Sustainable forestry?

This is the text of a presentation prepared for a panel discussion, "Green Futures or a Green Future - what is the correlation between sustainable and ecological forest practices?" at the First North American Temperate Forest Conference, in Burlington, Vermont, on November 14, 1993. Other members of the panel were Tracy Katelman, of the Institute for Sustainable Forestry, and Richard Miller, of Forest Partnership. Only part of this text was presented. Printed in the Earth First! Journal, February 2, 1994, Vol.XIV, No. III.

I had some trouble seeing what the title of this panel actually meant, and finally decided it was about whether or not there could be a sustainable forestry within industrial capitalist society. So I will not in this talk outline the features making up an ecological forestry. From my perspective as a Green forestry activist, a sustainable forestry requires a sustainable society, and this will be my focus. As activists we need that spirit of, "You have to want to fight". But we also need to understand and project in our organizing, a vision of the type of society where a real sustainable forestry would be possible. In the video "Thinking Like A Forest: A Case for Sustainable Selective Forestry", Merv Wilkinson's forestry practices are presented as a case study of sustainable selective logging on Vancouver Island, carried on over a period of about fifty years.

However, this video and the book "Wildwood: A Forest for the Future", by Ruth Loomis and Wilkinson (which should be read in conjunction with the video), although very helpful, do not question the overall premises of industrial society. (The video is also human-centered, shows a lack of spirituality and emphasizes yuppie fossil-fuelled machinery.)

Similarly the book by Herb Hammond, "Seeing The Forest Among The Trees: The Case For Wholistic Forest Use", the best Canadian book on forestry that I know of, does not fundamentally question the premises of industrial capitalism. Hammond, who presents very interesting ideas on community forest boards and wholistic forest use, explicitly states in his book that he will keep corporations, the capitalist market model, and the world timber market. As Hammond says, "We would establish real free enterprise in the British Columbia timber industry." Also he notes, "Timber companies can and will continue to exist."

Forestry activists must face up to the fundamental question of whether or not real long term sustainable forestry can be practiced within this society. In my own view, it is a deceptive illusion to advocate the path of sustainable forestry WITHIN industrial capitalism. This does not mean we sit back and do nothing, and wait for the revolution. We need reforms which help to disintegrate, not consolidate capitalist industrialism.

I think that a lot of the work we do as activists helps consolidate the system. For example, we hear the comment that consumerism is the main problem. There is little talk about continual industrial growth, with consumerism as an aspect of this. If consumerism is the problem, then manipulating consumer choices, e.g. "consumer boycotts" (consumer sovereignty?), becomes a focus of organizing for many forestry activists. Growth remains unchallenged by our practice. "Niche marketing", for designated forestry products, labelled as produced sustainably, also leaves the system untouched. The "Silva Forest Foundation", which Herb Hammond is a member of, speaks of the "Certification of Ecologically Responsible Forest Uses and Products". Yet "green" marketing still remains a promotion of consumer products and part of the engine of corporate growth.

Winona LaDuke, who spoke at the conference, pointed out that capitalism requires continual intervention into other lands and cultures. David Suzuki showed that in our culture the economy determines the society. So activists had better make sure they understand the nature of the economy they are operating in.

What then is a sustainable society? We surely need an understanding of this if we are searching for a sustainable forestry. A sustainable society is one which does not destroy our ecology or our communities and which has social justice as its core. Values which promote this are crucial for forestry activists. Forestry conflicts are clashes between basic values.

We have to understand and oppose the basic values of capitalist industrialism in our forestry work - and along with our activism - hold and put forward an alternative philosophy. All the mainstream political parties in Canada (Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic Party, Reform, Bloc Quebecois, etc.) have the same basic values as the forest industry: maximum wood production, and the use of whatever extraction methods can do this the most cheaply.

UNSUSTAINABLE SOCIETY CORE VALUES

The core values of the UNSUSTAINABLE society which we live in, and which are reflected throughout the forest industry, center around two basic sets of beliefs:

1. The belief in economic growth, sometimes called "development". Consumerism is part of this and is presented as the meaning of life. Philosophy is now turned on its head. It is no longer "I think, therefore I am", but "I consume, therefore I am." There is also the unchallenged view that there can be unlimited population growth.

2. The belief that nature is a "resource". This is the view that ethics is totally human-centered. (I think we should, as activists banish the frequently heard term "resource", as a description of trees, fish, minerals etc. This term conveys a human-centered perspective that nature is only for human use. It is a form of conceptual enclosure.) We must continually think hard about the basic values we reflect in our organizing work, and the language we use to express ourselves. We must put our minds as well as our bodies on the line.

Wolfgang Sachs, a German thinker, shows in the article "Development: a Guide to the Ruins", (The New Internationalist, June 1992) how "development" was an American-generated concept introduced after the Second World War, "designed to remake the world in the image of the United States of America." The US was promoted as the model of the good life to which other, "underdeveloped" countries must aspire to.

At the NFN conference, stories were told of US environmental interventions in other countries, environmentalists doing good works abroad. But, under the US flag, the United States has intervened militarily, economically and culturally all over the world. One must therefore at least question interventions by American environmentalists in the countries of the Two-Thirds World, or the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.

Personally, as a Canadian living in Nova Scotia, I am quite sensitive to American-generated maps of "north woods", published in Wild Earth, which include a large chunk of Canada, drawn up without consulting with Eastern Canadian forestry activists.

AN ALTERNATIVE PHILOSOPHY

I think the bones of a basic alternative philosophy for our forestry and other environmental work draw on traditional native and deep ecology thinking - the eight-point deep ecology platform - and with a strong social justice component which has its roots in the socialist tradition. This alternative philosophy expresses a new relationship to nature, which is biocentric or ecocentric, not human-centered.

Putting the Earth first means ecosystem rights before human rights. When considering human rights, give native/indigenous rights first consideration, but not at the expense of ecosystem rights. From such a perspective, I cannot support the pulpwood logging of La Verendrye Park in Quebec, or similar situations, even if endorsed by some native people. Similarly, a biocentric perspective cannot endorse COMMERCIAL fur trapping, no matter the impassioned defense of this by Winona LaDuke. Social justice is only possible in a context of ecological justice. We have to move from a shallow, human-centered ecology, to a deeper all-species centered ecology.

The social component of the alternative philosophy must advocate building a movement against industrialism, and advocating a no-growth economy. We need to raise the banner of living more simply and reduce population. We must advocate the cancellation of debts for countries in the Two- Thirds World, and the transfer of wealth to "have-not" countries. Our orientation has to be that governments and industry in "developed" countries are partners in environmental crimes. The values we advance in our work as forestry activists, or in the illusive pursuit of a "certifiable" sustainable forestry, cannot help destroy the natural world.

An American philosopher, Andrew McLaughlin, whom I first met at a Vermont Earth First! conference back in September, 1989, has produced a book which combines a deep ecology and social justice perspective coming out of the socialist tradition. His book is called "Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology". The final chapter, "For a Radical Ecocentrism", should be required reading for any environmental activist seeking an alternative world view to industrial madness.

THEORETICAL WEAPONS OF THE INDUSTRIAL EXPANSIONARY CLASS

Discussions of forestry in Canadian industry or government circles now speak of "sustainable development", not sustained yield. The federal government's Green Plan, which has a major influence on environmental activity in Canada, is permeated by the language of sustainable development. The general bogus idea behind this human-centered concept is that the world can continue growing economically, with unlimited expansion, and we can still "protect" the environment. Solutions to environmental problems are to be addressed through market forces and through existing social structures. Lobbying elected politicians, as we are continually exhorted to at this conference, in the process legitimates the government-sanctioned system of industrial expansion and corporate order.

The 1987 UN report, "Our Common Future", known as the Brundtland report, makes the theoretical case for sustainable development. (See the Green Web Bulletin #16, "Sustainable Development: Expanded Environmental Destruction", February 1990, for a critique of the various aspects of sustainable development.) Many mainstream environmentalists in the government-funded Canadian Environmental Network also use the terminology of "sustainable development". This can lead to disputes between mainstreamers and developers, over whether or not a particular "development" is an example of "sustainable development"!

My argument in this presentation is that those who pursue the road of sustainable forestry within the existing system are pursuing a mirage and essentially operating within the sustainable development framework of unlimited industrial expansion. Society in Canada or the United States is not ecologically viable, and there can be no sustainable forestry without a fundamental and revolutionary change to ecological and social sustainability. We must advocate this in our organizing work.

Back home