<head><style>body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;background-color: #ffffff;color: black;}</style><title>Communities seen key to saving forests</title></head><body id="compText"><br><br><br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 255); padding-left: 5px; margin-left: 0px;">-----Forwarded Message-----
<br>From: Laura Schweitzer <lschweitzer@amfor.org>
<br>Sent: Jul 17, 2007 9:12 AM
<br>To: af_policy_updates@lists.amfor.org
<br>Subject: [Af_Policy_Updates] Communities seen key to saving forests
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</zzz!--></zzzbody></zzzmeta></zzzhead></zzzhtml></lschweitzer@amfor.org><p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Hi folks,</font></span>
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<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">The following article published by Michael Astor of the Associated Press late yesterday afternoon discusses the importance of communities to the management of forests worldwide.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Laura</font></span>
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<p><span lang="en-us"><b></b></span><a target="_BLANK" href="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8QDTLEG1.htm"><span lang="en-us"><b><u><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8QDTLEG1.htm</font></u></b><b></b></span></a><span lang="en-us"><b></b><b></b></span>
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<p><span lang="en-us"><b><font face="Arial" size="2">Communities seen key to saving forests</font></b></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">By Michael Astor</font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">The Associated Press July 16, 2007, 4:51PM ET </font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Rio De Janeiro, Brazil </font></span>
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<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Supporting communities who earn their livelihoods from forests, rather than creating national parks, may represent the best hope for preserving the world's remaining wilderness.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">That's according to Andy White, a coordinator of the Washington D.C.-based Rights and Resources Initiative, who on Monday presented a review of forest-based businesses from around the world to a conference in the Amazon.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Some 110 million people around the world are involved in forest enterprises harvesting wood, bamboo, rattan, fibers, nuts, resins, medicinal herbs, honey and other natural products, White said, and granting land rights to these small communities working in sustainable forest industries is especially urgent now as a boom in biofuels drives land speculation.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">"The evidence from around the world, not only here in the Amazon, is that once their rights are recognized, forest communities are more effective at protecting forests than national parks," White said.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">White spoke by telephone from Rio Branco, capital of the western Amazon state of Acre, which is hosting a weeklong conference uniting 250 community forest entrepreneurs and policy makers from Africa, Asia, Central and South America.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">"The action of these communities have global repercussions," said Brazil's environment minister Marina Silva, the daughter of an Acre rubber tapper.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Biofuels such as ethanol, derived from sugarcane and corn, and biodiesel, derived from oily plants like soy beans and palm fruits, have been touted as eco-friendly alternative to carbon fuels. But many environmentalists worry that growing demand for land will cause more deforestation.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Biofuel "is both a tremendous opportunity and tremendous threat," White said. "If land is worth more as sugarcane fields than as forest, the forests are going to disappear unless you empower local groups like rubber tappers."</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Brazil is trying to empower local communities but complex land use regulation and lack of clear ownership in many areas still creates barriers to community control, he said.</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">"If you don't have property rights to the forest, you don't have any clear incentive to preserve," he said. "Where property rights are unclear or contested, whoever has access slicks whatever is there off as quickly as possible."</font></span></p>
<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2"> </font></span>
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<p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Laura Schweitzer</font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Director of Forest Policy</font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">lschweitzer@amfor.org</font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">734 15th Street, NW</font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">8th Floor</font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Washington, DC 20005 </font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">tel: (202)737-1944 ext.219 </font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">fax: (202)737-2457</font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"></span><a target="_BLANK" href="file://www.americanforests.org"><span lang="en-us"><u><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">www.americanforests.org</font></u></span></a><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2"> </font></span>
<br><span lang="en-us"> </span>
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</blockquote></body><PRE>
Robin Alton Suggs
MoonBranch Botanicals
5294 Yellow Creek Road
Robbinsville, North Carolina 28771
USA
Telephone: 828.479.2788
moonbranch@earthlink.net
www.moonbranch.com
Member:
American Herbalist Guild
Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project; Farm Partner
Co-op America
Green Products Alliance
National Network of Forest Practitioners
North Carolina Consortium on Natural Medicines
North Carolina Goodness Grows/NCDA&CS
North Carolina Natural Products Association
Southwestern North Carolina RC&D Council
United Plant Savers
"We have no choice but to respect that which sustains us."</PRE>