P. Wardle
Philip Wardle is Senior Forestry Economist at FAO.
The evolution of forestry statistical analysis at FAO.
The first FAO forestry statistical analysis and outlook publication, issued in 1946
"A comprehensive world forest policy must be directed toward a dual goal: First - sufficient forest areas to ensure the benefit of their protective role, second - a permanent and abundant supply of forest products.
"Faced with an ever-increasing need for forests as allies to agriculture and producers of material serving unnumbered human uses, FAO cannot look on indifferently while the world's forests deteriorate in quality and shrink in area and volume.
"So long as famine treads the world, the first obligation of FAO is very clear. Our immediate task is to increase the available supply of food; our long-range task is to create a world better fed and better sheltered through a wiser use of land. For both these tasks we must call upon an indispensable ally of agriculture - the forest."
Thus Sir John Boyd Orr, first Director-General of FAO, prefaced the first FAO forestry statistical analysis and outlook publication, Forestry and forest products - World situation 1937-1946, presented to the Second Session of the Conference of FAO, held in Copenhagen in 1946.
FAO's forestry staff has, therefore, been involved in assessing the forestry situation, analysing trends and reviewing prospects from the beginning. In that formative first year, statistical conferences in Washington, DC, and Rome laid down uniform definitions and specific plans for the statistical programme that has become the foundation on which FAO constructs its presentation of the forestry sector's state and outlook. The first FAO Yearbook of forest products was published in 1947, with data for 1945 and 1946; the 47th consecutive annual issue was produced this year.
Forestry statistics are essential for sound forestry sector decision-making and for monitoring the achievement of objectives. An important stage in the development of decisions is the analysis of statistical information, to have a better understanding of changes in supply and demand of forest goods and services over time, the variations in the characteristics of different locations and the relationships between the many dimensions of the forest, its products and the economy and society that is using them. So far as these dimensions are recorded in statistics, an objective quantitative analysis is possible, and this has been an important component in the development of FAO timber trend and outlook studies. On the other hand, much relevant information is either not available in quantitative form or is not capable of being reduced to simple quantities. Thus there remains a major role for review and judgement on the basis of much richer qualitative and descriptive information, which is an essential complement to the quantitative analysis in developing policy, plans and operational decisions.
Global information on the forestry sector serves the needs of the international community which arise from the interdependency of nations and regions. FAO has contributed to the quantitative assessment of the state and performance of the forestry sector in three main ways: it has developed the collection and dissemination of statistics; it has carried out analytical studies with the particular aim of exploring the quantitative implications of the information for future development of the sector; and it has carried out reviews drawing on wider information and pinpointing the major issues emerging from the analysis. Over the years, the composition of the data has been revised and the focus of the analysis and reviews has been changed and expanded to respond to new perceptions, priorities and demands and to ensure that subjects that have become important are adequately addressed. The availability and quality of information has evolved and the technical capability in data processing and analysis has developed dramatically with the expansion of computing power.
The following sections focus on selected events in the 50 years of FAO forestry economics, statistics and analytical studies and reviews.
POSTWAR TIMBER SCARCITY - WHAT TO DO
Forestry and forest products - World situation 1937-1946 perceived a scarcity of timber, recognizing that the immediate constraints following the Second World War - insufficient labour, disorganized transport and inadequate equipment - were short-term. The long-term issues at that time were deforestation, poor management, inefficient logging and processing and insufficient skilled labour. The prescription for improvement fostered the adoption of a policy to achieve a dual goal: to ensure the benefit of forests through their protective influence and to supply raw material for increasing living standards. This called for action in the areas of legislation, improved silviculture, management and utilization, forestation, research and education.
The International Timber Conference, held in 1947 at Mariánské Lásne, Czechoslovakia, led to the formation of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) Timber Committee and the FAO European Forestry Commission as well as other regional commissions for the purpose of considering forestry. At its first meeting, the ECE Timber Committee reviewed plans and estimates for member countries' timber production. This is an activity that the Committee has found worth pursuing up to the present time as a guide to market development and a signal for the need to avert shortages or excesses of production.
A joint meeting of the ECE Timber Committee and the FAO European Forestry Commission in October 1952 reviewed the first European timber trends and prospects study, containing projections to 1960, while World pulp and paper resources and prospects was published in 1954. These studies assessed the trends in demand and supply of products, estimated their probable growth and reviewed the resources available to secure that growth. Their objective was to provide information needed for securing an adequate supply and fair distribution of materials essential for advancement. This was to support FAO in its responsibility for furthering action to assure that output in quantity and quality rises commensurately with the increase in the needs of the world's population.
Methodology
Collecting and analysing statistics, proposing conclusions and implications and then discussing them with those of the international community who are interested as well as revising and disseminating information and responding to recommendations have proved to be elements of a methodology that challenges FAO staff to seek perfection in results; ensures the effective dissemination of information and findings to people who need them; and secures energetic feedback from informed and concerned national participants. This process of interaction has been a hallmark of many of FAO's major studies, including European timber trends and prospects, the Outlook for pulp and paper, Wood -World trends and prospects and World forest products demand and supply. Exposure to live international discussion, the synergy of interaction with the practical knowledge and the diverse perceptions offered by people of many countries and skills add a stimulating dimension and result in an enriched final product. The meeting of minds on problems of real substance has an important place in the effective performance of international institutions.
Early assessments of pulp and paper trends and prospects drew freely on estimates for regions or countries in previously published studies. World demand for paper to 1975 was the first to be based on an explicit econometric analysis of the relationship between consumption of products and measures of the economic situation and economic growth, an approach which became a basic building block for subsequent assessments of the sector's outlook.
FORESTRY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
The discussion of World demand for paper to 1975, at a consultation held in 1960 and involving leading manufacturers, forestry organizations and international organizations, raised questions about paper and pulp industrial capacity, the investment required, trade, raw material supply and the role of waste paper. Beyond making recommendations on the further development of outlook studies and the perfection of the methodology, this consultation emphasized the importance of international discussion and exchanges of views and information in strengthening the validity of estimates. Following its recommendations, FAO formed the Advisory Committee of Experts on Pulp and Paper. One of the early decisions arising from that committee was the establishment of an annual survey of pulp and paper industrial capacity based on information supplied by the industry. The aim of the survey was to monitor capacity in relation to production and expansion plans and expected growth in demand.
In the 1960s, the focus was on the concept of the potential of forests to contribute to self-sustained growth and on the "propulsive possibilities of the forest industries sector". It was recognized that many new areas of forest were going to be brought into use, and that a choice was to be made between utilization based on sound planning with adequate safeguards to make the resource base secure and uncontrolled or haphazard exploitation. Achievement of the former would be dependent on proper management through strong and effective forestry organizations, but the actual situation was characterized by inadequate resources, and weak and poorly integrated institutions. The role of forest industries in the attack on economic underdevelopment (in The State of Food and Agriculture, 1962) called for concerted action to ensure the full realization of the immense potential contribution of forest industry and forests (if appropriately used) to development.
The outlook studies of the 1960s saw this potential as well as the rapid growth of the forest sector's contribution to the world economy and its rapid technological evolution, with an increasing prominence of processed and reconstituted products: wood-based panels and paper. While the growth in consumption was predominant in developed countries, stress was also laid on the importance of securing the necessary sectoral growth to meet expanding needs in developing countries and increase their potential for economic development.
WOOD ENERGY AND COMMUNITY FORESTRY
The oil shock of the mid-1970s and the studies leading up to the United Nations Conference on New and Renewable Sources of Energy, held in 1981, reminded the world that a very substantial proportion of the energy available to developing countries came from fuelwood and charcoal and that 80 percent of these countries' wood consumption was for that purpose. This coincided with the recognition that, in great part, the contribution of forests and trees to the well-being of the people of developing countries, rather than coming from government or large-scale private forestry enterprises, is generated by local communities, small farmers and landless people dependent on the forest.
It is obvious that fuelwood and charcoal, non-wood forest products, pit-sawn wood, small sawmills and the myriad crafts and artisanal forest products are important to the economy of rural communities of developing countries. Objective information about the structure and magnitude of their contribution is problematical, however. Much of the production and consumption takes place within households and does not enter formal systems of employment, enterprises or markets. Activities are dispersed among many millions of households and carried out by countless millions of family members - men, women and children - rarely registered as employed in that work. Some countries, several with the support of FAO projects, have carried out sample surveys of these activities and one occasionally finds the products estimated in national forestry statistics. This vital component of the subsistence economy - in this case, households' consumption of their own forest products - which is cautiously assessed as contributing more than 10 percent to the national product of the poorest countries, must be recognized. A similar economic sector, however, is virtually unknown in the official national statistics of any developing country, with the inevitable consequence that it is widely neglected in national policy-making.
The FAO Yearbook of forest products
THE COMPUTER AGE
Good statistical data is the essential raw material for analysis and, to obtain such data, an international organization is dependent on the will, capabilility and cooperation of its member countries. Over the years it has been possible to strengthen this relationship in many areas. Forestry statistics and outlook studies of the 1970s and 1980s also responded to the coming of the computer age and the advantages it offered with respect to information processing and accessibility. The FAO Yearbook of forest products 1972, based on a computerized database with 12 years of data, was published in September 1974, only eight months after publication of the manually prepared 1970 yearbook which contained two years of data. It was followed in March 1975 by the next edition which published annual data for all countries of the world, 15 months after the end of the last year reported. Nowadays the data are available in computer-readable form by January, just one year after the end of the reported year.
In 1987, FAO was able to publish tables on the direction of trade, showing 1982 data for the trading partners of all countries using the UN computer-readable trade tables. In 1994, with better computer capacity and speed, it was able to extract these data in time for publication of the yearbook of the same year. The extraction of information on trading partners has permitted the addition of trade data on some 30 non-reporting countries to the 1993 yearbook tables.
From the mid-1970s the use of the computer database has been central to the econometric analysis of consumption, and later also of production, of forest products. Initially, this analysis depended on the use of periodic averages but, by the mid-1980s, it was possible to utilize annual data for all significant countries in the estimation of econometric relationships. It also became realistic to reassess the relationships and update projections on the basis of data for the latest years when confronting new reviews of sectoral development. This has also allowed the production of reference projections covering a wide range of products and including indicative projections for all countries.
THE FUTURE FOR OUTLOOK STUDIES
The objective in analysing the trends and projections of possible future directions of the forestry sector is to support policy formulation and investment decision-making by Member Governments. The aim is not to anticipate development in any one country, but rather to take advantage of the global database for exploring general tendencies and relationships and estimating the implications for the world and regions, putting individual countries into this context. Recognizing the limitations of detail that can be assembled internationally, this objective analysis provides a useful reference - which few developed and even fewer developing countries have the resources to prepare for themselves - to the complexity of international forestry development.
Being responsible for collecting, analysing, interpreting and disseminating information has always been the first function of FAO and is likely to remain so. In the afterglow of UNCED, the international community is pressing forwards to identify the new dimensions of criteria and indicators of sustainable development and environmental conservation which may be added to the compendium of regularly published information. It was well recognized in 1945 that education, training and adequate institutions were essential for sound policy planning and management of forest resources. Much has since been done to transform capacity. The dynamics of evolution and enormous growth of demand on the finite forest resource brings us once again to the conclusion that the development of capacity and capability at the national level is a foremost need. Capability in the area of policy, planning, analysis and information is a fundamental requirement if sound decision-making is to lead to sustainable development.
The 1980 assessment Tropical forest resources reawakened the world community to the forces of forest destruction and ensured that forestry would be central to the debate inspired by the Brundtland Commission and UNCED. What is clear from the analysis and perspectives referred to in this article is that the dual objective recognized in 1946 by Sir John Boyd Orr - the forest as protector and the forest as producer - remains equally valid today. Society depends on the conservation and service roles of the forest and on its contribution to development.
Proponents of the myriad roles of forests must recognize their responsibility to work together in pursuing the multiple benefits for society, including its economy, ecology and environment. Statistics and economics are often not the preferred sciences of foresters or ecologists but, if they neglect them, in our complex and intensively competitive society, they are unlikely to be able to find an acceptable compromise between the conservation of environmental capital and its sustainable use.
BOX: List of publications
