Greenmail
May 2010 – Green Papers: Issue III

In a carefully co-ordinated campaign, environmental groups in Europe and North America are ‘greenmailing’ major companies in Europe and the US to suspend purchase of paper products and palm oil from Indonesian and Chinese producers. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth in Europe, and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in the US, have threatened to blacken the standing of luxury goods companies, major retail chains and major producers of grocery products unless they submit to Greenpeace demands. The assertions that these companies endorse serious damage to the environment by purchasing from Indonesian suppliers are spurious. Yet some of the companies — Gucci, Nestle and Unilever — have bowed to threats to damage their brand names and leading branded products. They justify this by the belief that it will preserve their carefully developed reputations as leading practitioners of corporate social responsibility (CSR). In reality, what they have done is adopt the radical Green view of how business should behave. They have broken two golden rules shareholders expect CSR to deliver: protection of core business and high ethical standards.

Conversion – The Immutable Link between Forestry and Development
December 2009 – A World Growth Study

Leading European Union (EU) members are pressing either for agreement to a ‘No Conversion’ principle, or for endorsement of the idea that no financial assistance should be provided to developing countries unless they apply a ‘No Conversion’ policy. These are policies that would increase, not reduce, poverty (nor have a meaningful environmental impact – most developing countries have already reserved large areas of forest to protect biodiversity). Furthermore, based on the same erroneous assumption about what drives deforestation, the EU is introducing trade measures to enable it to coerce large exporters of forest products to adopt ‘No Conversion’ policies and to restrict large scale and commercial forestry. These policies, advanced as measures to protect the environment, will have only one certain effect: they will increase poverty. This report aims to explain why.

 Click here to read the rest of the World Growth report

 Click here to read the rest of the Executive Summary

The New Face of European Environmental Protectionism:  Forestry and Climate Change
December 2009 – A World Growth Briefing

The European Union (EU) is seeking to impose environmental trade restrictions on food and forestry products which serve to protect European producers and harm viable sources of growth in developing countries. This action is not new. It is reflective of a longer term trend in the rise environmental trade protectionism. The last few years have seen the growth of regulation in the EU to address environmental concerns affecting trade in food and agriculture as governments have sought to manage the impacts of climate change and ensure environmental sustainability. This approach is being extended to international trade agreements and negotiations. In the agricultural sphere, the EU has made clear (including in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round negotiations) that it intends to seek new trade restrictions which ostensibly ensure environmental considerations are recognized in any new agreements to liberalize trade in agriculture.

 Click here to read the rest of the World Growth briefing
 

Forestry and Biodiversity: A Healthy Report
December 2009 – A Study by World Growth

A great deal of criticism has been leveled at the global forest industry for its apparent contribution to biodiversity loss. Those undertaking forestry in natural forests are accused of wholesale forest destruction, leading to signi?cant biodiversity loss. At the same time, those in the private sector that are establishing forest plantations are accused of propagating “sterile monocultures” that harbor little or no biodiversity. Consequently, the perception of forestry in the global environmental debate is that it is the enemy of ?ora and fauna. This perception rests on two assumptions. First, that forestry – plantation or natural – is a major cause of deforestation and therefore biodiversity loss. Second, that forest plantations harbor no biodiversity. NGOs need to decide if they are simply going to campaign against economic development in poor countries – which appears to be their current strategy – or if they actually want to give both the poor and the environment a stronger chance for survival

 Click here to read the rest of the World Growth report


 Click here to read the rest of the Executive Summary

Green Poverty
November 2009 – Green Papers: Issue II

Greenpeace has been active in the global climate change negotiations. Its public message is “Stop Deforestation — save the Climate.” But this is not the Greenpeace forestry strategy. It is, as it was long before climate change became a global issue, to “halt commercial forestry” everywhere. Greenpeace has developed technical proposals to support the negotiations and has been active in discussions with donors on strategies for developing countries. Yet its research advances its political goals and its record demonstrates that it will pursue its objectives at any cost, including to the poor. Greenpeace mounts publicity stunts which it coaxes foundations to fund and celebrities to endorse. The latest is a “climate defenders” camp in Sumatra. Greenpeace claims the support of local communities, but local communities have protested its presence. Greenpeace also neglects to show the 70,000 or more people dependent upon forest industries for their livelihoods.

 Click here to read the rest of the Green Paper

Don’t Bag Indonesia’s Poor
October 2009 – Green Papers: Issue I

Wangan Maathai — the world’s first female African Nobel Prize winner and originator of the forest conservation Green Belt movement in Kenya — was recently asked on CNN what was the best way to stop deforestation. Her answer? ”Address poverty.” Forestry experts know it is the hunger of the poor for land for food, not commercial forestry, which drives deforestation. Frances Seymour, noted US environmentalist and international forest researcher told the United Nations recently that more than a decade research has found “most drivers of forest loss originate outside the forestry sector.”  Nearly half of Indonesia’s 245 million people live on less than two dollars a day. 35 million live in poverty. The Indonesian paper industry employs 400,000 workers and contributes US$5billion a year to the Indonesian economy, mostly from exports. That reduces poverty. World Growth has previously warned that these types of strategies make victims of the world’s poorest children and families. Luxury goods businesses that join the campaign will make them victims too. What would luxury good consumers in fast-growing emerging markets think?

 Click here to read the rest of the Green Paper

Back to Basics: Restoring Economic Growth to the Aid Agenda
September 2009 – A briefing by World Growth

The impact of the global financial crisis on developing economies is anticipated to be severe. Private inflows to developing countries are projected to fall significantly, while development assistance is expected to remain steady.  World Growth produced a report, Back to Basics: Restoring Economic Growth to the Aid Agenda, which demonstrated that all of these actions underline the essentiality of supporting economic growth.  Yet there is no evidence that development agencies have reviewed their strategies that inform their development expenditures.  The report showed a clear decline in support for programs that promote basic economic growth.  It revealed that the share of development assistance which directly supports economic growth – specifically, spending on economic infrastructure and services – had fallen by more than half in the past decade.

 Click here to read the rest of the World Growth briefing

Forestry And The Poor: How Forestry Reduces Poverty
August 2009 - A study by World Growth.

World Growth’s previous two reports on forestry and sustainable development examined the win-win outcome posed by forestry for both the economy and the environment and the measures needed to implement sustainable forestry in the developing world.  The third report, “How Forestry Reduces Poverty,” demonstrates the economic benefits of expanding forestry in the developing world. It also highlights the potential development risks of attempting to curb the uses of forests solely for conservation purposes and tracks the historical link between using forest lands for other purposes and economic growth.  The report makes a comparative analysis of the financial returns from using forest plantations for timber and for carbon sequestration; it demonstrates that returns from forestry are four times higher than from carbon sequestration on conservative estimates.  For other crops and land uses the returns are potentially much higher, leading to conclusions that efforts to restrict forest use in the developing world through aid programs that encourage so-called “traditional use” are strategies to maintain poverty.

Click here to read the rest of the World Growth report
Click here to read the Executive Summary
Click here to read the Annexes

Forestry and Development: Building the Foundations for Sustainability
April 2009 - A study by World Growth.

The first World Growth Forestry and Poverty Project report, “Winners All: How Forestry Can Reduce Both Climate Change Emissions and Poverty”, warned that sustainable forest management was being ignored by climate change policymakers as a cost-effective way of reducing emissions – that would also assist the world’s poor.  The trends that have since followed in multilateral and intergovernmental aid-for-climate strategies have continued to ignore the economic and environmental benefits that sustainable forestry can bring. Worse, developed countries are attempting to introduce trade measures that will restrict exports from developing countries on environmental grounds with no real basis in fact. This approach must change. Aid agencies and intergovernmental agencies must begin to appreciate that the drivers of deforestation are economic. Increasing economic growth increases the resources available for sustainable approaches to the environment. Aid agencies and developed countries must focus upon building the foundations of sustainability – not curtail it with restrictions on growth.

 Click here to read the rest of the World Growth report
 Click here to read the Executive Summary

 Winners All: How Forestry Can Reduce Both Climate Change Emissions and Poverty — A Pro-Development Program
December 2008 - A study by World Growth.

World Growth’s August 2007 report “Building a pro-development strategy on climate change”, warns about the risk of ignoring the interests of the world’s poor by acting too precipitately to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. The trends on discussion of forestry in the Bali process also carry the risk of disregarding the interest of the poor.  It is time to avoid that risk and adopt a strategy in which everyone wins.  Measures can be implemented which effectively reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and at the same time enable developing countries to foster productive forest industries where environmental values are protected and living standards increase.  This new study, “Winners All: How Forestry Can Reduce Both Climate Change Emissions and Poverty — A Pro-Development Program,” examines this argument.

Click here to read the rest of the World Growth report
Click here to read the Executive Summary