Wood & Sustainability
Tropical Forest Management –
Status and
Challenges
Sustaining tropical forests requires more than general policies and guidelines. Governmental and international corporate as well as non-profit organisations will need to cooperate and coordinate to find a mutually beneficial meeting point. by Dr Jegatheswaran Ratnasingam, FIWSc
54 FDM ASIA JAN/FEB 2010 | www.fdmasia.com
basic goods and services, which are important to human livelihoods.
Drivers Of Change In Forest Management A number of forces, either individually or collectively, influence the management of tropical forests, and the trends related to these forces are not yet clearly understood. According to the International Furniture Research Group (IFRG), an analysis of tropical deforestation in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean regions identifies four proximate causes of deforestation: 1. Infrastructure development 2. Agricultural expansion 3. Wood extraction 4. Environmental factors like land characteristics, biological drivers such as fires, drought and pests and social drivers such as war, social disorder and economic shocks. Furthermore, five clusters of driving
Jayanta Debnath
T
ropical forests are a repository of biodiversity, providing habitats for more than 50 percent of the earth’s plant and animal species. They are an important sink for carbon stores, providing many goods and ecosystem services, and they act as a critical contributor to the livelihoods of more than 1.5 billion people. Of this number, at least 60 million mainly indigenous groups of people are entirely dependent on forests, while 350 million are highly dependent, and 1.2 billion are dependent on agro-forestry resources. According to the Forest Resources Assessment Study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) report on the Status of Tropical Forest Management, the tropical forests are among the earth’s most threatened ecosystems, with a deforestation rate estimated at nearly 25,000 hectare (250 million sq m) a day. This sector is perceived to be lawless and is threatened by activities such as uncontrolled logging and illegal collection of fuel wood, fires, conversion into agricultural land, the depletion of ground water as well as climate change caused by economic activities. As a result, these forests are losing the capacity to provide
forces that shape these proximate causes are demographic factors, economic factors, technological factors, policy and institutional factors as well as cultural factors. Analysis has shown that tropical deforestation is determined by a combination of proximate causes and driving forces that are specific to time and place.
Schemes Of Tropical Forests Management Recognising the need to address the forces driving tropical deforestation, the international community has engaged