Opinion - Laura Snook, Forester, CIFOR

The dark-red and highly prized timber from the world’s rapidly diminishing supply of mahogany trees epitomizes the ongoing conflict and controversies regarding tropical forests. Most media coverage has focused on the underbelly of the mahogany trade, reporting accusations of slavery, threats to indigenous South American tribes and unchecked illegal logging.

There is truth to this media coverage. Unlike mahogany itself, loggers guilty of using treachery and violence to get at this prized timber are not a rare species. Only last year the Brazilian government freed more than 1,400 slave laborers working in the mahogany sector.

Often in their quest to meet the world’s demand for mahogany, loggers penetrate deep into remote tribal lands, bringing with them diseases to which local people have little resistance. But it would be wrong to assume conflict and controversy occur everywhere mahogany is logged.

Mahogany need not be associated with violence, crime or unsustainable logging. Indeed, methods for ensuring the mahogany industry has a sustainable future do exist and actions to address current problems are already underway. Illegal logging, which threatens the species in Peru and Brazil, has seen the US and European countries reject Brazilian mahogany exported under fraudulent permits. The problem is also being addressed at the source, with the Brazilian government suspending mahogany logging.

Successful efforts to guarantee the survival of the magnificent mahogany and the economic benefits it offers poor rural communities can be found elsewhere in Latin America. In parts of Central America, environmentally and economically sustainable techniques for managing mahogany are providing livelihoods to thousands of rural people while conserving hundreds of thousands of hectares of tropical forests.

A few hours south of Cancun, Mexico, more than 40 communities, many of them indigenous Maya Indians, own up to 50,000 hectares of forest land. Each year communities harvest mahogany trees from four percent of their forest area, and plant mahogany seedlings in the resulting canopy openings. A few communities have sawmills where members earn wages converting their logs to the boards they sell to buyers. Some run carpentry shops and produce furniture. These diverse forests also yield other saleable products and sources of livelihood. Latex sold for chewing gum is harvested by machete-wielding men climbing trees. Railroad ties are made from other hardwood species and communities sell palm leaves for thatching the roofs of local dwellings or beachside restaurants catering to tourists.

Across the border in Belize, an NGO owns and manages 100,000 hectares – some six percent of the country’s total land area. The “Programme for Belize” harvests timber, including mahogany, from 18 percent of their forest land, to help pay the costs of protecting these forest ecosystems. The continued existence of these habitats is crucial for the survival of jaguars, tapirs, pumas, monkeys, toucans and many migrating birds from the US and Canada.

To ensure these habitats and their mahogany survive, the NGO harvests mahogany timber from only 2.5 percent of its timber management area each year. It leaves 20 mahogany seed trees on each 100 hectare felling compartment to generate new mahogany trees. The mahogany produced by the “Programme for Belize” and a number of Mexican communities is certified according to the Forest Stewardship Council’s internationally agreed guidelines.

Both Mexico and Belize are showing the world not only how mahogany can be sustainably harvested but also how logging can continue to provide livelihoods for rural workers and their families. Strategies for achieving these outcomes were further developed at an international workshop on sustaining mahogany, sponsored by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), in Chetumal, Mexico in early November, 2003.

These advances are coming just in time. The same month mahogany was placed under the protection of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). CITES will require producing countries to define sustainable levels of mahogany production and limit their export permits accordingly.

Let’s hope mahogany producers in Brazil, Peru and elsewhere pay attention to both CITES and the outcomes of the Chetumal workshop. These will not only benefit mahogany, but will provide technologies and strategies for conserving their tropical forest homelands and ensuring sustainable livelihoods.