It is good to see the World Bank and WWF forest conservation behemoths seeking more ambitious goals than working to make logging of ancient forests better and aiming to establish small protected areas in vast intact landscapes, many on contested indigenous lands. Finally there is recognition that the only measure of successful forest conservation is dramatically reducing the loss of forest cover, stabilizing, and then restoring forest landscapes.

Their new improved forest alliance II seeks to cut deforestation by 10% annually. An admirable goal, though somewhat compromised by their worldviews. Their methods for measuring net deforestation equate lossing ancient forests with new tree plantations, which are obviously NOT the same. And the focus is too tightly upon reducing deforestation, while not addressing the equally important issue of forest diminishment where trees may stand but forests are much reduced in vigor, species and ecosystem services. Still - Forests.org's and other feedback on the failed Forest Alliance I appears to have been heeded to some extent. I would continue to argue that efforts by WWF and the World Bank to make industrial harvest of old-growth ancient forests acceptable through pushing of certification is the greatest threat to these forests, and creates an environment where timber markets drive illegal logging.

New Program Aims to Reduce Alarming Destruction of Global Forests by Ten Percent Annually

The World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund announced a five-year program Wednesday to reduce the destruction of forests by 10 percent annually in an attempt to combat the alarming disappearance of the world's trees. The two organizations, which established a Forest Alliance in 1998, said they will intensify their efforts to support new forest protected areas such as national parks, more effective management of already protected areas, and improved management of forests that are not yet protected.

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New Thinking Needed on Rainforest Conservation

Amazon rainforest loss increased some six percent in 2004 to near record levels - as ranchers, soybean farmers and loggers burned and cut down a near-record area of 10,088 square miles of ancient rainforest ecosystems. Rainforest deforestation and diminishment is spiraling out of control wherever the World's last ecologically and evolutionarily rich rainforests are found - and particularly in the world's last large rainforest wildernesses found in Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo and Papua New Guinea.

New thinking is desperately needed on rainforest conservation. I concur with the assessment by the Rainforest Foundation (below) that "international discussions about forest destruction have achieved virtually nothing in the last 13 years." It is becoming abundantly clear that the forces of destruction marshaled against rainforests - loggers, agriculturalists, oil and mining - will not be defeated through status quo policy responses. The World Bank funds soya production, and along with WWF sponsors efforts to reform commercial logging. These approaches have failed and made rainforest loss worse - largely because they have not understood that empowering indigenous peoples is the best way to meaningfully ensure rainforests are sustained.

The only way that large and contiguous rainforests will continue driving Planetary ecological functions into the next century is to pay their inhabitants to protect their habitats while maintaining their rights to low impact traditional uses. Forests.org has long advocated such an approach, and now no other than the Papua New Guinea delegation to the current climate talks has suggested that developing nations should be paid to preserve tropical rainforests, in order to both slow deforestation and global warming.

Rainforest protection payments would offset foregone opportunity costs of NOT industrially harvesting their rainforest assets. At least 20% of carbon released into the atmosphere is as a result of land clearance - much of it ancient rainforests liquidated for a pittance of their true value, and at great cost to global ecological sustainability. Rapidly escalating carbon trading must urgently implement measures to include protection of intact rainforests - and the foregone release of relatively stable carbon stores - as being eligible for carbon offset payments. This can not wait - as the rainforests and global climate, as well as the well-being of rainforest dwellers and all the world's peoples - are at stake.
g.b.

*****************8

Title: New figures show devastation of the Amazon rainforest, as United Nations meet to
discuss global deforestation
Source: Rainforest Foundation Press Release
Date: May 19, 2005

For immediate release

The rampant destruction of the Amazon rainforests revealed today by the Brazilian government is an alarming wake-up call for the governments meeting this week in New York for the UN Forum on Forests [1]. Record levels of Brazilian deforestation -- 26,000 square kilometres of forest in the 12 months prior to August 2004 -- is the strongest indicator yet that international discussions about forest destruction have achieved virtually nothing in the last 13 years, according to the Rainforest Foundation UK [2].

"Some of the agencies that have been entrusted by the international community to safeguard the rainforests have instead been contributing to their destruction," said Rainforest Foundation UK director Simon Counsell. He cited the World Bank's role in promoting and funding the expansion of the soya industry in Brazil as a factor in deforestation there.

Rainforest Foundation trustee, Prof. Sir Ghillean Prance [3] dismissed claims that logging, mining and farming in rainforests contributes to improved economic development. "Actually they are evicting the poor from their habitat, so it is having the opposite effect," he said. "It's not just having a local impact, deforestation effects the entire planet. The world should help Brazil to defend its rainforests."

The devastating statistics illustrate the importance of indigenous peoples in protecting their environment. Satellite images show that the areas of forest that are best surviving the wave of destruction in Amazonia are those that have been legally designated as Indian territories. "Protecting the rights of indigenous people has been proven to be the best way of protecting rainforests in Brazil" said Simon Counsell.

--ends--

CONTACT:

Simon Counsell, Rainforest Foundation
Mobile: (0)7941 899 579
Email: simonc@rainforestuk.com

Rosemary Brown, Rainforest Foundation
Phone: 020 7251 6345
Email: rosemary@rainforestuk.com

NOTES:

[1] The United Nations Forum on Forests is the main international discussion body set up by governments to tackle global deforestation. It is the latest in a series of UN initiatives which started in 1992. The Forum is holding its 5th meeting from May 17th-29th at the UN headquarters in New York.

[2] The Rainforest Foundation UK supports indigenous people and traditional populations of the world?s rainforests in their efforts to protect their environment and fulfil their rights. This is done both by providing financial and technical assistance to projects that assist forest people directly, and by campaigning in the UK. To date, the Foundation has assisted thousands of indigenous people to gain acknowledgement of their rights and an improved quality of life. The Rainforest Foundation was set up by the musician Sting, and Trudie Styler in 1989.

[2] Sir Ghillean Prance is former director of The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and current Scientific Director of the Eden Project in Cornwall. He has spent eight years in the field in Brazil and has a worldwide interest in sustainable development of rainforest ecosystems.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (5)

All available scientific evidence would suggest that the Earth has already overshot the amount of native forests and other natural terrestrial ecosystems that can be lost while reliably and adequately maintaining ecological processes such as water retention, wildlife habitat, soil formation, atmospheric cycles, etc. The type of large scale restoration of Scottish native woodlands discussed in the following article will have to occur globally as a matter of some urgency. It is the dawning of the age of ecological restoration.

Return of the native woodland on giant scale

A HUGE tree-planting project aimed at creating an area of native woodland on a scale unseen in Scotland since the Middle Ages will be launched today. The afforestation of an 8500-hectare area, twice the size of Dundee, will begin taking shape across the heart of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park over the next 20 years.

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As ancient forests the World over come crashing down, the world's governments and United Nations have marshalled their forces to - talk about it some more?! Global governments are failing miserably to protect the Earth's ancient forest heritage, and Forests.org supports calls for immediate agreements to protect ancient forests from any sort of industrial development wherever they are found.

New international law for ancient forest protection

Forest ministers from around the world will gather today to discuss the future of the forests at the start of the Fifth Conference of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) at the UN's headquarters in New York. Greenpeace is calling on governments to bring an end to the UNFF talk-shop which to date has done nothing to protect the forests nor the communities or the biodiversity that they house and create a legally binding agreement that will ensure the protection of the world's last remaining ancient forests.

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The true nature of the perilous condition of the Earth is rarely appreciated, and thus there is little hope of ever achieving global ecological sustainability. Even ardent environmentalists tend to be concerned with climate change, wildlife loss or any number or other environmental issues mostly in isolation. There is a general failure of most to appreciate that climate change, extinction, water shortages, ocean dead zones and others are all symptoms of the same problem. Too many people are consuming too much while failing to maintain adequate intact ecosystems that provide humans and other animals with their habitat. Inequitable, unjust and unsustainable economic growth running rampant over ecosystems required for all life is the disease. Climate change, forest loss, other environmental issues, poverty and conflict are the symptoms - and each is amplifying the others. The world's protected areas are too small relative to the human enterprise. The problem with the environment is that we are experiencing global ecological collapse.

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Here are two updates on long-standing campaigns by Forests.org. The first involves a long overdue World Bank ombudsman investigation of their activities in the Cambodian forest sector. The second regards President Bush's formal rescinding of roadless forest protections. Together they demonstrate how two of the most powerful institutions in the world - the U.S. government and World Bank - are utterly failing to protect the forest ecosystems upon which all life depend.

It need not be this way. Forest conservation is deeply conservative - so Bush's effort to log the last of America's wild forest heritage is purely resource cronyism and corruption, not tied to political ideology. There is no reason that rigorous forest conservation as a component of policy to ensure North American and global ecological sustainability should not be a bi-partisan no-brainer. The present American government must discard the notion that the way to healthy forests is through heavy industrial logging.

At one point several years ago the World Bank was playing useful roles in several national forest conservation policy debates - using its financial clout in a coalition with other conservation interests. As I shepherded one such Bank program in Papua New Guinea, we were able to tie lending to maintaining relatively high tax rates on the sector and to a moratorium on new logging. But alas, it appears the Bank's commitment to forests was primarily a sop to NGOs, and a means to maintain flows of tropical timbers to developed countries. The Bank must jettison its misguided support for reform of mafia-like illegal loggers.

There are potential forest conservation roles to be played by multi-lateral lending organizations and the World's wealthiest nations. But the World Bank and America have blown it. Both must change their most basic assumption - that industrial logging of the World's remaining forest wildlands is their best use. Until they do so, together they pose the greatest threat to the World's last mighty, ancient and roadless forest landscapes. As outgoing World Bank President Wolfensohn has himself recently said, they need to take "another look (at the Bank?s work on forestry) to see if we have screwed up". They have.
g.b.

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