Quantum Forest

It seems that during summer time not much is happening on environmental issues in Tasmania. Plenty of people are on holidays and the news cover mostly regrettable natural disasters around the planet. Anyway, just a few things that will be—or are likely to be—happening in Tasmania during 2005:

• 1080 will stop being used in State Forests in December 2005. Therefore, Forestry Tasmania will stop its use, in the same way it stopped using Atrazine in 1997.
• Parliament will continue the discussion about repealing section 32A (112 KB, PDF file) of the Freedom of Information Act. Although Forestry Tasmania is subject to Freedom of Information law, it may request exemption under specific circumstances. FoI law still protects information considered ‘commercial in confidence’, including pricing.
• The government should make available the results of public consultation on the projected pulp mill in Northern Tasmania.
• Forestry Tasmania should make public the updated version of Alternatives to Clearfell Silviculture. They were supposed to be released around the time of the past Federal Elections. On hindsight it was good that the results were not released on time. The issue will still be political, but not more than necessary.

I doubt that there will be any real news before March.

PS. 2005-05-16. Additional reservation and other changes were announced in May.

In an unsurprising appearance in the news a few days ago, Senator Bob Brown said that nothing is going to happen with the re-elected government’s promise on Tasmanian forests, so he will not hold his breath about their conservation.

But what would happen if parts of the Tarkine were to be reserved? What would be the impact on Tasmania’s environmental debate if part of the Styx Valley became protected? I think that is highly unlikely that the whole areas — which go way above the 170,000 ha promised by the government — will be reserved. For once, it would probably break the RFA (Regional Forestry Agreement). On another front, it would be seen as too much a concession to the Greens.

However, if the heart of the Tarkine or the section of the Styx Valley that contains the tall trees (yes, a good part of the valley does not contain giant/tall trees) what would be the reaction of environmentalist organisations? They would probably claim that ‘the end is near’ and that ‘it is not enough’, despite of extending partial reservation to two icons of the Tasmanian environmental debate.

I may be wrong — and Bob Brown in the right path — and nothing will happen with this electoral promise. In fact, I normally do not trust politicians; however, in this case I think that the ‘John W. Howard’ reserve (mock name, of course) will be a reality pretty soon indeed.

PS. 2005-05-16. Additional reservation and other changes were announced in May. Bob was wrong.

Gunns has started legal action against twenty environmentalist individuals and groups, including Bob Brown, Peg Putt, the Wilderness Society and Doctors for Forests. The company is trying to recover around AU$6.36 million that claims to have lost due to:

• Logging operations disruption campaigns and actions at Lucaston, Hampshire, Triabunna and the Styx;
• Corporate vilification campaigns relating to the Burnie Woodchip site and the Banksia Awards;
• Campaigns against overseas customers of the First Plaintiff (Gunns) including customers in Japan and Belgium;
• Corporate campaigns targeting shareholders, investors and Banks.

The writ claims that the environmentalists’ campaign is a conspiracy to injure Gunns and to interfere with Gunns trade and business by unlawful means. The writ is quite large, and you can obtain a copy from Bob Brown’s website (PDF 5.4MB).

Environmentalist organisations and forest companies have used before legal action, called to Royal Commissions, lodged formal complaints, etc. Thus, there is nothing new in the ‘legal approach’ to environmental ‘debate’. However, this time Gunns is certainly aiming high in a very risky bet.

Is legal action threatening freedom of speech? I think it is hard to be conclusive about it. On one side, it may deter people voicing their opinions and genuine concerns, which would be a major drawback. On the other, there would be pressure to be more responsible when expressing dissent, particularly pushing people to ‘check facts’ and to avoid bogus claims to disqualify their opponents, which would be a major plus. I would certainly prefer a parallel universe where people would speak their minds openly always telling the truth. However, I live in this universe where legal action may be the lesser evil.

Will Gunns be able to prove the accusations presented in the writ? I find it hard to believe, particularly when (i) trying to connect cause (environmentalists actions) with effects (loss of income) and (ii) valuing the size of the effect of the campaign. It may be that Gunns is trying to establish a ‘fear factor’ (that I do not think will be achieved) or that John Gay really believes the contents of the writ and is trying to recoup some of the money. Anyway, there are interesting days ahead of us.

In a not so unrelated note, the Independent Complaints Review Panel of the ABC, found that the ‘Lords of the Forests Programs’ (aired on 16 February 2004) showed some innacuracies, unsourced visions and emotive language, which affected its balance and fairness.

I received comments about this site from an old university friend who works in Latin America for a major environmentalist organisation. He had some compliments and many criticisms, the latter including that ‘there is only a superficial varnish of conservation biology and you don’t touch political issues like overconsumption and rural poverty’. He is somewhat right, because — mostly due to lack of time — I have not treated with detail all those issues. I will start with poverty.

It is possible to claim that poverty is closely linked to many environmental problems. If one lives in poverty environmental problems tend not to be at the top in one’s list of worries. This probably is because this would imply long term planning, and one is in survival mode. A typical example of poverty and its interaction with the environment is that large part of natural forests deforestation — particularly in the Third World — it is due to harvesting for firewood by poor people. Another one is that reproduction rate (and therefore larger populations that exert more pressure on the environment) is higher in poorer societies.

Richer societies tend to develop a preoccupation for the natural environment — and can dedicate resources to improve it. An increase of living standards is often accompanied by a reduction of birth rate. Graphical representation between income and a series of ‘quality of life’ indicators can be found at Gapminder’s site. Environmental conditions and quality of life tend to improve when societies become richer. Then the questions are Why are some countries poor? and How do we get people out of poverty?

In The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (you can read the introduction here), Hernando de Soto argues that developing countries have failed because most people have dead capital.

Even the poorest people save… but they hold these resources in defective forms: houses built on land whose ownership rights are not adequately recorded, unincorporated businesses with undefined liability, industries located where financiers and investors cannot see them. Because the rights to these possessions are not adequately documented, these assets cannot readily be turned into capital, cannot be traded outside of narrow local circles where people know and trust each other, cannot be used as collateral for a loan, and cannot be used as a share against an investment.

My old friend’s comments and the previous quote reminded me of some lectures on ‘rural development’ at university, where with another friend we questioned the approach proposed by the lecturer. ‘Weren’t we just perpetuating a subsistence level but not increasing living standards?’ ‘Wasn’t the lack of clear property rights (going back to old Spanish institutions like mayorazgo) one of the main causes of environmental degradation in Chile’s IV region?’

Rather than continuous handouts, poor countries need help on implementing reforms that transform all the wealth in their informal economies into capital. Doing this will certainly contribute to improve environmental conditions in the Third World. Going back to my university days: developing a drought-tolerant tree species for firewood is a nice thing to do, but will do very little on improving living standards in a permanent way, because it doesn’t tackle the roots of the problem.

I always find surprising the clean and green motto used by New Zealand, particularly the green part. Driving with Marcela and Orlando from Christchurch to Wakefield (following the Kaikoura, Blenheim, Nelson route) the whole landscape has been transformed. There were only rare examples of the original native vegetation, but there were plenty of farms and wineries (with very nice white wines, by the way).

Yes, the place tends to be very clean and there is a surprisingly large number of public toilets (most of them quite clean). However, from an environmental point of view, New Zealand has been modified and transformed into a large farm. In fact, Tasmania is much ‘greener’ and with a larger forested proportion. It just happens to be drier and, therefore, the vegetation looks less green.

In summary, the motto seems to be clever marketing but quite far from reality. This takes me to another word used all the time with the motto: sustainability and the almost religious meaning of the word.

A few weeks ago I was asked in Tasmanian Times if plantation forestry was sustainable, mostly from a soil fertility viewpoint. Of course my answer was ‘it depends on site and silvicultural practices’. However, every time I answer this type of questions I have a feeling of uneasyness, because people seem to think that the idea is to repeat ‘exactly the same practices’ ad infinitum. That is, they assume a static world, where there is no technological change and no learning. For example, applying current techniques we would probably be able to keep growing plantations one after the other in the same site, while maintaining site productivity. However, most likely we will not use the same techniques and we will want to actually increase productivity while reducing the amount of land dedicated to production.

Environmental discussion in Tasmania is plagued with false dilemmas. As I described before in Conservation or production: a false dilemma, the reduction of environmental issues to ‘two unpleasant mutually exclusive propositions’ shows either dishonesty or lack of imagination (maybe both). In that case, I pointed out that the false dilemma was being presented by environmentalists.

This time around the false dilemma comes from the pro-forestry camp. It is now phrased as ‘pulp mill or woodchips’. Considering the diversity of forests and of their management in Tasmania (species, ages, silviculture, etc), it is conceivable to feed a range of industrial processes (e.g., pulp mills, sawmills, veneer mills, energy production, etc) to obtain, again, a range of products. However, the discussion is presented as we either build a large pulp mill or keep transforming part of the forests into woodchips. Either you support a pulp mill or you support woodchipping; bollocks!

There are, of course, many possible alternative scenarios: large pulp mill, no pulp mill, small pulp mill and other mills, etc. When searching for optimal solutions for Tasmania there is no point on discarding options a priori just because they do not boil down to a simple message or slogan.

I know. I may expect too much from politicians…

Watching the coverage of the USA’s presidential election reminded me of García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Crónica de una muerte anunciada). The end of the story was known from the first pages — well, unless you were a die hard Democrat, but the flavour was in the details. Is the world any better because George Bush won? Probably not, but Kerry winning would not have made much of a difference. As The Economist put it, the choice was between the incompetent and the incoherent.

Given that the election was not that interesting, and that I was confined home with a cold, I decided to do something ‘useful’. I went through some old fan and hate mail for this blog and my Forestry in Tasmania site in an attempt to select the ‘all time classic’. The winner was the chap from the United Kingdom, claiming that there was a conspiracy to hide the environmental problems in the Stix Valley. He would look for it in Google and could not find any references to the problem. Surely the forest industry was exercising undue pressure on Google to hide the truth. Hint: look for Styx Valley, with y, and get over 6,000 hits. What can one say about that? Illiterate comes to mind. He added ‘what can we do about this? Maybe we should boycott Circus Oz, which is financed by Forestry Tasmania’. Of course Circus Oz has no relationship with the forest company, except for participating in 2001 in the Ten days on the island festival, which at the time was sponsored by Forestry Tasmania. The festival had dozens of artists participating, and none of them would claim that they were financed by a forest company. Loonie.

Continuing with loonies, I just read a letter written by a Rambo wannabe representing Doctors for Forests, explaining that the ‘civil war to defend Tasmanian forests’ must continue. I hope he uses a different definition. Should we now start shooting each other over some trees?

Last Saturday the coalition Liberal/National Party easily won the election, despite polls predicting a very close result. However, the market (i.e., betting odds) was giving a probability of 0.6 for a Liberal victory.

This reflects an interesting phenomenon: one should trust more where people put their money than what they say will do. I call this the ‘footy tipping effect’, where most fans will bet against their team if that means they can win the tipping competition. Thus, one can extract more reliable information from tipping than when there is nothing to loose (like in an opinion poll).

Coming back to election policies, Labor was unable to sell its forest policy in Tasmania and did not get anything in exchange in mainland. Labor lost two seats — Bass and Braddon — in Tassie (at least in part because of that policy) and failed to gain the marginal seats in urban mainland that were the reason of being for that policy.

I expect that now that the election is over, political pressure on the forest industry will reduce a bit. Despite of this, I think it is a good idea for industry to use this post election time for making changes that enhance community support in urban areas. This would reduce the ability of its adversaries to put again forestry in the spotlight at federal level. Finally, it is clear from the election results that rural areas are certainly behind industry, as it has been suspected for a long time.

Finally yesterday the Liberals anounced in Launceston their policy for Tasmanian Forests. No big surprises, no big policy. On one side, it is not very different from Labor’s policy, adding 170,000 ha to conservation areas. However, it promises much less money and—here is the big difference—to support the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement (RFA).

A quick glance to the major parties’ forest policies:

I still have not decided which policy is best for Tasmanians. I would love to see a policy that, on one side answers the environmental concerns of the bulk of the community and, on the other, sets clear guidelines for a modern industry, providing appropriate ‘carrots’ for guiding change.

A completely different issue is that I still find strange to have a special ‘Tasmanian Forests Policy’, where it would make much sense the existence of an environmental policy, covering all ecosystems in the country based on biological importance rather than on beauty alone (although I leave room for cultural values here). Particular policies are like having a specially high taxation policy for sexy underwear in King Cross, Sydney. It may be relevant to attract conservative votes somewhere else in the country, but it would certainly not be of national interest (and not necessarily in the best interest of King Cross’s residents).

This post expand on my previous post on Labor’s and Greens’ Tasmanian Forests policies.

We are getting closer to federal election day in Australia and we keep getting new promises and plans for Tasmanian Forests. The Australian Greens are playing the ‘we may hold the balance of power’ card and plan to sell their preferences¹ to the highest bidder. The Tasmanian Greens recently released their Forest Transition Strategy to Protect Forests and Create Sustainable Jobs. It is an interesting document, although with much more emphasis on protecting the forests than on creating jobs. I do not know where they did get the overestimated plantation productivity figures, while underestimating the value of native forest.

Meanwhile, Australian Labor—the main opposition party—released Labor’s Plan to Save Tasmania’s High Conservation Value Forests. The plan is aimed to attract Green preferences in urban seats, although it has managed to annoy the forest industry and the rural electorate dependent on forestry activity.

We are still waiting to hear from John Howard (Liberal Party) and see if he puts forward a plan for Tasmania’s Forests. My feeling is that he may be astute enough to avoid controversy—there is no much to win for the liberals in this front—and will not release any forest policy, cashing on angry rural Labor votes.

This will be an interesting week heading towards election day: Saturday 9^th of October.

¹ The Australian Federal Parliament has two levels: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Members of these levels are elected using a preferencial voting system—called proportional representation—which is slightly different for the Representatives and the Senate.

P.S. 2004-10-07. The Liberals’ policy is discussed on a later post.