Stopping and reversing deforestation is a foremost priority in much of the tropics. Numerous policies and programs try to stem forest clearance, encourage tree planting, and restore forest landscapes. The hope is to promote “forest transitions” similar to the historical turnaround in forest cover trajectories in wealthy temperate countries. Such efforts have become all the more urgent given the climate and biodiversity crises. Yet it is often assumed that more forests is better and more sustainable, without careful consideration of how and where it happens, who wins and who loses, and what kinds of forests. In a recent open access paper, we identify nine pitfalls to such assumptions. Hopefully this inspires researchers, policymakers, and leaders to promote more diverse transitions to sustainable forest use and management.
The nine pitfalls and their implications for research and policy. (Figure 2 from our paper in the journal Environmental Conservation). With photos of forest landscapes across Southeast Asia: (a) plantations of rubber and acacia spreading in central Vietnam with remnant natural forest on hilltops; (b) ancestral lands of Pala’wan farmers on Palawan, Philippines; (c) announcement of an application for a communal land title for heritage land that has already been converted to oil palm plantations in Sabah, Malaysia; and (d) paddy rice fields and upland forest with swidden in Hsipaw, Myanmar. Photos (a) Tran Nam Thang, (b) Wolfram Dressler, (c) Jennifer Bartmess, (d) Kevin Woods.Read the rest of this entry »
Wanting to preserve biodiversity in tropical forest areas without involving the local and indigenous communities that live there is neither fair nor effective, say ecologist Jacques Tassin and geographer Christian Kull. This was the tag line for our recent opinion piece published in the French newspaper Le Monde. Thanks so much to my friend and collaborator Jacques Tassin for involving me in this project. Below, I’ve made an English translation of the article, and also inserted some of the references that inspired us.
The recent media storm over Amazonian flames recently caught up with me – here’s the result, in French, published in La Liberté (Fribourg), Le Nouvelliste (Sion), and Le Courrier (Genève), and in pdf. I laud the journalist Thierry Jacolet for his efforts to understand and not just populate preconceived soundbites with academic authority. Read the rest of this entry »
Oil palm gets all the attention, but what about acacia? Oil palm has become synonymous with deforestation in Indonesia and resulting losses of orang-utan habitat, increased carbon emissions, and unhealthy smoke haze. But equally large areas of peatland are being converted to pulp and paper plantations of tropical salwood wattles like Acacia crassicarpa and A. magnum, trees that now cover many millions of hectares in South East Asia. In Riau province, Sumatra, the two big pulp mills (operated by Asia Pulp and Paper [APP] and Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd [APRIL]) have around 75 and 45 per cent (respectively) of their pulp plantations located on peatland. The ways in which such forestry concessions have been granted and implemented have inspired dramatic protests: 28 residents of the Meranti Islands in Riau Province stitched their lips shut while demonstrating in front of government buildings in Jakarta (Jakarta Post; Transparency Int.). Read the rest of this entry »
If stated often enough, a fact becomes truth. That seems to be the case with the oft-repeated figure that “Madagascar has lost 90% of its original forest cover”. The problem, as Bill McConnell of Michigan State University and I point out in a letter just published in Science magazine, is that this fact cannot be proven.
Slash-and-burn tavy clearing near Andapa, Madagascar (photo by C. Kull)
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