timbers, leaving a landscape peppered with the scars of inappropriate logging. A significant move away from unsustainable logging came in the early 1990s when, after a united indigenous front marched on the capital of La Paz, the federal government began to formally recognize and establish indigenous land rights by creating TCOs - a Spanish acronym roughly equivalent to "Traditional Community Lands." By properly demarcating land titles, indigenous peoples began classifying regions within their TCO as appropriate for forestry operations, dramatically formalizing the forestry sector in the Bolivian Amazon.
Furthermore, the Bolivian forest law - Ley Forestal 1700 - was signed in July, 1996 and required that all forestry operations, including those within the TCOs, produce an acceptable management plan. As one of the primary criteria for FSC certification is an effective management plan, compliance with this requirement has brought many forest operations a mammoth step closer toward certification.
On April 11, 1997 the TCO Yuqui was established, demarcating just over 120,000 hectares of forested land in the Ichilo river drainage covering five settlements. The name "Yuqui" is derived from the indigenous group that carries the same name. Remarkably, there are just 158 Yuquí who, until missionary contact and infrastructure brought them into contact with the modern world in 1965, were nomadic hunters and gatherers known anthropologically for their ferocity, simple technology, and practice of slavery.
Nils, our Mojeno companion Don Angel, about 40 of the extant 158 Yuqui, and I all gathered around the Bia Recuate schoolhouse for a discussion on certification. I thought to myself, "a few decades ago these folks were nomadic hunter/gatherers, isolated in the otherwise unoccupied Bolivian Amazon, and now they are dealing with management plans, GIS, international timber markets, and non-government organizations?" Nils and I were amazed at the cultural dexterity of these people, their capacity for adapting to new social and ecological situations, and their interest and sincerity regarding sustainable forest management.
There are many hurdles between the TCO Yuqui and sustainable forest management through forest certification: lack of technical capacity, lack of infrastructure, lack of timber species with high demand in the international market. In fact, these hurdles are common to many of the 17 communities of Nils' project.
The national and international NGO world has inadvertently fostered a kind of dependence on outside support. Sustainable forest management with the Forest Stewardship Council is one avenue by which small, indigenous communities like the TCO Yuquí can meet their own needs and wants while safeguarding the world's forested ecosystems for centuries to come.
Nils turned to me as we took our spots in the bottom of the canoe after leaving the group in Bia Recuate and said, "It will take time, much longer than it would take any large forest corporation. But it will happen." I believed him, and it wasn't only because the sun was now warming my bones that had been frozen by the surazo only a few days before.
(950 words)*Darron Asher Collin is WWF Regional Forest Coordinator, based in the Latin America/Carribean Secretariat, Washington, DC, USA