English | French | Home

Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions

This assessment paints a picture of a forest management style which has unfortunately become known as "Solomon Style logging"- the full gambit of socially, economically and ecologically unacceptable impacts associated with many of the practices uniformly in evidence throughout the surveyed ITC operations. ITC have a forest management style that not only ignores legal requirements -the Standard Logging Agreement, and industry standards - The Code of Practice, but any sense of ecological sustainability.

The descriptions in this assessment of a litany of poor forest management practices point to little prospect for commercially viable stands of timber trees being available for harvest on realistic scales within time frames relevant to human development regimes. The post harvest forest condition is such that long term degradation of flora, fauna and substrate have occurred and will continue to occur both within the logged over forest areas and adjacent affected sites e.g. rivers, estuarine and marine areas including fringing reefs.

 

Recommendations

The management style of ITC, which has had such catastrophic consequences, be abandoned immediately as totally inappropriate to sustainable forest management. Alternative styles of forest management be implemented as soon as possible which have the support and participation of the local population, and fulfil notions of sustainable forest management. Alternatives such as the European Union funded Isabel Sustainable Forest Management Project (ISFMP) should also be presented to landholders to enable them to reach an informed conclusion as to the most beneficial land use option available under existing circumstances. The thorough and meaningful implementation of existing national legislation. The Solomon Islands has laws encompassed in the Standard Logging Agreements, and a Cabinet approved Code of Practice. These need to be implemented. In particular, the local community should be consulted more and participate in any decisions over the management of their land. They need to be empowered with both knowledge and resources to monitor logging operations and enforce the clauses of future logging agreements based upon more environmentally sound logging practices. None of these recommendations, taken in isolation, will alter the present situation. A fundamental shift in political and business paradigms is necessary before sustainable forest management practices (based solely on commercial productivity) can be approximated in a timely fashion prior to industry collapse. Ecological sustainability is so distantly removed from present realities that it is considered that the current economic and industry climate within the Solomon Islands logging industry totally precludes any possibility of attaining this ideal in a realistic time frame. Minimisation of impacts is the most practical objective and could be achieved via community participation in the monitoring and rehabilitation of logging operations.