Logging is only one of many illegal activities in South-East Asia’s forests. There are further activities that should be considered illegal because they create human insecurity and threaten sustainable forest management. The complexity of these activities, which always involve poor people, poses a challenge to effective preventative policies.

Research from the Asia Forest Network, Philippines, examines illegal forest activities in South-East Asia and evaluates the trade and aid policies that aim to stop them. Issues of legality are not always clear: there is uncertainty amongst laws especially where they cause negative environmental impacts or discriminate against poor and marginalised people. Global forestry laws should support the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015, but it is usually poor rural people who suffer most by law enforcement. Traditional forestry activities often become illegal when governments allocate the same forest area to different users or when they issue log bans in response to flash flood disasters.

Illegal activities take place on different scales and at different intensities:

• Poor people, who often lack skills or opportunities to secure their basic needs, carry out low-intensity subsistence activities to obtain food or fuel, such as small-scale cultivation or gathering of fuel wood.
• Poor people also carry out illegal activities to obtain money. Such activities are usually a response to external changes primarily market forces, new policies and migration trends.
• Larger scale organised forest crime involves many different people, at times including government officials, can arise in many situations. Local people are used in such criminal actions, though communities are often initially unaware of the illegality or may be forced into activities through violence.

These three levels of activity often occur together. For example, illegal money-making activities rarely happen without subsistence activities happening first. At all levels, however, poor rural people do not usually take part through choice, but because of other circumstances:

• Almost all illegal forest activities are related to community insecurity regarding land tenure.
• This is the result of poor governance systems that lack the political will to resolve tenure issues.

Illegal forest activities contribute to the cycle and spread of poverty across time and space. However, because of the complexity of illegal activities, particularly the number of people involved¸ this means it is often difficult for national government to isolate both the causes of poverty and the people who instigate illegal activities in order to break this cycle.

Decentralised forest management is an increasingly common response to these problems. However, its success in South-East Asia is still limited. Policies have no adequate systems to support the necessary shift in attitudes and working practices. To improve this situation, the research recommends:

• Community participation in forest management and community rights to land access must be recognised on a national scale, not just in isolated places.
• Implementing existing policies is a challenge. Programmes that encourage discussion about forest management between existing managers and communities will increase the effectiveness and enforcement of policies.
• Trade-based approaches, which rely on certifying forest products, can help to encourage sustainable forestry, but these require long-term investment and policies to be successful.

Source(s):
‘Approaches to Controlling Illegal Forest Activities: considerations from Southeast Asia’ Asia Forest Network, Working Paper Series No. 7, by Akiko Inoguchi, Rowena Soriaga and Peter Walpole, March 2005 Full document.

Funded by: European Community through the Community Forest Management Support Project for Southeast Asia (CFMSP-SEA)            

id21 Research Highlight: 31 March 2006

Further Information:
Peter Walpole
Asia Forest Network
Rizal Street, Sacred Heart Village, Cogon District
Tagbilaran City 6300, Bohol
Philippines

Tel: +63 38 501 8947
Fax: +63 38 235 5800
Contact the contributor: afn@asiaforestnetwork.org

Asia Forest Network, Philippines

Other related links:
'China and the forest trade in the Asia-pacific region'

'Conflicting aims: tribal rights and conservation practice in India’s forests'

'Fuelling conflict: unsustainable forestry practices in Burma'

'Supporting community forest management in Lao PDR'

See id21's links of forestry