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to tackle corruption, a major driver of deforestation, it is unlikely that any forest management regime can be effective. Rhetoric will achieve nothing. Corruption in tropical forestry has thrived in large part because, although it has been publicly condemned, it has also been tolerated – and it has been tolerated because naive policy-makers have come erroneously to believe that industrial logging is simultaneously ecologically and economically sustainable and good for development as well. The reality is that the world must enter a new phase of zero tolerance for forest-related corruption. The world’s remaining forests are at stake, and without them the battle against climate change cannot be won. Notes 1. 2. 3.
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Patrick Alley is a director of Global Witness. World Bank, Strengthening Forest Law Enforcement and Governance: Addressing a Systemic Constraint to Sustainable Development (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006), p. xi. Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change (The Stern Review) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). See also: Guido van der Werf et al., ‘CO2 Emissions from Forest Loss’, Nature Geoscience, vol. 2 (2009), pp. 737–738. See Johannes Ebeling and Maï Yasue, ‘Generating Carbon Finance through Avoided Deforestation and its Potential to Create Climatic, Conservation and Human Development Benefits’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 363 (2008), pp. 1917–1924; The Eliasch Review, Climate Change: Financing Global Forests (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 2008). Guardian (UK), ‘UN’s forest protection scheme at risk from organized crime, experts warn’, 5 October 2009. Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), State of the World’s Forests 2007 (Rome: FAO, 2007), p. 70. See International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), ‘Indigenous Peoples and REDD-plus: Challenges and Opportunities for the Engagement of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in REDD-plus’ (Gland: IUCN, 2010). See Anand Madhvani, An Assessment of Data on ODA Financial Flows in the Forest Sector (New York: UN Development Programme [UNDP], 1999); Uma Lele et al., The World Bank Forest Strategy: Striking the Right Balance (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000). See Brendan Mackey et al., Green Carbon: The Role of Natural Forests in Carbon Storage (Canberra: ANU [Australian National University] E Press, 2008), pp. 17–18. Global Witness, Trick or Treat? REDD, Development and Sustainable Forest Management (London: Global Witness, 2009). See http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-28721-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html. See www.globalwitness.org for reports on Cambodia and Cameroon that are illustrative of these issues; Royal Government of Cambodia, Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries, Department of Forestry & Wildlife, Cambodian Forest Concession Review Report (Asian Development Bank, 28 April 2000). Dependent on approval by the European Council, an EU regulation is set to take effect from 2012.
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