16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/1 
I 
(Information) 
COMMISSION 
The Conservation of Tropical Forests: The role of the Community 
(89/C 264/01) 
CONTENTS 
Page 
I. INTRODUCTION 
1. Gravity of the Situation 2 
2. Need for Rapid Action 2 
3. The Wider Context 3 
II. DEFORESTATION, THE SITUATION IN PERSPECTIVE 
1. Current Situation 3 
2. Perspective: Africa, Asia, the Americas 3 
III. CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENON 
1. Deforestation for Agricultural Purposes 4 
2. Cutting/Felling for Fuelwood, Wood and Timber 5 
3. Public Development Schemes 5 
4. Natural Phenomena 5 
IV. CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEFORESTATION PHENOMENON 
1. Social and Humanitarian 6 
2. Economic/Trade 6 
3. Environmental Consequences 7 
V. THE REMEDIES 
1. Investment and Technical Assistance Priorities 8 
2. Economic Policies and National Development Planning 9 
3. Research 10 
VI. PAST AND CURRENT EFFORTS RESPONDING TO TROPICAL DEFORESTATION 
A. International Action 11 
1. The Tropical Forest Action Plan 11 
2. ITTO — The International Tropical Timber Organization 11 
3. Other International Organizations 12 
4. Other Coordinating Efforts 13 
B. Community and National Actions 13 
1. Community Actions 13 
2. National Bilateral Aid Programmes 15 
C. Non-Governmental Institutions 15 
1. Timber Trade Associations 15 
2. Environmental and Development NGOs 16 
VII. COMMUNITY STRATEGY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF TROPICAL FORESTS: 
MAIN ELEMENTS 
1. Development Aid and Cooperation 16 
2. Actions Relating to the Trade in Timber 17 
3. Development of Additional Resources 18 
4. Debt for Conservation Strategies 19 
5. Research and Development 19 
No C 264/2 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
I. INTRODUCTION accelerating the process of environmental degradation 
and making the objectives of 'sustainable development' 
still harder to attain. 
1. Gravity of the Situation 
Tropical forest destruction has increased in recent years to 
such an extent that what has long been regarded as a 
serious problem is now a world-scale crisis. The rising tide 
of public and political concern is based on several factors: 
— tropical forest destruction, especially through burning, 
is contributing to man-made carbon-dioxide emissions. 
Today, fossil fuel use injects about five billion tons of 
carbon into the atmosphere each year and deforestation 
adds at least one billion tons more (or around 20 %). As 
a result, carbon dioxide concentrations are continuing 
to increase at about 0,4 % a year, contributing — 
together with other gases such as methane and 
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — to the 'greenhouse 
effect': the trapping of the sun's heat near the earth's 
surface. The present crisis involves all types of tropical forest, from 
the 'closed' lowland rain forest typical of the Amazon and 
Congo basins and the South East Asian archipelago, to 
moist montane (hill) forest, dry savanna forest (often 
encroached by desertification), monsoon forest, and the 
largely coniferous forest of higher mountain regions, 
notably the Andes and the Hindu Kush — Himalaya. It is 
most acute, however, in lowland rain forests. These 
contain not only the great majority of indigenous forest-
dwelling people, and the greatest variety of plant and 
animal species, whose properties may be of incalculable 
value to modern industrial as well as traditional and 
developing societies, but also the most valuable timber. 
The most important causes of tropical forest destruction 
are extreme poverty and over-population. Their impact is 
accentuated by patterns of land control and ownership 
which multiply the phenomenon of landlessness and hence 
acute land hunger. Two more immediate pressures 
producing this crisis link developing countries to developed 
via demand for hardwood timber, or cheap beef. 
tropical forests play a significant role in global 
atmospheric — mechanisms in other ways. Forests of all 
kinds exchange moisture and energy with the atmos­
phere more intensively than do other types of landcover. 
Tropical forests with their dense vegetation are 
especially important and their destruction may have a 
significant impact on climate, globally or regionally. 
The process of evapo-transpiration in the Amazon 
basin, for example, and the subsequent transport of 
water-vapour via the troposphere results in the transfer 
of heat from tropical to temperate regions. 
tropical rain forests are the world's greatest reservoir of 
genetic resources. They cover seven per cent of the 
earth's surface, but they contain 50 % of its species. The 
Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon, alone contains 
700 fish species, more than four and half times as many 
as the combined rivers of Europe. But threats to 
biodiversity are growing alarmingly. The great single 
threat is the outright destruction of habitats, par­
ticularly of tropical forest, where biodiversity is 
spectacularly high. Loss of species diversity at a 
minimum estimated rate of three extinctions per day 
(and perhaps as many as 50 per day) and of genetic 
diversity within species is reducing the range of genetic 
material available for future use in medicine, agriculture 
and other vital fields. By the 1980s, approximately half of all tropical forests that 
existed at the beginning of this century had been destroyed 
and the land converted to other uses. According to the only 
formal world-wide survey of deforestation, conducted by 
FAO in 1981 (revised 1984), the rate of loss of tropical 
forest was about 11 million hectares per year (an area 
approximately three times the size of Belgium). 
This rate of tropical forest loss has been accelerating 
sharply each year in recent years. The Brazilian Space 
Research Institute, for example, has claimed that Brazil 
alone lost over 25m ha of rain forest and savanna forest in 
1988. (Instituto De Pesquises Espacias, 1989). At present 
rates of forest loss, all but a few of the remotest forest 
regions, mostly in the Amazon and Congo basins, could 
have disappeared by the early 21st century (2010-2025). 
2. The Need for Rapid Action 
at national level, the loss of the tropical forest may 
represent a gross misuse of vital natural resources, The deforestation crisis is complex and not susceptible to 
simplified solutions. Action must be taken simultaneously 
on many fronts. Hence the need for a coordinated strategy 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/3 
both on the part of the Community and the Member States, 
and, most importantly, in the wider international frame­
work. 
The Community is directly and indirectly affected by the 
tropical forest crisis. It is affected directly by the 
contribution of deforestation to the greenhouse effect, and 
by the loss of genetic material which may be critical in 
solving present and future problems, and by threats to 
timber supplies. It is affected indirectly by the potential 
collapse of development efforts locally and regionally due 
to environmental disruption, with attendant threats to food 
supplies and hence political stability. 
The cultural, political, economic, social and agro-forestry 
diversity of the states containing tropical forests requires 
that the Community and international conservation 
strategy be similarly diversified. In particular, the elabor­
ation of this strategy should take account of the policies of 
the producer countries. 
The implementation of the Community strategy for the 
conservation of tropical forests will have to be the result of 
a dialogue between the Community and the countries or 
regions concerned, and will be a function of the relations 
which the Community has with these countries in the 
economic and commercial fields as well as in the area of 
development cooperation. 
The Community strategy should by itself be able to ensure 
that the Community makes an important contribution 
towards the solution of the present problems. It should at 
the same time have an international dimension. Indeed it is 
essential that the other major 'players', for example the 
United States, EFTA and Japan and also the centrally-
planned economies, participate in concerted actions with, 
at the same time, the full cooperation of the main countries 
within whose borders the remaining tropical forests are to 
be found. 
3. The Wider Context 
The Resolution on the Greenhouse Effect and the 
Community, adopted by the Council on 8 June 1989, 
underlined the global dimension of the 'greenhouse effect' 
and the need for the Community and the Member States to 
play their full part in the definition and implementation of a 
global response to the problem. Measures to conserve 
tropical forests are of importance for the maintenance of 
global climatic stability. Even more important, as the same 
Council Resolution stressed, will be the measures intro­
duced in the advanced industrialized nations, including 
those of the European Community, to increase energy 
savings; to improve energy efficiency; to promote the 
development and use of energy sources, such as non-fossil 
fuels which will not contribute to the 'greenhouse effect' 
and to give high priority to the development and 
introduction in the Member States of innovative commer­
cially viable technologies in these fields. II. DEFORESTATION: THE SITUATION IN 
PERSPECTIVE 
1. The Current Situation 
Deforestation has historically been primarily a temperate 
zone phenomenon — a fact that must be borne in mind in 
negotiations with Governments of tropical forest countries. 
However since the 1960s the bulk of the phenomenon has 
occurred in the tropics. 
Official estimates as to the scale and scope of the 
phenomenon are few, and out of date. FAO's 1981 estimate 
(resived 1984) for the loss of tropical forest was around 
11 million hectares a year (twenty football pitches a 
minute). On the basis of current knowlegde, it is likely that 
the updated survey of tropical forest cover to be produced 
by FAO by 1991 will show a considerable acceleration in 
the rate of loss. 
Two major problems beset attempts at estimates. First, 
satellite surveillance, which is an extremely important 
means for assessment of deforestation, the most favoured 
source of data, needs on-the-ground verification if a picture 
is to emerge that is accurate enough to indicate the policy 
implications of forest loss or disturbance (e.g. in relation to 
carbon emissions). Secondly, local participation and 
governmental cooperation is required to achieve such 
verification. This is often not available at present, due 
either to the political reticence or lack of technical and 
organisational capabilities. 
Thus in 1982/1983 an area of 3,7 million hectares, or over 
one third of the annual estimated world total of forest 
losses, was destroyed by fire in East Kalimantan (In­
donesia), but the loss was not reflected in revised FAO 
estimates (1984). 
It must be stressed that the tropical deforesation problem 
differs very considerably among the major tropical forest 
regions, as, indeed between individual countries. For 
example, Africa in general differs from the other major 
tropical regions in that its tropical closed forests represent 
only about half the area covered by open savannah forest. 
The proportion of closed to open forest in South America is 
2,5 times, and in Asia (excluding Oceania and China) 
about 4 times. See Annex A. 
2. The Perspective 
Looking towards the year 2000, it was estimated in 1986 
(World Resources Report) that: 
In Africa 
Gabon will have lost over a third of its rain forest and 
Ghana, half. Madagascar's forests, on which a particularly 
No C 264/4 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
concentrated rescue effort is centred, led by WWF and 
other conservation bodies but with government aid agency 
support, will be 99 per cent gone unless present trends are 
sharply reversed. Only a few patches will remain in Sierra 
Leone and the Ivory Coast, while Nigeria is likely to have 
only vestiges left outside national parks. 
The Congo Basin contains some 12 per cent of remaining 
rain forest, mostly in Zaire. Yet in Zaire, a country which is 
not generally reckoned to have made major incursions on 
its forest due to relatively low population levels and the 
presence of tse tse fly, vast tracts of forest have been 
destroyed through small scale farmers burning for grazing 
with scarcely a log extracted. Zaire continues to have major 
plans for forest clearance. Large-scale cattle ranching is 
envisaged across this, the second largest extant region of 
tropical moist forests to supply world demand for cheap 
beef, following in the footsteps of Central and South 
America. 
In Asia 
Bangladesh, mainland India and Sri Lanka have already 
lost all primary rain forest outside parks and reserves. In 
less than a decade — perhaps three or five years at current 
rates — only a few small patches of accessible lowland 
forest will remain in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philip­
pines. Thailand has lost half its forest since 1960. In 1988 it 
banned all lowland logging under draconian penalties, 
following much loss of human life through flooding. But 
the action appears too late to prevent further ecological 
disasters. Indonesia's primary forests, at present exploi­
tation rates, will be reduced to remote and inaccessible 
regions by the turn of the century. 
In the Americas 
Central American forest cover as whole has been reduced 
from about 80 per cent in the early 1960s to under 40 per 
cent in the late 1980s. Guatemala, Colombia and Mexico 
will, by the year 2000, have lost over one third of what 
remains of their forests today; Honduras, Nicaragua and 
Ecuador more than half and Costa Rica 80 per cent. The 
situation in the Brazilian Amazon basin has already been 
referred to. The Amazonian forests of other countries 
sharing the basin are also under heavy pressure from forest 
colonization logging and mineral (especially oil) explor-
' ation. Looking ahead a quarter of a century, at present rates of 
loss, only the Amazon and Congo basins will still have 
major forest areas left. Brazil's forest, which still makes up 
over 60 per cent of the Amazon region will have 
disappeared by the year 2000 at the estimated 1988 rate of 
loss of 5,1 per cent per annum. (Instituto De Pesquises 
Espacias 1989.) 
III. CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENON 
Tropical forest is an important natural resource for the 
countries concerned, which have a right to use this resource 
in a balanced and sustainable way to support their 
economic and social developments, while maintaining for 
long term global aims a part of it untouched (forest 
reserves). Forest destruction takes place when the use of 
this resource is not achieved in a sustainable way. 
(a) The underlying causes of deforestation are rooted in a 
complex web of social, economic, and institutional 
problems both within and outside the forestry sector. 
The relative importance of these factors varies form 
one region to another. They include: 
— the combined effects of poverty, skewed land 
distribution, insecure land and tree tenure, low 
agricultural productivity, lack of access to credit 
and markets, and rising population pressure, 
— the demand for tropical timber and agricultural 
products, 
— international debt obligations, which can lead 
developing country governments to accelerate the 
pace of forest exploitation in order to earn needed 
foreign exchange. 
(b) There are four principal immediate causes of tropical 
forest destruction: 
— clearance for agricultural purposes, 
— cutting/felling for fuelwood, wood and timber 
(timber is defined separately as mature wood used 
for durable products e.g. house building, ships, 
furniture etc.), 
— public development schemes, 
— natural phenomena. 
1. Deforestation for Agricultural Purposes 
The destruction of tropical forest for agricultural purposes 
in recent years dwarfs all other causes of deforestation by 
comparison. 'Blame' cannot be attached to the agricultural 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/5 
colonists who enter the forest. They are generally the 
poorest, landless or dispossessed elements of society, 
driven to slash and burn the forest through lack of any 
alternative strategy to provide the food and fuel for their 
survival. 
Forest farmers follow trails blazed by loggers, road builders 
and site clearers. However, to an increasing extent forest 
colonisers today are equipped with chain-saws (especially 
in Central and South America) and clear forest land at their 
own initiative. When, as is generally the case due to weak 
and poor soils, their food crops dwindle after two to three 
plantings, they may sell their land for a few US $ per hectare 
to ranching land-owners who raise cattle for beef export, 
primarily to North America, but also to Western Europe. 
Because of the poverty of the soils, however, such ranching 
even if extensive, often desertifies the land in three to five 
years. The ranchers then move forward purchasing more 
cleared forest land from colonisers, leaving desert behind 
them. 
2. Cutting/Felling for Fuelwood, Wood and Timber 
According to the FAO Yearbook on forest products 1986. 
removals from tropical forest comprise 83 % for non­
commercial use (mainly fireword), 13 % for local commer­
cial use, and 4 % for commercial use as exported timber. 
Thus the export trade is not a major direct cause of forest 
destruction. (*) 
However, offsetting the apparently small importance of 
exported timber is the fact that timber extracted for export 
tends to use larger equipment to penetrate inaccessible 
forest areas to extract large individual specimens of trees. 
Such equipment is of high environmental impact. As much 
as 55 % of a hectare of standing dipterocarp forest of 
(!) In 1984 the value of imports of timber and timber products into 
Western Europe and the United States both stood at US 
$ 2,2 billion and to Japan, US $ 2,3 billion. The main 
difference between these three blocks is not so much in terms of 
total trade value but rather the form in which tropical timber is 
imported. Japan imports raw material direct form forest zones, 
particularly South-East Asia. The United States imports mainly 
semi- or completely manufactured goods from intermediary 
countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore. Europe lies 
somewhere between these two extremes. (In volume terms the 
1980 figures for the import of tropical timbers were US 
$ 10 million m3, as compared to Japan's 35 million m3 and 
Europe's 21 million m3). Borneo, (Sarawak, Sabah, Kalimantan) may be effectively 
destroyed by heavy equipment extracting three to five trees. 
Experience from Malaysia suggests that cutting the lianas 
before felling can reduce the damage up to 20 %. 
It is generally the case that the environmental impact of 
export logging is higher than that of logging for domestic 
purposes. Export logging, with its heavier equipment and 
deeper penetration in remote region, is also more prone to 
encourage forest destruction by landless colonisers. Their 
slash-and-burn agricultural practices fan out from logging 
roads and sites. 
Because the level of this damage varies from country to 
country, and forest to forest, it is impossible to offer 
meaningful percentages of responsibility in global terms for 
the direct and indirect impact of export logging. However, 
it is clearly substantially more than the 4 % of extractive 
share. 
An increasing part of the 83 % of non-industrial wood 
extraction is now entering the market as commercial 
firewood transported from the forest. Steadily increasing 
demand for such firewood is an important source of 
pressure on tropical forests. 
3. Public Development Schemes 
Another major cause of forest destruction is official 
development schemes for forest land. This is generally of 
two types: 
— road-building in deliberate attempts to open up 'land 
without people for people without land' in schemes of 
transmigration. This is often accompanied by subsidies 
to individual farmers to induce them to settle in rain 
forest lands, or tax incentives to corporations to 
encourage the clearance of forest for cattle raising for 
export. 
— major industrial projects whose purpose is to provide 
raw materials or energy supply for industrial processes 
elsewhere. The forest location of such schemes is mainly 
a consequence of the availablity of a resource — a river 
catchment for a dam, or an ore body for example. 
However, the low value placed on the existing land use 
(or non-use) in economic terms may be a major 
contributory factor. 
4. Natural Phenomena 
Increasingly in this decade, major deforestation has 
resulted from a combination of human intervention and 
No C 264/6 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
mis-management with a natural phenomenon which would 
otherwise have damaged forest areas but not destroyed 
them. For example, Hurricane Joan in October 1988 blew 
down several million cubic metres of valuable specialist 
hardwood timber in South and Central Nicaragua. The 
government was negotiating to salvage the timber from the 
hurricane-damaged forest when a part of it was destroyed 
by fires set by forest farmers. The increasing frequency of 
hurricanes and climatic/weather disturbances, which may 
accompany the phenomenon of global warming, may, over 
the coming years, produce a growing convergence of 
natural phenomena with man-made damage, resulting in 
worsening forest destruction. 
IV. CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEFORESATION 
PHENOMENON 
These may be divided into: 
— social and humanitarian 
— economic/trade 
— environmental 
1. Social and Humanitarian 
The most immediate and severe suffering caused by 
tropical deforestation is felt by the true forest dwellers, who 
have lived in and off tropical forests for many thousands of 
years, practising slash-and-burn agriculture without 
destroying the forest. (The fallow rotation of these 
practices may be as long as 60-80 years.) These indigenous 
forest dwellers who may number in total some 2,25-
2,5 million, depending on definitions, possess knowledge 
of the properties of forest species which have proved, and 
could continue to be, valuable to industrial societies. 
In many areas territorial rights of such forest people are 
challenged by their governments, and their treatment is the 
subject of international controversy. Forest peoples are not 
infrequently moved into reservations too restrictive for 
their extensive forest cultivation practices. Also the basic 
human rights of these people as well as the knowledge and 
experience which they have of living in harmony with their 
environment have sometimes been ignored. 
The indigenous forest peoples' presence is challenged also 
by colonising forest farmers who seek to emulate their 
slash-and-burn agriculture but lack knowledge of, and 
respect for, the forest habitat. The numbers of these 
colonists also render impossible any notion of long fallows 
between periods of forest cultivation. Also to be considered is the social and humanitarian 
situation of the forest colonisers themselves, who enter the 
forest people's domain. As the colonisers mis-use and 
destroy the forest they destroy the basis of their livelihood. 
While further forest remains they may hope to move on. 
However, when forest lands are cleared and become 
desertified (an estimated 40 % of cleared Brazilian forest is 
now desert) the landless become forestless as well, facing 
the prospect of worsening hunger or even mass starvation 
paralleling the plight of the former dwellers of Sahelian 
savanna lands. 
2. Economic/Trade 
The prospect of the loss the forest resource base due to 
over-exploitation and forest clearance has very serious 
long-term economic implications for both the tropical 
forest countries themselves and their trading partners, 
including the European Community, which imports 11-
12 million m3 of tropical timber annually. 
Developing countries are already, as a whole, net importers 
of timber from the temperate zone. Timber indepence will, 
at present rates of forest removal, become acute by the late 
1990s. The loss of timber value to tropical forest countries 
is likely to be increased significantly by the combination of 
bad forestry and timber processing practices and the impact 
of natural phenomena, such as droughts and hurricanes. 
The 1982/1983 Kalimantan fires, mentioned on page 3, 
were estimated to have destroyed between US $ 5-
$ 7 billion value of standing tropical timber. 
Loss of food production due to desertification also has 
major economic implications for deeply indebted coun­
tries, which are already often in food deficit. 
In retrospect we may find that if the pace of deforestation in 
the tropics is not greatly slowed or halted, the disappear­
ance of species other than trees may prove the greater 
economic loss. The estimated value of the trade (legal and 
illegal) in wildlife, mostly from tropical forest sources, is 
today US $ 5 billion in a single year, not far below that of 
tropical timber. 
Europe's industry, as well as that of developing countries, 
depends, to an extent few people realise on tropical species 
for its growth and prosperity. Apart from the critical 
'service functions' of tropical forests in supplying moisture, 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/7 
and nutrients for agriculture rain forests produce many 
commodities of importance to trade and industry. 
Spices originating from tropical forests earn, for example 
an annual $ 144 million in world trade. Wickerwork 
furniture and other Rattan products have a total traded 
value of over $ 4 billion per annum. A single oil of tropical 
forest origin — palm oil — is used in products ranging from 
ice cream to tin plate, while the range of gums and resins of 
industrial importance is immense. 
The health of Europeans is equally affected by rain forest 
products. Over one third of all drugs prescribed in the 
Community owe all or much of their potency to chemicals 
from wildlife — largely from rain forests. Today, drugs 
from curare, which tips the darts of Amerindians, play an 
essential part in sophisticated heart surgery, and are used to 
treat multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's Disease. Properties 
of the Rosy Periwinkle, discovered in the fast-disappearing 
forests of Madagascar, have assisted in the fight against 
leukemia. The Mexican Yam provides one of the active 
ingredients of the contraceptive pill, and the snakeroot 
plant from Indian forests relieves sufferers from hyperten­
sion and high blood pressure. 
However, the most important use of exotic genetic material 
is in underpinning food security. In the 1920s, when disease 
decimated the sugar cane crop in the southern United 
States, genes from wild species in Javan forests helped save 
the industry from ruin. In 1970 a wild coffee from 
Ethiopia's rapidly dwindling forests saved Latin American 
plantations from devastation and their national economies 
from disaster. 
Economic losses due to genetic destruction will never fully 
be known. Hardly any of the 28 000 species of palm from 
tropical forests have been examined by scientists. Less than 
five per cent of the plant species in the world's rain forests 
have been intensively examined for their potential, and 
only a few hundred of these forests' three million animal 
species have been investigated. Recently a wild relative of 
corn was found in a small area of Mexican forest which 
could enable commercial corn to spring up each year, and 
hence abolish the major economic costs and environmental 
disruption of ploughing and seeding, as well as offering 
resistance to several important diseases. 
The irony that these genetic resources are being destroyed 
at the dawn of an era when their potential may be 
multiplied through advances in genetic engineering needs 
no emphasis. 3. Environmental Consequences 
Tropical forest destruction has a variety of environmental 
impacts at local, regional and world levels. 
Local and Regional Levels 
At a local level, the balanced ecosystem of the rain forest 
protects soils, controls river flows, and mediates local 
climate and weather. On clearance for agriculture 
(including grazing) these sandy and lateritic soils which are 
often sandy and lateritic are liable to lose all fertility 
becoming desert in as little as two to three seasons. The 
soils of tropical rain forest lands vary from reasonable 
fertility to virtual sterility once vegetative cover has been 
removed. However infertile soils predominate. 
In contrast to temperate ecosystems with thick humus 
layers the growth and decomposition cycle in tropical 
ecosystems takes place almost entirely above the growth 
and decomposition cycle. Meanwhile, the hydrological 
cycle is maintained in balance by evapo-transpiration, 
convection and precipitation. With such ecosystems, the 
utility of soils is largely as an inert platform to support the 
complex, highly evolved vegetative structure. 
In such conditions local climate can be seen, in effect, as an 
extension of the vegetative cycle. Hence, drastic changes in 
precipitation are not only experienced after a lengthy and 
widespread deforestation, but are direct and immediate. 
As regards the surplus run-off, rivers that normally rise and 
fall in the wetter and drier seasons, in accordance with 
natural imbalances introduced by 'imported' water vapour 
arising from shifting weather and seasonal patterns, are 
liable, under deforestation, to produce damaging floods as 
the absorptive capacity of the forest is removed — a 
phenomenon particularly acute in regions of swamp forest. 
Dislodged silt not only raises river beds but often fills 
irrigation ditches, contributing to waterlogging and 
leaching of soils. 
A further environmental service important at the local level 
is, of course, the forest-based plant and animal life which 
sustains local and indigenous populations living in balance 
with the natural systems of the forest, but relying critically 
on the high level of genetic variety for their medicines as 
well as foods. 
No C 264/8 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
Similar environmental services are supplied by tropical 
forests to whole regions. Here, in particular, the 
downstream impact of deforestation is critical to ecological 
as well as economic and social stability. World publicity 
has been given to such phenomena as the 1988 Bangladesh 
floods, presumed to have been aggravated by Himalayan 
deforestation. 
Similar phenomena can be found on a less dramatic scale 
elsewhere in Southeast Asia, in East and West Africa and in 
the Americas. The impacts of flooding and siltation on 
irrigated agriculture, hydro developments schemes, trans­
port links and riverine and coastal fisheries may be 
particularly acute. 
World Levels 
Attention has recently been drawn to the contribution of 
tropical forest burning to C02 accumulations in the 
atmosphere. Approximately half of the 'greenhouse effect' 
is due to the build-up of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, 
stemming primarily from the consumption of fossil fuels. 
But the amount of C02 now being released by the burning 
and other forms of conversion of tropical forests is 
substantial. In 1980, the forest-burning release of carbon-
dioxide was estimated at between 0,5 and two billion 
tonnes (in carbon) compared with more than 5 billion 
tonnes from the consumption of fossil fuels. Contributions 
of other 'greenhouse' gases released by forest burning — 
especially methane — are at least proportionately signific­
ant. 
Tropical forests may play a significant role in global 
atmospheric mechanisms in other ways. Forests of all kinds 
exchange moisture and energy with the atmosphere more 
intensively than do other types of landsurface cover. 
Tropical forests with their dense vegetation are especially 
important. Human modification of the working of their 
ecosystems may bear significantly on climate. 
It is estimated, for example, that the Amazon basin has an 
annual precipitation of 12x10 cubic metres of water. At 
least 6,5x10 cubic metres are lost through evapotranspir-
ation. This process causes condensation and contributes to 
cloud formation in the inter-tropical zone. This evapor-
tation, which consumes a large amount of incoming solar 
energy (75 % to 85 %) reduces the average temperature of 
the intertropical zone. Water vapour, transported beyond 
the tropics via the troposphere, releases latent heat during 
precipitation (560 calories/gr.) Thus, the heat is transferred 
from tropical regions to higher latitudes influencing the temperature and, therefore, the climate of the peripheral 
temperate regions. 
V. THE REMEDIES 
Despite the grim prognosis for tropical forests, defores­
tation can be arrested and, possibly, reversed by actions 
designed to halt the process of destruction, establish the 
utilization of forest resources on a sustainable basis and by 
appropriate programmes of reforestation. Priorities for 
national action, identified in the Tropical Forest Action 
Plan prepared jointly by the World Bank, FAO, UNDP and 
the World Resources Institute and first published in 1985, 
are summarized below. The measures to be adopted will of 
course vary from region to region and country to country. 
They will need to be pursued over a long period of years 
and with unremitting vigour. The conservation needs in the 
open forest of the Savanna are not necessarily the same as 
those of the 'closed' rain forests. What follows is, however, 
a demonstration that there are real needs as well as 
practical possibilities for national conservation measures 
which can and should be supported by international 
efforts, including those of the Community and Member 
States: 
1. Investment and Technical Assistance Priorities 
(i) Forestry in land use: change land-use practices to 
stabilize and rehabilitate degraded lands, and to establish 
sustainable farming and grazing systems. Integrated 
approaches are required combining forestry, agriculture, 
soil conservation and livestock management. Agroforestry 
has a major role to play through sustaining or increasing 
agricultural production, satisfying basic needs for wood, 
fodder, and other forest products, and improving rural 
employment and income. Priority areas for investment and 
technical assistance include: integrated watershed manage­
ment and desertification control. 
(ii) Forest-based industrial development: meet domestic 
demands for industrial forest products: limit imports, and 
sustain exports, in those countries with suitable conditions 
for an expanded industrial forestry programme. Priority 
areas for investment and technical assistance include: 
protection and management of natural forests: accelerated 
industrial reforestation (avoiding the conversion of natural 
tropical forest and the displacement of forest-dwelling 
indigenous peoples); more intensive use of existing 
resources, e.g. improved logging practices to reduce 
damage and waste. 
(iii) Fuelword and energy: manage demand and increase 
supplies of fuelwood from outside tropical forest areas to 
meet the needs of rural and urban populations and 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/9 
industrial users. Priority areas for investment and technical 
assistance include: more efficient use of fuelwood, e.g. 
more efficient cooking-stoves, recovery of logging waste; 
fuelwood substitution; improved management of existing 
forest resources; on-farm tree planting; and fuelwood 
plantations. 
(iv) Conservation of tropical forest ecosystems: protect 
sufficiently large areas of tropical forests to conserve 
biological diversity and maintain environmental stability. 
Priority areas for investment and technical assistance 
include: reduction of pressures in areas adjacent to 
threatened tropical forests by intensifying agriculture on 
non-forest lands etc., as well as the establishment and 
management of protected areas. 
(v) Strengthening institutions; strengthen the insti­
tutional framework within countries to plan, develop, 
implement, monitor, and evaluate policies and program­
mes for sustainable forest land use. Priority areas for 
investment and tecnical assistance include: planning and 
administration, research, training and extension work. 
Investment needs for a five-year programme of accelerated 
action were assessed on the basis of the above priorities for 
56 countries seriously effected by deforestation, special 
account being taken of each country's likely absorptive 
capacity for new investment. The level of public and 
private investment needed to make an impact on tropical 
deforestation over a five-year period was estimated to be 
US $ 8 billion. About US $ 5,3 billion (two-thirds of the 
total) would be needed for the 56 most seriously affected 
countries reviewed. At least 30 % of the investment would 
be agriculture related. 
Half of the total US $ 8 billioft, or US $ 800 million a year 
for five years, would need to be mobilized by the 
development assistance agencies, with the remainder 
coming from national governments and the private sector. 
This would amount to a doubling of external aid to combat 
deforestation. 
The TFAP makes it clear that even resources of this 
magnitude would represent only an initial approach to the 
most urgent problems of deforestation and, if progress is to 
be made over the coming years, sums considerably in excess 
of this will need to be raised. Moreover, it is clear that 
direct efforts to combat deforestation will fail to be fully 
effective without parallel efforts in the fields discussed 
below. 2. Economic Policies and National Development Planning 
Experience has clearly shown that narrowly-focussed 
action within the forestry sector will be ineffective in 
controlling deforestation and protecting large areas of 
remaining tropical forest. Because many policies and 
practices in agriculture, energy and other sectors are a 
significant cause of forest destruction, many of the 
solutions to forest destruction must come from outside the 
forestry sector. 
Forest land use planning must be approached within the 
broader context of national development planning. 
Adverse policies within the forestry sector and in other 
sectors such as agriculture that lead to accelerated 
depletion of forest resources must be changed and policies 
to promote sustainable forest management and refores­
tation must be established. 
Major areas for policy reform include: 
(i) Land reform: 
Equity and access to land is an important policy issue 
that cannot be avoided if pressure on tropical forests 
is to be alleviated. Skewed land distribution due to 
historical and political patterns of development has 
forced rural people to migrate into ecologically 
fragile forest areas with poor soils and on to steep 
forest uplands. Strong political commitment by 
national governments to pursue policies of land 
reform would, in the short term, probably do more to 
relieve pressure on forest lands than any other single 
policy intervention. 
(ii) Correcting inappropriate policy incentives within the 
forestry sector: 
Many governments are directly or indirectly subsidiz­
ing deforestation through economic policies — such 
as investment incentives, tax and revenue systems, 
and highly favourable terms of access to public 
forests — that lower the net costs or increase the 
private profitability of commercial forestry exploi­
tation. These powerful economic incentives promote 
short-term consumption over long-term manage­
ment, leading to much higher rates of forest 
exploitation than would be the case without such 
policies. Policy reform, e.g. raising stumpage prices 
and expanding the use of competitive bidding for 
concessions, to replace inapproporiate incentives 
with measures that encourage private sector invest­
ment in sustainable forest management and refores-
No C 264/10 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
tation would help conserve forest resources, raise 
economic welfare, and reduce fiscal burdens on 
governments. 
(iii) Correcting inappropriate policy incentives outside 
the forestry sector: 
Many governments have instituted policies, such as 
subsidies, low-interest loans and tax breaks, that 
accelerate the conversion of forest lands to other uses 
and primarily benefit large landowners. For example, 
government-supported agricultural settlement 
schemes and cattle-ranching schemes have become a 
major cause of deforestation in several southeast 
Asian and Latin American countries. Major areas for 
policy reform could include: 
— eliminating public subsidies, tax breaks, low-
interest loans, and other policy incentives that are 
causing rapid conversion of tropical forests to 
unsustainable land uses, 
revising national development policies that have 
led to roads, dams, and mining projects in forest 
areas, and that have encouraged land speculation 
in tropical forest frontier lands, social impacts associated with any proposed 
development with potential major effects on 
tropical forests, and withholding funding from 
projects that do not conform to these new policy 
guidelines, 
making provision for setting aside and protecting 
critical ecosystems in situations where aid agency-
supported development projects are likely to 
encroach upon areas of unique biological import­
ance. 
(v) Integrating forest resource management into national 
development planning: 
The contribution of forests to protecting the soil and 
water base for agriculture, to meeting rural and urban 
energy demand, and to industrial development — 
and, conversely, the costs of forest depletion — are 
significantly understated in national development 
plans. To improve the integration of forest resource 
management into national development planning, 
high priority should be given to: 
undertaking country-level assessments of forest 
resources, through remote sensing and other 
techniques, 
revising government policies that subsidize live­
stock production in arid or semi-arid regions 
where stocking rates have far exceeded the 
sustainable carrying capacity of savannah rangel-
ands, developing economic methodologies to factor the 
costs of forest resource depletion into national 
income accounting, and to better quantify the 
benefits of investment in forest conservation 
measures, in order to improve national planning 
and resource allocation decisions. 
identifying mutually supportive investment and 
policy reform measures in the agriculture, energy, 
industrial, and population planning sectors that 
can contribute to relieving development press-
sures on forest lands. 
(iv) Aid agency investment: 
Aid agency funding has played a major role in large-
scale development projects that have become a 
significant cause of tropical forest destruction and 
displacement of indigenous peoples. The develop­
ment assistance community could make a major 
contribution to economic policy, land use planning 
and other policy reform by: 
— adopting and implementing strict policy guide­
lines with respect to the conservation of tropical 
forest ecosystems. This would include examining 
the full range of economic, environmental, and 3. Research 
In many developing countries, national forestry research 
institutions remain a weak appendage of the government 
forest department and have little policital support. They 
suffer from a shortage of trained personnel, poor facilities 
and inadequate funding. National governments and 
development assistance agencies need to address the 
following policy issues in order to increase the contribution 
of forestry research to forest land use problems in 
developing countries: 
raising the generally low political and financial support 
of forestry research within developing countries, 
concentrating forestry research efforts on a few priority 
research topics with high potential to address rural 
forestry needs and alleviate rural poverty, 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/11 
— ensuring more effective integration of forestry and 
agricultural research at the field level, and establishing 
stronger links with extension programmes to ensure 
systematic application of agroforestry research trials. 
VI. PAST AND CURRENT EFFORTS RESPONDING 
TO TROPICAL DEFORESTATION 
A. International Action 
So far as official recognition of the problem of tropical 
deforestation is concerned, the first significant action was 
taken in the early 1980s. 
1. The Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) 
FAO initiated the Tropical Forest Action Plan in 1985 as a 
development project programming venture conducted 
jointly with the World Bank and the UN Development 
Programme (UNDP). The non-governmental World Re­
sources Institute, based in Washington DC, was also 
involved in drawing up the Plan. 
The TFAP is not an organization but a mechanism designed 
to coordinate the efforts of a variety of entities — 
governmental, non-governmental national/international, 
private sector and local communities, cooperating together 
towards a single overall objective — the conservation and 
rational use of tropical forest resources in support of 
sustainable socio-economic development. 
The TFAP has evolved not as a rigid central plan but a 
framework within which national plans for the forestry 
and related sectors can be developed, tailor-made to the 
needs of a country which has asked for assistance under the 
TFAP. 
Once a country has requested assistance, typical steps in the 
formulation and implementation of the TFAP process are: 
— review of the forestry sector to devise or update the 
national forestry development plans, 
— preparation of a specific strategy for action, 
— adoption of legislative or institutional measures, 
— indentification, preparation and implementation of 
relevant projects. 
The TFAP operates at the international level through 
regular, informal meetings of forestry advisors representing 
various government/non-governmental organizations, 
international and national agencies involved so as to 
facilitate coordination, promote commitment and review 
progress of the TFAP process in individual countries. A Secretariat (in the Netherlands) and a Coordination Unit 
(in FAO Rome), provide overall support to the TFAP. 
As noted earlier the TFAP's original Plan of Action, 
produced in 1985, estimated that participants would need 
to raise some US $ 8 billion in public and private 
investment over five years, 1987-1991. Of this, US $ 5,3 bil­
lion would be needed for the 56 most seriously affected 
countries reviewed in the study. At least a third of the 
proposed investment is concerned with fuelwood and agro 
forestry, with industrial use and land projects accounting 
for 25 % and 17 %. Investment costs by region are Asia 
50% (12 countries), Latin America 30% (16 countries) 
and Africa 20 % (28 countries). See Annex B. The TFAP 
Secretariat has had limited success in meeting its US 
$ 8 billion target: less than half of the required resources 
were committed by 1989. 
2. ITTO — The International Tropical Timber Organiza­
tion 
The impetus behind ITTO was a developed country — 
mainly Japanese — concern at the threat posed by 
deforestation to their sources of tropical timber supply. 
ITTO was created in the context of UNCTAD initially as a 
commodity agreement. However, the environmental 
importance of tropical forests features significantly in 
ITTO's terms of reference (the International Tropical 
Timber Agreement). This puts among ITTO's objectives, 
'sustainable utilisation and conservation of tropical forests 
and their resources, and maintaining the ecological balance 
in the regions concerned.' 
The purpose of the Agreement is to provide and effective 
framework for cooperation and consultation between 
tropical timber producing and consuming members and to 
expand international trade in this product through 
structural market improvements. 
The aims of the Agreement are: to promote and support 
research and development with a view to improving forest 
management and wood utilization, taking into account 
local conditions; forest management; to encourage 
producing members to ensure the greatest possible value 
added by processing the products; to improve marketing 
and distribution of producing members' exports. It also 
provides for the encouragement of national policies aimed 
at sustainable utilization and conservation of tropical 
forests and their genetic resources, and at maintaining the 
ecological balance in the regions concerned. As will be 
clear, the Agreement does not contain any economic 
provisions as such. 
The ITTA provides for commercial instruments but also 
for the pursuit of wider objectives (e.g. collection of data on 
No C 264/12 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
products but also tropical forest management and 
utilization and environmental policy. 
For the first time there is an international framework where 
timber trade problems can be discussed in close connection 
with forest conservation issues, without neglecting the 
prospects for economic development that tropical timber 
offers the developing countries. 
Despite ITTO's Japanese backing it has remained in its 
three years of existance a fragile institution. Its annual 
operating budget in 1988 was approximately equivalent to 
ECU 2 million, a similar amount being pledged to its 
projects. Total project funds so far have amounted to 
approximately the equivalent of ECU 5 million. 
ITTO's funding picture has reflected the uncertainty of 
most governments as to its potential effectiveness. Almost 
all of its 42 producer member governments are in arrears on 
their mandatory contribution [as is the United State, due to 
its special budgetary constraints (under the Gram-Rudman 
Act)] — a factor which may affect the low level of support 
on the part of consumer members. Few among its consumer 
membership have come forward with any funding for its 
projects (exceptions are Switzerland, the Netherlands, the 
Federal Republic of Germany, the Nordic countries and 
Japan, but non-Japanese contributions so far have only 
amounted to $ 2,0 million). The Community itself is a 
member of ITTO. 
3. Other Intergovernmental Organizations 
(a) The World Bank and the IMF 
The World Bank's sectoral lending profile showed no 
significant priority for projects calculated to alleviate 
pressures on standing tropical forest until its involvement 
in the Tropical Forest Action Programme (TFAP) in 1984/ 
1985. Prior to this, while there had been no significant 
lending for the commercial development of tropical 
forestry as such, loans for projects involving the clearance 
of closed primary forest, notably to Brazil for develop­
ments associated with Electronorte on the Tocantins River 
in Amazonia, and the Carajas mining development, and to 
Indonesia for primary forest clearance in East and South 
Kalimantan, associated with the Transmigrasi Programme, 
were not uncommon and were renewed or replicated up to, 
and including, 1988. 
However, a major reorganization of its management 
structure took place in the World Bank in 1987/1988 which 
is likely to effect lending for all projects involving tropical 
deforestation, a point reinforced by the joint World Bank/ 
IMF Berlin Declaration (Berlin 1988) on the importance of 
the environmental considerations in development work 
made at the Bank/Fund annual meeting of 1987. The Bank announced that it expected forestry expenditure to rise 
from US $ 138 million (1986) to US $ 500 million by 1989. 
The policy leverage available to the International Mo­
netary Fund surpasses that of the project-oriented 
development banks in scale and scope. However, the IMF 
addresses itself to overall national budgetary financial and 
monetary conditions, and has not sought fit — at least 
overtly — to stipulate conditions regarding the use and 
management of one or other natural resource when 
assessing its financial and monetary policies vis-a-vis 
member countries. 
At present the IMF's Board is 'sensitised' to environmental 
issues due in part to manifestations such as the Berlin 
Declaration. However the absence of a direct link between 
IMF lending (its technical, budgetary and financial 
condition-setting) and the 'site-specific' impact of project 
lending has so far been seen as a political obstacle to more 
overt financial involvement. 
It is likely and desirable as well that increasingly in the 
future the environmental implications of structural 
adjustment packages receive increased attention. Structural 
adjustment measures should in fact take account of 
environmental effects; they may well be environmentally 
beneficiary and improve the situation in the countries 
concerned. Many developing countries may in fact not be 
gaining anything at national economic level from the 
exploitation of their tropical forests — because of tax 
concessions and subsidies and short-term agreements 
which contain no sort of incentive to the timber exploiter to 
re-plant. Other policy considerations important at the 
national level, which are relevant to tropical forests and 
which could be taken into account in structural adjustment 
measures are described in V.2. 
(b) The Regional Development Banks 
The Inter-American, Asian, African and Caribbean 
development banks all have explicit environmental 
procedures and allocation of responsibilities for Environ­
mental Impact Assessient (EIA). Each has a specific focal 
point for overall environmental responsibility. The pattern 
of their lending has shown a modest increase in the forestry 
sector and almost all of their lending in this sector has been 
within TFAP priority areas. There has, however, been 
virtually no environmentally-oriented lending by these 
banks to projects for sustainable yield management of the 
natural forest, nor any marked awareness that environ­
mental aspects in other than environmentally-oriented 
projects (e.g. agricultural projects) are often more 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/13 
important for the environmental situation than specific 
environmental projects. 
(c) UN Development Programme (UNDP) 
The UNDP is heavily involved in promoting the TFAP. Its 
pre-investment activities (largely centred on resource 
surveying, training and institution-building) are vital to 
improved development performance in tropical forest 
management. UNDP's range of pre-investment funding has 
in the past been economically focussed. However, an 
increasing number of its projects address environmental 
aspects of development. 
(d) UN Environment Programme (UNEP) 
UNEP has tended to concentrate on sponsoring research 
and discussion of environmental consequences of defores­
tation (C02, loss of species diversity, etc.) rather than upon 
measures to improve tropical forest management. Its role 
has always been a coordinating and catalytic organization 
acting as an environmental watchdog to ensure that 
members of the UN family take full account of environ­
mental aspects in their own work programmes. Its work 
has been severely inhibited by budgetary constraints. 
However the International Framework Treaty on Bio­
logical Diversity which is now being prepared may be of 
significance, particularly as far as the conservation of 
genetic resources is concerned. 
(e) United Nations on Trade and Development 
(UNCTAD) 
UNCTAD has no direct involvement with the tropical 
forest issue. However the Common Fund Agreement, 
which enters into force on 19 June 1989, may open up an 
opportunity for supplementary funding: under the 
Common Fund's Second (voluntary) Account, govern­
ments (for example Member States) may contribute 
funding for research and development activities of 
international commodity bodies. Funding from the Second 
Account will depend on designation of 'international 
commodity bodies' according to criterion established in the 
Common Fund Agreement. ITTO could well be a 
candidate along with numerous other institutions. 
(f) Convention on Amazonian Cooperation 
The Convention on Amazonian Cooperation was signed in 
Brasilia in 1978, and entered into force in 1980. Contract­
ing parties are : Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, 
Guyana, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela. Most recently 
(May 1989) the Heads of State/Government of the 
Contracting Parties signed the Amazon Declaration, reaffirming the sovereign rights of each Amazon country 
freely to manage its natural resources, but at the same time 
expressing willingness to cooperate with other countries 
and international organizations on the implementation of 
national and regional projects and programmes in the 
Amazon region. 
4. Other Coordinating Efforts 
(a) Bellagio 
A recent development has been the quasi-institutionalis-
ation of the 'Bellagio' meetings held since 1987. The 
Bellagio meetings (in 1988 they focussed on tropical forest 
research) have been used for a wider presentation and 
airing of understandings reached by the TFAP. The 
informality serves a useful purpose in enabling senior 
officials to meet with politicians and opinion leaders not 
normally within the specialist circle of those concerned 
with tropical forestry. 
(b) Committee of Development Financing Institutions on 
the Environment (C1DIE) 
Donor policies and practices on environmental protection 
have been coordinated by the Committee of Development 
Financing Institutions on the Environment (CIDIE), of 
which the Community, through the Commission is a 
member. CIDIE has focussed in the past on the forestry 
issue (1981/1982). However, the impact of CIDIE on the 
policies of its member organizations has been marginal at 
best in the field of tropical forestry is achieved by an 
exchange of information and experience. 
B. Community and National Actions 
1. Community Actions 
Forestry Development Activities in Developing Countries 
In the mid-1980s, EC financial assistance to forestry 
projects in developing countries totalled approximately 
ECU 20 million a year and was made available either 
through specific budget lines, e.g. 946, or within the 
framework of the Lome Convention. EC support was 
directed towards about 40 major projects or components 
of projects and other smaller activities. 
In terms of distribution, 54 % was committed to Africa, 
35 % to Asia and the Pacific and 11 % to Latin America 
and the Caribbean. 
Since 1986, Community aid to tropical forestry has 
increased steadily. Divided according to the five TFAP 
sectors, the percentage of EC assistance is as follows: 
1. Forestry in land use (including agroforestry) 59 % 
2. Forest-based industrial development 21 % 
No C 264/14 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
3. Fuelwood/wood energy 11 % 
4. Conservation of tropical forest ecosystems 0,5 % 
5. Institutional strengthening (research) 8,5 % 
Starting with the Third Lome Convention, the Commission 
and its ACP partners have chosen to concentrate aid on 
rural development and conservation of natural resources. 
60-80 % of the total national programmable resources and 
half of regional resources is spent in the rural sector. Much 
of the Commission's assistance in the forestry subsector 
takes the form of forestry components within integrated 
rural development programmes or projects. 
The trend of gradually increasing the Commission's 
assistance to forestry, already outlined in the Commission's 
Communication of January 1986 on the Conservation of 
Natural Resources and countering desertification in Africa, 
is likely to continue. Negotiation of the new ACP-CEE 
Convention has led to agreement that much greater 
emphasis should be placed in the new Convention on 
environmental protection and the conservation of natural 
resources. 
It is expected that the importance of forests will be further 
emphasised in the Commision's future development 
cooperation programmes, and that reafforestation and 
conservation of remaining forest resources will remain the 
important elements in controlling desertification and 
within rural development as a whole. 
ACP (Stabex) 
The financial transfers under the Stabex account of the 
Lome agreement have inlcuded tropical timber. Stabex 
support since 1975 has been about ECU 140 million 
(Lome I: 40, Lome II: 0,35, Lome IV: ECU 100 million). 
The major benefitting country is Ivory Coast, followed by 
Congo, Gabon, Ghana and Cameroun and smaller 
amounts for Central African Republic, Guinea Bisau, 
Solomon Islands, Belize and Western Samoa. The amounts 
are partly used for reafforestation and further for other 
activities, including diversification. 
Stabex-source funding in this sector has, however, been 
recently significant (ECU 50 million for 1985/1986) when 
compared with current range of forestry projects financed 
by the FED. 
Tropical Forestry Research 
Science and Technology for Development Programme. 
Since 1983 tropical forestry research projects have been and 
are being carried out jointly by laboratories from 
developing countries and the European Community within 
the framework of the Programme 'Science and Technology for Development' (STD). All aspects of forestry research 
are being covered by this Programme, namely resource 
evaluation, socio-economy, soil and water conservation, 
environment protection, surveys and genetic improvement, 
management of forest ecosystems, agroforestry and 
technological use of tropical forestry products. Under the 
first STD Programme (1983-1986), nine projects have been 
co-funded (50 % cost sharing) by the Community with 
ECU 1,3 million (budget line 7394). Under the second 
Programme (1987-1991), 11 projects are currently being 
implemented and co-funded with ECU 3,3 million. The 
total costs of these projects amount to at least twice these 
amounts. 
International Scientific and Technical Cooperation. 
Within the framework of the agreements with Asian and 
Latin American countries the European Community 
cooperates in a wide range of scientific fields, in particular 
the environment. It has been agreed with the scientific 
authorities of the countries of the Amazon Treaty at the 
meeting of the joint sub-commissions for Science and 
Technology held on 15 and 18 March (Brazil) and 17 April 
(Andean Pact) to support research actions for the 
conservation of the Amazon forest. These activities will 
become, on the request of those countries, a special 
regional programme coordinating the activities to be 
undertaken on a sectoral and national level. 
The above two programmes, 'Science and Technology for 
Development' and 'International Scientific and Tech­
nological Cooperation' follow the same philosophy: to 
provide a true partnership between researches from Europe 
and from developing countries through joint research, to 
strengthen the European tropical research potential and to 
increase the local research capacities of developing 
countries. This means to strengthen the scientific basis 
which will lead to increasing awareness of the scientific 
dimension of development at the level of decision makers. 
Both programmes aim at supporting national research 
institutes of developing countries to enable them to 
contribute to the advances of science when solving 
scientific problems of their countries. Scientists from 
developing countries have to play a key role in the 
conservation and sustainable management of forests of 
their countries. 
The R&D Programme of the Joint Research Centre 
included applications of earth observations by satellite-
borne sensors. These remote sensing techniques are a useful 
tool for research into deforestation and, therefore, they can 
be utilized for the control of the tropical forestry situation. 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/15 
Other Community Activities Affecting the Tropical Forest 
Resource 
Apart from the activities within the framework of the Lome 
Convention, other Community resources have been 
involved in funding activities in tropical forest lands. 
The Commission has policy-oriented responsibilities in 
French Guyana, a territory which falls under Objective I of 
the Structural Funds. It should also be noted that the 
Commission's recent Communication for a Community 
Strategy and Action Programme for the Forestry Sector 
[COM (88) 255 final] while relating primarily to actions to 
be taken within the European territories of the Com­
munity, refers to technical and financial support of the 
Community for forestry projects in developing countries, 
which should be integrated into development programmes 
in a manner consistent with the principles and aims of the 
Community action programme for the conservation and 
rational utilization of natural resources. 
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has made several 
loans for hydropower projects which have potential or 
actual impacts on tropical forests. 
The SILVA Conference, organized in 1985 at the initiative 
of President Mitterrand, brought together a wide-range of 
interests and actors, concerned with the future of forests 
and forestry not only in Europe but also in the third world. 
2. National Bilateral Aid Programmes 
There is substantial tropical forest management expertise 
deployed through Member States' bilateral aid program­
mes, and resources to this sector have recently been 
substantially increased. In total the volume of bilateral and 
multilateral development aid directed to forestry (including 
through the Community) amorestry (including through the 
Community) amounted to US $ 908,1 million in 1986. Of 
this total, $ 434,5 million was bilateral funding ap­
proximately two-thirds of which came from EC Member 
States, $ 300,0 million was multilateral (though develop­
ment banks and the Community) and $ 173,6 million 
channelled through UN Organizations (FAO 1988). 
An FAO analysis of bilateral and multilateral cooperation 
in forestry shows a high degree of congruence of 
philosophy as regards tropical forestry development. Key 
features of this thinking are: use of forestry and agro-
forestry to improve the living conditions of the rural poor 
through integrating forestry measures into general agricul­
tural programmes for rural development; involvement of 
local people especially in tree planting schemes; stress on 
the sustainability of use of existing and new forests; 
emphasis on institutional strengthening through training extension demonstration and research; development of 
mechanisms for better use of forests and of plantation 
schemes to meet needs for food fuelwood construction 
wood, together with measures for erosion and desertifi­
cation control. 
Perhaps the largest single source of grant and soft-loan 
funding for environmentally-oriented development ac­
tivities in tropical forest areas is US AID. A considerable 
volume of funding from this source is food aid arising from 
loan repayments 'recycled' in food-for-work programmes 
focussed on tree-planting. 
Japan is the world's biggest user of tropical timber. Until 
recently Japanese aid to the forestry sector in developing 
countries aimed essentially to promote forest industry in 
recipient countries. Currently there are 13 Japanese aid 
projects in forestry in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Most 
are for reforesting barren or degraded areas for future use 
in commercial logging. Some have been criticised for 
clearance of primary hill forest and its subsequent 
replanting. Development projects of the Nordic countries 
in the forestry sector tend to be technical and capital 
assistance programmes for timber exploitation, drawing on 
Scandinavian timber technology, and expertise. 
C. Non-Governmental Institutions 
1. Timber Trade Associations 
Commercial Timber Trade Associations may be divided 
into two types: those concerned directly and specifically 
with promoting trade; and those concerned with research 
and timber use development. All are actively concerned 
with promoting the import and use of tropical hardwood: 
all are equally concerned today at the threats posed to this 
trade: (a) by consumer resistance on environmental 
grounds; (b) by future threats to the resource base. Hence 
the Anglo-Dutch initiative of the Timber Trade Federation 
(TTF) UK and Nederlandse Houtbond proposing a levy or 
surcharge on tropical hardwood timber entering the 
Community, with the funds raised to be channelled to 
improve forest management and reforestation. 
The Community-wide timber federation — Union Com-
merciale de Bois Tropicaux (UCBT) — has the respons­
ibility for coordinating and negotiating this initiative 
among trade associations or Member States, and negotiat­
ing the levy's application with the Commission of the 
Community. UCBT and member Associations are cur-
No C 264/16 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
rently discussing parallel action with the Japanese 
Importers Federation and the International Hardwoods 
Products Association (IHPA) which represents US tropical 
hardwood importers. 
A substantial body of timber use and technology expertise 
relevant to aspects of tropical forest conservation resides in 
various national timber research organisations, such as the 
UK's TRADA (Timber Research and Development 
Association). The national research and market develop­
ment bodies of the Community are associated together in 
the Association Technique Internationale de Bois Tropi-
caux (ATIBT). 
2. Environmental and Development NGOs 
In recent years environmental and development NGOs 
have played a prominent role in alerting public and official 
attention to the tropical forest crisis. Their part in helping 
to bring ITTO into being and ensuring its environmental 
dimension is generally acknowledged as important, as is 
their activity in helping to shape the TFAP. 
From being largely promotional and media-oriented, a 
number of environmental NGOs have more recently joined 
the major development NGOs in undertaking project work 
in tropical forest countries. In some cases, notably that of 
WWF, they have joined with governments and NGOs in 
ITTO producer countries in operating pioneering projects 
seeking to demonstrate how economic value and local 
benefit may be extracted from tropical forest without 
involving its destruction or degradation. At least one 
experimental project along these lines has received 
Community support. 
Such NGOs will continue to be close observers and 
participants in the work of tropical forest conservation and 
sustainable utilization. Their capacity has not yet been fully 
tried as participants alongside governments and inter­
national agencies in this field. 
The principle limitation on further use of such NGOs by 
the Community in cooperative efforts is likely to be their 
acceptability in the eyes of timber producer country 
governments, some of which have taken exception to 
representations of such NGOs for example on behalf of 
indigenous forest dwellers. 
VII. COMMUNITY STRATEGY FOR THE 
CONSERVATION OF TROPICAL FORESTS: 
MAIN ELEMENTS 
It is clear from the foregoing that the causes of tropical 
deforestation are many and complex. Yet there are 
measures which can be implemented at national level by 
those countries which still possess tropical forests which 
" could have the effect of mitigating and even reversing present trends. The remedies, of course, are often as 
complex as the causes. They touch on the forestry sector 
directly, and the associated sectors of agroforestry and 
agro-industry. But they also involve the wider spectrum of 
development planning and policies, going to the heart of 
economic and social policy. 
The preceding section of this paper outlined past and 
present international efforts to help tropical forests 
countries come to terms with the present crisis. Within that 
wider international effort, the Community has a special 
role to play. The Community is bound by historical and 
political ties to parts of the world — especially Latin 
America and Africa — where the tropical forest resource is 
still of immense importance. The Community continues to 
pursue major objectives in the field of development aid, 
whether through the Lome partnership, or through specific 
cooperation agreements with the nations of Latin America 
and Asia. The Community is, moreover, affected — as we 
all are — by the global threats to the environment which 
may result from the continued destruction of the tropical 
forest, in particular through the contribution forest-
burning may make to the greenhouse effect and global 
climate change; the Community is also affected, as is 
mankind as a whole, by the other consequences of 
deforestation, for example the loss of genetic diversity. 
The rest of this section sets out the main elements of a 
Community strategy for the conservation of tropical 
forests, taking into account the outline already presented of 
causes, consequences, remedies and past and current efforts 
to respond to tropical deforestation. 
Once again, it must be stressed that Community action 
should be placed clearly within the context of wider 
international action to meet the challenge of this overarch­
ing crisis. 
The five areas for possible action are as follows: 
1. Development Aid and Cooperation. 
2. Actions relating to the trade in timber. 
3. Development of additional resources. 
4. Debt and environment. 
5. Research. 
1. Development Aid and Cooperation 
Actions aimed at the conservation of tropical forests are the 
responsibility first of all of the states concerned. Many 
different pressures determine the policy of these states: the 
need for funds, the need for rural land, social pressures — 
these are a partial explanation for the complexity of the 
problem and of the difficulty in finding simple standardized 
solutions. Certain measures to stop felling taken by 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264717 
governments (Thailand, Indonesia) may encourage the 
emergence of new exporters, whence the necessity for 
dialogue and concerted actions between the European 
Community, the states concerned and the international 
institutions. 
In general terms, Community aid and development 
cooperation programmes should either directly or in­
directly promote activities that avoid deforestation and at 
the same time should provide alternative solutions, such as 
the promotion of sustainable techniques, introduction of 
agroforestry techniques, creation of plantations, etc. (see 
Section V). 
In particular, the Community and the Member States 
should strongly support tropical forest countries who are 
attempting to carry out forestry-programmes within the 
framework of the Tropical Forest Action Programme. As 
noted earlier, the Tropical Forest Action Plan identified 
US $ 8 billion of worthwhile tropical forest-related 
investment over a five-year period. Only a fraction of the 
necessary support has currently been committed. This 
Community support should take the form of active 
participation in the forestry policy sector reviews and 
funding projects identified by the reviews. 
Much could be done in the context of the ACP-EEC 
Convention to assist ACP countries, to conserve their 
forests and to develop appropriate techniques, legislation, 
institutions and management systems to enable them to 
exploit the full range of forest products and services in a 
rational and sustainable manner. 
The cooperation agreements between the Community and 
the countries of Latin America and Asia, both bilateral and 
regional (Andean Pact, Central America, ASEAN, 
SAARC), without excluding other possible vehicles, 
constitute a sound institutional basis for the development 
of a significant cooperation in the field of the environment, 
for example the conservation or restoration of tropical 
forests. However, they do not provide for specific means in 
this respect. 
The principal instrument of intervention remains the 
financial and technical aids in favour of developing 
countries of Latin America and Asia (ECU 283 million in 
1989), concentrated on rural development and the 'poor' 
countries, a fact which excludes for the time being the large 
'tropical forest' countries such as Brazil. It is necessary 
therefore to examine the possibility of introducing the 
environment-tropical forest priority in support of the 
developing countries in the cooperation agreements and in 
the other existing instruments, notably the financial and 
technical aids. Furthermore, the possibility should be examined of 
strengthening budget line 946 (Ecology in developing 
countries), which amounted to ECU 6 million in 1989 and 
was destined to help the identification of projects and 
programmes to be financed via the classical tools of 
cooperation (the EDF for the ACP countries, the financial 
and technical aids for the LDCs, ALA for Latin America 
and Asia); a significant percentage of this amount could be 
reserved a priori for the tropical forests. 
More generally, both in this context as well as in the Lome 
context, forest conservation policy should be seen in close 
liaison with other economic policies such as agriculture, 
energy and industry, and with social policies relating to the 
distribution of land, the reform of social structures, the 
encouragement of Community participation, etc. The 
Community should establish improved guidelines for the 
financing of projects having an impact on tropical forests 
(roads, dams, agriculture, etc.) 
However, without major new resources or reallocation of 
current resources (see section 3 below) it would be hard for 
the Community to increase substantially its support of 
national tropical forest programmes. 
Going beyond the framework of the Community insti­
tutions, there is a strong case for far greater coordination of 
Member States' positions in bodies such as the World Bank 
and the regional development banks as far as the issue of 
tropical forests is concerned. In the past, Member States of 
the Community have not always exerted the necessary 
pressure to support programmes and projects aimed at the 
conservation of tropical forests and to avoid financing 
programmes and projects likely to have a deleterious 
impact on such forests. 
2. Actions Relating to the Trade in Timber 
(a) ITTO 
The Community should support ITTO, particularly 
through a more active coordination at Community level as 
far as the conservation aspects of ITTO's work is 
concerned. 
The Community was strongly in support of the establish­
ment of ITTO and has since played a highly active role in 
the early years of ITTO's activities, The special character 
of the agreement is illustrated by the categories established 
for technical committee work namely: 
— statistics on forestry economics and market inform­
ation, 
— reforestation and forest management, 
— forest industries. 
No C 264/18 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
The Community has throughout stressed the need for the 
ITTO Secretariat to develop a realistic work programme. 
Aspects which have received particular attention include 
the need to establish criteria which would facilitate 
decisions on priority areas for ITTO, as well as a practical 
methodology for the evaluation of projects. ITTO is of 
course handicapped at this stage by a relative lack of 
financing for a substantial number of projects. 
In any event the Commission has strongly taken the view 
that rather than try to become yet another funding 
organisation (for which it does not have the resources) 
ITTO should put a great deal of emphasis on developing 
what is broadly termed the 'normative approach'. This 
implies the establishment of a set of standards. This is a 
task that is being undertaken by no other international 
organisation. It basically involves generating advice and 
guidance on sustainable tropical forest management, in a 
concerted attempt to ensure sustainable development and 
conservation of those forests. A number of areas are of 
particular interest such as the preparation of model 
contracts and model laws for tropical forest exploitation, 
advice on royalities, handling of concessions, replanting 
conditions etc., and the definition of a standardised 
approach to the granting of licenses, based on well defined 
criteria. 
(b) Codes of Conduct 
In the Community's Fourth Environmental Action Pro­
gramme, adopted by the Council on 19 Ocotber, 1987, it is 
indicated that there should be a 're-examination of the 
trade and aid policies of both the Community and the 
Member States from the standpoint of their impact on 
tropical forest conservation and the promotion of a 
voluntary code of conduct among timber companies based 
in the Community to ensure that imports of tropical 
hardwoods only come from concessions that include 
ecologically positive management policies (including in 
particular the acceptance of appropriate obligations to 
renew and replant and to restore damaged lands and 
landscapes)'. 
Such a Code of Conduct might in the first case be 
elaborated by the ITTO on the instigation of the 
Community. But consideration should be given to the 
adoption of the Code by firms based in the Community, 
possibly through the means of an appropriate Community 
instrument. 
(c) Extension of Protected Species in the Framework of 
CITES 
The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered 
Species (CITES) should be examined to see if protection 
given especially to endangered species of tropical forest 
trees is adequate. Here preliminary enquiry appears to 
indicate that the CITES listing of such species needs 
urgently to be updated. It is suggested that the forestry department of FAO be consulted regarding a revised list of 
rare and endangered species. The Community has in the 
past funded a study of the need for a monitoring facility on 
this matter. Its findings should be followed up. Appropriate 
modifications could be made to the Community's own 
Regulation implementing CITES. 
3. Development of Additional Resources 
Existing resources available for programmes aimed at the 
conservation of tropical forests fall far short of what is 
needed and can usefully be spent (for example in 
accordance with the priorities of the Tropical Forest Action 
Plan). Bearing in mind the special role played by tropical 
forests in the maintenance of global climatic stability and 
genetic diversity, there is a need to mobilize greater 
international resources for development assistance pro­
grammes in general and for tropical forest conservation in 
particular. This should be done both at EEC level and at the 
wider international level. 
At the EEC level, possibilities for all allocating additional 
resources to tropical forest programmes include: 
— as discussed under (1) above, devoting more resources 
to tropical forests within existing budgetary envelopes, 
e.g. Lome or the cooperation agreements with Asian an 
Latin American countries, 
— developing new mechanisms which could permit 
increased support to worthwhile projects, whether in 
Asia, Africa or Latin America, which have been 
indentified through the TFAP process. This could also 
permit the financing of actions aimed at rational 
exploitation or at actions which provide the popu­
lations concerned with alternative means of production 
and which therefore avoid the necessity for them to 
exploit irreplaceable resources in an indiscriminate 
way. 
It is clear that at the present time, the Community's 
budgetary possiblities will necessarily place limits on the 
type of actions mentioned above. However, in this 
connection, all new possible sources of finance should be 
examined, both within and outside the context of the 
Community budget, including those related to the better 
application of the 'polluter pays' principle. 
At the international level, the Community should stress the 
need for similar commitments by our major industrial 
partners as called for in the conclusions of the Summit of 
the Main Industrialized Nations which took place in Paris 
in July 1989. The Community should moreover, also stress 
the need to link international efforts for the conservation of 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/19 
tropical forests with other issues of global concern, notably 
the effects of global warming and the depletion of the ozone 
layer. It seems clear that if these vital resources are to be 
preserved, as they must be, developed countries will have to 
contribute in many ways. 
4. Debt for Conservation Strategies 
Action taken to reduce the debt burden carried by 
developing countries will, other things being equal, free 
resources for development and investment, including of 
course projects for 'sustainable development' or environ­
mental protection, such as rain forest conservation. 
On the other hand, continued economic pressures, 
including the debt burden, invariably lead to continued 
environmental pressures. It is no coincidence that the major 
debtor nations are, in many cases, also the nations where 
the tropical forests, once extensive, are now being rapidly 
depleted or degraded. 
The Community itself is not a major creditor except 
through the European Investment Bank). However, several 
Member States are major creditors and it may be useful 
therefore to have a coordinated perspective on the 'debt-
development-environment' question. 
More generally, given the intrinsic links between environ­
ment and development, there seems a priori to be no reason 
why international financial institutions such as the IMF 
and the World Bank (and the Community Member States 
who are represented on the Governing Bodies of those 
institutions) should not be concerned by countries' 
environmental as well as economic performance. 
Recent developments in debt reduction strategies could 
create opportunities to further conservation objectives on a 
much larger scale than the much more limited debt for 
nature swaps concluded so far. The Community should 
support the exploration of these possibilities. 5. Research and Development 
The Second Bellagio Meeting on Tropical Forestry 
(30 November and 1 December, 1988) emphasized the 
need for a major effort to be devoted to forestry research in 
developing countries. Institutions need strengthening. 
Existing technologies and research knowledge needs to be 
disseminated to practitioners. International organizations 
or groupings such as the CGIAR (Consultative Group on 
International Agricultural Research) needed to be strength­
ened. The Community's contribution to national and 
international tropical forestry research efforts should be an 
integral part of the overall Community strategy for the 
conservation of tropical forests. Tropical forest research 
should be eligible for support from, inter alia, the 
Community Tropical Forest Fund mentioned above. 
As an immediate measure the Community should increase 
the funds devoted to tropical forestry research. The efforts 
to build up a European tropical forestry research network 
should be strengthened in pursuance of the decentralisation 
policy. The mandate of such a network should be to 
constantly monitor tropical forestry research and develop­
ing activities carried out by institutions in Europe and the 
Third World to coordinate those activities, to serve as a 
forum for tropical forestry research and development and 
to assist the Commission in this field. 
The follow-up Programme of STD under the forthcoming 
Framework Programme of Community research should 
provide substantially more funds devoted to tropical 
forestry research according to a more problem/solution 
oriented approach allowing for the build up of 'critical 
masses' on a regional basis by strengthening in particular 
national forestry research institutes. 
Research activities under the bilateral cooperation agree­
ments (International Scientific and Technological Cooper­
ation, budget line 7394) should be intensified to achieve a 
significant impact for the conservation and sustainable use 
of tropical forests. 
No C 264/20 Official Journal of the European Communities 16. 10. 89 
ANNEX A 
I. FORESTS COVER SOME 40 PER CENT OF THE WORLD'S LAND AREA 
Area 
Temperate 
Tropical 
TOTAL Total 
(M ha) 
1 733 
2 338 
4 071 Broadleaved 
closed forest 
371 
1 160 
1 531 Coniferous 
closed forest 
1 075 
34 
1 109 Fallows/ 
open forest 
287 
1 144 
1 431 
Source: FAO. To these figures some 624 million hectares of scrub area should be added in tropical regions. 
II. BROADLEAVED CLOSED FORESTS REPRESENT 50 PER CENT OF TOTAL TROPICAL FORESTS 
AND 28,5 PER CENT OF TOTAL WORLD FORESTS * 
Area 
(M ha) 
Latin America 
Africa 
Asia/Pacific 
TOTAL Closed 
broadleaf 
654 
214 
292 
1 160 Coniferous 
25 
1 
8 
34 Open 
forest 
217 
486 
31 
734 Fallow 
62 
104 
4 
170 Fallow 
closed 
109 
62 
69 
240 
Source: FAO. 
* Not including shrub formations. 
16. 10. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 264/21 
ANNEX B 
Estimated costs of the Tropical Forestry Action Plan, 1987-1991 * 
(million US$) 
Costs by activity 
\ 
\ V 
916 V 
1 316 Total 5 320 
\ \ X 
1 576 448 1 064 
Land use 17 % Industrial use 25 % Fuelwood and agroforestry 30 % Conser- Institutions 20 % 
vation 8 % 
Costs by region 
X 
\ V 
1 038 X 
2 699 Total 5 320 
\ 
1 583 
Africa 20 % 
(28 countries) Asia 50 % 
(12 countries) Latin America 30 % 
(16 countries) 
Summary of costs 
ACTIVITY 
Land use on upland watersheds 
Forest management for industrial uses 
Fuelwood and agroforestry 
Conservation of forest ecosystems 
Strengthening of institutions 
TOTAL REGION 
Africa 
139 
167 
439 
105 
188 
1 038 Asia 
682 
565 
747 
148 
557 
2 699 Latin America 
95 
584 
390 
195 
319 
1583 5-year totals 
916 
1 316 
1576 
448 
1 064 
5 320 
FAO is currently conducting a comprehensive study on investment and technical assistance requirements for forestry development in developing countries, 
including investment for industrial facilities. This study is likely to result in an upward revision of the above estimates. 
* 'Tropical Forests: A Call for Action', World Resources Institute, Washington D.C., 1985.