TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040191/0401004.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.6 KB | 191 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 48

FOREIGN AID

Good Intentions, Woeful Results


How an ambitious environmental program ended up damaging the
tropical rain forests

By EUGENE LINDEN


    A new threat to the world's fast-diminishing rain forests
has united the normally fractious environmental community. The
organizations arrayed against this peril constitute a Who's Who
of the environmental movement: the Sierra Club, Friends of the
Earth, the World Wildlife Fund, the National Wildlife
Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Testifying before Congress, Bruce Rich, chairman of the
Environmental Defense Fund's International Program, said none
of these groups were "exaggerating when they say they fear
that an environmental Frankenstein has been unleashed."

    And just what is this monster? Sadly, it is a program
originally intended to save the world's remaining rain forests.
The Tropical Forestry Action Plan, or T.F.A.P., was perhaps the
most ambitious environmental aid program ever conceived.
Sponsored in 1985 by the World Bank, the U.N. and other groups,
the initiative was designed to help the world's tropical
countries come to grips with deforestation. With the help of
international agencies, each nation would come up with a formal
proposal for managing and protecting its forests. T.F.A.P.
would channel $8 billion in aid over the next five years to
implement those programs.

    By now, efforts to slow tropical deforestation should have
been in effect for years. Instead, sponsors had to convene in
Geneva last month for what James D. Barnes of Friends of the
Earth described as a "make or break" meeting to see whether the
foundering plan could even be saved.

    Few would deny the seriousness of the crisis that prompted
T.F.A.P. Moist tropical forests cover just 6% of the earth's
terrestrial surface but contain at least 50% of the world's
variety of insects, plants and animals. Throughout the world
the forests are chopped to clear land, provide firewood or
supply the timber market. A report issued in 1990 by the U.N.'s
Food and Agricultural Organization shows that the rate of
deforestation in the tropical world has accelerated 80% since
1980.

    T.F.A.P. was the industrial world's largest collective
effort to help address the developing world's environmental
problems. It was launched with assurances that the program
would not repeat the mistakes of past development efforts,
which included duplication of effort; rip-offs by contractors,
consultants and corrupt officials; and a tendency to promote
the donor's priorities at the expense of the Third World's.
Unfortunately, the forestry plan ended up repeating many of
these failings.

    From the outset, T.F.A.P. seemed to have more to do with
expert opinion in industrial-world think tanks than with actual
situations in tropical nations. Perplexed critics asked why
India, with few remaining tropical forests, was targeted to
receive $1.2 billion, while Indonesia and Zaire, with huge
forests, were to receive $193 million and $34 million apiece.

    It turned out that the authors of the original T.F.A.P. had
chosen spending targets not by the size of their uncut tropical
forests but by their ability to digest large amounts of money.
Says Bruce Rich: "It was a plan that was really devised
according to the needs of the aid agencies rather than the
needs of the countries."

    Embarrassed by such missteps, the sponsoring organizations
made the first of several attempts to fix T.F.A.P. Be patient,
they advised waiting aid recipients; the plan was still
evolving, and its shortcomings would be addressed. Despite
reservations increasingly being voiced by sponsoring
organizations, however, the program seemed to take on a life
of its own.

    In country after country, proposed action plans stressed
such projects as the opening of previously pristine forests for
exploitation. Noting that Cameroon could become the "most
important African producer and exporter of forestry-based
products from the start of the 21st century," T.F.A.P. proposed
construction of a 370-mile road through virgin rain forest that
is home to 50,000 Pygmies. Many environmentalists wondered, By
what logic do building roads into pristine areas and financing
logging operations help preserve uncut forests?

    The logic of self-interest, as it turns out: the sponsors
of T.F.A.P. created a plan that promised benefits to rich and
poor nations alike if they adopted programs stressing forestry
over conservation. By making the forestry department of the
U.N.'s Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization principally
responsible for administering the overall plan, moreover, the
sponsors made it likely that cutting trees would have high
priority.

    But the organizations also made the mistake of selling the
program in different ways to the rich nations and the Third
World. Although touted to environmentalists in the industrial
nations as a plan to save the forests, T.F.A.P. was sold to the
Third World as one more source of funding for traditional
forestry projects. Little wonder that the plans tended to be
short on ways to slow deforestation. Said a development expert:
"For officials in the Third World, environmental aid has become
a new form of cargo cult: Go through the motions of doing these
assessments, and cargo will come."

    The most serious problem, however, is that T.F.A.P. may be
based on a flawed premise. Thomas Fox of the World Resources
Institute doubts there is evidence to support the assumption
that tropical forests can be harvested and managed without
damaging the ecosystem. So little is known about the intricate
co-dependencies that tie the myriad species of plants, animals
and insects of these forests into a working system that some
biologists wonder whether tropical forestry is sustainable at
any commercial level.

    The plan has been all but disavowed by some of its original
sponsors. James G. Speth, who as president of the World
Resources Institute was instrumental in creating T.F.A.P., has
described the plan as the "biggest disappointment of my six
years at W.R.I."

    FAO director general Edouard Saouma, an autocratic executive
who likes to run his own show, has fought to keep control.
Under threat of a funding cutoff from the sponsoring
organizations, however, the U.N. organization agreed in Geneva
earlier this month to cede control of the program to an outside
governing council and to participate in the program's redesign.
For the moment, these decisions have partially mollified
critics, who are willing to wait to see whether these actions
will produce meaningful reform.

    So far, T.F.A.P. has not fulfilled the most dire predictions
of environmentalists, but only because very little of the $8
billion intended for the Third World has actually been spent.
Moreover, the plan has not been all bad. It offered a framework
that brought rich nations together with Third World countries
to begin dealing with tropical deforestation. "There are
benefits to having global, one-stop shopping for the basic
principles of forestry lending," says Barnes of Friends of the
Earth.

    Nor can it be said those criticizing T.F.A.P. are without
sin. Tropical nations today find themselves besieged by
international environmental groups, each promoting its own
approach to conservation and planning. Some African nations are
dutifully undertaking as many as seven different types of
assessments, often with little coordination between the
ministries involved. It was the fear of this type of scattershot
approach that inspired creation of T.F.A.P. in the first
place.

    Perhaps the best thing to come out of the T.F.A.P. disaster
is that the furor it triggered has forced major international
organizations to pay attention to the complexities surrounding
tropical deforestation. The World Bank has been harshly
criticized for promoting development projects that lead to the
destruction of tropical forests. But the bank's vast influence
in poorer nations gives it the potential to be a major force
in plans to save the forests.

    There is little time to spare. An estimated 210 million
acres (85 million hectares) of tropical forests have been
burned, cut or flooded in the five years since T.F.A.P. was
conceived. It is not too late for the world to act to save
these intricate green engines of life, but efforts to help will
come to naught if the rich nations do not first absorb the
failings of the world's most ambitious environmental program
to date.