Seeking New Ways to Use International Laws to Stop Illicit Logging
July 29, 2010
"Just daft."
That's how Catherine MacKenzie describes international efforts to stop illicit logging of tropical forests, whose destruction has come to symbolize the struggle between economic exploitation and ecological preservation.
"It makes no sense," MacKenzie told a Hot Topics lecture audience at Vermont Law School on July 29. "We have to find a new system" that balances sustainable economic policies with environmental protection.
MacKenzie, a professor at the University of Cambridge, is the 2010 International Environmental Distinguished Scholar at VLS. Her Hot Topics lecture was titled "International Law and Tropical Forests: Sovereignty, Corruption, and Failed Agreements."
At one time, tropical rainforests encircled the earth. Today, only a fraction of those forests remain and degradation continues. MacKenzie asked whether international law can slow deforestation. She believes so, but only if a new model is adopted to replace the bogged down bureaucratic process that has produced no substantive agreement since international efforts to save tropical forests started nearly 40 years ago.
Her journey started, appropriately enough, with her childhood love of climbing trees in West Africa, where her father was a subtropical forester. She went on specialize in international and environmental law in private practice and at the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Her work included road and bridge construction and other economic development projects in remote regions. She has particular interests in international forest law and the implementation and enforcement of environmental obligations by international courts and tribunals.
Much of the world's forests have been cleared in recent centuries to fuel economic development, especially since the Industrial Revolution. But forests remain a major influence on trade, biodiversity, climate change, jobs, recreation and other socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions, MacKenzie said.
The annual rate of deforestation has increased significantly since the 1950s, and the first major international effort to address the issue was the Stockholm Conference in 1972. Since then, more than 900 environmental treaties with roughly 200 recommendations have been signed by 197 nations, including 18 dealing with forests, but none of those agreements has slowed the loss of tropical forests, MacKenzie said.
The problem, she said, has been endless delays stemming from efforts to include all global players and their differing interests in exploiting and protecting their forests. The answer, she said, is having a handful of major forest nations, major logging companies and major environmental groups negotiate an agreement that balances profits and preservation.
And it's the job of international law experts to come up with a model that combines "sophisticated legal scholarship and sensible, feasible ways" to implement such an agreement between the world's major forest nations, MacKenzie said.
"Forests are central to human security and are key indicators of poverty, public health, sustainable development, the rule of law and good governance," she said. "I'd happily tear up 800 of those 900 treaties. If you'll pardon the pun, we've been barking up the wrong tree."
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