IS SUSTAINABLE COMMERCIAL WILD HARVESTING A MYTH?

We must learn what sustainability means in practice if we are to apply it to our daily lives and restore the health and vitality of our planet - Sir David Attenborough

In the words of the well-known ethnobotanist and field researcher Dr Janis Alcorn of the Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) in Washington DC, “One of the most basic and rarely questioned assumptions is that the harvesting of non-timber products has little or no ecological impact on a tropical forest. This ubiquitous idea has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers, on television and radio shows...and even on the back of cereal boxes and ice-cream cartons."

She goes on to say, here paraphrased, that this assumption is a dangerous fallacy; for intensive resource extraction almost always leads to gradual depletion. We know this from the basic tenets of forestry ecology, and the history of forest exploitation.

Further, “regardless of the species, land tenure or marketing system involved, collectors cannot simply harvest commercial quantities of fruit, nuts, latexes and oil seeds year after year, and then expect the forest to magically replenish these stocks. As elsewhere, there is no free lunch in a tropical forest.”

Indeed, all ecosystems are fragile, not just tropical forests. Therefore, wherever commercial wild-harvesting takes place, it may eventually lead to ecological imbalance.

In view of the above, let’s hope the Soil Association, Ecocert and all other proponents of commercial wild-harvesting will take it upon themselves to dismiss their current 'experts' and seek the advice of authentic gurus like Dr Alcorn. Please, before it’s too late.

To obtain a copy of the publication entitled "Sustainable Harvest of Non-Timber Plant Resources in Tropical Moist Forest: An Ecological Primer", published by BSP 1994, contact:

Dr Janis Alcorn
The Biodiversity Support Program
c/o WWF, 1250 24th Street,
NW Washington, DC 20037

ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH SO-CALLED NON-WOOD FOREST PRODUCTS

One of the aims of the United Nations Development Programme is to develop the trade in non-wood forest products (NWFP). The idea is to generate income for the world's poorest people, to support biodiversity and save ancient forests. As explained in the previous report, supposedly this is achieved by regarding the world's forests as a resource for commodities other than timber. For example, medicinal and aromatic plants - including the essential oils of such species - nuts, fruits, honey and fibres.

However, the UN and other supporters of the trade in NWFP have a blind spot. Ludicrously, the essential oils of rosewood (Aniba rosaeodora), sandalwood (Santalum spp.) and cedar (Cedrus spp.) are also categorised as non-wood forest products - and yet in order to extract the essential oil of these species, the trees are felled for the purpose!

Needless to say, I've written to the United Nations' NWFP division requesting that they kindly stop categorsing such oils as NWFP since this implies that conservation is of utmost importance, when nothing could be further from the truth. I'm awaiting a reply.