Perspectives on Deforestation

Dauvergne, Peter. 2001. Loggers and Degradation in the Asia-Pacific: Corporations and Environmental Management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stone, Roger D., and Claudia D'Andrea. 2001. Tropical Forests and the Human Spirit: Journeys to the Brink of Hope. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Deforestation, especially in the world's tropical regions, is a catastrophic environmental issue of the early 21^st century. In the last 100 years, tropical forests which once covered more than 10 percent of the planet's surface, have been reduced by more than a third. Not only have original growth forests been lost to loggers and economic development, but also earth has lost storehouses of biological species found nowhere else, ¹ huge sinks for sequestration of carbon dioxide, and stable anchors for watersheds, river systems and micro-climates.

The two volumes under review present different perspectives on deforestation. Dauvergne focuses on deforestation and degradation in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia and Melanesia; Stone and D'Andrea adopt a global view of tropical deforestation. Dauvergne paints a darkly pessimistic picture of forest degradation, with little hope for reform and recovery, while Stone and D'Andrea find hope in the growth of community forestry movements. Both volumes contribute significantly to our understanding of the causes and consequences of deforestation.

Peter Dauvergne's study is based on a decade of research and field work in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, and the Solomon Islands. A former faculty member in the School of Economics and Political Science at the University of Sydney (now at the University of British Columbia), Dauvergne writes passionately about the forces driving environmental practices and results of tropical logging companies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. His argument unfolds in four parts.

The book's first part provides background to the study and then chronicles some of the failures of forest management in Southeast Asia and Melanasia. Dauvergne emphasizes the "corporatization of local ecosystems," which he defines as:

The interplay of corporations, states, communities, global capitalism, and science (that) can lead to a social construction of ecosystems with little intrinsic value, which companies exploit for quick profits and abandon after they no longer contain sufficient monetary value. (p.10)

Logging companies are the culprits that degrade forests and cause loss of biodiversity, he contends; and reckless logging creates forest fires that have regionally and globally destructive impacts.

The second part of Dauvergne's study examines the contextual factors accounting for the deleterious impacts of timber corporations. In chapter 3 he critically evaluates the concept of "scientific forestry," arguing that it tends to reinforce corporate world views. The concept carelessly assumes that markets are perfect and ignores their environmental implications. In chapter 4, the author considers the relatively weak role that environmental reformers play in Southeast Asia and Melanasia, as compared to their activity and influence in developed nation-states. Moreover, NGO growth is inhibited by the absence of aglobal forest convention to match efficacious international agreements, such as the Montreal Protocol. Then Dauvergne documents the inability of states to enforce their own environmental rules and control predatory corporations. Chapter 5 treats the impact of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-99 on forest degradation. While the crisis lessened demand for tropical hardwoods, it also intensified population and local resource development pressures on remaining old-growth forests.

In part 3 Dauvergne investigates the elements of corporate capitalism which contribute to destructive logging. Japanese trading companies such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui link log producers, shippers, and other firms in vast production and distribution chains; they thrive on resources sold at prices that externalize environmental and social costs, which brings them, as well as monopolists such as the Indonesian plywood association Apkindo, windfall profits. Lack of transparency in corporate structures obscures the extent of their control over the timber industry. Corporations corrupt officials and cheat governments through tax evasion and transfer pricing. Nevertheless, they operate in an environment of uncertainty because weak states neither secure property rights nor clarify the status of land tenure. Thus, the...