| [Back to front page] | What is
‘deforestation’? To the lay person, ‘deforestation’ may mean little more than the removal of trees from the forest. But according to CIFOR scientists William D. Sunderlin and Ida Aju Pradnja Resosudarmo it is more complex than that. In their survey of Rates and Causes of Deforestation in Indonesia: Towards a Resolution of the Ambiguities (CIFOR Occasional Paper 9), the researchers point out that a number of questions must be asked about the removal of forest cover in order for it to be termed ‘deforestation.’ Is the removal permanent or temporary? If the definition includes forest cover removed for shifting cultivation, when the land returns as secondary forest will it still be ‘deforested’? Does ‘deforestation’ refer to the loss of forest cover for all kinds of uses, or only for timber production? When a natural forest is turned into a plantation forest, is it deforested in the process? Does the term refer only to the removal of forest cover, or also to the loss of various forest attributes, such as structure, density and the composition of species? And is the ‘agent of deforestation’ the one who initially removes the forest cover or the one who later prevents the forest cover from re-growing (e.g., a small farmer who colonises the land after a timber company has moved on)? Sunderlin and Resosudarmo argue that defining such terms is a necessary foundation for
creating policies that adequately deal with issues of forest health and welfare.
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