Lost in the Forests of Uncertainty: When the Forest Industry's Future Is Doubtful, as It Is in Asia-Pacific, Firms Tend to Ignore Environmental Concerns and Seek to Maximize Profits as Fast as Possible

As recently as 100 years ago, old-growth tropical forests blanketed much of the Asia-Pacific. Today, great swaths of formerly forested land are denuded, replaced not so much by cities and roads and productive agricultural land as by weeds and floods and eroded soils. Natural forests now cover only about half of Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia, and less than half of Malaysia and Burma. Elsewhere, it's even worse. Forests cover less than a quarter of Thailand and less than a fifth of the Philippines. It's better in Melanesia, where forests still cover three-quarters of the land, but that's only because there are fewer people, and encroachment, with its associated destruction of natural resources, has only recently begun. The destruction of so much natural forest has left the Asia-Pacific region with little remaining frontier forests--areas that the World Resources Institute defines as large and pristine enough to still retain full biodiversity. Almost 95 percent of Asia's frontier forests are now gone. What remains is mostly on the islands of Borneo, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and New Guinea, with smaller pockets in Burma, Laos, and Cambodia. The Philippines no longer has frontier forests and similar losses in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Burma will soon follow. Cambodia now has just 10 percent of its frontier forests, Malaysia 15 percent, Indonesia 25 percent, and Papua New Guinea only 40 percent. (1) The loss of frontier forests, through deforestation and forest degradation in the Asia-Pacific, has resulted in severe social and environmental problems. The rate of soil erosion in the Philippines, for example, is one of the world's highest, putting even greater social and environmental pressures on increasingly scarce land, as once fertile agricultural land becomes eroded and barren. Logged forests--with open patches and drier forest floors--are also more susceptible to devastating fires. In 1997 and 1998 alone, five to 10 million hectares (12 to 25 million acres) of land burned in Indonesia. In many areas that were once rich in frontier forests, indigenous people have been uprooted. For those people, the disappearance of frontier forests means the loss of their homes and, all too often, the loss of their culture. Every government in the region now recognizes deforestation as an urgent environmental, economic, and social problem; and in recent years, those governments have responded with new policies and tougher rules. Yet, the problem continues, virtually unabated, and, in some cases, is getting worse. In Indonesia, for example, annual deforestation has risen to between 1.7 and 2.4 million hectares, far higher than in the 1980s and early 1990s. (2) Timber Companies at the Center A constellation of factors explains the inability of governments in the Asia-Pacific to slow deforestation. Poverty, large populations, and unstable land tenure all play a role, as do politics and markets and institutions. At the center, however, are the firms that log the old-growth forests. Often, these firms do not clear the forest; yet, they do irreparable damage to the integrity of the ecosystem, leaving the forests unable to regenerate. Roads and trails also leave these forests more vulnerable to encroachment from plantation developers and farmers. The scale of logging in the AsiaPacific has been extraordinary. Over the last four decades, much of the Philippines' timber has been harvested. Once the world's largest tropical timber exporter, by the mid-1990s, the Philippines had become a net importer of tropical timber. This tragic history is being repeated elsewhere in the region. At recent logging rates, and under current practices, loggers will largely deplete the old-growth forests of commercial timber in East Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak) within 10 years, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea within 15 years, and Indonesia within 15 to 20 years. Timber firms have been quick to declare their commitment to new logging policies and procedures in response to government inspectors and environmental and community critics. …

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