[Feature: Sustainable Consumption] Sustainable Forest Management and Timber Consumption

2019/08/05

At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, the "Forest Principles" (Non-legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests) was issued regarding the handling of forests. The phrase "non-legally binding" represents the complexity of international forest issues. In fact, between 1980 and 1990, forests decreased by 15.4 million hectares annually, and there was a sense of crisis particularly regarding the sharp decline of tropical rainforests. However, because forest issues are highly social in each country and a legally binding treaty covering the entire world could not be concluded, the "Forest Principles" were summarized with the expression "authoritative but non-legally binding." Subsequently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) was established, but it remained in a state where concrete activities did not follow. Nevertheless, the concept of "Sustainable Forest Management" (SFM) from these "Forest Principles" came to be placed at the center of global forest management.

According to "FAOSTAT" (Statistics of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), as of November 30, 2015, the world's annual timber production is slightly less than 3 billion m³. Of this, 1.2 billion m³ is used primarily as fuelwood and charcoal for fuel, while the remaining approximately 1.8 billion m³ consists of industrial roundwood for construction materials and paper raw materials. The trade volume is only 136 million m³, accounting for a mere 4.5% of the total.

One might be puzzled by the large amount used for fuel and surprised that the timber trade volume accounts for such a small percentage. In other words, it is clear that most timber is consumed domestically, and a significant portion of that is used for fuel. Of course, it is used as fuel for biomass boilers in developed countries, but in developing countries, fuel for cooking and heating for daily life is by far the most common.

Currently, 60 million indigenous people on Earth live depending on forests, and the number of people who depend on forests for their daily food and livelihood reaches approximately 350 million. This is roughly 5% of the total population on Earth. Since I make a living through the business of forestry, I am also one of those who depend on forests. It is not a mistake to think that many people who depend on forests, including indigenous peoples, are in a state where they entrust their lives to the woods. Ownership and usage rights for forests are often not codified in developing countries and have mostly been recognized through custom. While these customary land-use rights of indigenous peoples have already been recognized by the United Nations, in most cases, indigenous peoples have no concept of land ownership itself. Therefore, when the land or forest gains value, powers such as the state ignore the rights of the people who have used it customarily and eventually develop it for profit. The negative impact is not limited to forest loss alone.

Daily life is possible precisely because firewood as fuel for living is available right next to the forest, and drinkable water flows from the forest. If the forest disappears, obtaining firewood becomes difficult and water sources become distant. Women and children, who could previously obtain these things next to their homes, must walk long distances to get them. Women may ruin their health by carrying heavy loads daily, and children may have to work during the time they should be receiving an education. Even livestock manure and crop residues, which should originally be plowed into fields to maintain crop yields, are used as fuel, causing the land to become depleted and yields to decrease. Respiratory diseases increase due to fuels that are inappropriate compared to wood. Ultimately, they are pulled into a cycle of poverty. And children end up in prostitution from a young age for the sake of survival. The trigger for this may be the fact that forests have been cut down in a disorderly manner to obtain the timber used for the buildings, furniture, and paper materials we use.

However, this is rarely realized within Japan. In other words, we are committing the "sin of not knowing." In this way, the reality exists that forests are being taken away from people who depend on them for their lives, primarily in developing countries.

According to a 2015 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), natural forests decreased by an average of 6.5 million hectares per year between 1990 and 2015. Compared to the annual decrease of 15.4 million hectares between 1980 and 1990, this has slowed to about 42%, but this is a result of China significantly increasing its forests, and the decrease continues. The global economic loss due to serious illegal logging in developing countries is said to be approximately 2.2 trillion yen every year.

There is a widely shared global recognition that there are limits to enforcement by administration regarding forest issues, and that private sector activities are also important. In Japan, because large government subsidies (relative to the economic scale of the industry) are poured into forests, forestry activities are mostly influenced by the intentions of the Forestry Agency. For this reason, there is low awareness of private sector activities as important players in sustainable forest management.

Internationally, there are various influential private-level activities. It was determined that a system called forest certification was necessary for these diverse activities to involve everyone from the forest to the consumer. Separately from intergovernmental discussions, the need for a forest certification system began to be discussed even before the 1992 Earth Summit to break the current state of deforestation and tropical rainforest degradation. In 1993, the founding general assembly of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) was held in Toronto, Canada, by representatives of foresters, timber consumers, distributors, environmental groups, and human rights groups. 130 people from 26 countries participated, and the first board members were elected. That year, the first FSC FM (Forest Management) certification took place in Mexico, and CoC (Chain of Custody) certification was born in the United States.

The FSC has a mechanism to promote consumer choice through a system that proves forest products come from appropriately managed forests. It utilizes market mechanisms to support responsible forest management through consumer understanding and purchasing power.

Developed countries consume products made from timber from all over the world through timber trade. To put it another way, it might be said that the societies of developed countries are built at the expense of the forests and biodiversity of developing countries. Japan is one of them. Modern life is built on the premise of consumption, much of which is made possible by trade. Consumers have few opportunities to know where and in what condition the things they consume were produced.

Forest-derived products actually provide a variety of things, not just timber, but also fruit, paper, fiber, and medicine. People notice which forest these came from or how that forest is managed even less than they do with agricultural products, but it is becoming important for consumers to consider the state of forest management as a criterion for their choices. The system that made this possible is the FSC.

On the other hand, domestic forests in Japan are in their richest state in modern history. By the 17th century, at the beginning of the Edo period, the forests available for people to use had already been logged; therefore, it was necessary to protect forests by imposing strong regulations such as "Tomeyama" (restricted mountains). Not only fuel, but also houses, bridges, ports, river improvements, new field developments, ships, and fishing gear were all made of wood. Even before the Edo period, timber was excessively logged for the construction of castles, shrines, and temples. Entering the Edo period, logging continued for urban expansion, and in the Meiji period, for construction materials and fuel for developing industries. With the forced felling of timber for wartime use during the Pacific War and timber for post-war reconstruction, forests were constantly exploited. As a result, Japan suffered from floods for a long time.

In 1964, tariffs on imported logs became roughly zero, but at that time, Japan's forests were mostly young, with 70% being 15 years old or younger, so imported timber met the domestic demand for wood. Prior to that, from the 1950s to the early 70s, 300,000 to 400,000 hectares were planted every year, and about 8 million hectares were planted over 20 years. Since the current total area of plantation forests is 10 million hectares, this accounts for 80%. These have grown, and 70% of Japan's land is covered by forests, with many plantation forests being around 50 years old and ready for logging.

The current forest issues in Japan, for better or worse, stem from the fact that the age of the forests has increased and the amount of timber, or forest stock, continues to increase. Due to Japan's timber situation, which relied on imported wood for a long time after the war, the development of mass processing and distribution for domestic timber was delayed. Furthermore, the technology and systems for logging and transporting standing trees from the mountains to flat ground remained outdated, and the modernization of each was delayed. The government is leading modernization with large subsidies, but the effect is limited, and productivity in the process from the mountain to the timber product does not increase.

In this situation, the self-sufficiency rate for timber once dropped to 17%, but it has now improved to 36%, and more than 80% of plywood made domestically is produced from domestic timber. That in itself is a welcome development. However, while the price of timber products themselves, which once fell, has returned to the relatively high prices seen during the transition from the Showa to the Heisei era, the price of standing timber on the mountain side (the price of the tree as it grows in the mountain), which was about 20-30% of the product price at that time, is now 4-5%. Consequently, the income of forest owners has become extremely low. It is mostly the forest owners who replant after logging, and if they do not receive a return on what they have grown so far, the next reforestation will not take place. Even if one says that forest regeneration should be left to nature, in reality, if we wait for the forest to recover without planting, it will likely be delayed by about 20 years compared to reforestation, and in some places, it may not become a forest at all. Under current conditions, since forest owners who replant are rare, Japanese forests may face degradation.

Domestically, the Forestry Agency provides subsidies in the form of covering direct costs for operations to promote thinning, but these subsidies have resulted in lowering the price of standing timber on the mountain side. When logs are supplied to the market in large quantities, prices naturally fall, and therefore domestic timber comes to be used. If it is used, timber prices should rise, but that only increases the price of products like pillars and boards, and is not returned to the mountains.

In the future, it is necessary to create a situation where profits are generated on the mountain side by implementing thorough cost reductions from logging to the sawmill, as well as cost reductions at the sawmill.