1999 was a historic year in Indonesia. Our host country became the world’s third
largest democracy; a new government took control, committed to eliminating the corruption
and cronyism that not only had restricted the social development of the country but also
was the root cause of the misuse of its forests. CIFOR welcomes these changes that will
bring a liberal and progressive culture to the environment in which we work. But this
progress has not come without cost. During the civil unrest associated with the
democratisation process, three of our young Indonesian scientists working in the field in
the Province of Aceh disappeared. Now, eight months later, we still have no reliable
information on what happened to them, and hopes are fading for their safe return. We share
the grief of their families at this tragic loss.1999 was also an important year for forests. The
work of the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests drew toward its climax. International
opinion is converging around a vision of forests as having multiple functions, while the
highly dichotomous views of the North and South are giving way to a mutual search for
technical and institutional solutions at the national level. There is a growing
recognition that a given area of forest can be managed to simultaneously meet the
objectives of the IFF, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention on
Climate Change and perhaps even the Convention to Combat Desertification. The Global
Environment Facility has shown an awareness of the need to manage forests to provide for
multiple functions. CIFOR contributed to these and other international policy-making
processes by preparing a number of major papers. Moreover, a study we produced late in
1998 on the potential of using the World Heritage Convention as a mechanism for conserving
biodiversity in forests led the UN Foundation to award a $45 million grant to the World
Heritage Convention Secretariat.
CIFOR’s activities elsewhere in the
world progressed well in 1999. Our office hosted by EMBRAPA at Belém in the Brazilian
Amazon was the venue for a Board meeting, where staff and trustees got to know our
Brazilian colleagues and we jointly reviewed our emerging research agenda in the region.
Valuable results are emerging from studies of secondary forest management and improved
siliviculture, and CIFOR will initiate additional activities in Belém in the coming
months.
In Africa our outposts in Harare and
Yaoundé had good years. Although we have few staff members based at these locations, they
are facilitating a considerable number of activities by our programmes, notably Adaptive
Co-Management, Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Products and People. We are
grateful to our hosts, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Yaoundé
and the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, for their
hospitality. Our Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Forest Management Programmes
will expand their activities in Africa next year.
Among the high-value products we produced
in 1999, the Criteria and Indicators Tool Box has been widely acclaimed. It enables users
to devise C&I tailor-made for any forest. The Tool Box marks a major conceptual
breakthrough from the days when C&I were generated with a view to widespread and
uniform application. CIFOR rejects this "one size fits all" view of forestry. We
see sustainability as a matter of social choice and believe forests can be managed
sustainably in a variety of ways that provide any balance of goods and services society
chooses to derive.
A significant achievement in 1999 was
having three areas of our research recognised by the journal Science. Douglas Sheil
authored a paper attacking the myth that species counts represent a valid measure of the
value of biodiversity. A news article described the work of David Kaimowitz and Arild
Angelsen questioning the widely held assumption that agricultural intensification
automatically relieves pressure to clear more forest. Science also accepted a commentary
by Bruce Campbell and his colleagues in Africa on the weaknesses and strengths of
community-based natural resource management approaches.
Our Plantations Programme published a
number of major studies in 1999 on sustainability and diseases of tropical plantations. We
also advanced our work to improve forest harvesting, with experiments on reduced-impact
harvesting at Bulungan Research Forest in East Kalimantan yielding initial results.
Overall, the volume of research at Bulungan grew considerably, and we can now claim to
have a critical mass of scientific activity in the field.
Meanwhile, the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research renewed its interest in realigning its research
programmes around integrated natural resource management approaches. CIFOR aided this
dialogue by organising a system-wide meeting of INRM specialists in Holland in September.
There is now wide acceptance within the CGIAR that crop improvement research must be
integrated into its broader natural resource context and that managing for environmental
outcomes is as important as managing for commodity crops.
We enter the new millenium with a strong
scientific team and an excellent network of scientific partners in more than 40 countries.
Our facilities in Bogor are excellent, and a renewed spirit of optimism pervades our host
country. We have the resources and the opportunity to redouble our efforts to provide the
science needed to sustain forests and forest-dependent people into the future.
Professor Jeffrey A. Sayer
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