THE world鈥檚 tropical rainforests should be handed back to their inhabitants, who protect them better than governments or rangers, and spend more on their upkeep. That is the conclusion of a major review to be presented this week to a UN meeting on the world鈥檚 tropical forests 鈥� talks in which, critics say, forest inhabitants do not get a look-in.
The study, Who Conserves the Forests?, by the Washington-based Forest Trends group contradicts the popular image of farmers and hunters as the primary destroyers of rainforests. In fact, forest dwellers are a bigger and more effective force for conservation than park authorities, and are often better forest researchers than foreign scientists, the report鈥檚 co-author Augusta Molnar says.
Most of the world鈥檚 tropical rainforests are the property of national governments. But too often that results in lawlessness and uncontrolled deforestation. By contrast, local control is a 鈥渃ost-effective, long-term solution to the problem of conservation鈥�, Molnar says. 鈥淚ndigenous residents are managing at least 370 million hectares of tropical forest. Why not strengthen their rights and turn these forests into assets they can use?鈥�
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Examples of local conservation include sacred ancient groves in West Africa. By one count, there are more than 1000 of these in Ghana alone. Besides their religious importance, villagers protect them because they help maintain local springs and increase crop yields in nearby fields, while some bring in tourists. Elsewhere, millions of farmers from Cameroon to Brazil protect forests that supply medicinal herbs, fodder crops, bush meat and firewood.
Locals spend both time and money on conservation. They spend around $2.6 billion a year, which is more than overseas aid and national governments put together. Although some conservationists argue that giving rainforest inhabitants control over their forests is a recipe for plunder, the report says that in practice, it allows them to keep out commercial logging companies, land speculators and hunting gangs.
The potential value of local science is underlined by new research by Lui Hongmao of the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in south-western China. His team have found that the Dai people in the remote valleys of south-west China can identify thousands of plant species almost as accurately as trained scientists, and do so twice as fast (Conservation Biology, vol 18, p 1139).
The competing claims of logging and conservation are governed by rules set out in the UN International Tropical Timber Agreement. Its signatories represent about 80 per cent of the world鈥檚 tropical forests and 90 per cent of the tropical timber trade. But after almost two decades in operation, only 2 per cent of rainforests are managed sustainably.
Forest Trends, whose members include the World Bank, conservation groups such as the WWF, and companies with wide tropical logging interests such as Mitsubishi, says the missing link is local control. But it points out that even a 鈥減assing reference鈥� to local communities in the old agreement has been dropped from the draft of the new agreement to be discussed by governments at this week鈥檚 meeting in Geneva.
The group says the good news is that many cash-strapped national governments are ceding control of forests to their inhabitants. Forest Trends says governments should now give up their near-monopoly on foreign aid for conservation and forest science. Locals, it says, could benefit from doing much of the research undertaken by foreign biologists. Fewer than 5 per cent of published research on native uses of Amazon plants was translated into local languages, says the report, to be published next month.