Prospects for sustainable logging in tropical forest

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There is a convincing body of evidence shows that, as it is presently codified, sustainable forest-management logging implemented at an industrial scale guarantees commercial and biological depletion of high-value timber species within three harvests in all three major tropical forest regions.

Rainforest trees

The minimum technical standards necessary for approaching ecological sustainability directly contravene the prospects for financial profitability.

Therefore, industrial-scale sustainable forest management (SFM) is likely to lead to the degradation and devaluation of primary tropical forests as surely as widespread conventional unmanaged logging does today. Recent studies also show that logging in the tropics, even using SFM techniques, releases significant carbon dioxide and that carbon stocks once stored in logged timber and slash takes decades to rebuild.

These results beg for a reevaluation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change proposals to apply a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation subsidy for the widespread implementation of SFM logging in tropical forests. However, encouraging models of the successful sustainable management of tropical forests for timber and nontimber products exist at local-community scales.

Article authors

Barbara Zimmerman

Barbara Zimmerman

Barbara is the Director Kayapo Project on behalf of the International Conservation Fund of Canada playing a key role in support of Indigenous Peoples in conservation of very large areas of forest in Brazilian Amazon.
Cyril Kormos

Cyril Kormos

Cyril is Founder and Executive Director of Wild Heritage, a project of Earth Island Institute. He also serves as IUCN-WCPA Vice-Chair for World Heritage, is a member of IUCN’s World Heritage Panel and chairs the IUCN-WCPA World Heritage Network.

Reference

Zimmerman, B. and C. Kormos. 2012. Prospects for sustainable logging in tropical forest. Bioscience 62(5): 479-487. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2012.62.5.9

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