Promoting Reduced-Impact Logging in Tropical Developing Countries: A Success Story of Technology Transfer

Abstract

Industrial timber harvesting operations commonly employ heavy machinery and thus have the potential to inflict significant damage on soils, streams, and residual vegetation. Impacts associated with such operations have been especially troubling in many tropical countries, where mature trees often have large crowns capable of destroying other trees when they fall; soils remain wet for much of the year and are highly susceptible to significant compaction and erosion; loggers typically have little education, are poorly trained, and often must work and live in arduous, unhealthy conditions; and remote locations make oversight by government agencies difficult. Beginning in the early 1990s, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched a concerted effort to develop and promote codes of forest harvesting practice that would provide guidelines for planning and controlling logging operations in tropical forests in order to reduce environmental impacts. This effort included research to define and validate reduced-impact logging practices and technologies; publication and distribution of a "model" code of forest harvesting practices; development and promotion of regional codes of practice; and provision of technical assistance to individual countries to develop and implement national codes of practice. Although FAO provided the initial stimulus for the effort and has remained a central player, much of the work has been done by a wide variety of research institutes and universities; nongovernmental organizations; industry associations; government technical-assistance programs; and international agencies such as the International Tropical Timber Organization, the International Labor Organization, and the World Bank. This paper provides an overview of this global effort and suggests reasons it has been successful in transferring knowledge and technology from industrialized countries to tropical developing countries.

Citation

Dykstra, Dennis P. 2007. Promoting Reduced-Impact Logging in Tropical Developing Countries: A Success Story of Technology Transfer. In: Miner, Cynthia; Jacobs, Ruth; Dykstra, Dennis; Bittner, Becky, eds. 2007. Proceedings: international conference on transfer of forest science knowledge and technology. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-726. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 255 p.