LESLIE J. VERNELL
FOR A QUARTER CENTURY, FAO's Forestry Department (formerly Forestry and Forest Industries Division) has offered counsel to governments and industry on ways to conserve the forest patrimony, improve forest management, train foresters and technicians, reduce waste, find markets for wood products, and end ruinous practices that damage the environment of plants, animals and human beings.
Enough has been written of past events in the pages of innumerable reports and in Unasylva so that there is no further call at this time for either elegy or panegyric. Moreover, the Forestry Department, along with other segments of FAO, is in the middle of change, and it is too early yet to say what its course or character is going to be. Its future will be watched and charted by a new FAO Committee on Forestry which is about to be established as a standing subsidiary body of the FAO Council.
Starting with the modest efforts of a handful of staff working under Marcel Leloup, the first director, the Forestry Department has over the years had to run hard to keep up with the requirements and problems of both developed and developing countries. At times it has overstretched its resources. This is not surprising viewed against the services it has been called upon to render because of the growing world demand for wood for the many uses to which it can be put. For instance, world consumption of paper from wood raw material alone has been rising at the rate of almost five million tons a year. It has been estimated that by 1985 the world could need perhaps 75 percent more wood than it used in the late sixties. If it is not obtainable, there may be a sharp shift to substitute materials.
Through the period of the directorship of Egon Glesinger, which followed the retirement of Marcel Leloup, FAO forestry sought to keep pace with world needs by moving more and more into field programmes and helping to supervise a great variety of national projects in individual countries, ranging from preinvestment surveys, the planning and establishing of new forests, the better management of natural forests and the extension of forest industries to the development of national parks and areas reserved for wildlife. All of these projects came into being, as they still do, at the request of Member Nations which contributed manpower, materials and money, and received additional financing from such sources as the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, bilateral aid schemes or foundations.
While attention to the problems of the developing countries continued to be the main preoccupation of FAO, the next director, Nils Osara, insisted on the necessity of continuing also to render due services to foresters and forest industries in the economically advanced countries. In the programmes of the Organization a balance was struck which has continued to the present. But again this has meant stretching capacity very thinly. Meanwhile FAO has estimated that by 1985 consumption of sawnwood in the developing countries will be some 150 percent above the consumption 25 years earlier. The demand for various types of wood-based panels, paper and paperboard is expected to increase by four to ten times.
This picture of rising demand is something less than cheerful when one appreciates that many of these countries are already importing a great deal of timber and of wood products and generally can ill afford the cash outlay. Countries of Africa, for example, annually import more than 150 million dollars worth of pulp and paper.
The irony of it is that many of these countries possess forests that are relatively unused but which could fill most domestic needs, provide employment and even earn sorely needed foreign exchange. Lack of roads and equipment constitute part of the problem, but often an even bigger obstacle is the shortage of properly trained foresters and technicians. To review the way they should be educated and trained will be the important purpose of one of FAO'S meetings in 1971, which is expected to influence decisively the cause of forestry for many years ahead.
Most leaders of opinion who have been on the scene agree that the countries in the developing regions need a heavy injection of plain, practical forestry, with training oriented toward practice rather than theory. Ideally, for every professional forester, a country should have up to five men trained to the intermediate or technical level, to provide the essential support for the work of the professional forester and supervision of much of the physical and mechanical work in the forest and the wood-processing plants. Rather than be reserved for executive duties, the university-trained forester is too often bogged down in routine operational or administrative tasks which could be done by others.
In attracting to forestry students of suitable ability developing countries have a problem no longer usually encountered in more developed areas. They have a hard task " selling " forestry as a rewarding career. One of the frequent causes of this difficulty is the :lack of a coherent and consistently applied national forest policy which sets out clearly the needs and opportunities of the future. Public opinion, too, has not been roused to the need for conserving and using forests; people still think of the forest merely as something that " just grows." There is no full recognition of all the goods and services which forests are capable of supplying.
Within the Forestry Department, Jack C. Westoby has long been a vigorous proponent of developmental forestry as an FAO objective. Based. chiefly on plain, uninflated projections of anticipated needs and demands, the goals he has in mind for forestry in the developing world are high. But in the opinion of many, they are attainable, provided forestry is lifted out of the stepchild situation it so often occupies and there are substantial transfusions of capital and thinking, and radical changes in infrastructure, management and industrialization.
Social benefits may be equally, if not more, important than financial profits. Apart from the protective purposes that forests serve, forest industries can help reduce unemployment, which, as a human tragedy, is assuming proportions that grow more devastating every year. The high flexibility of forestry work and the consequent possibility of utilizing labour that is temporarily idle are cited as assets. Unlike food crops, the harvesting of trees is not tied to a strict time schedule, and many kinds of forestry work are well suited to the employment of relatively unskilled labour of the type found in rural areas a labour force that otherwise is wasted.
FAO's Division of Forestry and Products in early 1947
The present head of FAO's, Forestry Department, Börje Steenberg, claims that in spite of all the obstacles there are opportunities for substantial progress. One of the most promising developments - for both economically advanced and less rich countries - is the wider acceptance of the plantation forest as a shortcut to wood production. Manmade forests are nothing new and do not represent a new technique. They have several advantages over natural forests. Frequently in natural forests there are different species of varying ages and characteristics which makes harvesting and processing difficult and expensive. Natural forests are also often remote from centres of consumption, railways, ports and cities. The man-made forest, on the other hand, can be limited to the kind of trees most needed and can be established in areas close to markets or shipping points.
Moreover, forestry is having its own success with the breeding of new types of trees. Startling results, undreamed of a few years ago, are being obtained with fast-growing varieties, especially when cultivation includes the use of fertilizers.
These and all the other biological and technological improvements applicable to both production and protection forests are factors which give rise to a considerable spirit of optimism. The activities of FAO will aim to get advances applied on a far greater scale than they are at present. To this end, FAO will continue to:
- maintain contacts and liaison with member countries and supply advice through correspondence, through visits by staff members, and by the establishment of regional and country offices;- prepare and publish documents and studies containing statistics or summaries of technical and economic findings for the information of member countries and, in some instances, for the guidance of governments in formulating and implementing policies and projects for economic and social development;
- organize policy and technical meetings for the ex change of information and ideas, and arrange to coordinate subsequent action which may be required on problems of international concern;
- through its field programmes, assist governments in the implementation of the forestry and forest industries development projects which are entrusted to it by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) or other agencies, multilateral and bilateral;
- hold seminars, training centres and study tours to impart knowledge of specific techniques or to permit exchange of ideas and the study of new approaches as a basis for planning and administration;
- service permanent regional or specialized bodies which provide focal points for consultation on common problems, and for such concerted action as the countries involved may agree to undertake;
- provide technical advice to the UN/FAD World Food Programme, assist the FAO Investment Centre in studies on investment possibilities for forestry development programmes, and collaborate with the Industry Cooperative Programme, which is designed to encourage business investment in forestry and forest industries.
These ways of giving substance to the true role which forests and forest industries can play in world social and economic development will have priority in the future work of FAO.
