Ending the elitist monopolies of woodchipping and wilderness
the case of the South East forests of Australia
Peter Morgan
Abstract of Paper given at National Symposium
Regional Forest Agreements and the Public Interest:
16 July 1998, Australian National University
...forests like people, grow and die; it is the integrity of the forest ecosystem, the dynamic extension of the forest in time, that we must learn to protect (Perry 1988:19).
Conserved wilderness is the other face of rampant, urban, industrial growth. No surprise that bearded Tasmanian Wilderness Society boys ran heavy-fuel-consumption four-wheel-drives from inner city terrace homes to strategy meetings. Their narrow presevrationist attitudes sidelined the global injustice of a high-consumption lifestyle where Third World forests are used as carbon sinks' or traditional fishing grounds are closed off at the behest of a leisure class...the economic naivety of much wilderness politics carried on by an international environmental establishment' (Sallah 1996:27).
...the coiling discourses of communities' and indigenous peoples' rights, and of environmental values to be taken into account, must be seen to have a tragic side. Individually, when a community group wins a battle...or saves a mountainside from being strip-mined, we rejoice. But it would be disastrous if people were to believe that taking account of the "true value" of things (and of people) had anything to do with doing a full and correct cost-benefit analysis...In dog-eat-dog market society, winners "use" and use up losers - and the "losers" include individuals qua workers and consumers (and qua "unemployed" nonworkers and nonconsumers), and collectivities qua firms, communities, and indeed whole societies, ecosystems, and species. In the mad scramble for survival, the sheer plethora of values articulated and the incoherence of all these fragmentary valuation efforts works as a smokescreen deflecting attention from the outright impossibility, even in theory, of a "rational management" of all this notionally capitalised nature...so the question remains: The (sustainable?) management of production conditions, as desired by which labor, which communities, which urban (and rural) populations?...Abstractly, this problem of coexixtence probably defies satisfactory solution. In practice, solutions have to be, more or less unhappily, worked out (O'Conner 1994:145-146).
RFA's: WHICH "PUBLIC INTEREST"
Regional Forests Agreements: are official Governmenmtal modes of settlement, involving new lines on maps, between rival elitist forces: export woodchipping (resourcism) and wilderness (presevationism). The environment movement demands preservation of forests on the basis of the intrinsic and existence rights of "nature" (to de-industrialise forests, placing a regime of human non-interference).
Powerful forces behind wood extraction (the large woodchip companies') have fought the environment movement's agenda and sought to re-legitimise their position in the forests. These forces have strategically engaged in a power struggle over which particular discourse on "nature" will be imposed on the forests. This conflict became a major problematic for government resulting in inquiries, new bureaucracy, knowledge production and official discourse on the forests. Forests have been added to the domain of governmentality.
Governmentality, the RFA process and outcomes: are about the transformation of the problematisation of the forests and the rival claims into the subject of policy and administration. In the real world of forest conflict Governments' have taken-over, incorporated and transformed the claims of preservation and resourcism by "balancing" these two conflicting discourses as central components of its official discourses on the forests (RFA's). In this `transformation or mutation', preservation is partly secured by a `representative, adequate and comprehensive' reserve system; and resourcism is partly secured with long-term resource rights and no restrictions on export woodchips on forests outside the reserve system based on "regional sustained yields". What this governmentality of the forests has and will produce as a central outcome is a new division of the forests reflected on the new maps as separate and distinct areas of forest-use. What will happen to these preserved forests without the active intervention of a fire management regime (opposed by environmentalists) is yet to be seen. The fire ecology history of the region indicates the future may involve massive bushfires. The forest, given over to long-term wood production contains no restrictions on export woodchips.
THE ECOLOGICAL/ECONOMIC/EMPLOYMENT FUTURE: BUT WHICH OUTCOME
Question: What do we wish to conserve and preserve or what should we use in native forests?
The ecology and fire patterns now, those that existed 200 years age? In the case of existing National parks near Sydney, and by implication native forests generally, Flannery has argued that if we choose:
...to recreate the conditions that existed there during the 60,000 years of Aboriginal occuption. This would clearly involve the implementation of a fire regime that would be regarded as sacreligious by many conservationists, for it would effectively banish forest from much of the Botany Bay National Park and similiar areas, replacing it with very open, fire-maintained woodland (Flannery 1994:381-382).
This scenario would not suit the romantic views of the environment movement based on scenery and non-interference; it also may not suit the present configuration of the commercial wood interests, for they may not have a role. It most likely would be a management regime based on active forestry without mass-volume wood extraction.
Employment: the employment question has been pivotal to forest outcomes. Neither the environment movement nor the timber industry have delivered in social justice terms, a successful outcome for forest workers. The environmental movement remains post-distributional towards the situation facing workers, and environmentally-racist in regard to past Aboriginal occupation and use of forests. The large wood interests have used workers as a political barrier to preservation. They have provided little to replace their short term, capital deficient industry strategy, leaving workers with little employment security. RFA's allow the continuation of intensive wood extraction within the declared production forests. There is no real practical requirement (despite more feasibility studies) on the industry to move to a further value-adding and more labor intensive processing and product base. This leaves the future of forest employment resting on single low-value volume markets. It leaves forest workers subject to shifts in woodchip supply within the global market.
RFA's, despite the rhetoric, provide no clear progress with value-adding investments. Time is running out for the industry to adjust by using less wood to create new products and markets. Employment may (in the short term) be partially offset with export woodchip operations. This will be subject to regular wide cycles in demand, and long-term collapse. In the meantime the production forests will chiefly support intensive extraction and production of woodchips under a management regime that will pay little if any attention to the restoration requirements of these forests and the sustainable future of workers.
IS A HIGHER SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE?: THE REAL POLITICS INSIDE THE RFA's
An alternative direction (needing careful transition) for the South East forests of Australia is possible. It involves a forest restoration plan for existing degraded forests, using the wood produced in value added processing which, on the basis of existing research and existing but limited commercial application, would cut the rate of logging by at least one half and secure and increase employment. This new direction would deliver ecological justice for the extensive degraded forests by conducting a restoration plan; and social justice for the timber workers by creating stable and sustainable employment.
How?: By thinking the questions `what is a sawlog' and `what is a pulp or woodchip log'.
Research findings and practical commercial developments (Andrews Sawmills) suggested that up to 50 % of the now regarded non-sawlog material could be recovered for sawmill processing with export markets in place. This represents a fundamental challenge to the basis of dominant resource estimates used in RFA's and suggests the possibility of substantial changes in the nature of the industry, the stability of employment and the impacts on the forests. This information has however, failed to effect any major intertextual change in the `official resource estimation discourse' used to support the RFA's.
The employment and socio-economic advantages of sawing and adding value as opposed to simple woodchipping pulp/woodchip logs is an increase by the factor of five. If such a strategy was pursued and the employment gains achieved, existing employment could be maintained using less than half the proposed wood off-take, cutting the intensity of logging required to implement the restoration strategy. This employment analysis is based on sawing for existing unseasoned products and does not factor in any additional employment from moving to seasoning and further processing of the wood, nor the possibility of replacing (in the medium-term) export woodchips with local processing (low capital cost particle board manufacture, energy products).
The sawing of logs, as opposed to woodchipping, will require substantial restructuring. The key to this would be the development of centralised log classification systems along with log breakdown sawing systems designed to saw out solid wood sections from pulp/woodchip logs. This proposal is based on existing research. Its implementation would require a change in attitude from environmentalists, unions and industry.
This alternative industry strategy, by reducing the pressure on the forests, can create the possiblity of pursuing the restoration of the degraded forests. A sawn recovery strategy is far less intensive in its logging requirements and could be more easily tailored to the restoration requirements of these forests. It for instance, would enable: the more careful management of forests in order to achieve their original species composition; the ability to identify sensitive parts of the forest ecosystems, which could be subject to low-level utilisation, or not logged at all; and provide more scope for the retention of important habitat requirements.
SOLUTIONS NOW
- a new forestry;
- domestic adjustment policy and action;
- an intra-regional forest agreement plan (C/W, NSW, VIC);
- public discussion of publicily funded research;
- private and public attitudes and actions which embrace humane and mutual coexistence in this finite world.
REFERENCES
Flannery, T. (1994) The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People, Port Melbourne: Reed Books.
O’Conner, M. (1994) `On the Misadventures of Capitalist Nature’, 125-151, in M. O’Conner (ed) Is Capitalism Sustainable: Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology, New York:: The Guilford Press.
Perry, D. (1988) `An Overview of Sustainable Forestry’, Journal of Pesticide Reform, 8:3, 8-12.
Salleh, A. (1996) `The Politics of Wilderness: Aborigines and Eco-activists’, Arena Magazine, 23, 26-30.