"Paper Parks" Illustrate Magnitude of Threat to World's Forests

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

12/5/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

A new report commissioned by the World Bank/WWF Alliance and carried

out by IUCN revealed that less than one quarter of declared parks,

refuges and other protected areas in ten key forested countries are

well managed. This means 1% of the forests of Brazil, China, Gabon,

Indonesia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Tanzania and

Vietnam are protected and thus secure from the threat of destruction.

The western notion of Parks appears to be increasingly irrelevant as

a strategy to conserve forests and diversity--particularly in the

tropics.

This argues strongly for focusing more upon maintaining large,

contiguous areas of natural forest cover with various levels of

protection and management over landscapes and bioregions. In

countries that still have large forest expanses, it should no longer

be assumed that the majority will be industrially harvested, to

arrive (maybe, if lucky) at a maximum of 10% intact "preserved"

areas. As shown by the fact that few such Parks enjoy real

protection, this is the wrong approach. By all means, manage

existing Parks better. However, the emphasis in remaining forest

wildernesses should be upon maintaining extensive (if not entire)

forest cover; including large blocks of ecological core areas under

strict preservation surrounded by various types of certified and

sustainable forest management activities by local peoples for their

benefit.

Forest ecosystems are not well suited to being caged into little

refuges surrounded by a sea of human development and need. Given a

long enough time frame, and inevitable human demands, such isolated

and fragmented parks will come down eventually. It's just a matter

of time. The alternative is reintegrating large, functional forests

with various levels of use and protection into human landscapes.

This will require careful conservation planning, and massive

restoration activities in areas that have already been fragmented.

It will also require laws to reign in predatory logging, transfer of

finance and technology to developing countries, and political will

underpinned by an active and vocal civil society. Forest

sustainability is not exclusively determined at the stand level by

harvest practices. The focus needs to be more upscale. A given

forest (be it a park or managed forest) is sustained by maintaining a

forested landscape as its context.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: New research reveals magnitude of threat to world's forest

protected areas

Source: World Bank/WWF Alliance Press Release,

http://www-esd.worldbank.org/wwf/

Date: December 2, 1999

2 December, 1999

New findings released today by the World Bank/WWF Alliance revealed

that less than one quarter of declared national parks, wildlife

refuges, and other protected areas in 10 key forested countries were

well managed, and many had no management at all. What this means is

that only one percent of these areas are secure from serious threats

such as human settlement, agriculture, logging, hunting, mining,

pollution, war, and tourism, among other pressures.

In response to these findings from a study conducted by IUCN for the

World Bank/WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use,

World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn and WWF-US President Kathryn

S. Fuller today adopted a new target for converting these so called

'paper parks' into effectively managed areas. The target calls for 50

million hectares of existing but highly threatened forest protected

area to be secured under effective management by the year 2005. To

achieve this goal, the Alliance will continue to work with

governments, conservation organizations, indigenous people and other

stakeholders to identify the world's most threatened parks and to

develop a system for implementation, improving and monitoring

management of these protected areas.

"This new research highlights the urgent need to manage these

protected areas more effectively so that they are secure for the

people and wildlife who depend upon them for their survival" says

Fuller.

These findings, among others, are outlined in the World Bank/WWF

Alliance's first annual report released today by Wolfensohn and

Fuller. The Alliance is working world-wide, from Vietnam where it has

helped to mobilize more than $1 million private-sector investment

from the Tropical Forest Fund, an association of furniture buyers

committed to sustainable forestry, to Georgia in Eastern Europe,

where WWF and World Bank collaboration catalyzed action that led to

the passage of a new forestry code that should halt the devastation

of that country's forests.

The Alliance has seen the governments of Brazil, Peru and six nations

of the Congo Basin commit to actions that once realized, will help

the Alliance meet two-thirds of its target for new protected areas.

"Alleviating poverty and protecting the environment go hand in hand,"

says Wolfensohn. "This Alliance will help leverage our contract with

Nature, delivering real results on the ground." Currently, the

Alliance has projects in over 22 countries worldwide and is

continuing to form partnerships with other NGOs and governments to

make their global vision for the future of the world forests become a

reality.

Contacts:

World Bank: Kristyn Ebro, tel. +1 202 458 2736 e-mail:

Kebro@worldbank.org

WWF: Michael Ross, tel. +1 202 778 9565 e-mail:

Michael.Ross@wwfus.org

NOTES TO THE EDITORS

1. In April of 1998, the World Bank, the largest provider of

development assistance in the world, and WWF*, the world's largest

conservation organization, joined forces to protect the Earth's

forests in an Alliance for forest conservation and sustainable use.

The Alliance promotes the following targets:

* 50 million hectares of new forest protected areas by 2005.

* 50 million hectares of existing but highly threatened forest

protected areas secured under effective management by 2005.

* 200 million hectares of the world's production forests under

independently certified sustainable management by 2005.

2. Copies of the report "Threats to Forest Protected Areas" can be

found on the Alliance web site: www-esd.worldbank.org/wwf

3. 10 key countries in the Paper Parks report: Brazil, China, Gabon,

Indonesia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Tanzania and

Vietnam.

4. The Alliance's first Annual Report can be found on the Alliance

web site at: www-esd.worldbank.org/wwf

ITEM #2

Title: ENVIRONMENT: ''Protected'' Forests Go Unprotected

Source: InterPress Service

Date: December 2, 1999

Byline: Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (IPS) - Forests protected by the national

governments of developing countries are going largely unprotected,

according to a report released here Thursday.

The study, carried out by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), found

that only about one percent of protected areas in 10 key developing

countries received adequate management and were secure against any

foreseeable threat.

At the same time, some 11 percent of the protected areas were either

thoroughly or considerably degraded, according to the study, which

was commissioned World Bank/World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Alliance,

created to promote the conservation and sustainable use of forests in

the developing world.

''This new research highlights the urgent need to manage these

protected areas more effectively so that they are secure for the

people and wildlife who depend upon them for their survival,'' said

Kathryn Fuller, the president of WWF-US.

Fuller, together with World Bank President James Wolfensohn, held a

review of the Alliance at Bank headquarters with leaders of other

environmental groups.

''This is a global challenge,'' said Wolfensohn, whose agency has

been widely criticised in the past for funding projects and policies

which harmed forests, particularly in tropical areas.

Wolfensohn and Fuller agreed that the IUCN findings were so alarming

that they would add a new goal to the Alliance's seven- year agenda -

to ensure that 50 million hectares of already- protected but highly

threatened forests were secured under effective management by the

year 2005.

Forests - both temperate and tropical - currently were being cleared

at the rate of 23 hectares each minute - or a total of 12 million

hectares a year, an area the size of Greece.

Major threats to forest areas in poor countries include logging,

mining, agriculture, and herding. Some 350 million of the world's

rural poor and forest-dwelling indigenous still depended on forests

for their livelihood, the report said.

The Alliance, an unusual partnership between the Bank and a major

non-governmental environmental organisation, also includes other

NGOs, including Conservation International, the International

Institute for Environment and Development, the IUCN, Resources for

the Future, the Nature Conservancy, and the World Resources

Institute, as well as a number of different national and

international forestry institutes.

The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and the Global Environment

Facility (GEF) also provided funding for the Alliance which next year

will receive backing financial backing from Norway and Finland as

well.

It originally set itself two main goals to accomplish by 2005: to

persuade participating governments to create 50 million hectares of

new protected forest; and to have 200 million hectares of forests,

already being harvested under cultivation, to be put under

independently certified sustainable management.

The alliance already has largely succeeded in its first goal. The

governments of Brazil, Peru and the six nations of the Congo Basin,

the site of Africa's largest remaining tropical rain forests, have

agreed to designate some 34 million hectares of their land as

"protected."

It also has worked closely with the governments of Latvia, Georgia,

Madagascar, Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Laos - some of

the 22 countries which have joined the Alliance.

But designating areas as protected does not make them so, as the IUCN

survey discovered.

It assessed the status of officially protected forests in ten key

nations: Brazil, China, Gabon, Indonesia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea,

Peru, Russia, Tanzania, and Vietnam.

The study found that almost 25 percent of those areas were either

somewhat or thoroughly degraded, while an additional 60 percent,

while currently secure primarily because of their remoteness, were

certain to face threats in the future.

Of the total, less than 25 percent of the protected areas were

considered to be ''well managed with good infrastructure,'' while as

69 percent of protected forests were found to have inadequate or no

management in place.

The greatest immediate threat to most of the protected forests came

from logging and mining operations, the study revealed. But

agriculture, overgrazing, human settlement, bushmeat hunting, the

collection of exotic species for sale, fire, war, tourism, and the

introduction and invasion of non-indigenous species also were cited.

Nigel Dudley, who wrote the report, said most of the logging and

mining operations in protected areas were carried out by local

companies, rather than western transnational firms to which, however,

the local firms often sold their harvest.

''A lot of the illegal timber ends up in the West,'' he said.

Wolfensohn, who said the Bank increasingly had tried to persuade

local timber companies to cease predatory logging, added that some of

the larger Asian countries also engaged in the practice, as did some

European countries, particularly in Africa.

Underlying causes for the logging in protected areas, according to

the report, included high consumption levels in the world's wealthy

countries.

There also was the problem of persistent poverty in developing

nations caused by such factors as international debt, pressure for

trade and development, land tenure, population growth, corruption,

lack of capacity and education, and social relations, particularly

discrimination against women. (END/IPS/jl/mk/99)

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