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Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions and Recommendations

THE RAINFORESTS OF Central Africa provide food and livelihoods for millions of forest-dependent peoples and contain unqiue biodiversity; but they are seen increasingly simply in terms of industrial timber production. Corporations, predominantly transnational corporations, control most of the forests in the region. Multilateral and bilateral creditors are encouraging the industrial exploitation of these forests with little thought for the capacity of national governments to enforce forestry legislation, the timber industry's response to weak enforcement of legislation, and the lack of transparency and democracy in governments. As a result, private companies are logging illegally on a significant scale and national governments are using logging concessions to develop and maintain their various patronage networks, a process which perpetuates the lack of transparency and democracy, particularly when it involves senior political and military figures.

Within this context, forest-dependent peoples become even more marginalised; they are excluded from decision-making about how forests should be used and managed; in the process, their rights are undermined and their needs ignored. Industrial forestry removes many of the trees upon which local communities depend for food, medicines and building materials. The commercial hunting of bushmeat, which is directly and indirectly facilitated by logging, has decimated wildlife, undermined subsistence hunting and increased food insecurity. The commercial hunting of endangered species, such as primates and elephants, threatens their continued existence.

If these forest industrialisation policies continue in Central Africa and these issues go unaddressed, the buyers of timber will continue to generate poverty and environmental degradation. Ensuring that the forests of Central Africa are managed so that they are not degraded or destroyed but provide sustainable long-term livelihoods for local people should be the primary goal of all stakeholders. To this end, national governments, assisted by multilateral and bilateral creditors, must provide a fundamentally improved and enforced regulatory framework within which forestry companies can operate. Such a framework should address social issues, forest industrialisation policies and environmental issues.

Social issues

 Ensuring that all local peoples are equally represented at the heart of decision-making and policy development would be a first step towards sustainable forest management. This step would also be more likely to ensure socially-just development that respects forest ecosystems. This would involve:

§ recognising and respecting traditional tenure and use rights, including within national laws;

§ recognising the right of all local communities to meaningful and equitable participation in identifying the kind of forest management they want, including alternatives to industrial timber production;

§ providing culturally-appropriate opportunities for local communities to identify their needs and to be involved in planning and managing development strategies and social infrastructure;

§ assisting local communities and domestic civil society NGOs to build their capacity to deal with the other, more powerful, stakeholders in forest management;

§ ensuring that all members of communities, including women, the elderly and children, are involved in management and decision-making in ways which they feel are appropriate.

Forest Industrialisation Policy

 One of the main justifications given for pursuing industrial forestry policies is poverty alleviation. The evidence presented in this report suggests that the timber industry does not contribute to this goal; on the contrary, the prevalence of illegal logging and inequitable income distribution means that industrial timber exploitation exacerbates the poverty of forest-dependent peoples.

Multilateral and bilateral institutions, and national governments consistently demonstrate a lack of long-term planning and an inability to learn from experience elsewhere, both in the region and in the forestry sector, when pursuing forestry policies. For example, the wave of deforestation now rolling across West and Central Africa is similar to that induced by forest policies in South-East Asia, where many former timber-producing countries are now net timber importers. The lack of transparency within governments and the industry inhibits making progress towards long-term sustainable development. The following steps would go some way towards addressing the concerns associated with industrial forestry policy:

§ multilateral and bilateral institutions should be more accountable for the policies they impose and more responsive to national government and civil society concerns;

§ debt cancellation initiatives that enable significantly increased investment in basic services such as education and health should be pursued;

§ government transparency and accountability to civil society should be ensured;

§ political, military and other government figures should not gain personally from the forestry sector, either as concession holders or from concession allocation practices or as the recipients of informal or formal financial payments;

§ the benefits of forest development policies should be distributed more equitably so that all local forest-dependent peoples gain more income and are actively involved in deciding how that income is used;

§ the capacity of governments to enforce national forestry legislation should be developed and supported;

§ registers of interests of companies operating in the forestry sector should be made both public and accessible;

§ legal avenues through which governments and civil society can pursue transnational companies to their headquarters when criminal activity has been demonstrated should be developed and made accessible.

Illegal Timber Production and Trade

Certain sections of the forestry industry are perpetrating illegal and unethical practices in the forest itself and along the trading chain, as this report demonstrates. Illegal production and trade must be addressed as a priority by both producing and consuming countries acting together. The systematic smuggling of large volumes of logs and processed timber does not go undetected without the collusion of government officials. A "lack of means" to tackle the problem effectively should not prevent governments from making public statements about the problems they face. Consumer countries must acknowledge their role and act positively. Importers may be receiving stolen, fraudulently obtained or smuggled goods but to date neither importing country governments nor the trade have demonstrated much concern about this. Importing and exporting governments have not sought to tackle the issues of illegal trade or trade in illegally-produced timber either by bilateral co-operation or within international trade arenas such as the WTO. The G7 group of countries have made statements about the unacceptability of illegal logging, but have taken no concrete actions to follow them up. The following actions would be a first step in demonstrating governments' commitments to eradicating illegal timber production and trade:

§ the monitoring of forestry companies should be rigorous, transparent and even-handed;

§ stringent measures should be taken against all companies involved in illegal production and trading practices: fines should be punitive; further courses of action, such as exclusion from the forestry sector and/or criminal proceedings, should be pursued for repeat or flagrant violations of forestry laws;

§ trade policies should be subject to an assessment of the impact on sustainable development, including addressing issues of equitable development and ecological sustainability;

§ governments must support ways of distinguishing between internationally-traded timber that has been certified by credible independent bodies such as the FSC as originating from sustainably-managed forests, and uncertified timber. They should pursue this matter under WTO rules, among other avenues;

§ support for effective, producer country initiatives to regulate the timber trade should be provided, including support from consuming country customs departments to track illegal shipments of timber.

Environmental Issues

The implementation of current national forest- and environment-related laws, including respect for protected area boundaries, is the minimum standard for reducing the environmental impact of forestry operations. From this base line, a number of further steps need to be taken to protect the integrity of forests:

§ the commercial hunting of bushmeat should be addressed in a culturally-sensitive way to ensure the continued existence of the dwindling numbers of non-protected species and that of rare and endangered species;

§ local environmental goods and benefits of forests as well as larger-scale environmental goods and benefits, including potable water, food security, soil quality, and the protection of biodiversity, should be identified and protected;

§ the long-term impacts of industrial timber extraction on the quality and extent of the region's rainforests should be mitigated.