forests

Forests are not like other resources: people live in and depend on them and what they contain; the poorer the people, the greater the dependence. Forests are of immense ecological importance and are also one of the last bastions against climate change. Despite all this, the almost automatic response from the international donor community, especially the World Bank, and from the governments of the producer countries themselves, is to regard industrial export-based logging as a key economic driver that can kick-start the economies of poor countries, but the major problem with this approach, in tropical forests at least, is that it demonstrably doesn't work. In virtually every country where this has been tried, illegal logging and corruption have triumphed over economic theory, resulting in vast revenue loss, exacerbation of poverty, human rights abuses, environmental destruction and, too often, full scale timber-fuelled war.

Global Witness is working to change international thinking on forest exploitation, to ensure that forests are a benefit to the communities that depend on them, and are regarded as an international asset.

The Amazon and DRC possess the two largest remaining tropical forest blocks in the world, and Global Witness believes the world cannot afford to put these global assets at risk by subjecting them to tried and tested theories that do not work. Despite many initiatives surrounding forest law enforcement, timber certification, chain of custody tracking and attempts to ban the trade in illegal timber, deforestation increases every year, with implications that include releasing 18% of total global CO2 emissions - more than the entire global transport sector.[1]

The world cannot afford to wait in the hope that these approaches will work - evidence suggests that a whole new approach is necessary.

Global Witness' forest campaigns work to:

  • Change international and producer-government perception about the role and management of the world's remaining tropical forests, and other forests at risk, and to arrive at an ‘optimal use' scenario that first and foremost benefits forest dependent people, their home countries, and the environment.
  • Tackle illegal logging, the trade in conflict timber and unsustainable forest use.

Global Witness' work on conflict timber was responsible for shutting down the timber industries that provided the funds that fuelled the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and Charles Taylor's despotic regime in Liberia, and saw the closure of the Chinese/Burmese border to timber traffic in 2006.

 

[1] Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, HM Treasury, 30th October 2006.