Addressing the Forestry Forum for Development Countries (FFDC), the Prime Minister, Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao, said that were it not for the protection he provided to the Minister of Environment and Forests, Mr. Kamal Nath would be an endangered species.  Predictable, the comment raised the usual round of laughter; old hat that it may be, and this writer has heard the P.M. make it at every environment forum he has attended, it is no less true for all that.  Enormous pressure is brought to bear on the minister from several quarters - industrial houses and state politicians, to mention a couple.  If he were to give into hem, the forests, for one, would be history.  The demand by Kerala, for instance, that the ministry clear the Pooyamkutty hydro-electric project in the heart of prime forests would sure spell its destruction and of the rare species of flora and fauna it at present  maintains.  Both this is not likely to happen because now there is awareness among policy makers on the critical need to conserve the nation’s forests. 

In fact, this is true of most, if not all of the Third World nations, more so since the Earth Summit.  The FFDC is a significant follow up the pledge made by the countries who gave their support to the Forestry Principles and the relevant sections of Agenda 21.  In a sense, the reaction of the developed and developing countries, as well as the international organisations, was predictable.  The NGOs present were the ones provide some fresh ground for reflection.  Let us first examine what members from less developed nations had to say.  The representative from Iran stated:

Apart from the exhortations outlined above, insights were provided on the predicament of various countries.  The representative from Malawi did not confine himself to his own country but spoke of the African continent as a whole.  He emphasised the imminent danger of it becoming a vast desert due to the over-exploitation of natural resources, and the threat this would pose to the very survival of the African people. 

The Swedish representative was frank about the damage caused to the forests of his country.  He said “we deserve to be blamed for the reason that we have devastated our natural forests to a great extent.  The fastest rate of deforestation - especially in South Sweden - was between 1750 and 1850.  The reason was poverty, shifting cultivation and high pressure on land”.  It was during the turn of the century that Sweden took up a major plantation programme and the factors in the development history that contributed to afforestation include rapid improvement of agricultural productivity; decline in the pressure on land, thanks to the large-scale  emigration to North America; building of the railway infrastructure; mobilisation of the people by NGOs within the forest sector through folk education; introduction of sustainable forest management systems which Sweden adopted from Germany. 

As a result, like many other countries in Europe, Sweden now has a “very positive wood balance”. 

The NGO presentations, as noted, were ones that raised fresh issues.  Discussing the international cooperation in tropical forest management, a Delhi-based NGO representative made the following points:

Another NGO representative spoke of the need to enable the voluntary sector to play a greater role in forestry  schemes since this would help in a more effective and efficient implementation of the Forestry Principles agreed to at Rio.  He noted that the strategies of each NGO different, depending often on its ideological proclivities which could be Gandhian, Church related, Marxist or Eclectic, but their contribution to enlarging the green cover or protecting it could not be doubted.  The NGO representative then went on to mention the various reasons why afforestation schemes have been launched.  The Bhagavatula Charitable Trust began to plant the barren hillsides with saplings as a means to provide work for the large number of unemployment youth it found in the villages.  It was successful because, as is the nature of NGOs, BCT was able to secure the support of the local community in the effort.  Involving people does not come easily, and certainly not to bureaucracies.  But as the initial experiments of West Bengal forestry department high-lighted, and later that of Gujarat, joint management of forests could be highly productive requiring little or no investment.  The example of Anand Niketan Ashram showed the evolution of the forest strategy of a Gandhian NGO since Independence and its contribution to preserving the tribal habitat.  Marxist NGOs, such as Rural Development Association, have done a remarkable job of not only conserving forests but also, through this process, motivated the villager to force their local bodies to implement other development schemes.  

In conclusion, it may be said that even as Mr. Kamal Nath wanders the globe to secure the support of the North for the Delhi Declaration,  the FFDC initiative suggests that the pledges made at Rio on the earth’s forests have not been forgotten.  While the FFDC becomes a consultative mechanism to tackle the forestry issue, the control of forests must be vested within the community; the world’s forests must be linked to the well-being of the people.  No longer will developing countries accept the dictates of outsiders since they have realised that mobilisation of will and the capacity of their own people is more important than adequate international financing.  Even so, the North ought to accept that in order to benefit from the South’s forests (logging) it must be prepared to pay for the forests conservation measures, help reduce Third World indebtedness and improve international economic relations; it cannot protect own economy while damaging that of the South.   q

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