Sold down the river - Salva le Foreste

REGIONAL OVERVIEW 9environmental consequences. The search for the best trees means that companies drive roadsinto relatively large areas of forest to extract just a few trees. This opens up the forest tocommercial bushmeat hunters who have decimated wildlife in logging areas. The technique ofselecting the largest trees of a particular species has consequences for local uses and for themaintenance of biodiversity, with the regeneration of the target species not guaranteed.Despite legislation requiring increased downstream processing in-country, such as theproduction of sawn wood, veneer or other products, which would bring more revenue, theexport of whole logs from the region still predominates, with the processing taking placeelsewhere, mainly in Europe or Asia. But value-added processing policies bring problems oftheir own: demand for logs to supply large processing plants leads to increased pressure on theforests, fuelling unsustainable and illegal timber harvesting. Some argue that there is alreadyover-capacity in Cameroon if the forests are not to be destroyed.Some European companies have admitted that forestry operations have not beensustainable in Central Africa in the past: a director of French company Rougier stated in aninterview with a French trade journal that, for the last 40 years, operations generally havemined the forest. 15 This unsustainable harvesting has led to companies moving into newareas of rainforest over time, leaving a trail of forest degradation in their wake. Many of thecompanies that have been operating for decades in Central Africa are only now starting todraw up forest management plans, although often this work is subsidised and undertakenby third parties, such as bilateral government departments or international NGOs. It is notclear to what extent European companies which operate as sub-contractors can and doinsist on sustainable forest management plans when they undertake logging on behalf ofother concession holders.International financial assistanceMuch of the drive towards industrial exploitation of Central Africa’s forests has arisendirectly out of structural adjustment and liberalisation policies imposed by multilateral andbilateral creditors. France is one of the largest bilateral lenders and aid donors to the regionand French companies play a significant part in exploiting the region’s forests (see table 1,page 11). Other EU member states, as well as the EU itself, have provided large amounts offinancial assistance – as loans and grants – to Central African countries for decades. Fundsare often used for the preparation of forest inventories, for assistance to EU forestrycompanies to draft forest management plans or for the establishment and running ofconservation areas. The European Commission (EC) has made a number of policy statementsregarding tropical forests, which have made it clear that the EC sees its role in the context ofconserving tropical forests. In 1989, this included a strategy to establish actions withreference to timber trade, within which was foreseen the establishment of a code of conductfor European logging companies. 16 Despite being seen as a priority, this has not happened todate. In 1995, a Forest Protocol was added to the Lomé Convention (Protocol No 10). ThisProtocol requests, among other things, support to assist African, Caribbean and Pacific(ACP) countries to develop sustainable forest management, and stresses the need to get woodfrom sustainably managed forests onto the market. 17 One of the EU’s largest conservationand sustainable development projects is the Conservation and Rational Utilisation of theForest Ecosystems of Central Africa (ECOFAC), which operates in six protected areas in theregion. The project was established in 1992 and has received US$ 33 million.The World Bank has provided technical assistance for forestry sector reform, helpingwith the drafting of the current forestry law in Cameroon and the draft new forestry law inGabon, for example. This technical assistance has been firmly based on supporting thedevelopment of the industrial timber sector, with the objective of improving the efficiency oftimber extraction and in particular the capturing of economic rent from the sector. Whilstthe competitive tendering process introduced into Cameroon may reduce, but not eliminate,corruption among civil servants and transnational employees, the fact that the biddingprocess is weighted in favour of financial rather than technical merit does not encourage thepromotion of sustainable forestry management, and may indeed foster short-term profitseekingover long-term sustainable forest management (see Cameroon, p. 13).By far the most important step towards assisting long-term sustainable development inthese countries would be debt cancellation. Most debt is owed to the G7 group of countries,either directly or through the World Bank and IMF. Many of the countries in this reportspend more on debt repayments than they do on health and education combined, and repaymore money than they receive in grants each year. Some G7 countries have pledged tocancel at least some of the outstanding debt. The World Bank and IMF have established theHeavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), which will cancel some, but not all, debtof some countries (see HIPC, right). Despite the levels of poverty in each of the countries inthis report, only Cameroon has qualified to have some of its debt cancelled, although this isconditional on a number of factors, including institutional reform within governmentregarding the forestry sector.The primary goalof forest policiesin the region is topromote industrialtimber productionfor export byallocating most ofthe forest asloggingconcessions.HIPCThe Heavily-IndebtedPoor Countries Initiative(HIPC) was established in1996 by the World Bankand IMF and introducedthe concept of “debtsustainability”. Creditorsassess how much of itsdebt a country can pay offover the medium- to longterm(sustainable debt)and then write-off theremainder (unsustainabledebt). Only debts accruedbefore a certain datequalify for HIPC, not alldebt. The measurement of“sustainable” debt isbased mainly on the ratioof debt service paymentsto export earnings, not toa country’s absolutepoverty or its people’spoverty.To qualify forreductions, a countrymust spend six yearsengaged in strict economicreforms under IMFsupervision. It must openitself up to foreign goods,privatise state-ownedenterprises, deregulate itsfinancial and bankingsectors, cut publicspending and implement apoverty reductionstrategy. One of thecentral purposes of theHIPC Initiative is toencourage privateinvestment. An estimatedhalf of the HIPC -designated countries willnot meet the reformtargets and thus will notqualify for debt relief.