Convention on biological diversity
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The causes of forest lossIn this section, causes of forest loss are analysed from an economic point of view to examine how far they could be addressed by improving economic incentives for sustainable use and conservation of forests. However, it should be stressed that the limitations of market mechanisms need to be explored and recognised in relation to the needs of stakeholders. Market mechanisms must complement other mechanisms including legislation, regulation, certification, capacity building and addressing wider underlying causes of forest loss (see next section). A more comprehensive analysis of these issues is contained in Chapter III. It is important to distinguish between the direct and underlying causes of forest loss. The main direct causes include unsustainable logging, slash and burn agriculture, the building of infrastructure such as dams and roads, pollution, fires, infestation and invasive species. However, statements about direct causes provide little insight into the issues that would have to be addressed by policy measures. For this it is necessary to ask why each of the direct factors comes about - e.g. why do loggers behave unsustainably, why do shifting cultivators behave as they do and so on. The basic concept of relevance is that of an economic incentive to engage in deforestation or forest damaging activities. These economic incentives are reinforced by, or embedded in, issues such as rapid population change, corruption and lack of information. In turn, however, it is important to ask what the incentives are for these contextual factors. Missing marketsProbably the most important feature of forest goods and services is that many of them have no market. As such, there are no market forces to send the appropriate price signals to users of forest land that forests have economic value in conservation or sustainable use. The essential requirement is that conserved or sustainably used forest must secure returns to provide an economic justification for conservation. While it is not essential that these conservation values show up as cash flows, or flows in-kind, there is obviously more chance that conservation will occur if they do have associated real benefit flows. The overall conclusion is that, despite the early literature [some references needed?] suggesting non-timber benefits could greatly outweigh those from slash and burn and/or clear felling, sustainable commercial uses of forest land have considerable difficulty competing with alternative commercial uses such as conventional logging, agri-business and agriculture. There will be exceptions to this rule. Given the difficulties of competing, the importance of 'encashing' the other benefits of forests is to be emphasised, especially carbon storage and sequestration and, where relevant, tourism and the sale of genetic material. Discount ratesOne of the features underlying comparisons of the relative profitability of different forest land uses is the role of the discount rate. High discount rates favour conventional logging over sustainable timber management, slash-and-burn agriculture over agro-forestry and so on. The issue is therefore one of knowing how large discount rates are in such contexts. Existing research suggests that local communities often have high discount rates of well over 10% and up to 30 or 40%, reflecting their urgent need to address subsistence and security needs now rather than in the future (Poulos and Whittington 1999). While this conclusion should not be exaggerated - there are many examples of poor communities investing in conservation practices - the available evidence supports the traditional view that many have high discount rates and that these contribute to 'resource mining'. Property rightsIt is well established that the existence of complete, exclusive, enforced and transferable property rights is a prerequisite for the efficient management of natural resources. Rights must be complete and exclusive to avoid disputes over boundaries and access. They must be enforceable to prevent others from usurping them and they must be transferable (there must be a customary or full market in them) to ensure that land is allocated to its best use. The effects of incomplete or no property rights show up most clearly in the lack of incentive to invest in conservation and sustainable land uses. Regardless of the 'paper' designation of forest land rights, many forests are de facto open access resources, i.e. resources for which there is no owner. Other forests are common property and are managed by a defined group of households with rules and regulations about access, use and transferability. Provided common property resources are not subject to external forces that lead to the breakdown of the communal rules of self-management, common property is a reliable and reasonably efficient use of forestland. Factors causing common property breakdown include rapid population growth and interference in traditional communal management by central authorities. Traditional, customary and, sometimes, even legally recognized land rights of indigenous peoples can be hard to establish and are often ignored or violated. Establishing property rights in the form of communal or private ownership regimes is a prerequisite to efficient land use, but may still not guarantee the desirable level of forest protection. This will be the case where the forest values take the form of 'public goods', i.e. services and goods the benefits of which accrue to a wide community of stakeholders and for which no mechanism exists to charge them for the benefits. Forest dwellers may then have no incentive to conserve forests for their benefits to downstream fisheries or water users, since they receive no benefit for these services. Institutional change designed to compensate forest users for these services can often be devised (see below), effectively establishing property rights in the unappropriated benefits of forest services. There is a small but growing trend towards the redefinition of property rights in forests to take account of these factors. Carbon trading provides one clear example, whereby corporations or agents in one country invest in sequestration or conservation in another country in return for the paper credit certifying the amount of carbon so stored or sequestered. Probably the greatest progress in establishing property rights in forest services has been made in Costa Rica (Chomitz et al., 1998). Costa Rica's forestry law of 1996 recognises the value of forests as carbon stores, providers of hydrological services, protectors of biodiversity and providers of scenic beauty. Sources of finance, e.g. a fuel tax, were designed and the rules for paying forest owners for services were established. The Costa Rican government currently disburses money for reforestation, sustainable forest management and forest preservation. Landholders cede their rights to the relevant services to the National Forestry Fund (FONAFIFO) for five years in return for the payments. A summary of this project is in the Annex 5. Perverse incentivesGovernments worldwide provide incentive systems that affect natural resource use. While usually conceived with good intentions, they often have deleterious effects on natural resources. Notable examples include the $800 billion spent each year on subsidising certain economic activities, especially agriculture ($400 billion). Most subsidies are in the developed economies, where agricultural subsidies are responsible for some reduction in woodland area, the woodland being removed to capture the subsidies, which are often on a per-hectare basis [reference needed]. In some parts of the developing world subsidies exist for the clearance of forest land, and in some cases title to the land cannot be secured without a given percentage of the land being cleared [reference needed]. Other subsidies are more subtle, and may take the form of preferential logging concessions and low royalty rates relative to what could be charged without deterring logging companies. Low charges increase the 'rent' to be secured from the land. The result is a competition to capture the rent, a competition that uses up resources to no productive purpose. Ensuring a good share of rent capture can involve corrupt practices such as bribes to officials and politicians. In turn, this can result in more extensive logging outside 'official' concessions and more intensive logging inside concessions as those responsible for enforcement secure greater rewards from the bribes than they do from normal employment. Unsustainable logging is more immediately profitable and hence there is a financial incentive to override or ignore regulations designed to secure sustainable forest management. The extent of 'illegal' logging is not known with any accuracy but is clearly very large and may, in some countries, greatly exceed the officially declared rates of logging. Tackling illegal logging is immensely complex since it effectively involves tackling the corruption involved. Countervailing power in the form of NGOs and citizens' groups can help, as can a free media and international disapproval. Statistical studies suggest that political freedom may be linked to reduced deforestation, but the evidence is not firm (Kaimowitz and Angelsen, 1998). Overall, though, there are powerful incentives for illegal logging and deforestation generally. Population changeBrown and Pearce (1994) reviewed the econometric studies that link deforestation rates to explanatory factors. They found that population growth is generally linked to deforestation, although the patterns of interaction are complex. However, though simple statements that 'population growth causes deforestation' are unquestionably false, many models show that population change is important (Kaimowitz and Angelsen, 1998). As current population levels rise from 6 billion people to a predicted 9 billion in 2050, with much of the increase in tropical countries, pressures on forest areas must be expected to grow. Lowland-upland migrations and officially induced transmigrations will add to the pressure. IndebtednessIt is widely surmised that the more externally indebted a forested country is, the more likely it is to engage in policies that result in deforestation. This happens because there is pressure to export logs and processed wood and, to a far lesser extent, other forest products to secure foreign exchange to meet the interest payments on the debt. A number of econometric studies test this relationship and the balance of evidence suggests that there is some link between indebtedness and deforestation (Kaimowitz and Angelsen, 1998). Very few studies find any link between timber prices and deforestation, i.e. the expected relationship that logging will increase as world prices for the wood increase is not found. Internal factorsA number of factors internal to the forested country may contribute to deforestation. In regions of primary forest, road building has the obvious effect of opening up forested areas. Logging roads will have this effect initially and subsequent hardcover roads may exacerbate the situation by encouraging agricultural colonists to enter the area. Satellite pictures identify 'leaf vein' patterns of land use following initial opening up for logging or for highways and studies using statistical models to test for the effects of roads suggest that this deforestation will occur (Kaimowitz and Angelsen, 1998). Anything that reduces transportation costs will also tend to encourage deforestation, which would previously have been limited by the costs of getting produce to the market. More generally, the closer forests are to towns the greater the risk that they will be subject to clearance [reference needed?]. It has been suggested that raising agricultural productivity will lower deforestation by reducing the incentive to 'extensify' agricultural land use. Again, only limited econometric evidence supports this hypothesis. Income levels should also be linked to deforestation, with higher incomes perhaps increasing deforestation initially and later reducing it. Poverty should be linked to deforestation on the grounds that open access resources add significantly to household income. Econometric studies tend to find that higher incomes increase deforestation, suggesting that the initial phase of the expected relationship is in place. Globally, forest cover is clearly linked to income since European and North American forest area is increasing. Excessive consumptionAs incomes rise, so the demand for natural resources increases. The relationship is a complex one, however. For some forest services, the income-demand relationship can be such that as incomes grow the demand for those services decrease. An example might be the switch from wood fuels to liquid fuels as incomes grow. At the global level, however, higher income countries do consume larger absolute amounts of raw materials. This has led to the view that deforestation is linked to 'excessive consumption' in rich countries. The issue is complex because the efficiency of raw materials use, i.e. the ratio of raw materials to income, tends to be lower in richer countries than in poor countries. Rich countries utilise natural resources more efficiently, but the scale of their incomes means that the absolute level of consumption is higher than in poor countries. Since the aim of development is to raise per capita income, reducing that income is not a realistic policy option, nor is it clear what policies would bring this about without damaging the factors giving rise to income growth - education, technology etc. But it is legitimate to ask that rich countries greatly increase their resource use efficiency. This will then translate into reduced demand for raw materials, including forest products imported from developing countries. Care has to be taken that this does not damage the export potential of forested countries, but clearly there is scope for making this transition. Additionally, richer countries can afford to pay premiums on forest products to discriminate between sustainably and unsustainably managed products.
A. Introduction The previous chapters have shown that forest biodiversity is directly linked to the existence of forest and to the way forests are managed, and that deforestation and forest degradation themselves are the main proximate causes for loss of forest biodiversity. Therefore, in order to identify and propose measures to halt and reverse global forest biodiversity loss, the CBD will have to address both the direct and underlying causes of forest decline. Effective action will require an understanding of the underlying causes. It is often more immediately profitable to deforest areas or to log forests in an unsustainable way than to sustainably manage them, and this has been identified by the AHTEG as one of the primary causes for the high rate of deforestation and forest degradation and, therefore, for the current loss of forest biological diversity. This chapter addresses the main threats to forest biological diversity and, to do so, the causes have been divided into direct (proximate) and underlying (ultimate) causes (see figure 1): Direct causesThe direct (or proximate) causes of biodiversity loss in forests are human induced actions13 that directly destroy the forests (such as conversion of forest land, continuous overexploitation or large scale logging) or reduce their quality (by, for instance, unsustainable forest management or pollution). Underlying causesThe underlying (or ultimate) causes of forest destruction are the factors that motivate humans to degrade or destroy forests; complex causal chains are usually involved. The underlying causes originate in some of the most basic social, economic, political, cultural and historical features of society. They can be local, national, regional or global, transmitting their effects through economic or political actions such as trade or incentive measures (WWF, 1998). The driving forces behind direct human impact on forest degradation and deforestation and, consequently, on biodiversity loss are both numerous and interdependent. The approaches needed to try and remedy adverse human impacts are country specific and will, therefore, vary between countries (WRI et al., 1992; Mc Neely et al., 1995; Contreras-Hermosilla, 2000; IFF, 2000; WWF et al., 2000). Interactions between direct and underlying causesThe interactions between direct and underlying causes are very complex: the cause-effect relationships will vary a lot from country to country and/or over time and there can therefore be no overall hierarchy between the causes; they do not interact linearly, but rather in a circular fashion with many feedback loops. Even a single force, such as agricultural intensification, may operate in a very different way under one set of circumstances than it would in a different situation with other variables involved. Accordingly, remedial measures need to be tailored to the very specific situation to which they will be applied. There are no simple solutions to this complex phenomenon. (CIFOR, 2000). The distinction between direct and underlying causes of forest degradation is often not clear as it appears. In reality, there are long, complex causation chains that eventually lead to deforestation. Causes may be hierarchical. For example, a hypothetical chain of causes and effects may operate in this way: shifting cultivators deforest because they need to provide a means of survival for their families. This is because they are poor and have few alternatives to deforestation. They are poor because present power structures discriminate against a large number of people who therefore have little or no access to alternative means of survival. Present power structures originated in historical arrangements such as colonisation. Thus, in this theoretical example, there is a causation chain that starts with colonisation and runs through unequal control over key resources, to poverty and the need to survive and, finally, to forest decline. In contrast to the example above, few cause-effect chains are linear or unidirectional. Instead, there are many branches that constitute secondary cause-effect loops leading to forest decline14. Feedback loops complicate analyses of the causes of forest decline. For example, a logging company may construct harvesting roads that facilitate the occupation of forestlands by small farmers. After some time, these farmers may be successful in lobbying politicians not only to improve these roads but also to build new roads, thus making it easier for new migrants to obtain access to forested areas located further away. Causal factors are likely to vary over time, sometimes drastically. At certain stages of development, rapid income growth could promote forest decline by, for example, increasing demand for forest products and by enhancing human capacity to alter forests. When economies reach a certain threshold, the process is reversed. At this point, increases in the level of income per capita begin to be associated with factors such as technological improvements, better functioning of government institutions, urbanisation and less relative dependence on agricultural and forest production. That leads also a change in the composition of demand for goods and services with greater demand for environmental services of forests and for uses, such as recreation, that do not necessarily lead to the loss of forest cover (Contreras-Hermosilla, 2000). 
Global climate change Unsustainable forest use (illegal logging, poaching, overexploitation) introduction) Deforestation, forest degradation & fragmentation Pollution of water, soils and atmosphere 
Lack of good governance Inequity in the ownership, management & the flow of benefits from both use & conservation of FBD Loss of cultural identity, spirituals value & land rights INDIRECT CAUSES 
LOCAL GLOBAL 
MAIN CAUSE Natural causes (fires, pests, floods, storms) Poverty
Infrastructural development (roads, dams, fragmentation, mining, oil extraction…) DIRECT CAUSES |