“Asia’s New Woods”
Patrick B. Durst, Wulf Killmann, and Chris Brown. 2004.
Asia’s New Woods. Journal of Forestry 102 (4): 46-53. Agriculture becomes forestry
David Kaimowitz, Director General CIFOR
It has never been easy to say where agriculture stops and forestry starts. Many governments call some areas “forest land” even though there aren’t any trees and farmers grow crops there. Most people consider livestock part of agriculture, but millions of farmers graze cattle in forests. Agroforestry is stuck somewhere between agriculture and forestry and has never found a real home in either.
Now things are getting even fuzzier. People increasingly use “agricultural” crops to make “forestry” products. Each year Malaysia and Thailand export almost 1.5 billion dollars of furniture made from rubber trees, and coconut palms supply more than an eighth of the timber used by Filipinos. Fruit trees like mangos, tamarinds, and jackfruits provide much of the wood in Sri Lanka and the Indian state of Kerala. In the future, a significant share of Asia’s particleboard and fiberboard may come from tree crops, bamboo, straw, and sugar cane.
Admittedly, this phenomenon is not entirely new. The Chinese have made most of their paper from straw and other crop residues for centuries. Nonetheless, we are likely to see more of this as natural forests run out of wood, old tree crops need replacing, and new processing techniques open up all sorts of fresh possibilities for using raw materials. Right now Southeast Asia has enough old rubber trees to be able to harvest more than 6.5 million cubic meters of wood each year. That practically equals the entire timber harvest of Central Africa.
You can read about all this in “Asia’s New Woods”, by Pat Durst, Wulf Kilmann, and Chris Brown from the FAO, published recently in the Journal of Forestry. As they tell the story, any day soon people may start making doors and windows from tomatoes! This review first appeared in the 16/09/04 edition of the CIFOR-POLEX electronic list-server. If you would like to receive CIFOR-POLEX in English, Spanish, French, Bahasa Indonesia, or Nihon-go (Japanese), send a message to: k.kustiyawati@cgiar.org. For free PDF copy of this article contact: Janice.Naewboonien@fao.org. For comments and queries contact: Patrick.Durst@fao.org
Learning Lessons to Promote Forest Certification and Control Illegal Logging in Indonesia.
Luca Tacconi, Krystof Obidzinski and Ferdinandus Agung. 2004. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia. 81p. ISBN 979-3361-55-7.
Illegal logging has negative environmental impacts, results in the loss of forest products used by rural communities, creates conflicts, and causes significant losses of tax revenues that could otherwise be used for development activities. The Nature Conservancy and the World Wide Fund for Nature developed the Alliance to Promote Certification and Combat Illegal Logging to respond to widespread concerns about illegal logging. A three-year initiative, the Alliance aims to promote increased use of certification and combat illegal logging, increase the supply of certified Indonesian wood products, demonstrate practical certification solutions that differentiate legal and illegal supplies and share lessons. This report is part of the learning process within these lessons and contributes to the assessment of whether specified actions succeed in solutions being achieved. In particular, it focuses on compiling background and baseline information, highlights apparent major causes of illegal logging, presents the most significant assumptions underlying the work of the Alliance, and offers some recommendations on the Alliance's work.
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An Analysis of Forestry Sector Conflict in Indonesia 1997 - 2003.
Yuliana Cahya Wulan, Yurdi Yasmi, Christian Purba and Eva Wollenberg. 2004.
CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia. 79p. ISBN 979-3361-53-0.
This Governance Brief provides a profile of forest-related conflict in Indonesia from 1997 to June 2003, based on a survey of national and provincial newspaper articles and six case studies in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Java. The survey shows that conflict increased most rapidly in 2000 during the transition to decentralization and has generally stayed at higher levels than during the New Order period. Reports of conflicts were highest in East Kalimantan, followed by Sumatra and Central Java. The main causes of conflict were differences in perceptions about boundaries, rights to use of forest, compensation payments and distribution of benefits from forests. Although media reports focus on the escalation of conflict after the reform period, the case studies demonstrated complex histories of latent conflict and conflict resolution through compensation payments that proved unsuccessful in reducing long-run conflict. The study recommends that (i) conflict management be considered an element of forest management, (ii) forest conflicts be monitored to learn more about their incidence, causes and ways of managing them and (iii) alternative methods for managing conflict be explored.
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For details about these and other CIFOR publications contact: n.sabarniati@cgiar.org