0.13 Natural capital: forestry  (Page 11/14)

We noted earlier: poor people in poor countries are far more dependent upon soils, fisheries and forests than are the wealthy anywhere. Therefore, degradation of the resource base, particularly that portion which supports food production, involved more serious immediate consequences for the poor.

This is most obviously the case for millions of people, typical cultural minorities, for which tropical forests have been a traditional abode. In the Philippines alone, numbers of these has been estimated at six million people. There are, by the way – 2 general types of forest people 1. Habituated (i.e. already in modern economy) 2. Uncontacted.

The interests of peoples such as these are usually ignored liquidation of natural forest assets for the valuable wood or for the extremely limited agricultural potential of the soils lying beneath the forest canopy results in irreversible losses of livelihood for these people and destruction in a way of life.

Tangible, immediate costs to generally poor forest dwellers extend well beyond these losses, and include costs attendant upon increased erosion, greater difficulties in river transport, large-scale forest fires, and flooding that follow in wake of deforestation. These same costs, particularly those of watershed damage, leading to more erosion, impacts millions of marginal farmers downstream. As a result, in nations such as Thailand, both forestry and agriculture have become unsustainable in large areas in the adjacent to farmer forest lands.

Appendix to chapter 13: international trade and deforestation in tropical hardwoods

I. introduction

The markets for hardwoods and softwoods are related, but different. Hardwoods ordinarily are denser and more durable; the wood fibers tend to be shorter than softwoods such as pine. However, softwoods, while suitable for pulp and paper manufacture, are not sufficiently durable to be used outdoors unless wood preservatives are applied.

Large scale exports of tropical hardwoods has been a relatively recent development. International trade in wood and wood products prior to 1800 was dominated by exports from temperate zone forests. Typical uses were such items as ships’ masts, building materials and furniture. Trade in tropical hardwoods was relatively limited, and consisted primarily of relatively small volumes of wood taken from easily accessible forests in coastal tropical regions in Central and South America, West Africa, Philippines, Thailand, India, Burma and Malaya. However, ship builders imported significant quantities of African oak (iroku) into Liverpool as early as 1823. The history of international trade in tropical hardwoods over the past two centuries may be divided into three distinct periods.

1. 1800-1945: specialty trade in hardwoods prized in furniture and ornamentation, especially teak (first from Burma, then other Asian nations) and mahogany (from Central and South America).
2. 1945-1975: Booming log exports especially from East Asia, West Africa and to a much lesser extent, Central and South America. Tropical logs were shipped primarily to plymills and sawmills in the U.S., Japan and Europe. Two factors were especially notable in this period. First, rapid increases in industrial country demand for plywood and other wood products made from short-fiber tropical hardwoods generally unsuitable for making pulp and paper. Second, the increasing utilization after 1945 of the one-man chainsaw and heavy harvest vehicles enabled log exports on a scale theretofore impossible. Tropical hardwood exports grew rapidly during this period, from less than US $350 million in the mid-fifties to $8.7 million by the end of the seventies.
3. 1975-2010: There were four especially notable developments in this period. First, the dominance of East Asian Nations, especially Malaysia and Indonesia in the export market. Second, there was after 1985 a very sharp increase in exports to rapidly growing China. Third was a steady decline in the purchasing power of tropical timber exports, in spite of steadily rising nominal prices for logs, sawnwood and plywood. This is discussed in detail in Section III. Fourth, there were sharp changes in the composition of tropical hardwood exports. Whereas in earlier periods almost all exports were in log form, by 2010 exports were primarily in the form of processed wood products. By 2007, total export values reached $26 Billion (See Table 13-2).