Rob Glastra - Cut and Run: Illegal Logging and Timber Trade in the Tropics

Contextual factors: similarities and differences among the four countries

Forests are arguably the worst managed ecosystems on the planet. Where they are not regarded as barriers to economic growth, and therefore cleared to make way for agricultural or urban expansion, they are exploited by governments and by corporations in the name of economic growth, and just as effectively destroyed or degraded. Even when people live at a considerable distance from any wilderness, as they typically do in developed countries, the assault on forests continues as they receive the effluents of our affluent lifestyles in the form of acid rain and heavy metals. Even in less developed countries, where people live closer to the forests, both timber and nontimber resources have been extracted to the point where survival of the forest itself is in question. Living in conditions of poverty, men (but not women) have been quite prepared to sell their forest birthright for a mess of potage in the form of wages.

It was not always so. Not so long ago, forests received a great deal of protection. This was not because human beings were any more ethical in the past or because, living closer to nature, they possessed any innate sense of conservation. Rather, it was because forests were widely regarded as dangerous places untracked areas where one could lose ones way forever, be torn apart by vicious beasts, or perhaps stumble inadvertently into the home of a demon, never again to emerge, at least not as a human being. Only the very brave, the very foolish, or those living outside the law went into the forest. Under these

conditions, the forest was exploited, but minimally and only around its edges.

Today, forests have been largely tamed. One no longer has to be brave at all to go into the forest, as is evident by the enormous number of people who use the forest for day picnics or longer trips into remote areas. Modern equipment and modern communications have reduced the dangers enormously. Though some of those who enter the forest may still be foolish, they are more likely to suffer from mosquitoes or sore legs than to get lost or eaten, much less possessed by a demon.

In the tropics, the forests of today resemble those of the past in one respect: they remain a target for outlaws. But even here, differences are greater than similarities. The outlaws of old lived as small bands and exploited the forest mainly as a hideout and for subsistence rather than as a source of wealth. It is just the reverse with todays forest outlaws; few of them live in the forest and fewer still use it for subsistence. Rather, for them, the forest is exclusively a source of wealth in some cases, enormous wealth. And, coming as they do with huge chain saws, heavy equipment, large trucks, these outlaws are hardly hiding.

If forests are among the worst managed ecosystems on our planet, they are also among the most studied. The traditional knowledge of forest dwellers and of naturalists around the world is of course profound. Equally profound is the industrial and academic knowledge about forests, and we have trade journals and professional journals in a score of languages. Every year, hundreds of students graduate from courses in forest management at all scales from wood lot to commercial timber, and at all levels from informal classes to advanced university degrees. In recent years, new disciplines, such as forest ecology and recreation studies, have added to our store of knowledge about forests. As a result, we know a great deal about how forests grow and how they react to stress, including both natural stress and the stress imposed by human action. We also know a great deal about forest management and how much wood and other products are taken from the forests, the firms active in forestry, and the uses of forest products.