Conmonv. 7-or. Rev. 58 (3), 1979

CAY THE 'WET TROIPICIAL SURVIVE?*- Public Disclosure Authorized By JOHN S. SPEARST

In this address, I intend to tackle a question about which much healthv controversy, but also considerable confusion has prevailed in the 1970s, namelv the implications of the continuing decline of the world's wet tropical forest area. I shall attempt to summarize what leading experts have saWi about this question during the 1970s, and to interpret, from a practicar 's point of view, how their conclusions might alfect management and investment decisions in the 1980s. The interpretations which I am making do not reflect an official view of the World Bank. In keeping with the objective of these annual Commonwealth Forestry Association meetings, they are primarily intended to provoke discussion. During the present decade, the rate of tropical has become a matter of interna- tional concern. The main questions being debated are: -How rapidly is the wet tropical forest being cut our and will it really disappear as some experts claim - wtchin the next 60 to 100 years? -Is there a viable land use alternative for the wvet- tropical forest lands?

Public Disclosure Authorized -If the wet tropical forest were to disappear, what would be the global environmental and ecological consequences of its demise? -How will a further decline in the area of the tropical atfect future timber supplies? -Assuming that part of the wet tropical forests can be preserved, do natural forest manage- ment systems have any role or should they be replaced by more intensive forestry? The rate of tropical forest destruction The extent to which leading world forestry experts agree on this question is hardly reassuring. Dennis Richardson's (1970) view was:

'There is no technical reason why tropical hardwcGds should not substitute extensively for softwoods in the British market. There is certainlv no shortage of them. Using FAO Global Statistics and National Returns, it has been demonstrated that at a projected 1985 rate 3 of World Imports (80 million m annually), there are sufficient tropical forest resources to last for 400 years!'

By contrast, in the World Bank's Forestry Sector Policy Paper (1978), we concluded: Public Disclosure Authorized 'The existing forest stock in developing countries (estimated at 1,200 million ha of mature forest) is currently being removed at the rate of 15 to 20 million ha a year. At this rate, assuming no growth in demand, the remaining tropical forests will disappear in about 60-80 years.' Paul Richards (1973), a leading world authority on tropical rainforest was even more pessimistic: 'The tropical forest eco-system as we have known it will virtually disappear from the face of the earth by the end of the 20th century.'

'Address given at the Annual General Meeting of the Commonwealth Forestry Association, April 10, 1979. t Forestry Adviser to the World Bank, Washington DC. Public Disclosure Authorized -2- COMMONWEALTH FORESTRY REVIEW

To try and obtain a more precise assessment of the rate of destruction of the tropical forests, let's look at exactly where the remaining tropical forest resoufces of the wvorld ire located. This mao shows that - and indicares that out ol-somt I hO coLintries in the world, 4butl 37 contain signiticant areas oi tropical hardwood tbrest. - Of these. 16 countr:es locatcd in Latin Arnerica account for about 620 million ha, i.e. 55 per cent of the remaining tropical forest area of the world, 10 countries located in Asia for 300 million ha or 27 per cent, and 10 countries located in Africa for 190 riillion ha, i.e. 18 per cent. In total, the closed canopy tropical hardwood forests in 1975 covered just over one billion ha equivalent to some 40 per cent of the closed forest area of the entire world, This represents just over half of the area in the world originally covered bv tropical forests. Two principal causes of deforestation have been land clearing for agricultural cropping and livestock rmising and gathering for fuel. A third cause is harvesting for industrial use, but relative to deforestation, this is far less significant on a global basis rhan the other two. Much of the world's timber and forest products industry is selective:*- a relatively small proportion of total standing wvood volume. Since the neolithic revolution, more forests have given .vay to farms and pastures than co anv other form of land use and the spread of is still the biggest single cause of forest clearing today. Scudies bv Reidar Persson (1974), FAO and other agencies, in the earl. 1970s suggested thar the 'vorld's closed forest areas may have declined bv some 150 to 200 million ha durIng -he period 1963 to 1973. *\Ios't of this forest destruction occurred in i>e:eloping countries: in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the area of closed tropical forest has been reduced bv at least 100 million ha during this cencury, largelv through agricultural encroachment. Adrian Sommer (1976) working in FAO estimated that about 11 million ha a year were being cleared for agricultural settlement but he had conceded that this was only a very approximate estimare. ir was on the basis cf this and other FAO calculations that we con- cluded in writing the World Bank's Forestrv Secror Policv Paper, that the tropical forests of the world might disappear within 60-80 years. Jean Paul Lanlv of FAO and J. Clement of CTFT (1979) have recently been refining and updating Adrian Sommers' exercise and intend to publish a report on this in the near future. Based on their provisional figures and World Bank data derived from our involvement in various tropical setrlement projects, it seems that the countries in which encroachment for agricultural settlement is likely to result in disappearance of signiicant areas of tropical by the year 2000 are: forest in Asia Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Viet Nam, India, Burma and Nepal in Africa Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Zaire, Cameroon and Madagascar, and in Latin America Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua. If you add up the total area likely to be cut out between 1980 and the year 2000, it comes to about 130 million ha; in other words, by the turn of the century, the world's tropical forests may have declined by about 12 per cent from over 1 billion ha in 1980 to about 900 million ha by the year 2000. This is a slower rate of decline than predicted in earlier studies. In arriving at this figure, an attempt was made to assess the extent to which deliberate government intervention through forest reservation policies might be successful in slowing down the rate of forest clearance. The figure of 130 million ha reflects national Forest Service estimares of the area likely ro be converted to agriculture or other forms of land use not- withstanding Forest Service resistance to encroachment.

Not reproduced hier, lEd I. i.e. in excess of one million ha. CAN THE WET TROPICAL FORES-r SURVIVE?

Extrapolating bevond the turn of the century is obviously a very speculative business, but applying the principle that a projection based on crystal ball gazing, and common sense, is lik:ely to be as meanine :ialas a mathematical simulation based on dublous statistics mve guess is, that by the year 2050, a map ot the world's remaining .et tropical Corest resource mlght look like this., Bv then, the number of countries containing a significant area if wet tropical forests might have declined from 36 to about 20. Bv the middle of the next century, it seems highly possible that if nothing is done to check world population growth and to control tropical deforestation, the area of wet tropical forest will have shrunk from its present level to something in the order of 500 million ha, and may disappear altogether before the end of the next century. What then would be the human and ecological implications of such a change? - how would it affect thousands of small farmers in the developing countries? - the tropical timber trade? - the forestry profession? Is complete disappearance of the wet tropical forest inevitable? These are the next issues which I intend to examine. One of the problems we face in trying to analyze the future fate of the tropical forest is that soil scientists, land use planners, botanists, agronomists, meteorologists, sociologists, hvdrologists. ecologists, environmentalists and even , all tend to look at this issue from a parochial viewpoint. The volume of specialized literature which has grown up around the subiect would till St. Paul's Cathedral, whereas the number of papers which tackle this issue in an 'holistic' way would probably fit into my briefcase. In what follows, I shall attempt an overall review of what we currently know about the sub- ject highlighting those issues most likelv to be of concern to forest managers in the 1980s.

Possible ecological and environmental effects of tropical deforestation conversion of tropical forest to agriculture Destruction of tropical forests frequently induces in foresters a conditioned response similar to that which we might expect from Dr. Pavlov's dogs - namelv - that permanent removal of forest is a disaster (probablv for his dogs it is?). Before looking into this proposition a bit further, let me back off for a moment and talk about people instead of forests - i.e. the theme of the Eighth World Forestry Congress. The facts are at this point in time, that over 700 million people in the developing world are living in absolute poverty, a condition of life so characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, high infant mortality and low life expec- tancv, as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency. Taking a realistic expectation of future growth, it seems likely that at least 600 million people will srillbe living in that condition by the end of this century, McNamara (1978). Another wav of looking at the tropical deforestation issue then would be to take the positive view that, if successful, settlement programmes in the 130 million ha of forests - likely to disappear before the year 2000 - could provide a home, an assured food and fuel supply, plus a small income for at least 200 million poor people, some of whom would be drawn from the poverty target group."* Much of the agricultural settlement that has taken place in Western Europe and North America, for example, has been on former forest land. One obvious ques- tion, therefore, is why should we criticize governments for doing something .vhich has been the norm in the developed world for over a thousand years? Thp rub is, of course, that the tropical forest soils are frequently so highly leached, infertile and fragile, that converting them to sustained agriculture is a lot more difficult than, for example, converting ;hoJe soils which underlay the oak forests of the English Midlands into

* Not reproduced here (Ed.]. of land for * Assuming 3 ha per family and an average of five persons per household, Availabilicv settlement mav not coincide with geographic distribution of the poverty car-et group and for that reason it would be incorrect to deduce that settlement in forest areas would automaticallv improve the lot of over 30 per cent of the 700 million people now living in absolute poverty. Productive fields ot oats, barley and turnips. The scare of the art seems to he that wivth due care and fertilizer aorlication. monocultures of perennrlai ;ree crops such as rubb-r. coltlQe. mi paim. tea, cocoa and coconuts. can be continuously grown on the better tropical forcst soils without serious risk of soil impoverishment and there is reasonablv well documented evidence that such perennial crops provide an effective soil and carchment cover. Over 25 rnillion ha of agricultural tree crop have already been established in the and many of them are in sustained production after more than 50 years of continuous crop- ping. How,!ver, sustained livestock or annual food cropping have, so far, proved to be a more intractable problem. is a technic-allv viable land use alternative. It is estimated that some 250 million people in the world currently depend on this svstem of agriculture (Watte 1974) for survival and that about 300 million ha of forest lands are under such cultivation. But frequently, this has proved to be too extensive a form of agriculture to provide a politicallv acceptable solutionl and as a result of population pressure, often gives wav to intensive food cropping, declining yields, ecological deterioration and abandonment of the land. The ecological 'horror' s:ories of the tropics are well known to foresters and I do not need to repeat them here. The end results are widelv evident - thousands of square kilometers otf eroded hillisides, abandoned agricultural lands, detorested water catchmenc basins, storage dams f'ull of sediment, dried up perennial rivers and downstream agriculture disrupted by periodic flooding. One obviously tempting solution then would be to suggest converting the wet tropical forest areas of the world to producrive perennial agricultural tree crops such as oil palm, cocoa, rubber, cotTee, tea and coconuts, thereby simultaneously ensuring a reasonable family income for thousands of small farmers and an acceptable catchment cover for the soil. Unfortunately, there are at least two problems about that solution. The iirst is that possibly as much as one-half of the remaining wet tropical forest soils, particularlv in parts of Brazil, Guyana and other Latin American countries are highly wveathered, leached oxisols2 or ultisols; which are unsuitable for some perennial tree crops such as cocoa and oil palm and, secondlv, that for most of these agricultural tree crops, there are marketing constraints. It might be a reasonable hypothesis to assume that between now and the year 2000, a further two million ha of perennial agricultural tree crop plantations could be established without running into serious marketing problems, i.e. less than two per cenr of the tropical forest likelv to be destroyed between now and then. The objective in presenting this hvpothetical scenario is to focus on the facr thar, apart from shifting cultivation and forestry, we have a proven technical and economicallv viable land use alternative for only a.relatively small proportion of the area of tropical forest likely to come under pressure for agricultural settlement between now and the turn of the century. Other land use alternatives suitable for small farmer settlements such as inregrating perennial tree crops with food crops in a mixed farming system, and, livestock raising in association with production of annual food crops, have only been tried out in research olots or very small scale pilot projects or on large scale farms and ranches run by relatively skilled managers. They have nor yet been proven on a sufficientlv large scale in well managed small farmer settlement schemes for us to be certain that they can be sustained without risk of diminishing crop yields and serious ecological deterioration on either the red and yellow podzolic soils tvpical of much of the South Asia and West African tropical forest or on the poorer soils more commonlv found in the Brazilian Amazon and other parts of Latin America. - Nevertheless, quite large scale settlement programmes are under wav in which various alternative farming svstems are being tried and in which evidence from some areas indicates that it 'may' be possible to ensure a sustained - albeit relatively low - family income,

Capable of supporting maybe 10 persons per square kilometer on a sustained basis. (Nye and Greenland 1960, Richards 1967.) 'Formeril known as larosols. 3 Fcrrneriy known as red and yellow podzolic soils. -5-

CAN THE W'ET TROPICAL FOREST SURVI'E?

provided adequate soil conservation measures. rotational cropping parrerns and appropriate ferriliz-r apolicerions ire maintairned. Th'ese implv i high level ot extension irm-a't and :.rn- sive management, neitner or whicn are easv to ensure in high density settlement schemes in which the immigrant farmers have no p;evious experience of this type of agriculture. In indonesia, tor e:

OM MCNWA L'TH C ST? .' V12 " '

Typically, such protects range in cost from USS5.000 to US$20,000 per family settled; dependent on the s:ruation, invebtent of the same amount ot money in improving aoriculturai productivitv ourside the forest areas may :eil benefit more oeorie at lower cost. W'hat then should be the role of the forester in all this? Clearly, we are iaced wich an issue which, as foresters alone, we can neither control nor resolve. Inevitably, situations are going to arise where population pressure and lack of a political commitment to slow down the rate of settlement will bring-us face to face with projects where settlement is planned at a faster rate than seems technicallv advisable. Franklv, I don't see that bv trying to resist such pressure in the same manner as General Custer did whcn he took his heroic 'last stand' against overwhelmincg odds at Little Bighorn, that we will be verv effective in stopping the encroachment process altogether. We have to look for an alternative strategy. One obvious way in which foresters could play a more positive role than in the past decade would be firstly by modifying the 'forest policeman' image and actively cooperating with other agencies engaged in the agricultural settlement process in at least three main ways: -By better forward planning of settlemenc at least five and, preferably 10 years ahead, pinpointing those forest areas where population pressure is likelv to occur and allowing ample time for forest inventories and for soil surveys and comprehensive land suitaoilitv evaluations of areas to be settled. This wivll helo to ensure that settlement is directed towards those soils of better potential on [latter lands most su:ted to agriculture, that the agricultural systems adopted are suited to the prevailing local conditions and, that fores s on the steeper slopes of catchment areas are retained.l -Secondly, by trying to understand the problems of the small farmers settling in these areas; by assisting settlement agencies in formulation of forestry components for integration in agricultural settlement schemes including retention of small blocks of forest to pro' ide the settling fllarmers with an assurec future supply of fuelwood, poles, timber and other forest products; and, in building up the infrastructure, technical assistance and other support systems needed to improve the propects for sustained agriculture in those settlement schemes alreadv in progress. Careful planning of salvage logging operations prior to settlement so as to minimize waste and to maximize stumpage reve. oes should be an integral part of the settlement process. Early preparation of such operations is essential so as to keep ahead of the incoming settlers. -And thirdly, by actively cooperating with agricultural research and other agencies such as ICR.AF 2 working on agro-forestry cropping trials, which aim to produce a more sustainable agricultural cropping pattern and introduction of innovatory farming systems. Recent work by the Narional Academy of Sciences, for example, in the United States, has focussed attention on several promising new annual and perennial cropping 3 species which have not been tried out on a commercial scale. In addition to these pos;ive approaches to settlement, we should continue actively to support the efforts of ecologists and environmental agencies to pubLicize the negative efFect of unplanned settlemenc and try to persuade Governments to direct resources away from settle- ment and towards agricultural and rural development in non-forest areas.

The carbon dioxide issue An environmental question - which has recently evoked considerable attention in the scien- tific literature and world press - is global concern about the likelv effect of further destruc- tion of the wet tropical forest on the atmospheric carbon dioxide balance. Philip Stewart (1978), in his Commonwealth Forestry Review article of December, 1978 tackled most of the key issues and here I am mainly concerned with the practical imolications of his and other research workers' finding,s as they might aft^ect forestry in the 1980s.

1 As has been done, for example, in the FELDA Settlements in Malaysia. 2 International Council For Research in Agro-Forestrv. 3 See for example, Flying Beans, BoEanica', Whales. Jack's Beanstalk, and Other Marvels bv Roger Revelle, National Academy of Sciences, 1978. -7-

CAN THE WET TROPICAL FOREST SURVIVE?

Briefly. to summarize the oresent status 6fkSno.'. Iedge, the scientiflic facts aDoear t- be thfaz the atmospneric concentration or carbon dioxide has increased bv about 15 per cent in the past century. One group of investigators estimate that the current net carbon dioxide release as a resu,t of deforestation is 50-160 per cent of the fossil fuel contribution. Others make sharpiv.ower esrnmates for the iandward biotic contribution, i.e. 10-35 per cent of that from fossil1 fuel. The future impact of a continued carbon dioxide increase is speculative. One model pro- jects near doubling of atmosp'leric CO, concentration bv the middle of the next centurv 0 implying a rise in global temperaLure of about 3 C. A not implausible scenario suggests that this would have benign effects on human welfare. A higher CO, concentration increases the efficierncy of photosvnthesis and raises potential food crop produ.tion. While changes in rain- fall patterns following from moderately higher global temperatures %votildhave differing regional effects on agricultural productivity; the net effect on the world's food supply might be positive, although controversy exists on this point. Also, if the earth is entering a ratural long term cooling trend, for which there is some evidence, then the so-called 'greenhouse' effect could be a valuable compensation. No less plausible scenarios range to the catastrophic. Moderate planetary warming could initiate climatic processes altering dramatically the temperatures and precipitation patterns of the temperate zones. Present patterns of food production could be profoundly changed. Increases in the sea level, following a partial melting of rhe polar ice caps would imperil coa'tal areas. Miami, .New York, half of Bangladesh and most of the area between Cambridge and Kings Lynn would disappear under water. An even more destructive possibiiitv is an irreversible extensive warming of the oceans. The planet's oceans are estimared to hold about 60 times atmospheric carbon dioxide. Warming would reduce the amount of CO, which can be dissolved in the water and the released CO2 would then accentuate the 'greenhouse' etfect in a positive feedback fashion. One research worker has recentlv suggested:

'If this process continued until much warmer polar regions no longer fed the deep cold lavers of the oceans, enormous quantities of carbon dioxide would be released. It has been hypothesized that such a positive feedback process caused a catastrophic abrupt increase in planetary temperatures at the transition from the mesozoic and to the cenozoic geological period, a time in which an estimated three-quarters of the earth's species disappeared!'

.As one who has remained aloof from the lures of science fiction for the last 20 vears, I must confess that when I read that, I experienced a sudden flickering of morbid curiosity in the subject. The prospect of waking up one morning in the year 2000 to find mv wife, myself and the family dog being asphyxiated in a cloud of hot gas prompted me to reach for the telephone and contacr the top USA research workers in this field for their opinions. I am relieved to be able to report that, on balance, they seemed sceptical that this extreme situation would develop. Nevertheless, they all, seemed convinced that the stakes are sufficientlv high to warranr urgent scientific investigations of the climatic processes involved. The allocation of research effort in this area has been disproportionate to the research devoted to exploiting fossil fuels, shale oil, tar sands and synthetic fuels from coal. Fuels whose use may have to be constrained by the consequences of excessive carbon dioxide build up. What can the forester do in the 1980s to reduce the risk of excessive carbon dioxide accumulation in the event that scientific evidence confirms that foresrry management should be modified in some way? Philip Stewart advocated the following: 'Halr deforesration as far as possible, except in special circumstances, and intensify agriculture on existing farmland rather thaii clear new areas; tarrifs might be placed on the imports from countries known to deforest without good cause. Extend the forest area by plantations and encourage the planting of isolated trees, sheiterbelts, roadside trees, small woodlors, etc. CO,MMONWEALTH Fi'CRESTRY REVIEW

Inicrease (lie stockzni of existing forests, and close the canopy where at is open; careful srudy would be required to find the point of maximu-m bmomass, which mght' not &o:nc;de With that of max;.nu.n timber volume. Favour liih dJensitv where these ire exploitable; it .ight become necessary to learn to think in terms of tons rather than cubic metres per hectare. Maintain secondary vegetation especiallv where it has a role in protecting the soil and favouring the activity of soil organisms. Maximize soil organic mlatter by appropriate choice of species, maintenance of optimum tree cover, limitation or elimination of grazing, and by erosion control measures. Combat forest fire, which is perhaps the most potent single cause of rapid carbon mobilization.' Most of these measures add up to 'sound ' and I believe we could accept them as broad guidelines for forestry planning in the 1980s Without adverselv affecting most forestry development programmes. For reasons I have explained earlier in this address, I am somewhat sceptical about our ability to halt Further agricultural encroachment in the tropics altogether and for that reason, I arn equallv doubtful about the possibii:ky of efTectively implementing the first of Philip's above recommendations unless the rate of atnosoheric carbon dioxide accumulation reaches such serlous proportions during che 1980s, that it triggers off a universal international agency and, national government commitment ro a global action programme of voluntarv constraint on use of fossil fuels and uncontrolled burning of vegetation.

Preservation of gene pools Norman Myers (1978) in summarizing the discussions on this issue which took place at the Eighth World Forestry Congress, commented that this session brought up what some of the observers considered to be among the 'most important of all products' of forests, rnamelv genetic resources. Tropical wet forests, in particular, are rich in animal and plant iife, probably harbouring half, if not more, of the earth's species. Elimination of the wet tropical forest wo uld automatically mean elimination of many species which '.vould represent an irreversible loss of new unique resources which could offer urilitarian benefits to societv, par- ticularly pharmaceutical products. The US National Cancer Institute, for example, believes that if the tropical forests disappear, this could represent a major serback; to its anti-cancer campaign on the grounds that they are a principal reDositorv of anti-cancer drugs. The best way to safeguard tropical forest genetic reservoirs is through setting aside representative samples of forest eco-svstems which, according to Norman, should be something in the order of at least 10 per cent of the entire biome. So far, the amount of tropical moist forests set aside amounts to onlv 1.5 per cent of the total, The role of the forester in this area in the 1980s, then, should be to support the efforts being made by national governments, by FAO, UNESCO, the MAB programme, by UNEP, and other agencies to ensure the preservation of at least 10 per cent of unique moist tropical forest eco-systems and we should include provision in all forest development plans for the deliberate creation and protection of such reserves, wherever the experts in this field are con- vinced that a unique genetic pool resource exists. Similar reasoning can be applied to the conservation of resources and protection of national parks, a field in which many developing countries have made encouraging progress in the last decade. Let me now turn briefly to issues of more immediate interest to the tropical timber trade, namely:

The future production potential of the moist tropical forest Stan Pringle (1976) in his review of the outlook for production and trade of tropical forest products prepared for the FAO Committee on Forest Development in the Tropics, :oncluded -9- CAN THE WET TROPICAL FOREST SURVIVE?

his very comprehensive analysis by posing a number of unanswered questioris which will atTect she trade tn the 19i0s including: -zan the mi.lst tropicai forest, conrinue to support for :-.ore than , aecaue ,r ,w.vo aro.xinc demands For its large and high qualitv logs both for domestic uses and export to *cdus:r:aiized councries? -To what extent will species ai.d sizes currently ur,used or littie used, be abie to provide 'or these needs? -Must the market ultimatelv accept the terminiation of products based on large trees from natural forest and be prepared to use plantation woods alone? Dealing first of all with the demand aspects, the latest estimates we have indicate that cur- rent hardwood log consumption levels of a little over 100 million ml todav will increase to something between 160 and 180 million ma by 1990. Taking into consideration the antici- pated continued decline in the area of tropical forests that I referred to earlier in this paper (which, as you will recall, suggests a decline in total area of something in the order of 130 million ha by the turn of the century), and also taking into accounE the facts that a large part of the tropical forest is under shifting cultivation or has alreadv been logged over once and 'creamed' of high quality loks, the question is - can future supplies be sustained through the 198Os? To try and answer that question, let us refresh our memories bv first of all looking at where most ot th- c:oaical hardwood comes from todav. 'The map indicates that production, and es,eclaih.' exror:s. of trooical broadleaved wood and its products are :ieavily concentrated in very f'ew countres - 14 to be precise. Six countries with sawlog and veneer lo- removals in excess of 5 million m3 account for more than 70 per cent of total output while another eight 3 coun,ries with oroduction of over 1 million m raise this total to over 90 per cent. Referring to loc, exports in 1976, only 8 countries accounted for over 93 per cent of total trade. The main tropical hardwood producers* are - Indonesia, Malaysia. Philippines, Papua-New Guinea, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Colombia, Ecuador, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Costa Rica, Burma and Thailand. Looked at from a regional point of view, the Asian region accounts for about 67 per cent, West Africa 15 per cent, and the Latin American region, the balance - i.e. 18 per cent of total tropical hardwood production. Looking in the future, it is clear that readily accessible supplies of high quality logs of those soccies which are in the greatest demand in the USA, Western Europe and Japan are limited. To achieve the levels of production needed to meet future demands in the latter half of the 1980s, Kenit Takeuchi (1978) forecasts that it will be possible to meet these requirements by tapping hitherto unexploited forests in the remoter areas of Indonesia, Malaysia (Sabah), Brazil, Gabon, Colombia and Ecuador. Accelerated production can also be anticipated from eight other cou ntries which, up to now, have been marginal suppliers, but which have poten- tial for greatly increased production. They are: Papua-New Guinea, Cameroons, CAE, Congo, Liberia, Zaire, Bolivia and Peru. Alchough by the eariy 1980s, production from the traditional supply sources is likely to level off, by the mid-1980s the growth of import demand and rising prices in real terms will stimulate exploitation of the hitherto uncouched torests in the countries summarized above. It is difficult to be very precise about the probable geographic extent of logging in the com- ing decade, because production costs in these new forests a, likely to be significantly higher than todav because of the lack of infrastructure and also because of the relatively low yields per ha of :!f -esired species. Another critical factor is the extent to which rising domestic industrial wood demands in the developing countries themselves will result in pressure on hardwood supplies. FAO studies, for example, suggest that by 2000, the develop- 3 ing countries own industrial wood requirements will reach about 325 millionrm of wood and that this could constrain the availability of hardwvoods for export.

Over I million m3 a vear. -10- COMMNONWEALTH FORESTRY REVIEW

This *turomaticJllv feads ;o :'e setnni oftt;.auesttuz: s poseu zrlier, namely, 'What is the role for secondary species to meer parr of the additional demand?' If we look back over the last few decades of tropical hardwood exploitation, the progress made in developing export markets for secondary hardwoods can hjr:. be descr:bed as cncourua!irt,e In :he :ropical ramnforests of West Afrca, tor exampie, where '.r.we 3 growing stock ranges from 250 to 30t) m per ha, the volume of commercial wyood ac;uallv removed in 1973, after more than 50 3 years of continuous exploitation, still ranges betwveen 5 m and a maximum of 30 m3 per ha, i.e. between two per cent and ten per cent of the total standing volume. About ten species out of more than 300 species still account for over 70 per cent of total exports. The same applies to the Amazon forests of Latin America. Even in South.East Asia, which has a much larger proportion of total growing stock iri currently desired species, the volume extracted per ha 3 over the last decade, has averaged only 50 to 60 m , i.e. a maximum of about 25 per cent of the total standing volume. One dipterocarpous species group accouncs for most of this. While some countries (particularly Malaysia) have made encouraging progress in recent years in exporting greater volumes of domestically processed secondary species, the most significant progress in developing new markets for secondary hardwoods has been in those developing countries in which the domestic market for construction grade timber has developed to the point where these local markets have been forced to utilize more of the secondary woods simply because supplies of the better quality timbers are running out and ir is a case of either using local secondary species or having to import. Nigeria is the most obvious example where the number of species accounting for over 90 per cent of the total log extraction has increased from ten in the 1950s tb more than 40 today. If FAO's calculations are correct, it would seem at first sight that difficulties in securing supplies of high quality species during the mid-l 980s could be expected to result in a signifi- cant shift by tropical timber importers towards greater use of secondary species. But the possible extent of such a shift has to be carefillv weighed against the alternatives of more intensive utilization of temperate hardwoods and possible substitution in the developed world of tropical hardwoods by softwoods and by other competitive products. At this point in time we do not have any solid studies on which to base a more accurate assessment of these ques- tions. In the longer term, the possible role of plantations of selected high value tropical species could have a bearing on this issue and I shall return to this point in a moment. Whilst there seems to be no imminent risk that tropical hardwood supplies will run out during the 1980s, the writing is clearly on the wall that possibly by the middle of the next century, a considerable part of the remaining tropical forest mav have been converted to agriculture and that which remains will probably have been 'creamed' of better species. This leads automaticailv, to Stan Pringle's last question, i.e. 'What is the scope for ensuring con- tinuation of future better quality hardwood supplies by establishment of tropical hardwood plantations of selected species and whether the timber trade could be expected to adapt to using plantation grown, high qualitv hardwoods? At the risk of opening Pandora's Bo:f and finding a can of worms in the bottom of it, I shall try to summarize wvhat we have learned about natural forest management in the 19 70s and from there proceed to review the scope for tropical plantation forestry.

,Management systems for the wet tropical forest Alf Lesley's article reproduced in Unasvlva, Volume 29 of 1977 'Where contradictory theory and practice co-exist' is a masterlv summary of the present state of the art of tropical forest management. One of the views he advances is thar after several decades of experimentation on a fairly large scale, many foresters have concludec chat natual forest management systems may be ecologically impossible. It is now becoming widelv accepted that 'creaming' of high value species and the setting of minimum girth limits for their extraction may not ensure their perpetuation, and that the impact of such extensive exploitation is a downgradina of resource value. Even using social benefirt/cost analvsis, it is difficult to endorse natural forest manage- ment as an economic proposition. 'Continued preservation of mixed tropical forests on a large CAN THE WYET TROPICAL FOREST SUR\VIVE? scale, wirhout commercial uilization or conversion to agriculture simplv to preserve them -s a major eco-syscem is na;oilv a serious option.' His article concludes: 'the best reasons for not complete!v abandoning natural management of moist tropical toresr lie in ;he distinct possibilit, that decisions based on it being an uneconomic pr6position could be mistaken'.

Despite the -xeignt orevidence, in support of'these contentions, ecologists and many Foresters are, understandablv, reluctant to abandon natural forest management systems and con- siderable contro4-ersy still prevails on this issue. As was the case when we were looking a moment ago at the question of the rate of agricultural encroachment into tropical forescs, I be!ieve that wve have to look at -he specifics of each individual country' situationi for a better appreciation of what the appropriate manage- ment system should be rather than at tie general question of defining an opcimum manage- ment system in the abstract. We saw earfler that onlv some 37 countries contain significant areas of wer tropical forest. For about a third of those countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Philippines, Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Viet Nam, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, the question of what alternative management svstem should be adopted in the wet tropical forest is academic. These are countries in which the domestic demand for forest producrs is growing at such a rapid rate, thar it has alreadv outstripped the capacity of the remaining natural forests to produce the volumes of forest products required to ensure fucure domestic self- sufficiency if they adhere to a natural forest management svstem. Populacion pressure in most of these countries is so great, relative to forest resources, rhat the onlv option open to them is to intensifv managemert to the maximum, possible extent by creating compensatory planta- tions of fast growing species. The practical implications of this for these particular countries in the 1980s will be how to btuild up the institutional capacity co handle much bigger planta- tion programmes and techr..cal and financial issues such as what species will produce the largest volume of genera! purpose wood in the shortest possible time and at the lowest possible cost? At the other end of the scale chere are a few countries such as Gabon, CAE, Peoples Republic of Congo, Zaire, Guyana, French Guyana and Surinam in which the remaining area of tropical forest is so large relative to population density, and in which there is so litt!e pressure for agricultural settlement, that well into the next century, it would, theoretically, still be possible adequatelv to supply domestic industrial wood requirements from the natural forest without any need to invest either in new plantations or in natural forest improvement works. Since current timber extraction in these countries usually takes our less than ten per cent of the total standing volume, it seems reasonable to assume that, as dormestic markets ex- pand, they could be adequately supplied by a second round of cutting of the lower aualitv species which by then will have assumed a higher economic value, as for example, is alreadv, happening in Nigeria, Ghana and elsewhere. Between these two extremes, we have some 15 to 20 countries in which there is still room for a choice between a system of management based on more intensive cuttinig of secondary species and the establishment of compensatorv plantations.

The role of compensatory plantations in the wet tropics (a) Plantations of general purpose industrial wood species Whilst there remain many unanswered questions and much room for improvement of current productivity, the technical package for establFshment of plantations offaster growing general purpose industrial wood species such as gmelina, eucalvptus and pines, has now been demonstrated on a sufficiently large scale for us to be fairly certain that plantations of these species can be successfully grown in much or what was formerlv wet tropical forest land pro- vided care is taken over soil and site selection and crop management. The arguments in the 1970s against such intensive plantation development have been mainly voiced by ecologisrs -12- COMIMONWEALTH FORESTRY REVIEWV

'.v'to3e :on:r..rt. que r.ghtlvi, .Live been ;;at ,vrnuiesaie coonversion or targe areas ot wet cropical forests to plantations would imply a permanent loss of a unique co-system. But the inescapable fact seems to be, as I have sueesced in the earlier parts ot this raoer. that conversion ot' p2rt otf the wet tropical torest 'o agriculture mav be inevitable ind, pro- vtded chis ;s confined to the better soils and proven farming systems are used. this conversion represents a logical shift in land use. Preservation of eco-svstems can onlv be ensured bv deliberate rccention of designared biotic reserves. For the remainder, population pressure will necessitate adoption of a more produc- tive form of land use - one of these options being plantation forestry. On the soil impoverish- ment issue, if, as now seems reasonablv certain from over 50 vears of experience, tree crops such as oil palm, rubber, cocoa, te'a and coconut can be continuously grown on che better tropical forest soils without serious risk of ecological deterioration, provided they are ade- quarelv fertilized, why not plantations of eucalypts, pines or gmelina? In fact, some ecologists already accept this view, Robert Goodland and Irwin (1975), for example, recently commenting on the Jari Plantation Project in Brazil, state

reasonable people accept that much of Amazonia will be modified by some degree of "development". Tree plantations are, environmentally, greatlv preferred over the two developmlent models now being perpetrated in nearl all Amazonian projects, viz. conversion ot forests to annual crops and to cactle pasture. Emphasis should be placed on this important consideration because in the ranking oi environmental oreference - trees > annuals > cattle - the Jari model is seen in a more attractive perspecrive'.

Accepring then that continued conversion of sornt of the tropical forest areas to fast gIrow- ing plantations is a 'reasonable' development, the correct investment decision from a forester's point of view is not diiTicult to resolve. Faced 'vith the alternative ofeither investing anything up to USS 1500 per ha in development of compensatory plantations of homogeneous species, versus the alternarive of continued reliance on increasingly intensive exploitation of heterog-eneous secondary species from the natural forest with their concomitant utilization and marketing problems, the economic choice boils down to a straight costrbenefit com- parison in which influence of transport costs mav often b a more critical factor than the stumpage value of the wood to be grown. The usual preference of forest industry for an assured uniform log supply could also have a significant bearing on this decision. Taking Brazil as an obvious example, despite the fact that Brazil has over 200 million ha of un- touched wet tropical forests, transportation distances to che main population centres in the south and east are so great, that it has proved economicallv attractive to establish some two million ha of fast growing pine or eucalypt industrial pla.ntations on quite expensive land close to urban centres in the east. , puip mills and other wood using enterprises are now drawing.their log supply from such intensive plantations producing 20 to 30 mi per ha t of industrial wood a year rather than the alternative of intensifying utilization of the wet tropical forest and trying to transport industrial grade wood over 1,000 miles to the main consumption centres. The only types of timber which can stand, the cost of very long trans- port hauls are the higher grade hardwood species destined mainly for the production of quality veneer and plvwvood. Delivered log costs for construction grade saw logs and wood derived from plantation based forests in the coastal and southern region of Brazil, in- clusive of both stumpage and logging costs, are now running at somerhing between US$10 and USS15 per cubic metre; this should be compared with over US520 per cubic merre quoted in the recent FAO Tapajos project study as the probable cost of extracting logs of boch high grade and secondary species from the natural forests and transporting these logs to a suitable mill site in the interior. The inference is that large areas of the Amazon will remain economically inaccessible, except for extraction of higher value species, and most of the

3 3 * i.e. a final volume of berween 300 m and 500 m3ha compared with less than 20 m lha at present being utilized from the natural forest. -13-

CAN THE WET TROPICAL FOREST SURVIVE?

country's industrial wood demands will be supplied from fast growing plantations located :.ose to cne main :rban -cnFres. T is conciusion explains a paradox aiready seif-evident to most foresters, but freq uentlv not so to treasury gnomes - that investment in plantation forestrv may be justitied, even in countries which, apparently. are alreadv 'timber rich'. Similar geasoning can be applied in some ef the other 15-20 countries tallinz into this itnermediate classuicaton, particularly those such as Peru, Colombia and Ecuador where much ofthe tropical forest is situated east of the Andes and Sierra some distance away from the main population centres. An associated issue over which much controversy has also prevailed in the mid-1970s, has been the scope for producing pulp from mixed tropical hardwoods and how this development might be expected to infiuence tropical forest management systems. On this question, I do not share the optimism which has been :oiced during the 970s that the shortage of pulpwood in the world wvill induce a significant shift, in the next decade, to use pulp manu- factured from mixed tropical hardwoods and, that, in this trend, lies the key to 'full utiliza- tion' of the wet tropical forest. Currently, for example, the developing countries, as a whole, contribute less than s;.x per cent of the world trade in market pulp. At most, FAO predicts that this will rise to ten per cent by the end of the 1980s. Most of this incremental production will come - not from hardwoods - but from fast growing plantations located mainlv in Brazil and . A bit of simple arithmetic leads to the conclusion that the area of mixed tropical forest in which management could possibly be affected bv adoption of mixed tropical hard- wood pulping on a larger scale is - certainly between now and the end of the century - relatively small. Thus the developing countries' tocal pulpwood requirement is estimated bv FAO to increase from current levels of about 3 3 15 million m to about 55 million m in 1990. Even if we assumed that as much as 50 per cent of this incremental pulpwood requirement could be supplied in the form of mixed tropical hardwood pulpwood, the total area of wet tropical forest needed to supply this amount of raw -naterial on a sustained yield basis, would amount to something in the order of one million ha. This represents onlv one per cent of the total area of tropical forest likelv to disappear between now and the end of the century and an infini- tesimal proportion of the total tropical forest area still standing. This calculation is not intended to imply in any way that we should abandon the efiort being put into development of mixed tropical hardwood pulping. Obviously, there could be some pulp mill developments based on this resource. The purpose of the calculation has been merely to put a realistic perspective on the extent to which future development of the world's can be expected to influence utilizati,En and management of a significant proportion of the wet tropical forest. Clearly, in the short run, it could not. Finally, before leaving these issues of alternative approaches to natural forest management and the scope for fast growing utilitv purpose species in the wet tropics, I will digress for a moment, briefly, to deal with a auestion raised by Tim Peck (1973) in his address to you last year namely, to what extent can we anticipate that in the future the developed nations will be able to secure significant volumes of cheap industrial wood or manufactured forest products from fast growing plantations of pines, eucalypts or gmel,na located in the tropics? Notwithstanding the fact that sc-ne eight million ha of fast growing plantations have already been established in the developing countries and that their plantation area will increase to about 16 million ha over the next 20 fears, the fact is, that up to the year 2000, most of the output from these plantations will be primarily needed to meet the rapidly growing domestic demands for industrial wood in the developing countries themselves. Those countries which are likely to have a significant surplus of plantation 3 grown wood (over one million m a year) available for ex- port by the year 1990, c;.n be counted almost on the fingers on one hand. They are: in Latin America Brazil and Chile in Africa Madagascar, Kenya, Swaziland and Malawi in the Pacific Region Fiji and in Asia None, This list excludes Portugal which is not a tropical developing country cant plantation wood but which does have a signifi- export potential. Ir also excludes che remperate tropical forested countries Amnerica, e.g. Nicaragua, Honduras, of Central exports from which are derived mainly from natural pine foresEs. -14- COM.MO' NWEALTH FORESTRY REVIEW

Taming a look ahead to the turn of the century and assuming that planned pro-rammes are, in fact, implemented, this list of countries might be extended by'abour a dozen,, B. the year 2CPO. these countries might have established something in rhz order of :wo to rhree mnlflion ha otfexport oriented plantations (over ind above those needed to supply domestic markets) 3 wvith a production potential of something between 40 and 50 million m of industrial roundwood a year, most of which is likely to be exported in the form of construc- tion grade lumber, pulp or paper. Undoubtedly, the ecological conditions in these and many other developing countries are favourable for establishment of fast growing ?lantations and in some. land availability is not a constraint; but, a decision to establish large areas of export oriented plantations needs carefl review, on a case bv case basis, comparing the alternative of building up a relatively capital intensive export orienter. plantation induscry against the need for ensuring that people living in the rural areas have an assured supply of fuelwood, building poles, timber and fodder. During the 1970s, we have belatedly come to realise that past in- vestment priorities in forestry may sometirmes iloc acequiately have taken this point into account. Such consideration may well constrain realization of the 3 million ha target of plan- tations su-gested above. (b) Planrtatons of higher value tropicalhardwood species A more diffi-cult question to answer is what should be forest management policy with respect to plantations orf high value species and to what extenr could such plantation grown wood significantiv supply future export market dermands? This is a matter of concern to those coun- tries which currently depend, to a significant degree for economic growth, on foreign ex- change earnings derived from log or lumber exports. They include for example Indonesia, Burma, Malaysia, Peoples Republic of Congo, Liberia, the Ivory Coast and Gabon. The present state of this particular art is that while hardwood plantation trials of selecred species such as Terminalia, Cedrela, Triplochiton and have been under wav for a number of years, several unanswered questions remain, particularly relating to growth rates and yields which can be expected over (say) a 25-45 year life. How long it will take to produce average diameter logs of (say) 50 cms suitable for veneer and ply-wood production? What is the susceptibility of monocultures of large scale hardwood plantations to fungal and mycological diseases? What is the effect on soil structure and ferrilitv of plantation monocultures? What is the quality of utilizable wood produced from plantativns compared with older trees from the naturai forest? What are the stumpage fees which sawmillers, veneer and plv-wood manufac- turers will be prepared to pay for smaller sized plantation grown logs compared with prices currentlv obtained for larger diameter natural forest logs? Finally, whether investment in such a !ong term business is likely to yield acceptable rates of return compared with alter- native investment opportunities? Nevertheless, despite this formidable list of questions, the pilot plantation areas of Triplochoton in Ivory Coast, Terminalia in Peoples Republic of Congo, of Okoume in Gabon, M.faesopsis in Uganda and Teak in Burma and Java, are very promising. Initial establishment techniques have been well documented, and preliminary economic studies, bv CTFT, FAO, the World Bank and other agencies, suggest that, provided we can be reasonably certain of a continued real price' increase in better quality hardwoods (indications at this point in time are that we can), then acceptable rates of return"* can be expected from investment in such plan- tations. In short, there appears to be justification for proceeding cautiouslv with large scale plantations of this type in selected situations, incorporating a comprehensive monitoring programme wvith provision for systematic re'iew of silviculturar performance and timber utilization properties, disease problems, and the economic rates of return being achieved.

Other countries which are planning to establish a pine, eucalvpt or gmelina Dlantation based export industry include Liberia, Tanzania, Angola, Peoples Republic of Congo, Papua-.New Guinea, Nicaraa-ua and Honduras, but in many of zhese countries, the areas established so far are relatively srrail. Defined as greater than the opportunity cost of capital for the country concerned. -15- CAN THE WET TROPICAL FOREST SURVIVE?

The jackoot questmons ar- ro What cxrN'nt could such plantations supplV fiature expor: markets witn logs ana manufactured tropical hardwood products bevond the 'year 2000? and, secondl;, in the event that the technical problems of establishing such plantations could be overcome, whar wtould bte the nvestment mplications of an expanded plantinn programtn: .\ssumrint hac 'he demand for tropical hjrdwoods reaches about 30U million m' a year n'y the year 2025, an area or'somerhing in the order o0'5 million ha ot'plantations would satisfy about 25 per cent of' this demand. This implies an annual planting programme from 1990 onwards of about 150,000 ha a vear compared with the current annual rate of planting of'high value tropical hardwoods of less than 50,000 ha a year on a global basis. Whilst at f-irst sighr this seems a formidable annual target - if distributed amongst (sav) 10 to 12 principal tropical hardwood producing countries - it wouldn't represent a par- ticularlv alarming physical programme (about 15,000 ha a sear per countrv). But tde invest- ment implications would be quite high (about US$ 15 million to US$20 million per country per annum), and this raises very real questions as to the justification for such investment against the need to ensure adequate wood supplies for people in the rural areas, for protection of strategic catchrrent areas and of the scope for investment in other types of agriculture, such as perennial tree crops with a shorter term gestation period. These issues can onlv be addressed on a case bv case basis in the light of particular circumsrances prevailing in each country. Private companies already engaged in logging operations in the tropics could play a significant role in tlxis area if they could be persuaded to plough back some of their earnings into . as for example, Weyerhauser are doihg in Indonesia, I recognize that the errors inherent in the above type of 'guesstimate' can be enormous and in no wav are they intended to be used for serious planning purposes. The object of the exer- cise has been to take a preliminary look at an issue which is bound to come into sharper focus during the 1980s and that is - how to justify investment in tropical hardwood plantations which are not likely to mature until well into the next centurvy Assuming that the investment priority hurdle can be overcome, the questions are, whether during the coming decade, we will succeed in ironing the bugs out of this tropical hardwood plantation forestry and whether Forestry Services in those countries most favourablv placed for supplving long range export markets will be able to build up their capacity and institu- tional capability for implementation of larger scale planting programmes?

Conclusion I will conclude on a note which, in keeping with the spirit of these annual meetings, is intended to provoke discussion. NMv own view is that the future fate of the wet tropical forest and possible replacement of mucn of it by agriculture or plantation forestrv is somewhat analogous to Schuberr's 'Unfinished Symphonv', ending either in A-' or bFlat, whichever way you like to interpret it? If we believe in the slogan of the Sth World Forestry Congress that 'Forescry is for People', then clearly the possibility that part of the remaining tropical forest areas of the world could provide an assured home, food, fodder, fuel wood supply and sustainable income for several million poor people has to be pursued as a leiitimace development objective. But the present state of knowledge of sustainable farming systems in the wet tropics, clearly calls for a slow- ing down of the present rate of spontaneous encroachment, for a more careful plannina of settlement programmes, for excuding settlements on the poorer soils and steeper slopes of catchment areas, for more rapid development of agricultural supporr systems, and for maximum possible dependence on mixed farming systems which incorporate perennial tree crops :nclud;ng forestry. No opportunity should be lost to highlight the ecological disasters which have resulted from past colonization failures and to direct development towards alternative ecologicallv less risky and possibly lower cost solutions such as intensification of agriculture outside tkz tropical forest areas. Complete elimination of the wet tropical forest would represent a significant loss -16- COMMONW';'EALTH FORESTRY REV\IEW or genet-ic ano wiidwire resources anu ot mand species ol poteitiiai oe,:ntir to su-.ctv. L .ITort should be made, theretore. durino the coming decade, to expand che area of biotic and ;i.diiie rese:rves. Vh:lst ,here :s no ikelihood of tropical hardwXood .Xourilvs r onneor;= 'k,!bru 't .nd oit the century. he wrintng is on tne wall that bv the eni ot .he b9*lssupplies o0 elt r,nwn Species will become scarce. This should stimul,te opening up new areas as well as increased use of secondarv hardwood species. Tropical plantation Forestry will expand rapidly in the coming decade - the main emphasis will be on supplvin4 the developing countries' ow n rising demands tor tuelwood and indus- trial 'vood. But. tor a few developing countries. the scope for increasing foreign exchange earnings by exporting plantation based forest products is good. Trying to achieve a reasonable balance between these various development objectives, will require a degree of pragmatism, common sense and flexibility in decision making which will not be easy. It will also require a willingness bv foresters to work in closer association with other specialists engaged in the development process than we have sometimes done in the past. As a forum for encouraging a better dialogue on these issues, the Commonweaith Forestry Association has a signficant role to plav and I greatly appreciate having had the opportunity zo address you on ,his topic today.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ANON. (1973) Forestry Sector Policy Paper, Wr'orld Bank, Februarv !97S. GOODLAND, R. G. A. and IRWIN, H. S. (1975) Amazon jung!e to Red, Hell Desert- Reprinted bv Elseveir from Landscape Plannini Vol. 1. No. 2/3, pp. 123-254. KIRBY, J. M. (1978) Columbian Land Use Change and the Settlement of the Orient, Pacli.c Vie7ws Point 19 (1), 1-25. LANLY, J. P. and CLEMENT, J. (1979) Presenr ancd Fulture Forest and Planeation Areas in the Tropics, FAO, . McNA.AMARA, Robert (1978) Address to Annual Meeting of World Bank, [World Bank 1978. M -ERS,Norman (1978) Forestry for People NVew Scientisr, December 1978. NELSON, M. (1973) Thze develoPment of tropical la.nds: policy issues in Latin America Resources for the Future. Washington DC. NYE, P. H. and GREENLAND, D. J. (1960) Thte Soil Under Shifting Cultivation, Common- wealth Agricultural Bureau, Farnham Royal, 156 pp. PECK, T. G. (1978) Prospects for Europe's Consumption of Forest Products and its oppor- tunity for Other Regions. Commonw. For. Revo. 57 (3), 169-179. PERSSON, Reidar (1974) WXorld Forest Resources, Royal College of Forestrv, Stcokholin. PRINGLE, S. (1976) Tropical Moist Forests in World demand: Supply and Trade Unasvlva 28 (112-113), 106-118. RICHKARDS, P. W. (1967) The Future of the Tropical Rainforests in Atas do Simposio Sobre Biota Anrozonica (H. Lent, Editor) (Cons 'Nac Pesq Nro. 7) (Conservacao, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 49-56. RICHARDS, Paul (1973) The Tropical Rainforest Scientific American 229 (6), 58-68. RICHARDSON, S. D. (1970) The End of Forestry in Great Britain, Advancement of Science December 1970. (See also Commonw. For. Rev. 49 (4), 1970, 324-335. Ed.) SOMNAER, A. (1976) Attempt at an assessment of the WS'orld's tropical forests 23 (1 12-1 13), 5-25. STEW-VART, P. J. (1978) Forestry for Carbon Dioxide Fixation. Commonzv. For. Rev. 57 (4), 263-266. TAKEEuCHI, Kenji (1978) Market prospects for Tropical Hardwvood, 'World Bank, June 1978. WATTE'S, R. F. (1974) Shifting A.griculture Its Pasr, Present and Fiture, IUCIN, Morges, Switzerland.