- Forest exploitation
extensive logging to provide timber and materials for woodwork, intensive logging to provide wood for paper pulp.
- Mining
big company mines, or small local mines exploited by craftsmen (gold, diamonds).
- Hydroelectric exploitation
building dams and flooding valleys.
- Industrial agriculture, development of cash crops
coffee, cacao, oil palm, coconut, hevea, sugar cane, etc.
- Extensive livestock breeding
forests are cleared to make pastures.
- Colonization by farmers
organized or spontaneous search for new land by farmers from other areas.
The least aggressive encroachments of the environment are also the oldest : small scale collecting for trade (rubber, resin, oil-producing almonds, rattan, etc), small settlements of non-native populations, commercial fishing, extensive forest exploitation, extensive livestock breeding on open land. The most destructive encroachments are recent (mostly less than 50 years old) : mines and gold rushes, intensive logging, building roads (that are as many routes providing strangers with easy access to these areas), massive colonization by non-indigenous populations, industrial agriculture, livestock breeding after deforesting an area, flooding valleys to make dams.
These encroachments are similar on all the continents, and only their intensity varies.
The geographical areas this report sets out to study provide a whole range of examples of these impacts on the environment and on the populations living within it :
- The Philippines ought to be at the negative end of the scale : within 25 years the country has depleted its forest resources, and while the survival of all the indigenous populations is threatened, many have already disappeared (as independent cultural and economic units).
- Sumatra is on its way to doing exactly the same thing : massive deforestation is not even sparing the remarkable agroforests, though the latter set a marvellous example for the whole of the equatorial world.
- At the positive end of the scale, we find Papua New Guinea, where encroachment of the environment is still very limited though it is a very serious threat ; more importantly, here indigenous populations have the means to defend themselves and to choose what kind of development they would like, with the existing laws, and also because these laws are actually applied.
The present situation
- Cameroon : 50% of forests have been exploited, production : 2,7 million m3 per year
- Congo : 16% exploited, 34% have become concessions, production : 1,5 million m3 per year
- Gabon : 46% exploited, 2500 km2 per year, production : 1,2 million m3 per year
- Guinea : approximately 50% exploited (?), production : 160 000 m3 per year
- Central African Republic : approximately 50% exploited (?), production : 400 000 m3 per year
- Zaire : areas are small (no data available) because of logistical problems, production : 2,7 million m3 per year.
SOUTH AMERICA: Though increasing, logging is still a minor activity; as a cause of deforestation, it comes far behind livestock breeding and agribusiness.
ASIA: Forest exploitation is well advanced (except in PNG) :
- Philippines : forested areas went from 62% of the whole country in 1950 to 22% in 1990, 2100 km2 are exploited every year, production : 3 million m3 per year
- Indonesia : 46% of forests are exploited, production : 37 million m3 per year
- Peninsular Malaysia : 59% of forests have been exploited within the last 20 years, production : 10 million m3 per year
- Sarawak : 50% of forests are exploited, production : 15 million m3 per year
- Papua New Guinea : only 27% of forested areas can actually be exploited, 600 km2 are exploited per year, production : 2 million m3 per year.
The consequences of forest exploitation
There are different sorts of consequences, both direct and indirect ; they affect the ecosystem on the one hand and indigenous populations on the other :
- geographical equilibria are disrupted : erosion and floods ;
- the ecological equilibrium is disrupted, and resources available to human beings are altered.
Deforestation destroys mature trees that bear fruits ; this jeopardizes the regeneration of species (because the trees providing the necessary seeds are destroyed) and drastically alters the food chains (most animals, including birds and fish, are frugivorous) ; reducing the fauna (including aquatic animals) in turn affects human populations whose protein are provided by forest animals.
Indigenous populations are affected by the decline of their vital resources (food, game, fish, construction materials, etc) and by the intrusion of populations foreign to the area.
Forestry companies bring their employees into the area and settle them in company villages, often deep in the mountain forests ; these villages are actually small towns and the populations have correspondingly huge food requirements ; they therefore disrupt local trade networks, primarily by increasing the demand for game. Besides, the roads that are opened in the forest to enable the exploitation of its deeper recesses encourage strangers to enter the area ; they come to hunt for commercial purposes or to settle and set up permanent agriculture.
There are three types of population movements that affect forest rural areas, and each of them deeply affect the ecosystem and indigenous populations :
1) from the savannah to the forests
Poor peasants come from overpopulated areas seeking new land (see below) ;
2) from countryside to town
Towns in the forested areas gradually grow and, consequently, so does their demand for food, firewood and arable land ;
3) movement and settlement along the main axes
Big permanent villages settling along the roads and rivers imply :
- reduced mobility ;
- dietary deficiencies due to lack of sufficient wild products ;
- increasing pressure of crops on the soil because of accelerated rotation in shifting swidden agriculture and expansion of cash crops.
The overall farming population is increasing (and therefore needs more arable land) and this coincides with the governments' wish to put these remote areas to 'good' use, remote areas that are considered deserted, virgin, or underdeveloped. This entails colonization or even invasion of forested areas and of the indigenous populations' land by poor migrants pouring in en masse. This particular problem is especially important in Asia and the Amazon Basin, but only occurs in some places in Africa.
High population pressure in surrounding non-native populations is a precondition to their intruding on the territory of indigenous populations.
Africa : average population density in forested areas is 7 inhab./km2, but the population is unevenly spread out and densities can be as low as 1 inhab./km2 ; in Zaire, Nande immigration from Kivu (49 inhab./km2) towards Upper Zaire (9 inhab./km2) ; in Cameroon, Bamileke immigration from Western (97 inhab./km2) to Central Cameroon (8 inhab./km2).
South America : 3,3 inhab./km2 in Brasilian "Amazonia Legal" (including towns) against 12 inhab./km2 in the Nordeste.
Asia : in Indonesia, there is the official policy of Transmigration followed by spontaneous movements from one island to another : Java has population densities of 700 inhab./km2, hence the important emigration towards islands where population densities are much lower : Irian Jaya (4 inhab./km2), Kalimantan (17 inhab./km2), Sulawesi (48 inhab./km2), and even Sumatra (63 inhab./km2). An exception is the case of the Papua New Guinea Highlands where population pressure is high (37 inhab./km2 and even 60 in some places) and levels of population growth are among the highest in the world (about 3% per year). This last factor implies that populations are gradually encroaching on forested areas and therefore constitute one of the main dangers threatening the survival of rainforest ecosystems in this country.
Consequences
Non-native populations disrupt the environment :
- intensive clearing that is not followed by a fallow period, permanent deforestation ;
- excessive hunting and fishing to provide for their own food requirements and for trade.
It also disrupts the life of indigenous populations :
- by creating competition between groups of unequal demographic weight ;
- by creating competition for land ;
More particularly, indigenous populations may sell their land without quite understanding the process and without being fully aware of the final consequences of such an act.
- by disrupting the fragile regional networks of trade and exchange.
Bearing in mind the profound impact of immigrant population on both the forest ecosystem and its inhabitants, one ought to investigate the possible implementation of the following :
- legal and land-related clauses that would regulate or even restrict immigration of exogenous rural populations ;
The solution to this problem is far beyond the scope of the present report, but it does imply regulating the birth rates of the populations in these nations states, whether one approves of this or not. It is important to enable indigenous populations to maintain low population densities and protect them against people coming in from other areas where population densities are high.
- legal clauses aiming at preserving the rights of the earliest inhabitants and at providing them with decent standards of living, equal to their aspirations ;
More particularly, it is necessary to protect the land belonging to local populations by legislations that would take into account the idea of community ownership and that would discourage people from selling common land to individuals.
- a system that would supply immigrant populations with food and goods other than those provided by wild resources (game particularly) so as to preserve the forest's biodiversity.
Moving from food-producing subsistence agriculture to cash crops has many consequences, both economic and social : a constant search for profit is leading to the expansion of cultivated areas (but not in any regulated way), to major permanent deforestation affecting the natural water supplies, and to a depleted animal population ; cultivators engaged in cash crop cultivation are very vulnerable to fluctuations of the market price.
Commercial activities, cash crops and extracting forest products for trade are mainly regulated by export prices and by the fluctuations of world prices.
There are many examples of the impact of such fluctuations in the different equatorial countries : the impact in equatorial Africa of the drop in the price of coffee and cacao (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Zaire) ; the impact of drops in the price of damar resins on gathering activities and on the preservation of Borneo's agroforests ; drops in the price of hevea and its impact on the Amazon Basin, Borneo, Malaysia, etc.
Encouraging monocropping of cash crops can be dangerous :
- specific problems related to monocropping ;
plant diseases, soil exhaustion, some species do not adapt to local conditions, etc. ;
- reduced subsistence crops no longer provide adequate food resources and people become poorer ;
both land areas cultivated for subsistence and the amount of work put into subsistence crops are reduced ;
- vulnerability when there is a slump in prices.
On the contrary, one ought to :
- encourage people to maintain food-producing crops ;
- develop agribusiness on a regional scale ;
taking into account the pre-existing distribution networks ;
- develop variety in the types of crops that are grown, those that require little space so as to encourage some involvement in market economy ;
annual or short term crops ought to be preferred to long term crops (market prices might change before long term crops have even started producing) ;
- encourage monetary independence.
The major trends in the modern development of equatorial forests are altering the way of life of the indigenous populations in a similar way all over the world.
The main development processes that can be observed are partly due to the populations' spontaneous reactions to new requirements and partly to government policies :
- changes in habitat ;
scattered communities are brought together, nomad groups are settled, overall mobility is reduced ;
- subsistence economy is altered ;
hunter-gatherers adopt agriculture ; shifting swidden cultivators adopt permanent agriculture (especially in Asia). ;
- involvement in cash economy
permanent cash crops are planted, commercial production activities (hunting, fishing, gathering), working for companies on a temporary and seasonal basis, migrations of male labour force and the parallel development of prostitution and AIDS-related problems, etc.
The increase in numbers of non-natives in forested areas and the growth of towns around logging and mining concessions, entail an increase in demand for game and fish ; naturally, people turn towards those who know the environment best to obtain them.
Indigenous populations are more and more dependent on the market economy because satisfying their needs increasingly requires cash.
But by integrating a market economy, indigenous populations also begin destroying their environment by becoming professionals for :
- hunting,
- fishing,
- collecting forest products intensively.
Reduced biological diversity in the rich forest environment, reduced forest areas, influx of competitive exogenous populations, all these factors have drastic consequences on both social and health-related issues for traditional populations :
- loss of ancestral lands, traditional land rights are altered : feeling of having been uprooted ;
- social and economic marginality : poverty ;
- conflict of generation is intensified (due to loss of prestige of elders who represent a way of life that is is inefficient and out of date) : social disruption ;
- nutritional disorders due particularly to the disappearance of wild protein resources ;
- alcoholism creating an illusion of exchange and sociability that one can no longer provide for with traditional food and drinks ;
- to this, one must add the fact that the more isolated groups have to face the modern world very suddenly and cope with the trauma of this sudden change ;
there is a big debate going on about how adequate the diets of indigenous populations are, but it is based on lack of appropriate data for many ethnic groups because of the variety of different populations involved. Saying that the diet of accultured indigenous populations is better than a traditional diet is both wrong and misleading : the little data we do have shows how weak this type of diet actually is (few calories, few protein) and how one is in fact misled by what is only the consequence of easier access to health services (improved longevity, reduced morbidity and reduced child mortality). On the other hand, from what we do know about traditional foodstuffs (lists of foodstuffs, their diversity, access to protein, small populations) and about the working conditions of accultured populations (wage labour and cash crops to the detriment of subsistence agriculture ; less access to wild protein resources or gathered plants that provide vitamins) it is difficult to imagine how accultured populations could have better dietary habits than traditional indigenous populations, all the more so as the former seem to use their money to acquire goods considered prestigious rather than food...
- acculturation is an important factor of change : some of its conditions lead to the loss of the kind of knowledge necessary to the techniques they use when totally dependent on the forest. Consequently, the amount of food resources they extract from the forest is reduced and agriculture and hunting, fishing and gathering activities are simplified.
This is the case when a population is decimated by an epidemic (a frequent pattern in the Amazon Basin), or when a small community has to face the intrusion of big groups of settlers (along roads, or on the pioneer fronteers), but it also happens when children are taken on by ill-adapted schooling systems or by undiscerning Christian missions.
Ethnic groups that traditionally control their own production do not cost anything to anyone. The economic exploitation of their environment, leading to its destruction, only provides short-term profits to a business-capitalist minority and not to the Nation as a whole (let alone to the indigenous populations themselves). But as soon as these societies loose their traditional structure, they are dependent on the state and the latter has to take on the costs of the consequences of bad health, pauperism, moving out of the forest to the towns, criminality and excessive population growth. Not only can the state no longer afford to take them on, but these populations are also contributing to making it yet poorer.