Emerging issues in forest policy

Book reviews

terests in rural policy analyses, and this involvement is evident. From my this section is the perspective, strongest and is far more useful for understanding the complex issues near urban agriculture than the systems perspective. Rather than devoting exclusive chapters to the topic, the ‘interests in land’ theme is integrated into the text, especially in Chapters 3 (the market), 4 (the farmer) and 5 (government). The key to understanding the changing interests in land is individual versus collective interests, and the impact that these often conflicting perspectives have on the resource. The links between communities of interest are explored at a number of levels. National. regional and local examples are drawn from throughout the developed world. The authors effectively weave together the empirical data, helping connect cross-national and differently scaled findings. The final two chapters serve to provide summary thoughts on where periurban agriculture is coming from and what the future portends for the city’s countryside. As in earlier sections, the authors’ analysis synthesizes earlier research, but emphasis is more direct-

ly focused on the ideas of Bryant and Johnston. Rather than creating scenarios describing agricultural development in the urban-rural fringe in the year 2000 and beyond, the focus is on emerging or probable changes in the agricultural systems and shifts in the interests in land. In this way, the authors continue to build upon the data and analysis presented earlier and, at the same time, allow the reader the opportunity to develop his/her own judgement. In summary, this is an important book. At a time of growing debate over surplus agricultural resources, as well as changing perceptions surrounding peri-urban agricultural resources, Agriculture In the City’s Countryside makes a significant contribution to literature and debate. Urban-rural fringe land use specialists will find it compelling, while those working on general land use policy issues will find it instructive. Owen J. Furuseth of Geography and Earth Sciences University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC, USA

Department

Helping avoid crises EMERGING POLICY

ISSUES IN FOREST

by Peter N. Nemetz University of British Columbia Vancouver, 1992, 573 pp

Press,

Good policy making would prevent emerging issues from turning into emergencies. The dire state of so many of the world’s forests suggests that our species is not very good at foresight. Here is a book whose title suggests a serious attempt to remedy the situation. Forty-two authors have contributed 22 chapters, and there is a lengthy introduction by the editor, which gives a helpful and admirably clear overview. All except two of the writers are from North America, and attention is strongly biased to that part of the

LAND USE POLICY

July 1993

world. The book is divided into six sections, on the environment, on timber supply, on international trade (more than a quarter of the book), on social impacts, on multiple use and on the Third World. None of these topics is really new, and some are distinctly old, but all have acquired urgency through failure to attend to them properly when they first began to emerge. The first three contributions assess the impact on forestry of global warming, acid rain and ozone depletion. Curiously, it is the third of these three -the most recently discovered -that is the best understood and also the least important in its interaction with forestry. It is still not clear how far global warming will be counteracted by global clouding; nor is it clear how much damage acid rain does to forests. The implications for policy are still limited to using the dangers as one

more argument for slowing or reversing the process of deforestation. Incidentally, it is a pity that authors use ‘the environment’ to mean physical factors affecting life; we environ each other and the world around us as much as it environs us. The second section has two chapters on timber supply forecasting in Canada and the USA. No new ideas seem to have emerged in this area, and the only progress is in the power of computers and the complexity of models. The third chapter is on timber supply rationing in Sweden - a sad history of miscalculation. Section three, on competitiveness and international trade, is the longest, with six chapters. Forest economists came very late to the realization that comparative advantage is a dynamic concept, and most of these papers explore the implications of changes in the resource, the demand and the technology. The scope is almost exclusively North American, and these studies will be of interest elsewhere mainly to readers in countries that are its timber trading partners. The three chapters of the fourth section include studies of community stability in the western USA, tax policy for private forestry in the southwest of the USA, and the social impact of changes in forest trade in Japan and British Columbia. Perhaps there are subtle refinements in sociological thought here that escape the general reader, but it is hard to feel that any new issues have emerged. Remote rural communities are vulnerable to influences coming out of cities, as they have been since Old Testament times, and there is nothing new under the sun. Multiple use, the topic of the two chapters of section five, has been around for a long time as a slogan, but nothing much has been done in most places to translate it into reality, as these studies from California and Switzerland confirm. This failure is probably inevitable in our culture, with its division of knowledge into subjects applied by narrow specialists. Section six brings together five studies of forestry as it affects the Third World. (Do we have to go on using that euphemism for the poorer coun-

261

Rook reviews tries, now that the Second World so painfully

revealed

has

itself as belong-

ing in their ranks’?) With Lutheran insistence, William Hyde nails up 21 testable hypotheses on social forestry. More

than any other of the authors of

this book, much

he recognizes

more

‘emerging’

issues he considers.

clearly

how

is left for the

There

follow

two

very useful chapters on the complexities of property rights, and a study of fuelwood policy in Kenya. The best is kept till last. In the final chapter,

Roger

brings his cus-

Sedjo

tomary vigour and incisiveness to an economic comparison between plantations and natural forests. He comes to the arresting conclusion that ‘under reasonable assumptions the returns on

natural tropical forest management can be as good as or better than the returns to plantation forest’, and he offers plausible reasons why governments nevertheless prefer plantation forestry. This

is a handsomely

produced

book, and it gives a useful treatment of a wide range of policy issues. If its content ‘emerging’

does

not

of the

fully title,

justify it would

the be

unfair to make that a reason for failing

to welcome it; but it seems clear that we shall be coping with emergencies for a long time to come. Philip J. Stewart The Fauting Human Sciences Centre Oxford, UK

Promoting the Urban Management Program~e REFORMING POLICIES

URBAN

LAND

AND INSTITUTIONS

DEVELOPING

by Catherine

IN

COUNTRIES Farvacque

and Patrick

McAuslan

World Bank, Washington,

DC, 1992,

774PP Until the mid-1980s the subject of land policy and land management had been neglected among intellectual reviewers of urbanization and housing in developing countries. Contributions had been intermittent, fragmented, and rather disconnected from operating practices and the potential for policy reform. This is now changed. A rapidly emerged;

growing

literature

professional

and intellectuals

has

practitioners

now see the primary

issues; and the international multilateral and bilateral aid agencies are pressing the case for greater research understanding and urgent reforms. The policy paper authored by Farvacque and McAuslan is set in the foregoing context and purpose, being a part of the joint World Bank-UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) (UNCHS)-UN Dcvelopment Programme (UNDP) Urban Management Programme significance

262

of land

(UMP). The UMP contains other significant policy initiatives, including finance and government, infrastructure, poverty, health and the environment. In fact, the UMP is to be regarded as the elaboration of a package of policy reforms and redirections for global effort to address the mounting problems of urban growth and housing sector development. The problems in land man~~~ement and land policy in developing countries are substantial, with consequences that retard urban economic development, intensify urban poverty, and frequently contribute to land PI-ice inflation which sometimes grows at greater rates than incomes and retail price indicators. Given these overall circumstances Farvaque and McAusIan had to select their scope, treatment and approach. The emergent and growing literature from the micl1980s offered a number of interesting possibilities. For example, Barcss,’ in noting that the land settlement process in developing countries is the very reverse of that in developed countries, calls for innovations in relating government roles in land directly in participatory ways with the urban poor. In developing countries the reversed land settlement process and sequence is frequently first occupation, then

building, followed by obtaining services, and finally acquiring planning approval. In his focus upon tenure and security as an energizer for urban development, Doehele” also seeks innovation in proposing the creation of community land trusts to manage land acquisition and disposal among the poor, all set within new governmental policies and reformed institutional roles. For their part Feder and Feeney argue that in developing countries the unusual assumptions that constitute reality have to be clearly held in mind.? These realities often include complex and overlapping systems of property rights in land, chaotic conditions in the registration and titling of land, and severely inhibitory regulations. L,and titling and transactions are often without property rights which would be taken for granted in developed countries, including exclusivity, transferability, alienability and enforceability of contract. Farvacyue

and McAuslan

adopted

which centres upon land management systems because the inherited operating realities are characterized by instituti~~nal conditions and instruments which inhibit the efficient and equitable operation of land markets. They nevertheless have taken a broad view of management to include reviews of good practice in some countries and bad practice in others and they evaluate the relative merits of general policies to increase the supply of serviced land. These general policy possibilities inan approach

and focus

clude land banking,

land readjustment

South Korea and Taiwan}, and achieving consistency and coherence in linking roles of government agencies, markets, non-government organizations (NC&), and community based organizations (CBOs) such as community land trusts.’ Acc~~rdin~ly Farvacque and McAuslan have been able to address both pragmatic operational issues in land management and agcndas for wider national policy reforms. This gives their policy paper rclcvance, significance and the acceptance of innovation in reform agendas. The authors and their approach to the issues they address have useful cross-disciplinary relevance. Land or

pooling

(eg

as in Japan,

LAND USE POLICY July 1993