Associate Professor, Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Tokyo

In various areas of Asia, people are facing a dilemma: the natural resources are there, yet they cannot be used. In Japan, for example, cheap imported building materials flood the market, making it difficult to build a house using domestic timber felled on mountains nearby. Market forces would not allow the leisurely process of felling a tree planted by the previous generation and planting another for the next generation, which has long been the tradition in Japanese forestry.

On the other hand, in Thailand and Indonesia, rapid economic growth and urban construction have created a high demand for timber, especially since the 1970s. Consequently, local villagers have been excluded from access to their forests in order to make way for commercial harvesting. More recently, the global mandate to protect the environment has been taking its turn to drive the same local people away from their backyard forests. Indigenous populations in various regions are being displaced from their homes for the sake of environmental conservation. These top-down enforcements are being applied hastily with no consideration to how local people are connected to their surrounding environment, and as a result, local diversity.

The people relying on the resources are treated as nothing more than obstacles. Globalization and standardization may provide benefits; they allow us ready access to diverse goods and information anywhere in the world at reasonable cost. However, this generalization should not be applied to natural resources in the same way. Goods and information are extremely mobile and can adapt themselves to globalization, but this is not true for natural resources. Nature is rooted in its uniquely complex and often balanced local environment.

Global standardization of land use has privileged experts who do not live in affected areas. Science and efficiency became the central principle, legitimizing the division of land into areas to be developed and those to be conserved. Standardized policies did help increase the budget for conservation, yet despite the large amount of money poured into various projects, forests continue to diminish and deteriorate. How can this be explained? First, people have been displaced from the natural resources that used to be a part of their livelihoods. When people are alienated from their land, they lose their motivation to care even for their own surroundings. Second, forests may be disappearing because of the continuation of official exploitation by commercial loggers, and large-scale infrastructure projects that displace forests, while blame is put solely on poverty and population growth of the locals.

In the recent years efforts have been made to revive the lost connection between local people and their natural surroundings. In India, for example, the government has started the so-called Joint Forest Management. Under this program, the government signs contracts with local populations to conserve and utilize natural resources in their areas. The program has successfully regenerated many of the country’s forests. Local residents now work on government land that was previously offlimits. Their activities include planting and harvesting trees as well as collecting non-timber forest products, such as mushrooms and tobacco leaves. Trespassers from outside the community are carefully monitored and chased away. India’s program puts local people in charge of managing local resources. One may wonder why this apparently sensible plan has seldom been practiced elsewhere. The reasons are obvious: governments like to keep a tight grip on state-owned resources, and they tend to distrust the poor.

India’s experience clearly shows the value of utilizing people’s neglected abilities. This is not a call for a return to traditional life. This is a call to make the best use of the people who have intimate knowledge of the land on which they depend, and make them chief guardians of the environment. Under the market principle, a commodity may be devalued and then revalued in a climate of appreciation. However, intangible assets such as wisdom and sense of belonging, if lost, cannot be revived so easily. It is important to consider reuniting the local population with the land, and building a lasting link between the two as they are mutually dependent.

To re-establish the link between utilization and conservation, officials and specialists who live far from the resources must step down into the field, travel to the regions where the action takes place, and listen to the local people. India’s example indicates that land-use projects should incorporate the local people and be flexible enough to allow their self-initiated insights and ideas. Since the connection between nature and society is so complex, conservation programs should be prepared to confront surprises and failures, and to learn from them.

In protecting the natural environment, people who live on the land are priceless assets rather than obstacles. They have knowledge and experience unique to those who live close to nature, and we must not waste their wisdom. The success stories may be few, but we must strive to discover them, support them, and bring them together in a network of environmental management.

(IHT/Asahi: April 5,2002)