Can money grow on trees? That was the question put by this week’s BBC Panorama documentary. But it wasn’t referring to the value of timber. It was looking at ways for tropical countries to raise cash from their forests without chopping them down. This meant working out their value in terms of ‘ecosystem services’, for which industrialised countries would then pay an annual fee.
In the programme, land clearance for agriculture was portrayed as the main cause of deforestation. But ‘loggers’ came in for their fair share of the flak and the statement that “just one truckload of rare hardwood can be worth £40,000” reinforced the media image of the timber trade as solely devoted to converting endangered forests to cash.
The ingredients are there to tell the other story about tropical forestry and the timber trade. If a truck of timber is worth £40,000 and we all want the rainforests preserved, why not put two and two together and look at how sustainable forest management can be part of the solution?
Why TV documentary makers don’t make this connection is partly due to the influence of the harder line NGOs and their well-oiled media machines. But it’s also down to the fact that the timber trade worldwide still doesn’t make enough noise about its achievements in certification and sustainable timber harvesting. And now it has some fantastic stories to tell.
Recently we covered CIB’s certification project in the Congo, which included creating GPS-linked hand-held computers with symbol keys so the local population could map areas they wanted kept out of bounds to harvesting. This week we report on Wijma’s latest certification success in Cameroon, which entailed huge investment in local services, infrastructure and wildlife protection as well as a truly sustainableforest management regime.
These projects would make great TV and cast the timber trade in a whole new light for many viewers. It’s just a case of persuading broadcasters to make more of them.
