Sociology 302: Forest and Culture

Paper 2
December 16, 2003

There are lots of human actions that are impacting the world’s forests, and inhibiting a sustainable future.  Our Forests Our Future state that there are basic economic, political, and social forces that provide the underpinnings for value and decisions that shape how we  use our forests. For this paper, the emphasis is supposed to be centered around the actions of Corporations, but even corporations exist within these dynamic forces, so some time will be spent in examining this in context.  The second part of this paper, suggesting possible solutions for a sustainable future will also expand somewhat beyond these boundaries, because while corporations may be a major player in this situation, the complexity of the situation goes beyond simple corporate reform.

            The concept of corporations is not new.  In particular the British crown during the 1600’s granted extraordinary powers to some, such as the East India Company, which even had its own governor and army.  When the American colonies became agitated about British rule and decided to wage a war of independence, their unhappiness with corporations was a big factor.  Therefore, in the new nation that emerged in the late 1700’s, substantial restrictions were placed on corporations.  The restrictions included being of a limited duration, limited land and capital holdings, revocable charters, and a prohibition on political activity.

            During the 1ate 1800s most of these restrictions were eroded away by court decisions.  By the middle of the 1900’s corporations, now protected under the 14^th amendment and nearly free of any restrictions on their behavior began to flex their muscle.  By the end of that century corporate power was virtually unchecked, and many had become multinational in scope.   In fact many transnational corporations are far larger in economic measures than all but a few of the largest countries of the world.

            The concern with corporate power, and in particular the transnational corporations lies not simply in their dominate economic power, but their impact upon the environment, including the forests of the planet.  While forests are not the only ecological entity under assault, with the oceans and the atmosphere under particular stress, the destruction of the worlds forests has grave implications for the biosphere.   As the world’s forests are removed we find increasing siltation and salinization of waterways and cropland, increased global warming, due to greenhouse gasses, displacement of indigenous people and human rights violations, species eradication and loss of biodiversity.

            Earthsummit.biz, subtitled The Corporate Takeover of Sustainable Development explains quite well what is happening.  Beginning in the 1980s some major effort were made to attempt to deal with some of the more severe problems facing the planet through environmental treaties.  Three of these were the Basel Convention dealing with international trade in hazardous waste, the Biodiversity Convention, and the Climate Convention also known at the Kyoto Protocol.  Each of these provided much hope for a troubled world, but as we will see corporate power, and in particular the United States, undermined each to the point that they failed to meet their goals.

            The Basel Convention was designed to prevent the dumping of hazardous waste into developing countries.   While to some degree this is still working, it has not kept pace  with the times, so now such items as old computers and asbestos laden building materials have been exported into developing countries without regard for the welfare of their citizens.

            The Biodiversity Convention was passed at the 1992 Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro.   This agreement appeared to be in good shape, but the biotech industry, aided by the WTO has worked steadily to weaken it.  In particular arguments about intellectual property and international trade have weakened its impact.  Large transnational corporations such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Pfizer have all devoted a huge amount of money toward lobbying, mostly through the WTO, to protect patent rights granted to corporations over public genetic property.   The world’s poorer nations are suffering mightily because of this.

            The Kyoto Protocol, dealing with what is inarguably one of the most well documented and short term threats dealing with our planet, global warming, began with very high expectations.   President Bush (the father) signed this very important agreement to reduce greenhouse gasses, but the current President Bush (the son), caving into the lobbying of the fossil fuel industry, withdrew the United States from the agreement.  With the U.S. now out, Russia has threatened to withdraw as well. If this happened it would invalidate the agreement, even though most of the world’s countries have already signed on. 

            Our Forests, Our Future points out the role of the forests in global warming is very large.  Because the main cause of global warming is carbon dioxide, and trees remove carbon dioxide from atmosphere, removal of forests is responsible for 20-25% of the total carbon emissions into the atmosphere, only behind the combustion of fossil fuels.   Furthermore the destruction of the forests has a tendency to accelerate this problem, because global warming itself leads to less healthy forests, thereby increasing the problem.

            The United Nations, formed in the aftermath of World War II, was at one time the main hope for forging agreements between countries to ensure peace, human rights, reduce poverty, and protect the environment.   But in recent years there has been a major corporate takeover of this organization, and this is well documented in Earthsummit.biz.  We learn of the creation of the Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD), founded by non other the former CEO of Shell Oil.    While BASD has exposed some principles for sustainable development, it is really nothing more than simply another form of “greenwash”, where the companies talk about this issue for propaganda purposes, but meanwhile continue to engage in the same practices as before, all exploiting the earth’s natural resources, forests, and its indigenous peoples.  Since its creation, the BASD has managed to get corporate influence over virtually every UN function.  

            The telling blow was when the Secretary General of the U.N., Kofi Annan urged “all U.N. agencies to form partnerships with the private sector”.  The private sector of course means in most cases large transnational corporations.    This led to the Global Compact, which was launched in July 2000.  The compact required companies that sign on, to adhere to nine core labor, environmental, and human rights principles.   This was strictly a responsibility agreement however, not accountability, as there were no provisions for monitoring and no enforcement.    The Compact has come under considerable criticism as a clear case of the “fox guarding the hen house”, and Earthsummit.biz calls corporations signing up under the compact “bluewash”, a term taken from the United Nations white dove peace symbol on a blue background.    Based on the actions of such companies as Enron, it seems quite clear that when corporate profit is the driving force that nothing short of accountability will produce good results.  Responsibility lies far behind profits when there is a conflict. 

            The creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), which arose out the Uruguay Round of Negotiations in 1995, have also turned out to be very bad for the environment.  In both cases, these organizations have used economic sanctions and removal of trade barriers to give unprecedented power to transnational corporations.  So when any country attempts to protect the environment whether it is forests, waterways, or oceans, the power of the WTO is brought down upon them as a restraint on free trade and the planet’s natural resources and peoples are the poorer for it.    Since its creation, the WTO has ruled every environmental policy it has reviewed as an illegal trade barrier. 

            So we see the economic, political, and social forces now at work are conspiring to the detriment of the world’s forests.    Our Forests Our Future gives some figures that demonstrate this.  In the temperate boreal forests of Europe, no primary forests exist, and of the current forestland much of it is in poor health.  In the former Soviet Union, what primary forests that still exist is under heavy siege with much of the more valuable trees being removed, including even those in the ecologically fragile Siberian permafrost zone.  In North America the ancient eastern forests are all now all gone, and commercial timber harvests continue to remove much of what is left in the west.  The current Bush administration has its greedy eye on the forests of Alaska.  In Mexico pressure for agricultural land is leading to the removal of much of the forest.  The tropical and sub-tropical forests of Asia and Oceania are disappearing at an alarming rate with just a small fraction of the ancient forests still remaining, and much of the current growth being consumed by pressures for agricultural land to feed a growing population.  In Africa about 75% of the original tropical moist forest has disappeared in just the last 50 years, and in the great Amazon Basin about 2% of the forest is being lost each year, which puts this area on target to be virtually deforested in just 50 more years.

            Our Forest Our Future has suggestions for arresting and even reversing the ominous decline of our world’s forests.  They call this Forestrust International, and divide it up into four complimentary functions.  They are Forestwatch, a network of forest information gathering, analysis, and dissemination that connects organizations together at global level, a Forest Ombudsperson to be an international watchdog on issues of discrimination, abuse, inequity, and corruption associated with forest practices, a Forest Management Council that will carry out a wide variety of activities on behalf of the forests including a Forest Security Council and Certification of Forest Products, and finally a Forest Award to recognize good practices in conservation and sustainable forest management.

            While some of this seems quite idealistic, certain portions make a great deal of sense and are already being implemented in a variety of manners.    The Internet has made many of the principles of Forestwatch quite feasible, and already a large network of web sites has sprung up linking organizations and individuals together to carry out many of the objectives set forth by Forestrust, and Certification of Forest Products in making good headway.

            The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, who published Our Forests Our Future, takes on some other issues related to sustainable forests.  The first of these is Clearcutting on which they do not take a pro or con position, but do point out the severe damage that can be done by clearcutting steeper slopes or cutting too large an area reducing genetic diversity.  They are a big fan of Plantation Forestry, where monoculture crops of trees can drastically improve yields, though they do admit that plantation forests planted in the wrong location or without regard to local land rights can lead to abuses.   Finally they push the concept of agroforestry, where mixing trees and other crops can make more productive use of the land.

            It took, however, the writers of Our Forests Our Future quite a while to finally get realistic about the situation, which they finally do when they address “Forests in a Full World”.  A projected global population of around 9.5 billion in 2050, combined with pressure for a higher standard of living by the world’s population will push the forests to near total decline without some form of technological breakthrough that is not yet on the horizon.    So the need to feed the worlds teeming masses, demand for wood for buildings and fuel, and the emerging threat from forces such as climate change and toxic pollution from increasing industrialization is going to require some more drastic measures than those so far suggested.   The political, social, and economic realities are such that we need to address the problem in a different manner.

            Two things became evident during this class. First is that we will have to have different ecological futures for different parts of the world.    The United States already consumes resources at a rate that cannot be sustained on a global basis.  In fact it is estimated that if the rest of the current world population consumed at the rate of the U.S. we would need three entire new planets.    So there just has to be a lowering of expectations.  The second is because the fate of our world is in the hand of a few very powerful corporations.

            In setting forth some ideas for a sustainable planet, I want to explore three more possible scenarios for the future. We have already discussed the inadequacies of the ideas of Forestrust as a solution, but there are three more ideas worth exploring. They are a Technological Fix, Corporate Reform, and Catastrophe Theory. 

`           There is no question that technology is advancing a very rapid rate.  In fact it is advancing almost exponentially.  This gives rise to the hope that many of our most pressing problems will be solvable by a technological “fix”.  In the last couple of decades we have seen amazing advances in computers, telecommunications, medicine, and such activities as cloning and genetic engineering.   So there are those that sincerely believe we can continue any sort of behavior because science, almost like a religion, will be there when we need it.  So computers are seen as being an enabling technology for solving many of our problems, genetic engineering solving then need for an increase in the worlds food supply, cloning reviving extinct species from DNA materials gathered from museums, and even travel to Mars and possibly beyond as a way of gaining new access to raw materials exhausted on Earth.

            I happen to be a big believer that science will indeed provide solutions to many problems, but I also believe that a blind faith in science is very foolhardy. Science can and has turned upon us and bitten us, as we have seen with nuclear power plant disasters.    Genetic Engineering could lead to monoculture crops that are subject to eradication in the face of a plant disease thereby wiping out much of the food supply.  The potato famine in Ireland should have been a lesson to us, but for some reason we do not seem to learn from our mistakes.  In short, we should not count on science alone to protect us from ourselves.  Other measures are needed.

            Because transnational (and even domestic) corporations have become so powerful, and as mentioned earlier in most cases act without regard for the consequences of their action, we need meaningful change here.  For starters we need to curtail the power of the WTO.   The activists that rioted in Seattle in 1999 knew quite well of the evils of that organization and were prepared to fight to expose its failings.  I feel a return to the citizen activism that was so dramatic in the late 60’s and early 70s when an unjust war was so successfully protested, is needed.   It would take a dramatic uprising of the world’s population to overpower the entrenched political and economic interests, but it is not impossible.  Social change is also within possible reach which would require a new set of values regarding exuberant consumption and what we now consider certain freedoms such as a right to drive any car we want no matter how inefficient, or drive as much as we want, regardless of how much fuel we consume.

            Another action might be to seize back the United Nations from the corporate powers that have taken it over.  Earthsummit.biz has a few suggestions.  They argue not to underestimate the power of an aroused civil society.   Led by increasingly militant NGOs, and emboldened by their successes in Seattle, and more recently Cancun, environmental groups are beginning to flex their muscle, and they are supported by a growing anger from developing nations who realize they are getting a raw deal from corporate power.  The one thing they all agree on is that corporations, particularly transnational ones have too much power, and these NGO’s and nations are increasingly organizing to try to curtail this power.    Earthsummit.biz contains a number of examples of actual actions that might lead to a replacement of corporate responsibility with corporate accountability.  These include redefining sustainability to include the principle of recognizing the inherent unsustainability of both poverty and excessive wealth, separating corporations from the state, increasing confrontation as mentioned in the previous paragraph, support for the Alliance for a Corporate Free U.N.    Finally, assuming we get the UN back on its feet as an independent body representing human rights and a sustainable world, they want the U.N. to stand up and work for these principles.

            In view of my pessimism regarding all of the above objectives, the principle that I am most likely to believe in is catastrophe theory.   The most dramatic of any of these is a nuclear winter, caused by global nuclear war.  With so much nuclear material available due to the cold war and nuclear reactors, the possibility that terrorists or a rogue nation might set off a chain reaction of retaliation to cause this remains frightfully possible.  This eventuality, however, would make everything else moot, and it would probably take many thousands of years for anything approaching civilization to emerge again.  A second, less likely event is a large-scale tectonic event or other natural disaster. This could be caused by a large volcanic explosion, huge earthquake, or even another asteroid strike such as the one that apparently wiped out the dinosaurs.   Another scenario is a pandemic, caused in part by global warming and population growth.  Increased mobility of the population makes disease more likely to vector from one location to another where resistance is low, and our overuse of antibiotics makes it increasingly likely a virulent disease will find low resistance.  Another ominous possibility is a catastrophic failure of the world’s food supply, which becomes increasingly likely as we limit ourselves to a monoculture of major food staples such as maize, wheat, and rice.  Today just a handful of varieties feed most of the world’s population, and a failure of any one on these food supplies could have devastating consequences.    However, the catastrophe I find most plausible, and the one with the most far reaching and irreversible impact, is species eradication.  This, ironically, is closely tied to the destruction of the world’s forests.  We are causing species go extinct on this planet at a rate that if sustained will mean the loss of nearly 50% of the earth’s diversity in another hundred years.  The balance of nature is just that, a balance.  And as we eradicate one species after another, with one keeping another is check, it seems almost a foregone conclusion that we will in the not too distance future find something living thing spreading without restraint across the planet wiping out other species, some of which we depend on for our own survival or will prey upon us.  Ironical as it may sound, a species as robust and intelligent as humankind may eventually find itself “done in” by something as tiny and unintelligent as a bacteria or a virus.

            To sum up then, my prescription for a sustainable future, and a world worth living in, is make use of all the possible strategies available to us .  None of the proposals presented above are mutually exclusive, and while one alone might not be enough, taken together they may help enough.  If we can head off total disaster when the catastrophe finally comes, as I feel it must, we will still have enough forests, agricultural land, and biodiversity to survive the dark age that will follow, and to allow humankind to rise from the ashes, and hopefully get it right next time.