Sustainable management of Guyana’s greenheart timber

Oct 11, 2016 Letters

---

Dear Editor;
May I be allowed to respond to the letter ‘A plea to the Guyana Forestry Commission’ (KN, 09 October 2016)? The letter writer seems to think that the prohibition by the UK Environment Agency on greenheart timber (not proven to be from sustainable forest management in Guyana) has been debated by the GFC Board of Directors. So far as I am aware, there has not been such a debate this year.
Let me try to explain forest sustainability in kitchen terms. Managing our tropical rainforest is like baking black cake. There are many ingredients for black cake but you do not use the same quantities of each ingredient. Similarly the forests of Guyana have more than one thousand species of trees but not in equal quantities. A cook wants to be known for his/her special recipe, he/she uses the same ingredients at each bake for consistency. Likewise, to sustain the forest, we want to keep all the species in the same proportions, from one generation to another.
A cook would not use only one tablespoon of raisins, after letting the children steal and eat the rest of the prescribed cups of raisins, because the mixture just would not be black cake. Similarly, the GFC (as cook) should not be allowing the loggers (the children) to take out or damage preferentially most of the middle-sized greenheart trees, so prejudicing the next crop of commercial trees.
The post-logging surveys or silvicultural assessments of areas of forest which have been logged are the evidence of whether a forest is sustainably managed or not. That is the measure of sustainable logging. In 2002, the villagers at Rupertee in Region 9, learned about and participated in silvicultural assessment of paurine timber trees (botanical name Centrolobium paraense) on Rupertee Mountain under the guidance of Colin Jacobus of Iwokrama . They understood Colin’s demonstration of age-size classes and his assessment that continuing logging of paurine would make that species extinct in their area and they made rules to control future logging. When I last visited Rupertee in 2013, a few people told me that they were still protecting their remaining paurine trees.
By May and December 2015, the Forest Products Association, GMSA and GFC were aware of the reasons for the prohibition of greenheart imports into the UK. In July and September 2015, the GMSA at least was aware of the need to compile reliable forest inventory data. The GMSA may not have been aware that a demonstration of sustainable forest management requires pre-logging inventory, estimation of tree growth and mortality rates, and post-logging inventory of the trees which should form the next crop. The GFC has had a manual of how to conduct post-logging survey – or silvicultural assessment – since 1999. This kind of survey was routine in Sarawak in Malaysia from the mid-1960s. The GFC has had computer models for growth, yield and mortality of the main timber species since 2000.
Likewise, there is no shortage of information about the UK Government’s timber procurement policy since 2002, the accepted definitions of legality and sustainability, the acceptable evidence for legality and sustainability, the framework for assessment. If the GFC –
►implemented the national forest policy approved by the National Assembly in 1997,
►made obligatory the codes of practice on timber harvesting (third edition, 2013-4) by activating section 35 in the Forests Act 2009,
►including the provisions for sustaining viable populations of individual timber species, then the assessments for Guyana would not be negative. Remember that the assessments are for each source forest (individual logging concession), not a one-time tree count spread over much of central Guyana.
The following four sources are among the several which are easily accessible:
►https://www.gov.uk/timber-procurement-policy-tpp-prove-legality-and-sustainablity;
►https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/framework-for-evaluating-category-b-evidence;
►https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/323007/Practical_Guide_to_Supply_Chain_Information_Edition_1.pdf;
►http://www.procurementcupboard.org/Files/Practical%20Guide%20to%20Forest%20Source%20Information%20Edition%201.pdf.
For some 15 years, the UK Government funded a Central Point of Expertise on Timber (CPET), to draft policy papers and prepare guidance notes. At the end of March 2016, CPET was closed, partly to save money and partly because nearly all regular suppliers to UK Government procurement contracts knew and complied with the rules. Why is Guyana the odd country which does not know and does not comply but somehow wants to be allowed to sell piratically-logged greenheart, unlike all other suppliers?
Rupertee Village in 2002 made a decision on their own to manage the paurine tree sustainably. If the GFC is managing greenheart sustainably in central Guyana, then among the things it has to do is publish the post logging surveys that show the age-size classes of sufficient undamaged mother trees to form the next crops.
Janette Bulkan

---

---