Drivers of Deforestation in Asia and the Pacific

Asia and the Pacific

Asia and the Pacific contains approximately 37% of the world’s rainforest cover, stretching from India out to the outermost reaches of Oceania. Some of the forest remains unexplored and new species of plants and animals are still being discovered. However, a study of forest clearing from 2000 to 2005 showed the asian region to have the highest deforestation rate of all three rainforest regions. Forest loss in Indonesia is the second highest after Brazil [1], and deforestation accounts for 85% of its emissions [2]. Three of the rainforest holding countries in the region that The Prince’s Rainforests Project have been working with are are Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Malaysia.

Half of tropical Asian countries have lost at least 70% of their forest cover. Indonesia loses more Humid Tropical Forest cover than any nation aside from Brazil - and just over an eighth of the total [1], with this deforestation accounting for 85% of its national GHG emissions [2]. The main drivers of deforestation throughout the region are logging, palm oil, shifting small scale agriculture and mining.

These drivers of deforestation are often closely interlinked. For example, developers often establish new palm oil plantations on forested land, mitigating the initial investments required by selling the timber they gain from clear cutting. Indeed logging companies have also taken advantage of the government’s support for palm oil expansion by proposing plans for palm oil plantations and then merely clear cutting for timber.

Logging

Logging is an important economic activity in most South East Asian countries. According to some estimates [3], more timber was exported from Borneo during the 80s and 90s than from Latin America and Africa combined. Even when a forest is not clear felled and only certain trees selectively cut, the logging process often results in damage to almost twice the number of trees as those actually harvested. Poor logging practice can also lead to reductions in soil carbon, depletion of soil fertility and result in biodiversity loss. Timber is extracted from rainforests at varying intensities. In many countries various rules and controls have been introduced in an attempt to reduce the environmental impact of the timber industry. Logging codes are, however, only as good as their enforcement. In many countries corruption and illegal activities undermine positive attempts to conserve forest resources.

For example, NGOs such as Greenpeace suggest that around 60-80 per cent of all timber from Indonesia might be logged illegally. Of this less than 20 per cent is smuggled out as logs, and the remaining wood is processed in saw, paper or pulp mills, and later exported. There is major economic momentum behind illegal forestry practices in some countries, not least because there is massive over-capacity in these saw mills and pulp plants, which rely upon processing volumes of timber many times greater than that which can be supplied legally.

The industrialised countries’ vast demand for wood and paper has now been added to by the increased need for such natural resources amongst rapidly developing nations. For instance, China has emerged as the world’s largest plywood producer and furniture exporter, and now has the world’s largest market for hardwood lumber. Its pulp and paper industry is the second largest (after the US), producing 15 percent of the world’s paper and paperboard and it buys half of all internationally-traded tropical logs. Around two-thirds of these imports come from Asia and the Pacific - though Africa and Latin America are now also increasing supply

Palm Oil

In Indonesia, the area of land occupied by palm trees has doubled over the last 10 years, supporting directly and indirectly, the livelihood of approximately 5 million people. Revenues from palm oil approximate around 2% of the Indonesian GDP. With a long term trend of massively increasing global demand for palm oil, this number is expected to rise further. Although palm oil can be cultivated and harvested in a more sustainable manner, including through small-scale agroforestry, large-scale monoculture plantations tend to dominate production. The growth of these has in recent years led to widespread deforestation. Indeed, one Indonesian research institute estimates that some two thirds of productive palm oil plantations involved deforestation. Plantation expansion has sometimes occurred at the expense of indigenous people, whose land has been taken over, leading to the loss of their traditional livelihoods. Logging companies have also been reported to use plans for palm oil plantations to justify the extraction of timber, and then subsequently omitting to produce palm oil.

Shifting Agriculture

Transient settlers or people who have neither the money nor the political power to acquire permanent holdings on productive lands, follow and settle along roads constructed in the rainforest by development or extractive activities. These people use the trees for building materials and slash-and-burn small areas of forest for agriculture. Denuded of their trees, the productivity of the soil in these cleared areas declines after a year or two, and farmers move on to clear additional forest for more agricultural land.

Mining

Developed and rapidly developing countries’ demand for raw materials has put new pressures on the Asian rainforests. In Southeast Asia, mining of coal, gold, copper and bauxite is an indirect cause of deforestation due to slash and burn agriculture practised by the families of mine workers who move into the regions and infrastructure development The wastes from mining are also devastating to forested watersheds, destroying biodiversity.

Sources:

1: Hansen, M. et al (2008) “Humid tropical forest clearing from 2000 to 2005 quantified by using multitemporal and multiresolution remotely sensed data”, in PNAS vol 105, pp. 9439-9444.
2: Mitchell, A. W., Secoy, K. and Mardas, N. (2007) Forests First in the Fight Against Climate Change, Global Canopy Programme
3. Curran L.M., Trigg S.N., McDonald A.K., Astiani D., Hardiono Y.M., Siregar P., Caniago E. and Kasischke E.(2004): Lowland Forest Loss in Protected Areas of Indonesian Borneo; Science, 13 February 2004; Vol.303: 1000-1003.