Biodiversity Conservation in Southeast Asian Timber Concessions : a Critical Evaluation of Policy Mechanisms and Guidelines

Tropical deforestation is leading to a loss of economically productive timber concessions, as well as areas with important environmental or socio-cultural values. To counteract this threat in Southeast Asia, sustainable forest management (SFM) practices are becoming increasingly important. We assess the tools and guidelines that have been developed to promote SFM and the progress that has been made in Southeast Asia toward better logging practices. We specifically focus on practices relevant to biodiversity issues. Various regional or national mechanisms now inform governments and the timber industry about methods to reduce the impact of production forestry on wildlife and the forest environment. However, so many guidelines have been produced that it has become difficult to judge which ones are most relevant. In addition, most guidelines are phrased in general terms and lack specific recommendations targeted to local conditions. These might be reasons for the generally slow adoption of SFM practices in the region, with only a few countries having incorporated the guidelines into national legislation. Malaysia, Indonesia, and Laos are among the frontrunners in this process. Overall there is progress, especially in the application of certification programs, the planning and management of high conservation value forests, the regulation and control of hunting, and silvicultural management. To reduce further forest loss, there is a need to accelerate the implementation of good forest management practices. We recommend specific roles for governments, the forestry industry, and nongovernmental organizations in further promoting the implementation of SFM practices for biodiversity conservation.


INTRODUCTION
The forests of Southeast Asia are species rich and provide important ecological and economic functions (Food and Agriculture Organization 2005).However, they also exhibit high rates of deforestation and degradation (Table 1).This is the main reason why the need for sustainable forest management (SFM) is recognized throughout the region.Since the late 1980s, there has been a marked increase in the number of instruments available to achieve SFM.The main impetus was provided by the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, which highlighted many problems in the forestry sector, particularly in the tropics, where a lack of sustainable forest management was leading to rapid deforestation.New tools and instruments that have been developed and promoted since then include: criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, certification standards for forest management, reduced-impact logging techniques, codes of practice for forest management and forest harvesting, and the creation of model forests.
In Southeast Asia, the implementation of SFM tools is increasing at both the government level, as part of forestry legislation, and the level of forest management units.Most forests in Southeast Asia are public or state lands and are allocated for production through concessions (Table 2).This determines the main foci of various SFM tools that are developed.For example, national guidelines and codes of practice define general management standards for each country.Criteria and indicators http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art25/are developed as general industry standards, whereas certification is aimed primarily at privately owned companies that lease concession rights from governments and that are influenced by growing consumer demand for better forest management.Most of the tools and guidelines focus on the silvicultural and operational aspects of forest management such as concession planning, directional felling, road design, and waste management.Other tools such as the Forest Stewardship Council certification criteria also address socio-cultural issues and high conservation value.Few tools adequately address biological issues, and those in existence provide little detail on the steps required to retain species diversity in production forestry areas (Meijaard et al. 2005).
There is an increasing body of literature that has assessed the effects of selective timber extraction and associated processes (hereafter referred to as logging) on the population density of forest wildlife (for an overview see Fimbel et al. 2001, Meijaard andSheil 2007b).Selective logging, which is the prevailing logging system in Southeast Asia, means the removal of certain trees in a stand as defined by specific criteria.Here, we do not address clearcut felling, which is the total removal of trees.Logging affects the ecological processes in timber concessions by removing biomass, changing forest structural characteristics, changing light regimes, and altering microclimatic conditions at both the ground and canopy levels.Logging also introduces people into the forest, increases access via logging roads, and generally increases disturbance.The unsurprising result is that forest species are affected; how they are affected depends on the species' ecology and the intensity of the forest disturbance, with some species benefiting even from highdisturbance logging and others being negatively affected by the slightest disturbance (Meijaard et al. 2005).Overall, it appears that selective logging conducted according to SFM guidelines has a  Concessions in which such logging is implemented can play an important role in the conservation of forest wildlife (Meijaard 2007, Meijaard andSheil 2007a,b).
In the knowledge that good logging has a relatively limited impact on forest biodiversity, we wanted to know what progress has been made in Southeast Asia toward better logging.Our specific objective was to assess which SFM practices have been developed, with a specific focus on those practices relevant to biodiversity issues.Such an overview identifies not only what has been achieved, but more importantly, the remaining gaps.This helps to focus specific programs, for instance, the development of national guidelines, training for concession managers, or support from academic institutions or nongovernmental organizations, in those countries in which such programs are most needed.Another objective was to determine whether the adoption of SFM practices is starting to change the industry at large or whether there are only sporadic improvements from a handful of enlightened concession owners.

METHODS
We focused our review on all countries in Southeast Asia, including those without an active timber industry: Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam (Fig. 1).For each of these countries, we sought reports and scientific publications, as well as information from Internet websites.A complete overview of the literature is provided in Gustafsson et al. (2007).Our search involved formal bibliographical searches, as well as consultations with local, national, and international experts, to identify all potentially relevant documents, as well as unpublished information.
Through the synthesis and critical assessment of the literature and other knowledge, we assessed the extent to which biodiversity guidelines have been http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art25/developed, the level of detail that they provide, and the extent to which they have been implemented on a country-by-country basis.

Codes of practice
The first tool we assessed was the codes of practice (CoP), which had its beginnings in the work carried out in the South Pacific in the early 1990s (Durst et al. 2003) 2006).The 2006 IUCN draft guidelines focus on measures additional to the ITTO guidelines that favor biodiversity.The IUCN uses "ecosystem approach principles" as adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2000, which imply that all situations are different and that there are multiple ways of managing forests, all of which can be considered sustainable and all of which have impacts on biodiversity.In developing the guidelines, the IUCN has attempted to distinguish two levels of intervention: general approaches to forest management that will have wide application in ensuring that biodiversity values are maintained and should be universally adopted, and a much broader set of technical suggestions that managers

Reduced-impact logging
Moving to specific operational guidelines, reducedimpact logging (RIL) consists of technologies and practices that are designed to minimize environmental impacts from timber harvesting operations (Sist et al. 1998, Klassen 2006) The debate about the adequacy of RIL as a tool to minimize damage to residual stands is a good example of the need to consider forest ecology issues before making generic recommendations (Fredericksen andPutz 2003, Sist andBrown 2004); RIL is a tool to minimize damage to the residual stand.It does not, however, ensure sustainability because it does not address the issue of regeneration of desired species.Sustainability requires the regeneration of desired species, which depends largely on the interaction between the ecology, dynamics, and harvesting regime of the forest type under consideration.

Certification
Forest certification emerged in the early 1990s as an instrument for promoting SFM.The most widely accepted of all international certification schemes is that developed by the FSC in 1993 (Nussbaum and Simula 2004).As of November 2007, within Southeast Asia, three countries have FSC-certified natural forests, and Thailand and Vietnam have two and one certified plantations, respectively (Table 4).
Two countries in the region have developed their own national certification schemes.In 1992, Indonesia established the Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute (Lembaga Ekolabel Indonesia, LEI).This was followed in 1998 by the Malaysian Timber Council scheme.In Myanmar, the Timber Certification Committee is apparently a national certification scheme.
The LEI is an independent foundation that was developed by a working group of nongovernmental organizations and academics.

High conservation value forests
The concept of high conservation value (HCV) was added to the FSC forest management principles in the late 1990s as Principle 9 (Jennings 2004).HCV includes environmental and social values that are considered to be of outstanding significance or critical importance.Examples may include concentrations of endangered species, a stream that is the sole source of water to a local community, or a site with special religious significance.Of the six HCV categories under the FSC principles, three deal specifically with biodiversity: HCV 1, concentrations of biodiversity; HCV 2, large landscape-level forests; and HCV 3, rare or endangered ecosystems.
The FSC provided the first definitions of HCV.The definitions were subsequently streamlined and elaborated by the independent company ProForest, which developed the HCV forest (HCVF) assessment guidelines in the HCVF Global Toolkit between 2001 and 2003; this toolkit has been in use since 2001(Jennings et al. 2003, Judd et al. 2003a, b,c)

Specific biodiversity guidelines
Specific biodiversity guidelines for timber production areas were only found for four of the eleven countries examined: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, and Malaysia (Sarawak), with only the Malaysian state of Sarawak officially adopting these guidelines as policy.

Cambodia
Of all of the countries examined, Cambodia has the most comprehensive set of biodiversity guidelines for timber concessions.

Indonesia
Meijaard and colleagues (Meijaard and Sheil 2007a, b, Meijaard et al. 2005, 2006) recently reviewed the wildlife literature for Borneo and demonstrated how the application of conservation planning and implementation such as good road building and RIL methods can benefit wildlife.They provided detailed and practical recommendations that could directly benefit wildlife in timber concessions.After consultation with practitioners, these guidelines were further refined and made more specific (Gustafsson et al. 2007).
The main recommendations of Meijaard and colleagues (Meijaard and Sheil 2007a,b, Meijaard et al. 2005, 2006)  have not yet been adopted by the government.The guidelines recommend that annual biodiversity surveys be carried out in the production forest areas by staff from the Department of Forestry.There are detailed requirements about who should be on the team, the equipment required, and the need for forward budget planning to allocate funds for the activity.The World Bank/Finnish forestry project team has also carried out baseline biodiversity surveys in six production forest areas (Poulsen et al. 2005(Poulsen et al. , 2006)).These surveys were carried out to prepare HCVF assessments.

Sarawak, Malaysia
In 1997, the Sarawak Government adopted A Master Plan for Wildlife in Sarawak as official government policy.This master plan was co-written by staff from the WCS and the Sarawak Forestry Department.Its two core themes were the control of unsustainable hunting and the conservation of wildlife in various land categories.The implementation of this plan has included legislative changes that incorporated a total legal ban on sales http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art25/ of wildlife taken from the wild, regulations to control hunting in logging concessions, and the control of modern hunting technologies.The implementation involved state-wide conservation education and enforcement programs, formal training for government staff, the creation of important new protected areas, and reductions in sales of shotgun cartridges.The results have been an increase in protected areas and declines in the wildlife trade (Bennett 2004).
Since 2001, the WCS has been working with the Sarawak Forestry Department and Samling Corporation (a logging company) on a project designed to implement the Master Plan for Wildlife in Sarawak.In particular, the project addresses legal restrictions on the trade in wildlife, as well as work with local communities to reduce hunting pressure on wildlife in the logging concession.The Samling concession is certified under the MTCC scheme because RIL techniques have been used in the concession.The logging company contributes to the cost of the biodiversity surveys.

Regional sustainable forest management networks
Finally, we want to draw attention to several SFM programs that are active at a regional level.
Although none of these have a specific focus on biodiversity, they are important to promote the implementation of SFM practices in the region.
Since the 1950s, a number of regional forest fora have been developed in the Asia-Pacific region, with the goal of catalyzing policy changes that will encourage a more enabling environment for improved forest management.

Starting to see the wood for the trees
Our review shows that since the 1990s, there has been considerable progress in the development of tools and guidelines that help forestry practitioners manage wildlife populations in production forests.Many different guidelines exist at global, regional, and national levels.The plethora of information makes it difficult for practitioners to determine which guidelines need to be followed.Impediments to the adoption of biodiversity guidelines include the fact that they are usually not mandatory requirements and only become enforceable when stipulated in an approved license, plan, permit, or contract.Guidelines are designed without rigid prescriptions and allow for flexible decision making through well-planned and monitored adaptive management and research.Decisions should be based on local site conditions, the needs of local users, site-specific biodiversity conservation considerations, and technical innovation.At the same time, guidelines must express clear expectations and should be written in such a way as to reduce the chance of misinterpretation.Even when it comes to codes of practice (CoP) guidelines for established silvicultural and harvesting techniques, which have been available for many years, there is still poor implementation in some countries and in general, there is a lack of revision and updating of techniques and a failure to reflect new research results and lessons learned (Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission 2006).There is also a general lack of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.Overall, despite progress, there is much room for improvement.
Despite the relatively slow pace of the adoption of certification in Southeast Asia, it is widely recognized as a useful tool to stimulate movement toward sustainable forest management (SFM) at the forest management unit level.However, because certification is a site-based tool, its role in influencing the wider landscape beyond the single concession is limited.This is particularly true in areas where logging concessions may be small in size.Therefore, governments should not rely http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art25/heavily on the image of certified forests as the key to SFM and forget that overall appropriate land-use planning is the key to managing forested landscapes sustainably and to maintaining biodiversity.
We emphasize that there are still significant gains to be made for wildlife conservation in Southeast Asian timber concessions.An area of > 2.0 × 10 8 ha of forest remained in 2005 (Food and Agriculture Organization 2006); on average, 42% of that area has production forestry as its primary function.This means that the continued improvement of forest management in the remaining forests can still make a significant contribution to the conservation of forest species in the region.

Getting down to details while retaining general applicability
Many of the various SFM tools are phrased in rather vague terms and leave potential users with questions of how these actions should be implemented.Most guidelines fall short of their goal to provide technical suggestions to managers and decision makers that would allow them to develop locally applicable management regulations.Unfortunately, concession managers and policy developers are unlikely to develop specific regulations unless they are spelled out in detail by someone else.For instance, a (hypothetical) guideline "to minimize barrier functions of roads to animal dispersal" could be significantly strengthened by stipulating that "main roads should have narrow sections every 50 m where the road width is a maximum of 7.5 m and tree crowns touch overhead."The development of such detailed guidelines requires collaboration between forest practitioners (e.g., is such a regulation feasible and safe?), researchers (e.g., would such regulation indeed benefit animal dispersal?), and governments (e.g., would the government be willing to translate the recommendation into legislation?).

Implementation of biodiversity-friendly forest management
Our country studies indicate that increasingly, governments and forest managers realize the relevance of and necessity for biodiversity monitoring and management within production forest areas.Indonesia and Malaysia appear to be leaders in this field.The development and adoption of timber harvesting CoP is increasing, and companies in some countries are using or evaluating reduced-impact logging techniques.The number of certified natural forests is increasing annually, with almost 8.5 × 10 5 ha FSC-certified in the region as a whole and 4.0 × 10 6 ha MTCC-certified in Malaysia.
A comprehensive overview of the areas certified under the Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute was not available.These developments contribute to better logging practices, but the next step is to convince governments and companies that biodiversity within forest management units must be considered in a more integrated manner.

Roles of government, industry, and civil society
Improving wildlife management in Southeast Asian timber concessions requires the increased acceptance of sustainable forest management concepts by three main stakeholders: governments, the timber industry, and nongovernmental organizations.Governments need to recognize the role of production forestry in wildlife conservation.
In Southeast Asia, wildlife conservation focuses strongly on the establishment of protected areas where the forests are specifically managed for species conservation.The timber industry itself is starting to recognize the benefits of improved management, both in terms of gaining premium prices for sustainably managed timber, as well as in reducing operating costs in their concessions and in accessing a broader range of financing opportunities.These positive trends are starting to change the way that governments think about the long-term future of production forestry in Southeast Asia.There is a need, however, to consolidate policy and field practice gains to move toward a tipping point at which SFM becomes the private sector norm.Various steps need to be taken in the near future.The number of concessions that are now practicing SFM needs to be extended rapidly to achieve a critical mass of enterprises with significant learning and leverage potential.This requires substantial working capital to address technical management issues in the many timber concessions in the region, and funds need to be raised from both private and public sources.It also requires capacity building within the government, nongovernmental organization, and industry sectors, specifically in participatory planning and conflict management, reduced-impact logging, and high conservation value forest identification and management.
Finally, there is a need for further research.We recognize that forest loss will only be reduced if the Southeast Asian nations and other key stakeholders who influence forest land-use decisions receive more tangible benefits from SFM than they do from unsustainable forest exploitation and conversion.This will only happen if those who exploit forest resources pay the full price for their exploitation and conversion, including the full cost of environmental and social externalities associated with their activities on the ground.A much better understanding of forest economics is needed that takes into consideration all of the direct and indirect values that forests represent.Such knowledge would help in the development of a clearer picture of the real cost of forest exploitation and would substantiate scientifically that SFM is an economically attractive strategy in the region in the long term.
Despite continued deforestation in the region, we suspect that over the next 10 years, the rate of forest loss will be reduced.Much of the easily accessible lowland timber has now been harvested, and many of these ex-forestry concessions have now been converted to timber plantation, oil palm, and other agricultural and silvicultural uses.In the less accessible areas such as hill and mountain forests and, to a certain extent, peat swamps, there is increasing recognition of the economic value of the sustainable use and conservation of tropical forests.We expect to see the stabilization of land use with an increasingly clearly defined forest boundary.SFM will have to play a major role in the remaining forests to ensure that they provide economic revenues from timber, in addition to the many environmental services.

Table 1 .
Change in forest cover in Southeast Asia.Source: Food and Agriculture Organization (2006).

Table 2 .
Ownership of production forests in Southeast Asia.Source: Food and Agriculture Organization (2006).
moderate impact on forest wildlife, and no species have gone extinct because of logging alone.

Table 3 .
Status of codes of practice in Southeast Asian timber producing nations as of 2007.
actions.The latest draft of the guidelines was released in September 2007.
. RIL is part of a shift in forestry methods worldwide toward promoting SFM.To standardize the definition, application, and verification of RIL, the Tropical Forest Foundation has developed a detailed set of tools applicable to the Southeast Asia situation (Klassen 2006).

Table 4 .
Overview of natural and plantation forests in Southeast Asia certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Note: As of January 2008, from various sources.
The Biodiversity http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art25/ The Home Depot, Lowe's, and Xerox.The goal of the program is to improve both the quality and extent of the sustainable management of forest resources and biodiversity.
Responses to this article can be read online at: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art25/responses/ Bennett, E. L. 2004.Seeing the wildlife and the trees: improving timber certification to conserve tropical forest wildlife.Wildlife Conservation