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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Cutting Down on Political Anemia

We know that preservation of the South American rain forests is a necessary step in ensuring our future a stable climate. Why, then, is illegal logging in the Amazon still so prevalent?

Two weeks ago, the New York Times published a story explaining a recent chapter of Peru’s struggle to combat the black market timber industry ravaging its forests. The global demand for mahogany and other valuable hardwood types – more abundant in the Amazonian rain forests than anywhere else on Earth — has helped fuel illegal timber harvesting in some of the world’s most important forests. Like a similar story in National Geographic from April of this year, the Times articulates that many of the last big mahogany stands exist only within the boundaries of Indian lands. These areas prove difficult to patrol, and the indigenous communities that inhabit them are often as sympathetic to loggers’ cash as they are towards law enforcement.

What efforts are made to try and curtail illicit harvesting in protected areas and carry out conservation plans in managed lands are undermined by political corruption and a lack of other sources of income for the areas’ inhabitants. Military personnel, stationed to patrol locales and check that loggers have the appropriate documentation necessary to harvest trees, can only be so effective, and judges who are supposed to prosecute those caught in violation of policies, more often than not, take a bribe over the rule of law. Such conditions, together with the reluctance of distributors and businesses in the developed world to take precautions necessary for keeping “poached” timber out of their supply chains, might seem to draw a picture of a relatively bleak future for forests the Earth needs to breathe.

How might we go about trying to ensure that these forests — the importance of which links not only to climate change, but also biodiversity and human ecology — do not go damaged beyond repair? The problem will not be solved unless we tackle the conditions on the ground that perpetuates cutting as well as remedy the upstream demand that facilitates it.

Governance does not work in a given area unless it has the resources necessary for it to run. While I am not about to propose a solution for the lack of effective civil society in the Amazon, I do not think real progress can be made towards conservation goals without an effective means of enforcement. Military personnel can be paid off – the kind of social pressure capable of dissuading a judge from taking a bribe can only be instantiated through genuine community building. Getting people to take ownership over their political lives does not, and cannot happen overnight. However, if means are taken to lessen the influence that extra-governmental forces have on law enforcement and the justice system, then interests other than those of the governed might have a harder time interfering with regulation. Get the people involved in the way their government works — if we can set the scene for civic development, where livelihoods interact positively with an active role in the political process, conflicts like these will be easier to avoid and to mitigate.

At the same time, we in the North have our own part to play. If it is our demand for fine wood products that drives the illegal cutting taking place down south, then we should presumably do our best to make sure the wood we’re getting is ethically sourced. Sustainable forestry protocols can help, but as the examples at hand show, we have relatively little control what happens on the other end of the supply chain. I think we would do better to simply reevaluate what might be able to meet our material needs as conscious consumers. While we might not be able to control what emerging markets for rare hardwoods (read: China and India) demand, we might have a chance at trying to talk international markets into opting for more sustainable alternatives.

The story of the persistence of Amazonian logging only serves to bring our attention towards a central tension in our contemporary age — while economic development can appear to provide solutions for environmental problems, it invariably comes at a cost. Bringing commerce and nation-building to the global south might provide opportunities for development beyond natural resource exploitation, but questions regarding to the compatibility of capitalism and indigenous ways of life still fail to provide clear answers. Political liberalism, the panacea in vogue, may strengthen civil society to a certain extent. Problems arise, however, when liberal economics beat political liberalism out of the blocks.


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