Forestry and stewardship in South-East Asia, with special reference to Peninsular Malaysia
2000
Kathirithsmby-Wells, J.
Climate and geography have rendered the task of forestry difficult and complex in the tropics. Early realization of the impact of deforestration on climate and environment made colonial foresters aware that forests afforded services other than the provision of wood and fuel. The rapid expansion of population in Southeast Asia as of the nineteenth century obliged foresters to put in place appropriate legislation to curb indigenous practices of shifting cultivation. The forestry service was much less successful in arresting the loss of forests to plantation agriculture. After World War II, the challenge to forestry was intensified by Southeast Asia`s emergence as a major timber export region. Where previously natural regeneration, long cutting cycles and manual extraction allowed the return of biodiversity, post-War extensification and intensification of logging has threatened the fundamentals of forest stewardship in the tropics. Ironically, it is where the environmental and biological value of forests are highest, such as in the moist tropics of Southeast Asia, that the forester`s role has been most challenged by politics and economics. The paper will argue that it is within the context of these processes that global discourse on the ethics of forest conservation and stewardship has evolved.
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