Forestry and Poverty Project Newsletter
Issue 7, October 2009 
 
Indonesia and Other Tropical Forest Economies Targeted for Copenhagen
As prospects for agreement at Copenhagen on common global targets to reduce emissions fade, pressure is being mounted against developing countries, who can least afford it, to reduce emissions and restrict forestry. 
 
Fashionable Ways to Harm the Poor and the Kids
Environmental groups have launched new action against forestry businesses in Indonesia and are again likely to harm the poor in the process. The two campaigns – one by the US-based Rainforest Action Network, and the other by WWF – have picked two soft targets: the US fashion industry and children’s book publishing in Germany.
 
Global Forest Emissions Overstated
The head of Brazil’s most respected scientific research body says that emissions from forest loss may be overstated. 
 
Orang-Utans and Plantations – The Right Mix?
The idea that orang-utans and forest plantations are incompatible was comprehensively debunked at a recent conservation conference in Malaysia by The Nature Conservancy. 
 
Bangkok Talks Sluggish On REDD
The recent climate talks in Bangkok highlighted the clear differences between developing countries and some developed countries and NGOs on forestry. 
 
 
Indonesia and Other Tropical Forest Economies Targeted For Copenhagen
 
As prospects for agreement at Copenhagen on common global targets to reduce emissions fade, pressure is being mounted against developing countries, who can least afford it, to reduce emissions and restrict forestry.
 
From a distance, it looks like a campaign coordinated among environmental NGOs, aid donors and the World Bank is unfolding with the aim of pressuring tropical forest economies to commit at Copenhagen to cease conversion of forest land to other uses.
 
Generously funded assistance from foundations and donors has materialized in the last year with offers to prepare low carbon emission plans for tropical forest developing countries, from Guyana, to Congo to Indonesia.  Even consultancy firm McKinsey is offering pro bono assistance in applying the McKinsey “Carbon Cost Abatement Curve."
 
Much of the work World Growth has seen is based on assessments which do not meet FAO standards for assessing forestry baselines and which, if applied, would result in significant reductions in economic growth for poorer developing countries.
 
Indonesia has become a special target, as was apparently agreed at a meeting of global NGOs held earlier in the year to plan for Copenhagen.  Indonesia has been tagged as the world’s third biggest emitter, all on the strength of very recent and weakly based claims about the long term impacts of emissions from peat lands in Indonesia. 
 
Until peat was recently “discovered” as a major source of emissions, Indonesia was rated by the UNFCCC as the fifteenth largest emitter.
 
 
Fashionable Ways to Harm the Poor and the Kids
 
Environmental groups in Europe and the US have launched new action against forestry businesses in Indonesia. If they succeed, they are likely to harm the poor as they have in the past.
 
The two campaigns – one by the US-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and the other by WWF – have picked two soft targets: the US fashion and luxury goods industry and children’s book publishing in Germany. 
 
RAN’s Fashionable Campaign Against the Poor
 
RAN’s action has gained significant media attention over the past month. The strategy is to pressure fashion and luxury goods companies to cease purchasing paper bags from a US-based supplier, Pak2000, because of its ties to Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) which is based in Indonesia.  The campaign launch coincided with both fashion week in New York and the recent climate change talks in Bangkok.
 
RAN has singled out APP this time, but it has campaigned for a long time to pressure companies worldwide to purchase products only from paper or wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, a group established by WWF to set sustainability standards for forestry. 
 
In the US it has pressured Home Depot and Weyerhauser go along and a few years ago it launched a “Don’t Buy SFI” campaign.  The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) was a similar standard to encourage environmentally friendly forestry which was developed by the forest industry in the US.  SFI is now aligned with the globally reputable PEFC standard, against which FSC also campaigns.
 
In similar vein RAN has also begun to campaign against banks that have clients with non-FSC forestry operations in Canada.
 
RAN’s track record towards the poor in developing countries has been appalling and stretches a long way back. In 1993, the New Straits Times, Malaysia’s daily newspaper, reported that RAN founder Randall Hayes fabricated claims he witnessed physical abuse and ‘cultural genocide’ of the Penan people in Borneo by forestry companies.  He reportedly stated this was for fundraising.
 
The claims in the fashion report are as egregious. They exaggerate grossly the share of land conversion by plantations in Sumatra and wrongly blame the forest industry for most deforestation. Yet forestry companies are major employers and support large local communities.
 
If the RAN campaign succeeds, those hurt first will be the poor, again.  
 
WWF Plays the Kiddy Card 
 
WWF Germany has released a report which appeals to parents not to buy children’s books made in China. The claim is that this will save tropical forests. WWF claims to have detected tropical fiber in children’s books.  It would be strange if it had not. High quality paper needs hardwood and most tropical timber is hardwood.
 
WWF says that China imports 25 percent of its pulp from Indonesia. WWF says that illegal logging is widespread in Indonesia.  Therefore German children should not read books printed in China.
 
In World Growth’s opinion this report borders on propaganda.  According to the global forestry research body, CIFOR, China’s paper making fiber contains only 14 percent of imported wood pulp.  By WWF’s owns statistics, only one quarter of that is from Indonesia.  So, on average, Chinese paper fiber contains at most 3.5 percent Indonesian fiber.
 
Most of that will be provided by Indonesia’s two pulp and paper giants, APP and APRIL, one of which WWF approves, the other it doesn’t. But according to the market and forest experts, both produce legal product, mostly from plantations.
 
It is also widely acknowledged that illegal logging in Indonesia is undertaken by smallholders, not the large companies.  If any illegal product has seeped into the chains of the large companies, it would be minute.  It would seem, then, that the claims are bogus.
 
WWF also makes much of the migration of publishing in Germany to Asia and the steady increase in imports of children’s books (and it could have said almost everything else) from China. Is there something automatically wrong with product from China?  Is the problem that it is cheap?  Parents would not think so.
 
This is not the first time an environmental NGO has sought to link forestry with disreputable products and China. Greenpeace was criticized in the Malaysian media earlier in the year for expressing anti-Asian sentiment about the forest industry in the South Pacific, referring to Asian owned forest businesses as “Robber Barons” and the Chinese industry as “sweatshops."  It began its anti-forestry campaign in the mid nineties in the South Pacific banging the anti-Asian drum. There are regular outbreaks of anti-Asia rioting in the South Pacific.
 
Some may find the WWF report equally unsavory. The cover features a carton with a little girl and teddy bear wielding chain saws in the forest and scaring the animals.  This would alarm any child.  The report can be seen at www.wwf.de.
 
 
Global Forest Emissions Overstated
 
The head of Brazil’s most respected scientific research body says that emissions from forest loss may be overstated. 
 
Gilberto Camara, the director of Brazil's respected National Institute for Space Research (NISR), recently told the news agency Reuters that emissions from deforestation are likely to be far less than the 20 per cent figure currently accepted as popular wisdom among climate change policymakers.
 
"I'm not in favor of conspiracy theories," Camara said, quoted in a Reuters interview, "But I should only state that the two people who like these figures are developed nations, who would like to overstress the contribution of developing nations to global carbon, and of course environmentalists."
 
NISR research has shown that Brazil’s emissions from deforestation contribute to roughly 2.5 per cent of global emissions. Given that Brazil is responsible for roughly one-quarter of all deforestation emissions, Camara estimates that the true deforestation emissions figure is closer to 10 per cent.
 
NISR used a method that closely analyzed satellite data over the past five years, which indicated a much lower deforestation rate than that offered by the FAO. On this basis he described REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) as being a fundamentally weak concept.
 
Camara said that developed countries had no reason to question the figure, as it a laid a significant proportion of the blame for emissions on developing countries.  
 
 
Orang-Utans and Plantations: The Right Mix?
 
The idea that orang-utans and forest plantations are incompatible was comprehensively debunked at a recent conservation conference in Malaysia.
 
At the Orang-Utan Conservation Colloquium held in Sabah this month, Erik Meeijard of The Nature Conservancy currently working with USAID’s Orang Utan Conservation and Survival Program in Indonesian Borneo gave a presentation that showed orang-utans are able to survive reasonably well alongside acacia plantations – one of the main feedstocks for pulp and paper manufacturers in tropical countries. 
 
Meeijard’s program had confirmed populations of 3000 orang-utans living in acacia plantation areas in Borneo.  The orang-utans were gaining part of their dietary requirements from the acacia trees themselves, although Meeijard was quick to point out that acacia bark was no substitute for a balanced diet from natural forests as well as plantations.
 
Meeijard stated that there were “real opportunities” for the pulp and paper sector to collaborate on conservation programs.
 
Other presentations at the conference highlighted the many threats currently facing orang-utans, which are often overlooked in international conservation campaigns, particularly hunting and mining.
 
Dr Marc Ancreanz, head of the France-based NGO Hutan and organizer of the conference urged both industry and Green groups to work more closely on the issue and end the polarized approach to the public debate. 
 
 
Bangkok Talks Sluggish on REDD
 
The recent climate talks in Bangkok highlighted the clear differences between developing countries and some developed countries and NGOs on forestry.
 
While there is still disagreement about the types of activities that should be included under the REDD-plus (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation plus sustainable forest management and conservation) framework, tropical forested countries made it clear that their right to develop forests for commercial uses and convert forested land would be paramount.
 
Much of the discussion focused on social, environmental and governance safeguards for the scheme.  Yet once a call for a safeguard on forest conversion was made, both Peru and Brazil immediately underlined that this could not apply to forestry operations using sustainable forest management.
 
More strikingly, Congo Basin Countries, led by the Democratic Republic of Congo objected to any reference to “avoiding conversion of forests."
 
Similarly, when social safeguards on indigenous peoples, both Malaysia and Indonesia stressed that any text would have to make room for existing national legislation.
 
This hands-off approach to national sovereignty was also echoed by Singapore and surprisingly Norway, when discussing governance safeguards.
 
The upshot of the meeting is that many developing countries have staked their claim on their right to choose their development path – whether through sustainable forest management and food production or joining the green welfare queue.