Globalisation and deforestation in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

Over the last thirty years, global environmental agreements and nongovernmental organisations have proliferated, and international organisations, states, societies, corporations, and communities have to some extent been influenced by environmental values. Yet the global spread of environmental ideas has been uneven, contributing to important changes in some areas and minimal changes in others. This paper examines the impact of the globalisation of environmentalism—including the globalisation of environmental ideas and attitudes, international agreements and institutions, international and local nongovernmental organisations, and environmental sections within states—on commercial tropical timber management in the Asia–Pacific. It argues that the environmental rhetoric surrounding forest management has shifted. This has contributed to some policy reforms. However, few concrete changes to logging practices have occurred in areas that still have large commercial forests, and loggers continue to trigger widespread deforestation. Global environmental norms and pressures for environmental reforms from nongovernmental organisations, state agencies, and communities have had little impact on three key factors that drive unsustainable tropical logging: multinational and domestic corporations, global markets and corporate traders, and state capacity and willingness to manage forest resources. This has occurred partially because of direct opposition from these forces, partially because of the inherent weaknesses of environmental reformers in the Asia–Pacific, and partially because of the complexity of how these forces undermine sustainable commercial timber management. This suggests that even if current efforts to develop a global forest convention are successful, even as governments embrace new environmental institutions and laws, and even as international activist groups and local nongovernmental groups gain influence, genuine reforms will still occur slowly, perhaps too slowly to save the remaining old-growth tropical forests of the Asia-Pacific