Indigenous Peoples and the new ‘Global Vision’ on Forests:

 

Implications and Prospects

 

 

By Marcus Colchester[1]

 

 

 

 

Introduction:

 

The ‘global vision’ and its rationale: a summary

In 1997, the World Bank and the WorldWide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced the establishment of a new ‘Alliance’. The Alliance was to be shaped around a joint strategy designed to meet the WWF’s dual campaign targets of ‘setting aside’ 10% of all major forest ecosystems as protected areas and bringing an additional 200 million hectares of the world’s forests under sustainable forest management, both by the year 2005.[5]

 

The Alliance aims to take advantage of the convening power of the WWF to work with a wide range of ‘stakeholders’ and the financial muscle and policy leverage of the World Bank. From the Bank’s point of view, there was the added expectation that its engagement in this Alliance could salvage its reputation on forests which had been severely damaged by revelations in the 1980s that many of its projects were contributing to massive deforestation.

 

In the two years since the setting up of this Alliance a number of factors have encouraged the Bank and the WWF to clarify and refine the logical basis for the adoption of these targets. Where do these figures come from? Which actual forests are to be targeted? How do these targets relate to the Bank’s overriding goals of poverty alleviation and ‘sustainable development’? How can the Bank seek to achieve these global targets when it only has operations in developing countries, which account for only half the world’s forests and only 40% of world trade in industrial roundwood?

 

To deal with some of these concerns, Bank and WWF staff have identified the need for a clear and shared vision of what they envisage for the world’s forests, based on the best available information about forest trends. One powerful influence has been the wider availability of GIS tools, which now help environment and development planners visualise what is actually happening to forests on the ground. Improved data about rates of deforestation have also sharpened concerns about whether these targets are realisable or even too modest. Revised FAO and WRI figures suggest that forest loss is still accelerating with global annual loss now estimated at 15 million hectares per year.[6]

 

In the 1980s and early 1990s, it was received wisdom in the development agencies that the main pressure on tropical forests came from the poor.[7] Many NGOs argued that such statements were tantamount to ‘blaming the victim’ and put a lot of effort into  demonstrating the links between deforestation, landlessness and poverty and the processes of land and wealth concentration, which were in turn driven by macro-economic forces and global trade. They called for secure tenure for indigenous peoples and participatory agrarian reforms for peasants to address the linked problems of ecological injustice and deforestation.[8] These kinds of cross-sectoral linkages were accepted by some Bank staff.[9] Subsequent studies have demonstrated that forest loss is being caused by logging far more than had previously been thought. NGO case studies showed how the demands of the timber, and later paper and pulp, industries have heavily simplified and degraded boreal and temperate forests.[10] They also exposed the corruption in the timber industry, explored the political ecology of forest loss and drew attention to the activities of migratory loggers who have been expanding their operations out of South-East Asia and now pose an increasingly serious threat to the world’s forests.[11]

 

A highly influential report issued by the World Resources Institute in 1997, which consolidated many of the available GIS data sets, demonstrated that much of the world’s remaining old-growth forests, catchily named ‘Frontier Forests’, are severely threatened, particularly by these kinds of predatory logging operations.[12] On top of this, projections of world demand for pulp and paper products, industrial roundwood and croplands all suggest that market pressures on forests will intensify over the coming decades. 

 

Putting these kinds of figures together results in a worrying scenario. According to World Bank/WWF projections, by 2050 a further 200 million hectares of the world’s total 3.2 billlion hectares of forests will be lost to agriculture, while to service a projected demand of 3 billion cubic metres of industrial roundwood per year, up to half of the worlds’ remaining forests will be subject to logging at an intensity of 2 cubic metres/ha/year.[13] This may be taking logging up to the limits, as according to one study up to half of all forests are likely to remain inaccessible to logging for the foreseeable future.[14]

 

There are other major forces at work too. Rising demand for paper and pulp has already led to a massive expansion of timber plantations. Timber plantations in boreal and temperate forests already cover some 61 million hectares and, in recent years, plantations have expanded massively to cover some 81 million hectares of land in the tropics, with some countries doubling the extent of their plantations every five years. Influential agencies like the World Bank have argued that ‘resource expansion’ (tree plantations) can reduce pressure on natural forests.[15] The further prospect that plantations will gain financing through the Kyoto Protocol have encouraged planners to see further plantation development as a major part of the ‘solution’ to the forest crisis.[16]

 

Incorporating these new elements has thus led the WWF/World Bank Alliance to evolve a counter-vision for the future of the world’s forests. Taking advantage of the additional financing and the possibilities for intensive tree farming, an ‘Intensification Model’ has been put forward to meet the same market demands – a ‘model’ which corresponds closely with the Bank’s existing forest policy.[17] Under this model, 200 million hectares of forests will still be ineluctably lost to agricultural expansion but intensified forest management – intensive silviculture and plantations – on 600 million hectares of forest yielding up to 5 cubic metres of roundwood per hectare per year would service the global market, potentially freeing an additional 900 million hectares of forest for additional protected areas, while still leaving a further 1.5 billlion hectares of forests relatively inaccessible and untouched.

 

Social implications:

Questions about the validity of this kind of visioning do not only lie in doubts about the accuracy of the figures being used but in concern for the considerations that are left out.[18] A problem with GIS data sets is that they tend to leave out complex local social and political matters that cannot easily be mapped – local markets, social structures, political relations, identities, beliefs and livelihoods – but which tend to be highly relevant to actual decisions about resource use. Moreover, basic information about forest-dwelling peoples is often lacking or highly inaccurate.[19] There is also considerable nervousness about the political and institutional implications of this kind of ‘top-down’ approach to forest-policy making: who is involved in developing these visions? Who is included and who is left out? Whose interests are strengthened and whose marginalised in these visioning exercises?

 

Detractors have thus raised a whole series of questions about the ‘forest visioning’ approach. Is it prudent to base forest policy-making on an acceptance of future consumption patterns? Shouldn’t reduction of demand be prioritised instead? If sustainability is the objective, shouldn’t production targets be derived from the real potential of forest ecosystems to sustainably yield timber rather than on consumer demand projections? How does such a vision and set of targets translate into operational objectives for Bank staff? What connections are there between the vision and the Bank’s poverty alleviation goals? How can such approaches best be tailored to suit any one country or locality? Above all, where do people fit into this vision? How does such an approach fit with the notion of ‘sustainable development’ elaborated by the World Commission on Environment and Development and adopted by the World Bank, in which ‘local people should have a decisive voice in the formulation of policies about resource use in their areas’’?[20] 

 

This paper thus explores the inherent tensions between the global visioning approach and the concerns of local communities, specifically indigenous peoples, pressing for rights to their territories and to self-determination and seeking local solutions to local problems.

 

Forest visioning: past lessons

Before examining the social implications of the new ‘global vision’ or ‘intensification model’, it is important to recall previous experiences in developing global visions for forests. Global approaches to conservation planning have long been favoured by conservationists and have been expressed through previous visions such as the World Conservation Strategy of the early 1980s, which led to the development of national conservation strategies and in turn triggered a number of other environmental and forestry planning processes.[21] These have included processes such as the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy led by the IUCN, National Environment Action Plans promoted by the World Bank, Tropical Forestry Action Plans, promoted by the World Bank, UNDP, FAO and WRI, and a host of others.[22] All these approaches have been criticised for failing to address the underlying causes of environmental degradation, for imposing top-down plans on developing countries and local communities and for failing to take into account critical local issues such as: the effectiveness of national regulatory frameworks; institutional capacity; prevailing power relations; human rights; land tenure; women’s interests; indigenous peoples; and ecological realities.[23] 

 

The experience with the Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) is particularly relevant. Like the new ‘global vision’, the TFAP emerged from a global review of the current forest situation.[24] It advocated a major expansion of plantations as a way of supplying global demand for wood products and promoted the intensification of ‘sustained yield’ forestry to promote national development goals and curb deforestation. It also called for substantial additional funds to achieve these goals.[25] Almost immediately the plan ran into a storm of criticism, principally for its failure to prioritise the interests of local communities. The plan excluded the participation of civil society in its elaboration, proposed technical solutions to address what many saw as political problems, reinforced existing power relations and thus institutionalised the status quo while further marginalising the poor and the powerless.[26] Although the proponents promised procedural reforms, subsequent reviews of the first 'national forestry action plans' first by the World Rainforest Movement and then by the WRI and FAO, demonstrated that the TFAP process was indeed seriously flawed, ignored the needs and rights of local communities and indigenous peoples, and was intensifying forest loss. The revelations were so shocking that a decision to ‘revamp’ the TFAP was taken that same year at the G-7 summit. Although strong efforts were then made to reform the TFAP, the FAO proved reluctant to open up the process to other ‘stakeholders’ such as indigenous peoples and NGOs and the other international agencies gradually dropped out of the programme. The main lesson of the TFAP was its demonstration of the need to move forest policy-making out of the narrow confines of the 'forestry sector' and to adopt a much more integrated and participatory approach. The lessons of the TFAP experience can be set out in a table.[27]

 

 

Proponents of the new ‘global vision’ would do well to recall these controversies and errors, before falling into the same trap.

 

 

 

Indigenous Peoples and Forests: general issues[28]

 

Definitions:

There is no internationally agreed definition of indigenous peoples. In practice at the international level, the term includes a very wide variety of human societies including the ‘native’ and ‘aboriginal’ peoples of the Americas and the Pacific, the ‘tribal peoples’ and ‘minority nationalities’ of Asia and many non-dominant and discriminated ethnic groups in Africa. Indigenous peoples themselves insist on the principle of self-identification and see efforts to impose definitions on them as an affront to their right to self-determination. The principle of self-identification has been accepted by the International Labour Organisation (Convention 169 Article 1(2)) and by the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and is adhered to in this document. The same principle has been accepted by the WorldWide Fund for Nature and the World Commission on Protected Areas.

 

For the purpose of its operations, the World Bank adopts a broad approach and treats as indigenous peoples those “social groups with a social and cultural identity distinct from the dominant society, which makes them vulnerable to being disadvantaged in the development process”. Key characteristics used by the Bank for identifying such peoples include:

 

·         close attachment to ancestral territories and to natural resources in these areas

·         self-identification and identification by others as members of a distinct group

·         an indigenous language, often different from the national language

·         presence of customary social and political institutions

·         primarily subsistence-oriented production.

 

A people need not demonstrate all these characteristics to be considered as an indigenous people by the Bank. The Bank’s inclusive approach thus includes as indigenous peoples, the ‘tribal peoples’ of Asia, Afro-American groups in Latin America and many marginalised ethnic groups in Africa.

 

Numbers, Rights, and State policies:

Indigenous peoples are estimated by the International Labour Organisation to number some 300 million worldwide. They speak as many as 4,000 of the world’s approximately 6,000 languages. International law recognises their rights inter alia to:

 

·         the ownership, control and management of their traditional territories, lands and resources.

·         exercise their customary law

·         represent themselves through their own institutions

·         control, and share in the benefits of the use of, their traditional knowledge

·         self-determination.[29]

 

Indigenous peoples are distinctive from other vulnerable social groups insofar as they are recognised by international law and by some States as autonomous seats of power within the state. They are recognised as exercising collective rights as groups. In many countries special laws and policies establish their distinctive status and rights. Actual State policies towards indigenous peoples vary greatly. In general, African States tend to deny the relevance of ‘tribal’ identities and institutions, which are seen as obstacles to nation-building. In Asia, indigenous peoples are commonly seen as ‘backward’ and national policies are primarily orientated to promote the rapid assimilation or integration of indigenous peoples into the national mainstream, by re-education, resettlement and the prohibition of traditional cultural and religious practices. In some countries, as in India, a policy of positive discrimination is adopted, reserving quotas in education and administration for indigenous peoples. More recently, especially in Latin America, Governments are beginning to accept the multi-ethnic nature of States and are adopting policies promoting cultural tolerance, bilingual education, regional autonomy and collective territorial ownership and control by indigenous peoples, including Afro-Americans.

 

Development standards:

International development agencies have adopted specific policies towards indigenous peoples designed to respect existing and emerging principles of international law and to ensure that their programmes and projects fully take into account these peoples’ distinctive needs and rights. The World Bank’s Operational Directive 4.20 is designed to condition Bank projects to ensure borrower government adherence to these standards. The policy requires operational staff to ensure that:

 

·         there is a clear borrower government commitment to adhere to the Bank’s policy

·         acceptable mechanisms are in place to ensure indigenous participation in the full project cycle

·         an indigenous peoples component is developed which

-          makes an assessment of the national legal framework regarding indigenous peoples

-          provides baseline data about the indigenous peoples to be affected

-          establishes a mechanism for the legal recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights, especially tenure rights

-          includes sub-components in health care, education, legal assistance and institution building

-          provides for capacity-building of the government agency dealing with indigenous peoples

-          establishes a clear schedule for fitting actions related to indigenous peoples into the overall project, with a clear and adequate budget

·         final contracts and disbursements are conditional on government compliance with these measures[30]

 

In November 1998, the European Union also adopted a Resolution, which is binding on member states, setting out basic principles for development assistance affecting indigenous peoples. Special standards on indigenous peoples have also been adopted by a number of the bilateral aid agencies including by the German, Dutch, Danish and Belgian governments. A key principle common to these policies is the recognition of these peoples’ rights to their lands and territories. The more progressive also accept that projects should not go ahead on indigenous peoples’ lands without their prior and informed consent.

 

Indigenous perspectives and forest policies:

Indigenous peoples themselves have made several clear statements about how they feel they should be accommodated by forest policy-making. In 1992, in preparation for the Rio Summit, the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests set out the basic demands and concerns of forest-dwelling indigenous peoples in the form of a ‘Charter’.[31] These concepts were later refined in the ‘Leticia Declaration’ which was the outcome of an intersessional meeting of the InterGovernmental Panel on Forests.[32]

 

Global data are lacking on the extent to which forests are owned or claimed by indigenous peoples. They inhabit the majority of tropical forests, including mangroves, and also range over, use, own or claim very large proportions of boreal and temperate forests. The absence of reliable, comprehensive information about these peoples and the extent of their territories is just another result of their persistent marginalisation in forestry policies and practice.

 

Intensified natural forest management and indigenous peoples:

 

The experience of indigenous peoples:

Industrial timber extraction has created major problems for indigenous peoples ever since it was first imposed on them in the colonial era. The exploitative nature of French and Portuguese logging of brazilwood in the early 16^th century was remarked on as soon as it  started.[33] The creaming of the forests of French Equatorial Africa of the prized timber, okoume, depended on first crushing indigenous resistance, then the forced resettlement of forest peoples and, finally, the extraction of corvee labour to suppy the manpower that the industry demanded. Death rates in the logging camps were so high that an appalled Governor General felt obliged to denounce the practices of his own administration. The timber industry he wrote is a ‘great devourer of men’.[34] When the practice of ‘scientific forestry’ was introduced by the British into India and Burma in the 1850s and by the Dutch into Java, the establishment of forest reserves required the curtailment of indigenous rights. Conflict with indigenous peoples was immediate. Colonial opinions were divided over the wisdom or merits of denying indigenous peoples’ rights, but scientific forestry prevailed and set the dominant pattern for forest management in the tropics for the next century and a half.[35]

 

There have been surprisingly few detailed studies of the impact of modern forestry practices on indigenous peoples. The only authoritative long-term study of forest-dweller demography, carried out among the Agta people in the Philippines, shows clearly how logging and associated changes in disease ecology and land use, caused massive increases in mortality and severe health and nutritional impacts.[36] In Sarawak, the intensive logging of primary forests has caused a marked decline in game, both through direct disturbance of habitats and because of increased hunting pressure along access roads and skid trails. A study carried out for the WWF showed how mean intake of protein by Dayaks in logging areas declined from 54 kg/person/year to 12 kg/person/year. Logging also seriously increases soil erosion and consequently the turbidity of rivers, causing fish stocks to crash and thus further affecting community welfare. A Sarawak Government study showed that in recently logged areas, there is a three-fold increase in serious malnutrition in native communities, affecting some 31% of the population.[37] Likewise, logging in Central African forests has seriously depleted wildlife and encouraged a rapid escalation in the bushmeat trade.[38] A study of nutrition among indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon has also revealed the highest rates of malnutrition in areas invaded by loggers.[39]

 

Changes in disease ecology as a result of logging have also been widely noted. In the tropics pools of standing water due to blocked or absent culverts on logging roads, in tyre-marks along skid-trails and in poorly designed log-ponds provide new breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which coupled with increased rates of in- and out-migration, have resulted in high incidences of diseases like malaria and dengue. In addition, very high rates of STD infection due to prostitution and exploitative sexual relationships in logging camps and nearby townships have been very widely reported.[40]

 

Logging operations are sometimes welcomed by indigenous peoples as they seem to offer employment opportunities, road access, clinics, religious centres and schools. Commonly, however, where provided, such services fall into disrepair when the industry moves on. Moreover, because indigenous people often lack formal education or training, they tend to be employed in low-paid, short-term, arduous and dangerous occupations such as tree-spotters, fellers and debarkers. Labour, health and safety regulations are often weak or not enforced. In Sarawak in the 1980s, for example, rates of death and injury of forest workers were 21 times as high as occur in Canada, with one serious injury for every 7000 cubic metres of timber extracted. Compensation for loss or injury proved nugatory.[41] In the northern Congo basin, where ‘pygmies’ make up as much as one half of the work force in lumber camps, diseases such as malaria, yaws, ulcers, tuberculosis and jiggers are rife, but the companies discriminate against them providing them with far fewer facilities than to Bantu workers. Pygmy communities around the logging camps have suffered a breakdown in their traditional social structure and a loss of forest-dwelling skills.[42]

 

Indigenous women, children and the elderly suffer disproportionately from logging. Those left behind in their villages are left to survive without able-bodied males, who are away wage-labouring. Those who migrate to logging camps become dependent on their husbands’ wages. Indigenous women may turn to prostitution to supplement family incomes and regain a measure of independence. Women have suffered particular hardship as their societies become increasingly enclosed and subject to the legal and cultural impositions of outsiders. Studies in  India and Malaysia show how indigenous women have lost control of land and are excluded from any effective participation in decision-making.[43]

 

One of the most pervasive problems of conventional forestry practice for indigenous peoples is that it commonly denies their rights to land. Customary tenure systems are often ignored in forestry zoning exercises and rights may be heavily conditioned, curtailed or unilaterally extinguished when forest reserves are established. Historically in many parts, and still today in some countries, government agencies oblige the involuntary resettlement of forest-dwelling indigenous peoples from forest reserves. Alternatively, special regimes may be applied which grant conditional rights or privileges to indigenous people in forests, subject to the authority of forest departments. The dependency that results can encourage the emergence of damaging, exploitative, even corrupt patron-client relations between forestry officials and indigenous peoples.[44] 

 

The overall impacts on indigenous social systems are also severe. New inequalities are introduced, customary laws, social support networks and systems of land management may be undermined, gambling and alcoholism increase, and migration to urban centres accelerates.  Lack of experience with cash and the implications of large-scale habitat changes can lead indigenous forest-owners into imprudent deals with forestry companies, which many later regret. Internal conflicts over decision-making, resource allocation and use of cash often result, further undermining social cohesion.[45]

 

Perhaps the most serious of all the impacts of logging on indigenous peoples is that it shifts the balance of power over forests away from forest-dwellers and in favour of industry and political elites. The reinforcement of patrimonial political systems and rent-seeking behaviours then become major obstacles to sustainable forest management and to policies that respect indigenous peoples’ rights.[46]

 

Emerging standards and best practice:

The need for new standards to ensure that natural forest management benefits indigenous forest-dwellers is now recognised. The International Tropical Timber Organisation in its ‘Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests’ encourages the adoption of World Bank and ILO standards on indigenous peoples.[47] Recognition of indigenous tenure and participation is also enjoined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests.[48]  Principles 2 and 3 of the Forest Stewardship Council are explicit on the need to recognise indigenous peoples’ legal and customary rights and for them to be legally established. According to the FSC, logging should only go ahead on indigenous peoples’ lands with their consent. The World Bank/WWF Alliance has accepted these principles in its promotion of forest certification.

 

In its ‘Criteria and Indicators Toolbox series’, CIFOR has established a basic set of criteria necessary for the maintenance of the well-being of forest-dwellers in logging areas. These include:

 

·        The establishment of clear ownership and use rights, including the recognition of the pre-existing rights of forest-dwellers

·        Acceptable mechanisms for sharing benefits, including between generations

·        Clear communications between timber companies and local communities

·        Adequate measures to ensure sound health and nutrition.[49]

 

All these standard-setting processes agree that securing customary rights is a necessary first step in ensuring socially sustainable forest management.

 

One of the few examples of standard-setting for forest management that has been strongly  endorsed by indigenous peoples are those established by the Forest Stewardship Council in Sweden. In this case, specific provisions were agreed by all the main stakeholders - except small-forest owners – to recognise the Saami’s customary rights even though these had never been adequately recognised in Swedish law. The agreed standards thus allow the winter-grazing by pastoral reindeer-herding Saami people in forest areas. The Saami’s herds make use of lowland forests every winter as part of their transhumant grazing cycle and in harsh winters, when the deer cannot break through thick snow crusts, require old growth forest with pendent lichens to survive. The industrial-scale logging companies and the government have thus agreed to allow Saami access to forests in winter and to set aside 10% of forest concession areas for old-growth to provide areas for reindeer survival in harsh winters. However, the FSC process in Sweden has not been an unblemished success story. Small-scale private land-owners who own up to 50% of Sweden’s forests, have unfortunately rejected the FSC standards and have adopted an aggressive approach to the Saami, suing them in the courts for continuing their ‘illegal’ access to forests. Saami communities, unable to provide the documentary evidence of their customary practices that the courts demand, now face bankruptcy as punitive court costs are exhausting their financial resources.[50]

 

Since the 1980s, there has been a dramatic growth in participatory forestry management approaches, a field which has attracted a great deal of donor support from NGOs and government development agencies. In general, the more successful schemes have been those where local communities, including indigenous peoples, have been given rights to use and manage forests for subsistence purposes or to reforest degraded areas for the sale of harvests in local markets.  With some notable exceptions, indigenous experiments with the community-management of natural forests for the production of industrial roundwood have been less successful, owing to lack of capital, inadequate training, overharvesting, poor quality control and difficulties with marketing.[51] In countries where indigenous land rights are fully recognised, indigenous peoples have nevertheless sometimes suffered serious problems by allowing logging on their lands. A number of factors explain these experiences including: agreements negotiated through bribery or under duress; imprecisions in the law which allow indigenous elites or factions to permit logging against the interests of the wider community; lack of alternative means of income generation; community divisions; ignorance of the likely impacts of timber harvesting.[52]

 

Prospects:

Given the experience of indigenous peoples with logging to date, there are obvious misgivings about a new ‘global vision’ in which further intensification plays a part. The evidence is that most current large-scale logging operations on indigenous lands are not compatible with the well-being of indigenous peoples and violate their internationally agreed rights. Even where their rights are recognised and mechanisms are in place to ensure that operations only go ahead with their free and informed consent, the imbalance in power between the villages and timber operators often results in long term costs being born by communities for relatively modest short-term gains.

 

Important difficulties also remain to be resolved to ensure that certification processes really do secure advantages for indigenous peoples. For example, when the Forest Stewardship Council was first set up, there were hopes that the certification process would favour community-based forest management initiatives which were run by indigenous peoples on their own lands. However, as it turns out, the high overheads of managing forests to certifiable standards favour economies of scale. Few small-scale operations have the skills, or can afford the technical inputs required, to develop and implement well-documented forest management systems. Even where they can, the additional costs of independent certification itself are daunting. The combination of these obstacles and the target-driven approach of the process’ main sponsors, who seek the certification of as large a hectarage as possible in the shortest possible time, has meant that less than 10% of FSC certified forests are community-managed. Concerns have been expressed that FSC certification far from promoting community-based forest management may actually be squeezing it out of the market-place as it fails to compete with large-scale, certified forestry.

 

Even more worrying for indigenous peoples is the proliferation of competing certification schemes which have much lower standards than the FSC. For example, indigenous peoples from Sarawak were recently forced to withdraw from the national timber certification scheme in Malaysia because measures were not contemplated to ensure recognition of their rights in the establishment of forest reserves. The fact that the World Bank has avoided stating unequivocally which certification process it plans to support in the realisation of its targets, sharpens concerns that indigenous peoples concerns may once more get sidelined.[53]

 

 

Indigenous Peoples and Plantations:

 

The experience of indigenous peoples:

Not surprisingly, industrial-scale tree plantations established on indigenous peoples’ lands have caused them serious problems. A cursory review of the literature reveals the following problems:

 

·         Indigenous peoples’ rights to land may be permanently extinguished

·         Habitat loss undermines traditional livelihoods

·         Inadequate compensation is provided for loss of lands and livelihoods

·         Resulting landlessness may cause migration to shanties or to forest frontiers

·         The establishment of estates may transform hydrological cycles, meaning loss of drinking water, bathing and fishing

·         Water supplies are polluted with effluents from plantations and processing works

·         In the tropics, changes in disease ecology lead to rising incidences of malaria, dengue, scrub typhus, leishmaniasis and filariasis.

 

Where indigenous peoples are accepted into the workforce of the plantations, either as labourers or small-holders in out-grower schemes, they often find that conditions are poor, wages are low and workers’ rights are denied. Promised land titles, marketing facilities and services are slow to appear, while repayments from workers and small-holders for housing and start-up costs are demanded immediately. Conditions of ‘debt-slavery’ sometimes result. Adjusting to life on the estates may be difficult: working regimes do not fit customary labour patterns and life-styles; division of communities into nucleated households disrupts traditional social networks and rituals. Many have problems handling money, spend cash imprudently or are easily cheated.

 

Indigenous women and the elderly are especially affected. Traditional subsistence and social support networks are undermined but not replaced with viable alternatives. Compensation, when paid, for alienated lands, though customarily held communally or by both men and women, is handed over to men. Where communities are incorporated into estates, small-holder titles are provided to male heads of households, not females. Employment opportunities for women are fewer and wages are lower.[54]

 

Regrettably, as Stephen Bass of the IIED has noted, despite the prevalence of these problems, many plantation developers still ignore them.[55]

 

Emerging standards and best practice:

The growing criticism of plantations by NGOs, due to their negative social and environmental impacts, has led to a number of standard-setting exercises aimed at elaborating acceptable means by which the negative impacts can be mitigated or eliminated. Following intense controversy over the plans of Shell to establish extensive Eucalyptus plantations on peasant lands in NE Thailand, Shell and the WWF engaged in a joint exercise with the explicit aims of highlighting the need for tree plantations while producing guidelines for their responsible planning and management. While the guidelines make little reference to indigenous peoples, they do seek to address the concerns of local communities in general. The guidelines stress the need for:

 

·         Participatory rural appraisal methods to assess local realities

·         Special attention to the resolution of potential conflicts over land tenure

·         Open and continuing communications between the company and the communities

·         Evaluations of the implications for women

·         Broad consultations with local people

·         Careful impact assessments as part of the full planning cycle

·         Formal agreements with local communities incorporating guarantees on issues such as land allocation, forest protection, compensation for benefits foregone, employment and service contracts, marketing, infrastructural arrangements and monitoring and evaluation.

·         Mechanisms to share control of decision-making between local communities and the company.

 

The study notes that:

 

’In general, current single species/purpose plantation types are less desirable for local people than multiple species/purpose plantation types. However, apart from some taungya schemes, there are few commercial management strategies for multiple species/purpose plantations. Successful strategies are likely to build from traditional forestry techniques, or upon agroforestry systems of intercropping, underplanting or rotational cropping.’

 

To make plantations more acceptable to local communities the Shell/WWF study also suggests experimenting with profit-sharing schemes and the establishment of landscape mosaics incorporating a mix of single species/purpose plantations with other multiple species/purpose plantations, farmland and other land uses.[56] The study notes that where traditional land rights are not recognised by the state, plantation development should only go ahead with the informed consent of the local community. It further observes that customary tenures should be given de facto recognition and ‘no land should be transferred without the knowledge and consent of the local community’. As a basic principle the review argues that ‘indigenous peoples should not be arbitrarily displaced or disadvantaged by plantation development’.[57]

 

A second study looking at the environmental and social implications of the full cycle of paper production and consumption carried out for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development by the International Institute for Environment and Development did not directly address the concerns of indigenous peoples. Recognising the frequent negative impacts of plantations on local communities from large-scale monocultures, the study advocated outgrower schemes as one of the best methods for ensuring a greater degree of equity in plantation development. It noted that key concerns for local growers are: secure land tenure; choice of which species can be planted; clear tree rights; financial support while trees mature; good prices; adequate returns on investment; and diverse markets.[58] As noted, these conditions can rarely be assured in practice.

 

FSC certification has also been applied to plantations, although there has been a long-standing controversy over the extent to which certification should be allowed of plantations established in areas of natural forest. The same principles and criteria as those developed for natural forest management, including those with respect to indigenous peoples, apply equally to plantations

 

This review has found no examples of large-scale plantation operations which have dealt in an exemplary way with indigenous peoples. Two of the most oft cited examples of progressive plantation operations, that of Aracruz Florestal in Brazil and PICOP in the Philippines, have both been established on indigenous peoples’ lands without their consent and without the full recognition of their rights. In the case of Aracruz, the company’s reluctance to meet the demands of the resident Tupinikim and Guarani peoples has not only resulted in certification of the plantation being blocked but has also resulted in international NGO mobilisation to halt the certification  of the same company’s plantations in other parts of Brazil.[59] PICOP, historically one of the largest logging companies in the Philippines, established much of its plantations in previously logged over forests that are the ancestral lands of the Higaonon people in NE Mindanao. Higaonon complain that the plantations forced them off their lands for a second time, the first being when they had to make way for logging, the second to make way for plantations just as they had begun to re-establish themselves. The encouragement of outgrower schemes has stimulated the takeover of Higaonon lands by peasant farmers.[60]

 

Prospects:

The expansion of intensive, large-scale tree plantations is a central feature of the new ‘global vision’. The proposal would seem to hold few benefits for indigenous peoples. What indigenous people advocate and thoughtful foresters seem to agree suits them better, is the   promotion of  community-based forest management schemes, in which indigenous peoples’ tenure rights are secure and they have a free choice to plant and nurture the species that suit them best. Large-scale tree monocrops neither meet their immediate needs nor promote the kind of self-determination and self-development that they aspire to.

 

Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas:

 

The experience of indigenous peoples:

The imposition of protected areas on indigenous peoples’ territories has presented them with  severe problems ever since the first National Park was established in Yellowstone in 1872. The dominant model of conservation promoted worldwide by the WWF and IUCN over the past 40 years has envisaged the establishment of a network of strictly protected reserves, arrogated to the state, cleared of resident communities and under close government administration and control. A similar approach has been promoted by the World Bank, which accepts that  ‘resettlement is particularly important when the local people’s activities are fundamentally incompatible with the preservation objectives of Wildland Management Areas’.[61]

 

The problems for indigenous peoples caused by this ‘classical’ conservation approach have now been amply documented. Impacts include:

 

·         Denial of rights to land

·         Curtailment or denial of rights of access and use of resources

·         Impoverishment

·         Forced relocation

·         Violations of fundamental human rights, including destruction of property, arbitrary arrests, detentions without charge or trial and summary executions. 

·         Cultural and social collapse

·         Breakdown of traditional resource management systems

·         Environmental degradation

·         Political marginalisation

 

Imposed protected areas have also often proved self-defeating. Indigenous resistance to the impositions has provoked conflicts, creating serious management problems. In some places, incendiarism and attacks on parks personnel and property become commonplace.[62]

 

Emerging standards and best practice:

International thinking about biodiversity conservation has changed dramatically in recent years. Whereas original proponents of in situ conservation through the establishment of protected areas advocated the expulsion of human residents, this ‘wilderness approach’ to biodiversity conservation finds less favour today.[63] Noting that as many as three quarters of all protected areas overlap indigenous territories and have posed serious problems to indigenous peoples, conservationists have experimented with a host of options to try to accommodate them in their conservation programmes. Successive reviews of these experiences have found that pre-conceived, imposed schemes, however good the intentions, have rarely worked, while those which have worked best have been spontaneous initiatives undertaken by local communities and parks staff on the spot.[64]

 

Increasingly, conservationists accept that recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights is not only required on human rights grounds but may actually help conserve biodiversity by providing a front line defence against much more damaging forms of land use. The value of indigenous peoples’ knowledge about natural resource management has been recognised and increasingly indigenous peoples are being actively engaged by conservation agencies to protect and manage biodiversity-rich areas. Some of this thinking has already found its way into international environmental law. Notably, the Convention on Biological Diversity encourages state parties to respect, preserve, maintain and protect indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge and cultural practices that are compatible with conservation or sustainable use.[65]

 

In 1994, the World Conservation Union adopted a revised set of categories of protected areas which accepts that indigenous peoples among others may own and manage protected areas.[66] In 1996, following several years of intensive engagement with indigenous peoples’ organisations, the WorldWide Fund for Nature-International adopted a Statement of Principles on Indigenous Peoples and Conservation, which endorsed the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, accepts that constructive engagement with indigenous peoples must start with a recognition of their rights, upholds the rights of indigenous peoples to own, manage and control their lands and territories and to benefit from the application of their knowledge.[67]

 

The same year the World Conservation Congress, the paramount body of the World Conservation Union, adopted seven different resolutions on indigenous peoples.[68] These resolutions inter alia:

 

·         Recognise the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands and territories, particularly in forests, in marine and coastal ecosystems, and in protected areas

·         Recognise their rights to manage their natural resources in protected areas either on their own or jointly with others

·         Endorse the principles enshrined in ILO Convention 169, Agenda 21, the CBD and the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

·         Urge member countries to adopt ILO Convention 169

·         Recognise the right of indigenous peoples to participate in decision-making related to the implementation of the CBD

·         Recognise the need for joint agreements with indigenous peoples for the management of Protected Areas and their right to effective participation and to be consulted in decisions related to natural resource management.

 

In 1999, the World Commission on Protected Areas adopted guidelines for putting the principles contained in one of these six resolutions into practice. The new guidelines (which are considerably weaker than the resolution they are designed to implement) place emphasis on co-management of protected areas, on agreements between indigenous peoples and conservation bodies, on indigenous participation and on recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights to ‘sustainable, traditional use’ of their lands and territories.[69]

 

A series of four regional conferences being organised by the Forest Peoples Programme and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, in collaboration with regional indigenous peoples’ organisations is presently evaluating the extent to which these new principles adopted by conservationists are being put into practice. The two conferences so far held in Latin America and South and South East Asia revealed only a few cases where these principles are already being applied. More often, especially in Asia, application of these principles is still a long way off, some of the main obstacles being:

 

·         National conservation policies and laws are still framed by the ‘classical model’ of in situ conservation which deny the rights of resident peoples

·         Lack of training and awareness in national and international conservation agencies in social issues, participatory approaches and joint management

·         National policies and laws which deny indigenous peoples’ rights

·         Lack of secure tenure

·         Mutual mistrust between conservation agents and indigenous people.

 

On the other hand, the conferences revealed a genuine wish on the part of both indigenous peoples and conservationists to find mutually acceptable solutions that accept their different but complementary priorities and goals.[70] Many indigenous peoples, still in the process of negotiating full recognition of their rights to their territories and to self-governance, are reluctant to allow outside conservation bodies, whether NGOs or state agencies, decision-making power over their lands. They thus advocate full recognition of their territorial rights as the best means of conservation.[71]

 

Prospects:

There is growing evidence that the classical conservation approach is failing to protect biodiversity in the long term. A recent study for the WWF-WB Alliance has revealed that 22% of protected areas in a sample of 10 countries suffer serious degradation, with up to 35% being at immediate risk and almost none being permanently secure. The report noted, inter alia, the need to promote more collaborative management options and called on the GEF to come up with the funding.[72]  Especially in developing countries where financial resources are limited and state agencies are weak or inefficient, sole reliance on the authority of government conservation bodies to safeguard protected areas can create de facto open access regimes. More realistic planning, better assessment of political commitments, institutional strengths and weaknesses and a closer engagement with civil society are evidently necessary. However, conservation specialists disagree about the extent to which it is practicable or realistic to expect all protected areas to provide opportunities for social development as well as conservation.[73] However, a growing consensus has emerged in favour of more participatory approaches in many areas if not to replace at least to complement strict nature reserves. There is also increasing recognition that protected areas must respect indigenous peoples’ rights to own, control and manage their lands and resources and to self-governance.  

 

The new ‘global vision’ on forests proposes that up to 70% of remaining forests in 2050 should be classified as ‘protected areas’ of some kind. If these are to be strictly protected reserves where local peoples’ rights are extinguished and residents barred, the vision will be unlikely to garner much support from indigenous peoples. On the other hand, there is enormous scope for truly collaborative approaches between indigenous peoples and conservationists which apply the IUCN’s revised protected area categories and which respect indigenous rights.

 

Immediate opportunities exist for creating protected areas, under indigenous ownership, management and control, for all of the IUCN’s revised protected area categories. As participatory land use mapping projects with indigenous peoples using GPS and GIS technologies are beginning to reveal clearly, indigenous land use management practices include concepts akin to ecological zoning. For example, in southern Venezuela and neighbouring Guyana, just as in Australia, indigenous peoples traditionally ‘protect’ sacred sites to which access is altogether prohibited or strictly regulated by custom. ‘Hunting reserves’ are also established, through negotiated agreements between neighbouring communities, to which access is regulated, while other areas are more intensively managed for a wide range of forest products. Judicious use of the full range of protected area categories can potentially allow large parts, or even most, of indigenous territories to be classified as protected areas through the creation of a mosaic of corresponding protected area types. There is particularly obvious scope for the classification of extensive areas as IUCN Category V and Category VI protected areas, in which a greater measure of land use is acceptable. Some indigenous peoples are, indeed, already proposing that their territories be given protected area status subject to the full recognition of their rights.

 

Achieving this objective will require a number of obstacles to first be overcome including in particular:

 

·         the reform of national social policies, land tenure regimes and administrative laws to recognise indigenous peoples’ rights to their territories and to self-governance,

·         the reform of national conservation policies, institutions, laws and regulations so that indigenous-owned and managed territories can be classified as protected areas,

·         mutually acceptable clarification of the extent and nature of the state’s jurisdiction over indigenous owned and managed protected areas. 

 

Innovative financing for both start-up and recurrent costs may be required. Financing by the GEF of indigenous managed protected areas may first require revision of the ‘incremental costs criterion’. On the other hand, there are obvious risks in establishing protected areas with IBRD loans or IDA credits and thus burdening them with unrealisable rates of return. Indigenous peoples’ experiences with eco-tourism ventures are mixed, with problems reported even with schemes implanted on the basis of negotiated agreements. Partnerships between indigenous peoples and private investors have often proved one-sided.

 

Conclusions and Recommendations:

 

Principles:

International law and emerging best practice standards in conservation, development and forestry projects coincide in accepting the need for clear principles in dealing with indigenous peoples. These principles include:

 

·         Recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples to the ownership, control and use of their territories, lands and resources, to the exercise of their customary law, to self-governance, to represent themselves through their own institutions and to self-determination. 

 

·         Forestry and conservation initiatives should not go ahead in indigenous peoples’ territories or lands without their prior, free and informed consent as expressed through their own representative institutions.

 

·         Priority should be given to meeting the basic needs of the communities concerned, not only in terms of forest products and basic livelihood needs but also in terms of health, nutrition, education, social cohesion and cultural identity.

 

·         Special attention should be given to vulnerable sectors including the elderly, women and children.

 

·         Clear and mutually acceptable mechanisms should be in place, preferably in the form of freely negotiated contracts, to ensure benefit sharing, shared management and control of decision-making, market choices, and community-involvement in monitoring and evaluation.

 

The basic intent of these measures is to promote processes of self-determination, which is the underlying principle of indigenous aspirations and human rights law. It is indigenous peoples who should decide what happens on their lands and land use options should not be imposed from the top down.

 

 

 

 

The visioning process:

There is an obvious tension between these principles and the visioning approach, which aims to define land-use according to the perceived imperative of accommodating consumer demand.

 

From the point of view of self-determining indigenous communities, the visioning process risks opening itself up to a number of specific criticisms including the following:

 

·         The approach is not participatory and excludes the views and priorities of numerous interest groups.

 

·         As such the process is contrary to the principles for achieving sustainable development agreed at the Rio Summit which recommend the full involvement of all ‘Major Groups’ in policy making.

 

·         By adopting a ‘timber-centric’ approach, the visioning approach is ignoring - or giving less priority to - other crucial forest functions, social and political issues and livelihood needs.

 

·         By shaping the vision principally around projected consumer demand, the visioning process is not just entrenching unsustainable economies, but is marginalising alternative priorities, practices and perspectives.

 

Unless the visioning process is changed, there is a very real risk that it will recapitulate exactly the mistakes that led to the failure of the TFAP.

 

(The author recognises that one of the reasons he was invited to write this paper was exactly to avoid this problem: the question remains as to whether the visioning process is responsive enough to accommodate these concerns and - potential - criticisms).

 

Land Use Options:

The current ‘global vision’ promotes intensive logging of natural forests, the massive extension of intensive tree plantations – apparently in degraded forest areas – and the establishment of very extensive protected areas in forests. All these land use choices have caused very serious problems for indigenous peoples in the past where they have ignored or denied the principles set out above.

 

Logging: Even where efforts have been made to respect these principles, an evaluation of best practice experience suggests that intensive logging of natural forests is rarely carried out in ways that are both socially and environmentally sustainable. Community-based forestry options that have proved socially and environmentally beneficial have rarely been of a scale or intensity to supply much to global markets. Those community-based operations that have supplied global markets have tended to over-harvest the resource. On the other hand, large-scale logging operations in indigenous territories - even those with local consent - have tended to overwhelm indigenous institutions and decision-making processes, fomenting social divisions and accelerating cultural collapse. Short-term economic benefits have rarely translated into long-term social sustainability or improved well-being.

 

Plantations:  This review identified no best practice examples of large-scale tree plantations that have respected indigenous rights and provided community benefits. Although out-grower schemes have been recommended as a way of enhancing social benefits, increasing community-control and improving welfare, the option has yet to be proved workable for indigenous peoples in practice. The demands of large pulp and paper or timber mills for uniform produce militate against the kind of multiple-use community-based forestry that has proved the most viable and beneficial for indigenous peoples.

 

Protected areas: Although the history of protected area establishment in indigenous territories is a sorry one, novel community-based protected areas, based on an acceptance of indigenous ownership and control, are proving viable and have been widely endorsed by the international conservation movement. Wide-scale application of this approach will however demand major reforms in national policies, laws and institutions regarding both indigenous peoples’ rights and conservation. There will also be a need for clarification of the nature of the state’s jurisdiction in indigenous owned and managed protected areas. Innovative financing may be needed to meet start up and recurrent costs.

 

Turning visions into practice: think global, then think local, before you act local

The validity of many of these concerns will depend to a large extent on how the ‘global vision’ is further evolved and put into practice. The tendency may be to use the vision to set further targets for international policy-makers, which are in turn translated into national plans and local projects. While convenient, the temptation to adopt such an approach should be resisted. Experience shows that it will inevitably lead to poor connections to local realities, national priorities and prevailing socio-economic and political contexts.

 

A far more appropriate approach would be to set the global visioning aside, as far as it has gone, and to commence an independent bottom-up visioning of one, or of a small number of, localities based on actual land use and the views, priorities and the aspirations of indigenous peoples and other local communities and interest groups. The degree of fit between the ‘global vision’ and these local visions could then be assessed to see to what extent the ‘global vision’ is relevant to resolving local problems and improving actual forest management.

 

Market-based approaches: problems with voluntary third-party certification

The WWF-World Bank Alliance has set targets for independent, voluntary certification of large areas of forest by 2005, a trend which the ‘global vision’ seeks to extend until 2050. Although the FSC principles and criteria explicitly recognise indigenous peoples’ rights, there have been some problems with their application at the national and forest level as far as indigenous peoples are concerned. Three problems stand out in particular:

 

·         Economies of scale and the target-driven approach have both favoured the certification of large-scale, capital-intensive forestry enterprises. There is concern that certification actually disadvantages community-based forestry in the market.

 

·         Experiences in Sweden, Malaysia and Brazil all provide examples of how the voluntary nature of the certification process allows commercial forestry operators to avoid  obligations to respect indigenous rights by:

 

q       opting out of national certification processes (Sweden),

 

q       redefining the regions for which national standards are being elaborated to exclude those where conflict with indigenous peoples is intense (Malaysia),

 

q       selecting for certification only those of a company’s operations which do not overlap indigenous lands (Brazil).

 

·         Some proponents of certification-led forestry reform believe such market-based transformations obviate the need for reforms in national or international regulatory frameworks. This could have the effect of marginalising indigenous issues and discouraging legal reforms which recognise indigenous rights and oblige careful forest management. Many analysts agree for other reasons that certification needs to be complemented with regulatory frameworks if it is to be effective.[74] 

 

Reshaping the political economy: equity implications of the ‘global vision’

The ‘global vision’ favours large-scale intensive land-use options to supply rising global demand for industrial roundwood. The implications of these prescriptions for indigenous peoples should be evaluated not just in terms of their direct impacts but also in terms of the likely impacts on the political economy in which they will be implanted. Experience shows clearly how the promotion of large-scale logging enterprises, in both developing and developed countries, shifts power and hence policy in favor of large-scale operators who are able to use their enhanced financial leverage and political connections to amend laws, avoid responsibilities and corrupt decision-making.

 

Large-scale tree plantation enterprises are beginning to exert the same kind of leverage in developing countries. An example of the way the plantation lobby can distort national forest policy comes from Brazil where there has recently been heavy pressure from large landowners to pass a new law to promote plantations in forested areas. Under the proposed law, which has been at least temporarily stayed due to public protest, the landowners would be allowed to convert privately held rainforest - which constitutes much of the Amazon - into eucalyptus and pine plantations without government permits. Small landowners also would be allowed to count such plantations as forest set-asides. Brazilian NGOs believe this draft law has the potential to reduce dramatically the amount of protected Amazon rainforest.[75]

 

Inequitable power-sharing and patrimonial political systems are fundamental obstacles to both good forestry and respect for indigenous rights. There is a very real risk that the application of the ‘global vision’ could, in practice and quite contrary to the intentions of its proponents, undermine progress towards sustainable forest management, social justice, equity and poverty alleviation. Instead of curbing pressure on natural forests, the global vision risks concentrating control of forests in the hands of large-scale enterprises whose commitment to the objectives of sustainable development is, as the World Bank has noted, open to question.[76]

 

Implications for World Bank operations and poverty alleviation goals:

This paper has looked at the implications of the ‘global vision’ for the several hundred million indigenous people who live in forest areas. Equal attention should also be paid to the rights, needs and priorities of other social groups who depend on forests and forest products. It is estimated, though the data are very poor, that there are at least as many non-indigenous long-term forest residents as indigenous ones. Up to 1 billion people are thought to be dependent on forest products for their livelihoods. As many as two billion people, including many of the urban poor in developing countries, continue to rely indirectly on forests to satisfy their fuelwood needs. These people, rather than the consumers of industrial roundwood whose demands have shaped the ‘global vision’, are the social groups that should be the priority targets for World Bank operations.

 

If the interests of these groups are given priority, a strong argument emerges for the World Bank to prioritise small-scale community-based forestry operations. As the World Bank noted in its 1992 World Development Report on ‘Environment and Development’:

 

‘A compelling reason for supporting community resource management is its importance for the poor… Governments need to recognize that smaller organizational units, such as villages or pastoral associations, are better equipped to manage their own resources than are large authorities, and may be a more effective basis for rural development and rational resource management than institutions imposed from outside.’[77] 

 

Successive Forest Policy Implementation Reviews have failed to demonstrate strong connections between large-scale forestry operations and poverty alleviation. Rather than supporting further ‘intensification’ and the concentration of control of forests in the hands of large-scale enterprises, the Bank should be prioritising community-based forestry aimed directly at meeting local needs.  It remains to be seen whether a revised ‘visioning’ process can accommodate a rights-based, poverty-focused approach.

 

 

Marcus Colchester, discussion draft, 28 December 1999.

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