Saxakali Magazine V3N1
Environmental Issues:

What is sustainable logging?

Who decides what is sustainable for whom, and for how long? Sustainable development of people must be based on the material, cultural, social, intellectual and psychological existence of local communities. Sustainable development of resources should be in harmony with peoples and the natural environment.

A sustainable logging system has never been actually achieved. Many studies show the main obstacles are social, political and economic, not technical. Even the limited goal of achieving a sustained yield of salable timber from tropical forests has provedelusive. However, responsible logging must aim not just to allow timber to replace itself but alos to be socially and environmentally favorable and economically viable.

Sustainable logging practices include ensuring that only clearly identified timbers are extracted and that minimum damage is done by felling and skidding. Care must be taken that the residual forests are left in optimal condition after the cut. Because different soils, species and other variables may result in very different rates of growth, ongoing studies and interventions can increase the rate of regrowth of desired species four or five times.

The extent to which the CELOS system in suriname is profitable is disputed. It requries a costly management system of highly trained foresters and labor-intensive replanting and care of new trees. CELOS foresters are offended when timber companies use their careful, experimental and incomplete system, to propose management systems based on CELOS yields, and justify unsustainable logging.

Live in Harmony with Earth

Copyright © 1997. [Saxakali]. All rights reserved.
Revised: July 11, 1997.