Justin Stead, International Visiting Scholar, Global Forest Trade Network, World Wide Fund for Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF, called the World Wildlife Fund in North America) is one of the world's largest conservation organisations. Its brief is to conserve life on earth. WWF has an increasingly well thought out programme to bring focus to its work towards this very broad mission.
Forests contain as much as 90% of terrestrial biodiversity; from the charismatic mammals such as the great apes, the tiger and the panda, to millions of species of plants and as yet uncounted millions of species of insects. We cannot conserve species without conserving forests.
WWF's Forests for Life Target Driven Programme focuses on forest protection, forest management and forest restoration with the following targets:
It is estimated that this work in WWF already employs some 200 foresters. WWF, and groups like it, will have a growing demand for well trained foresters with a variety of backgrounds, who can help to achieve these ambitious but vital goals.
The Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) is the focus for WWF's work on forest management and certification. The global network is made up of 15 national or regional networks operating in 19 countries. Each is a partnership between a non governmental organisation (NGO), in many but not all cases WWF, and local companies committed to doing what they can to improve the quality of forest management using the tool of certification. WWF supports the work of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in this area. Company members of the GFTN, now numbering over 700, seek to produce, trade or purchase forest products from certified forests.
Case Study I The FSC: The FSC has been in existence for nearly 10 years and has played a key role in certification and the improvement of forest management standards. The FSC seeks to ratify local standards of good forest management. It also accredits the activities of auditing companies which certify that forests are being managed to the local standards.
The FSC holds huge opportunities for foresters and university departments of forestry. The level of management of the world's production forests is too low. The level of management of forests which are managed needs to be improved. Many areas of forest are not even managed in the first place! The world will need many more foresters to put in place management of all the world's production forests. There will also be quite a large demand for foresters to act as auditors to certify that management standards have reached an agreed level.
Forestry Schools need to train the foresters who will do all this work. There is also a huge opportunity to undertake research to demonstrate that best practice is what it says it is. The GFTN is undertaking research in partnership with the UBC Faculty of Forestry. We have recently done some work on genetics and certification (Auld et al 2002) which showed that certifiers do not yet have the tools to be able to judge whether or not a particular forest management unit is well managed in terms of biodiversity and gene conservation. Much research needs to be done to demonstrate that management decisions being taken on the ground are indeed the best available and we need the tools to allow auditors to assess that best practice is being carried out at the forest level.
Case Study II: Where are the foresters?! The FSC is having a huge impact on forest management. It is my observation however that much of the creative development of the FSC has been undertaken by non foresters, at least by people whose first degree was not in forestry. I have been associated with the development of the FSC for the last 8 years. Development has required huge creative energy on the part of many people and as I look across the key actors and opinion formers many have first degrees in subject ranging from biology, geography and agriculture to English, architecture and electronic engineering!! Barely half have forestry as a first degree.
Why is this? Forestry as currently structured in Universities and as a profession, attracts a certain kind of student - the ones which love being in forests! It takes all sorts of people to make teams work, not just the specialists who manage the trees on the ground. Forestry companies need leaders, thinkers, analysts and iconoclasts. Perhaps forestry schools should make more effort to attract people with a range of personality types.
In conclusion, WWF and its sister organisations in conservation and the environment already employ a large number of foresters and this number will grow. WWF needs a range of types of people with forestry training. People who can help us to manage forest, protect forest and restore forest. Such people need to be of a range of personality types who between them can make up efficient and effective teams. We do not just need people who know and love trees. WWF cares about all of the world's forests and wants to see an increasing area of forest that is appropriately protected and managed and is a source of well-being to the people who live and work there. This task will require a huge increase in the number of trained foresters, not a reduction.
