A North South difference
The countries of the North have emphasised the need for globally applicable criteria and indicators by which any country's forest policies may be judged. At an international workshop held in Delhi recently called Towards Sustainable Forestry: Preparing for the Commission on Sustainable Development 1995, they asserted that such criteria were desirable and feasible. In this context, several European countries cited the Helsinki Guidelines for the Protection of Forests in Europe.
But many developing countries, including India and China, countered the above point of view. Indian environment minister Kamal Nath stated that the states had "sovereign right...to use their resources in accordance with their own environmental policies and development needs." The Chinese were clear that internationally endorsed frameworks for resource use "while being useful as a point of reference, should never be legally binding".
Yet, the hosts as well as the participants did their best to keep such differences in the background of their discussions.
The July 25-27 workshop was jointly hosted by India and the United Kingdom as part of the Forestry Initiative the 2 nations had launched in September 1993. Delegates from 43 countries and several international organisations such as the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Environment Programme attended the workshop, held to draw up a uniform and internationally acceptable format for countries to report to the CSD in 1995.
The framework for national reporting that was agreed upon at the end of the workshop placed the "conservation, management and overall aspects of sustainable development of forests" ahead in terms of priority than the blandly termed "role of major groups and social aspects of forests".
This attitude -- decrying the role and rights of forest-based communities -- was often evident in statements made on behalf of India, too. While referring to the interminable linkages between millions of Indians and forests, Nath termed the fuelwood and fodder collected by them a "direct subsidy to them".
The same approach led one of the principal chief forest conservators from the Indian states, present as invitees, to urge the meet to recognise the cattle owned by rural Indians as a special menace. He claimed that foraging cattle constituted the greatest danger to the well-being of Indian forests.
The next day, the drafting committee in charge of the final recommendations spent some valuable time considering whether "livestock" was a more apt term for the threat referred to by the Indian officer, before the suggestion was dropped. Overall, an earnest and agreeable affair.
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