/* Written 3:07 PM Mar 9, 1995 by newsdesk in igc:ips.english */
/* ---------- "ENVIRONMENT-ASIA: Regional Bank Unv" ---------- */
Copyright 1994 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 06-Mar-95 ***
Title: ENVIRONMENT-ASIA: Regional Bank Unveils New Forestry Policy
///// REPEAT ////
MANILA, Mar 6 (IPS) - The Asian Development Bank (AsDB) announced
Monday that it will not finance any rural infrastructure or other
public investment projects that contribute to the loss of forests
in the Asia-Pacific.
The decision is apparently in line with the Manila-based Bank's
new forestry policy that is based on protection, production and
participation.
According to a freshly released Bank report, the Asia-
Pacific's total forest area was reduced by nine percent or by
about 45 million hectares between 1980 and 1990. The yearly
average forest loss is thus nearly double the annual replanting
rate of 2.1 million hectares.
This has prompted the AsDB to put down three main goals for its
new forestry policy, approved Monday, for the diverse region that
contains one-fourth of the world's tropical forests and half the
earth's plant and animal species.
The goals are: protection of the forests' soil, water and
biodiversity, production of renewable resources and harvesting in
a sustainable manner and participation of local communities and
non-governmental organisations in policy formulation and
implementation.
The AsDB said a macro-economic and intersectoral approach to
forestry is crucial because deforestation is linked to rural
poverty, population growth, agricultural practices, the
development of rural infrastructure and energy policies.
The AsDB forestry policy report notes, for instance, that
fuelwood collection and slash-and-burn agriculture are as big --
if not bigger -- threats to Asia's tropical forests as logging. It
says communities remove 700 million cubic metres of timber a year
from regional forests, or seven times more than loggers.
As a result, the AsDB has decided to promote pricing policies
to encourage the use of fuelwood alternatives such as biogas,
kerosene and solar power.
In addition, ''Bank-supported projects to create jobs in the
countryside will be designed to draw people away from illegal
forest exploitation activities,'' said AsDB agriculture department
director Richard Bradley.
''Agriculture projects will encourage intensive production on
existing lowlands rather than farming by clearing forestlands,''
he added. ''They will also promote tree-planting in upland areas
under cultivation and reforestation on degraded forestlands.''
Most affected by deforestation between 1980 and 1990 were
Thailand (with an annual deforestation rate of 515,300 million
hectares), Burma (400,500 hectares), Malaysia (396,000 hectares),
India (339,100 hectares), the Philippines (316,100 hectares) and
China (304,700 hectares).
Malaysia and Burma, however, are still among countries with
significant old-growth forests, including Laos, Indonesia, Fiji,
Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
The AsDB said it will aim to ''maximise the area kept as
functioning forests'' in such countries and to ''press for
adequate areas to be set aside for harvesting, habitat and
catchment protection, plantations and forest-dwelling
communities''.
It added that it will discourage any commercial logging in old-
growth forests.
For forest-poor countries, the AsDB said it will aim to create
more domestic wood supplies through plantations that will involve
the local communities and farmers and improved forest management
practices.
The report also points out that governments in the region need
assistance in all aspects of forestry activity, ranging from
policy-making to sustainable forest management and institutional
strengthening.
''In developing policy and regulatory frameworks, for example,
forest lands must be properly zoned, land tenure issues clarified
and logging agreements altered to include more incentives to
safeguard the long-term productivity of forests,'' the Bank said.
What has caught the eye of activists, though, is the AsDB's
statement that it will continue supporting the establishment of
industrial tree plantations -- fast-growing and high-yielding --
in degraded forests and grasslands.
The Bank is already deep in such a scheme in Laos, where
consultants are putting the finishing touches on plans for multi-
million dollar plantation that will largely have eucalyptus trees.
Non-profit groups and farmers are expected to participate in the
project.
But environmentalists say fast-growing species like the
eucalyptus deplete the soil of its nutrients, slowly destroying
valuable food-growing land.
Activists also say the Bank would do well to scrutinise what
went wrong in a similar scheme in the Philippines that was
supposed to be AsDB's international forestry showcase effort.
The four-year, 240 million-dollar project that ended in
December 1993, was proclaimed a success by the Bank and the
Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources in a
joint evaluation report last year.
But academics, non-government organisations and independent
analysts say the model reforestation scheme was an expensive
failure in which only seven out of every 100 trees survived in at
least one project site. (END/IPS/CB/95)