State of the Rainforest 2014

forests of indigenous peoples should no longer be classified as state forest, paving the way for a rights-based, sustainable rainforest management. Strengthening forest communities’ rights to their lands, and developing forest management policies in close cooperation with the forests’ inhabitants, should be given urgent priority in rainforest countries. This report tells five stories from five different rainforest countries, showing the important roles forest people can play in forest management. Extensive rainforest destruction in the making. The threats against the world’s remaining rainforests are immense. Rainforest countries, which on the one hand have stated their political intention to reduce deforestation, on the other continue to develop plans for major infrastructure development and the expansion of plantations and extractive industries, all of which will increase deforestation. A few examples from major rainforest countries illustrate this too well: Almost 75% of Peru’s Amazon is covered by planned or operative oil-and-gas concessions. Indonesia intends to double the area for oil palm, and neighbouring Papua New-Guinea faces a comparable threat. Most of PNG’s commercially accessible rainforests have been allocated for logging, and special licences to convert thousands of km 2 of forests to oil palm plantations are causing controversy in the country. In DR Congo, the moratorium on logging concessions has for many years been under pressure, and expected expansion of roads, mining, plantations and agriculture will lead to a steep increase in deforestation rates. Even in Brazil, laws protecting the rainforest and indigenous territories are under pressure. On top of the expected continued expansion of industrial scale agriculture, the sum total of planned infrastructure and extractive activities in Amazon countries are so extensive that they may impact half of the remaining Amazon rainforest (se section 3). Unless governments and the key players responsible for forest destruction address and reverse these plans, the future of the world’s remaining rainforests is grim.

Organized crime plays an increasing role in deforestation and illegal logging in all rainforest regions. This includes the illicit trade in endangered high-value species like rosewood, logging for timber, advanced laundering through plantation front companies targeting pulp and paper production in Asia, and control of the distribution of the rapidly rising charcoal trade, especially in Africa. The global value of forest crime, mainly commercialization of illegally logged timber, is estimated by UNEP and INTERPOL to be between USD 30 and 100 billion annually. By comparison, the global value of all official development assistance was reported by OECD to reach USD 134.8 billion in 2013.With the dramatic rise in organized forest crime, enforcement capacity will become essential to any success. Few measures have been taken to address the role of companies or investment funds involved in tropical deforestation, whether they are domestic or trans-national actors. Within some sectors, including those representing major drivers of deforestation, the industry itself, responding to mounting pressure from civil society actors, consumers and public opinion, have adopted internal policies meant to exclude deforestation and human rights violations from their commodity chains. Such initiatives represent important contributions towards reduced deforestation. Voluntary actions should, however, be followed by the development of public policies and internationally agreed rules to regulate actors who continue to cause deforestation and degradation of the world’s few remaining rainforests. Companies and investors genuinely interested in adhering to a no-deforestation policy can play an important part in combating forest crime and illegal trade in natural resources. Lack of tenure rights contributes to deforestation in many rainforest regions and adds to the complexity. In Indonesia, for instance, millions of people, including 50-70 million indigenous peoples, depend on the forest. Yet, the state has claimed authority over most of the forest, granting licenses for forest exploitation to industrial companies at the expense of local communities who have for generations maintained the forest ecosystems. Last year, an historic decision by the country’s constitutional court stated that customary

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STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014