"A guide to raise funds to save forests" - a brand new publication (October 2012) by "The Global Canopy Program"

"As a non-partisan analysis, the Little Forest Finance Book does not favour one proposal over another. We do hope, however, that our work will aid understanding and encourage collaborative dialogue on this vitally important area of research."

On page 98 we can read the following interesting sentences:

"The extraction of wood comprises 4% of global GDP (Butler, 2012) and causes around two-thirds of tropical deforestation (Geist & Lambin, 2001). Wood is extracted for timber production, fuelwood and charcoal production.

Fuelwood is used on a daily basis by up to 1.4 billion people living in tropical forest countries. This demand is a large source of deforestation and degradation, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Deforestation for wood extraction is also driven by international demand for timber. This demand drives an illegal market for timber, with as much as 30% of globally traded hardwood timber and plywood described as of “suspicious origin” (American Forest & Paper Association, 2004). In some countries, up to 90% of logging is illegal under existing laws (The World Bank, 2012)."

One should always be rather skeptical when (e)NGOs name studies made by themselves as a "non-partisan" analysis.

Let us analyze the text mentioned above in more detail:

1. A study made back in 2001 (older than 10 years!) was mentioned to prove wood extraction (logging of forests) as the main source of deforestation.
   Deforestation is exhaustively investigated since the global community started back in 2007 to realize the problem with deforestation and CO₂ emissions. Since then a dozens of scientists started research on the causes of deforestation. Nowadays there is a tremendous number of articles published to proof logging (or extraction of wood) not to be a crucial factor in causing deforestation (less than one third; read further here: Is (illegal) logging the main source of deforestation?).

   Two-thirds of tropical deforestation is caused by land-use-change in favor of agricultural needs (read further here: Don't Demonize Deforestation - sovereignty matters as well!)

   To proof the this fact right, just check this publication "An assessment of deforestation and forest degradation drivers in developing countries" published by IOPScience (most recent; as of October 2012).

   Chart taken from: INTERIM REDD+ FINANCE, by International Sustainability Unit

   The authors of "A guide to raise funds to save forests" must be aware of these facts as well.

   So, why do the Authors spread wrong facts by quoting an outdated article?
    

2. Unsurprisingly the Authors also mention a World Bank Report called:  "Justice for Forests: Improving Criminal Justice Efforts to Combat Illegal Logging report". It is quite common to campaigners around (e)NGOs to simplify forest topics to two generic (but fundamentally wrong) rules:
   • deforestation = illegal logging = logging
   • sustainable forest management = conservation

The World Bank report mentioned by the Authors is also doing so - read further here...

Deceptive campaigning is still ongoing...

Another recent example of deceptive campaigning is the new campaign initiated by FERN:

REDD, FLEGT and carbon trading – a six part training course

Here is a slide taken out of one of the six presentations:

Interestingly FERN is defining a new term: "Illegal deforestation".

So what?

As far as I can remember global community stood together to demonize deforestation in general because deforestation is bad.

It is bad for the climate, it is bad for the biodiversity, it is bad for indigenous people and local communities, it is bad at all...

Now we learn from FERN there exists an even worst kind of deforestation - "illegal deforestation"!

And EU is fighting the root causes of "illegal deforestation" by controlling timber trade!

As of now there is evidence based knowledge that deforestation is a problem of land use change towards agricultural land.

This is just the same as someone wants to tackle a cockroach pest by introducing cats...

You might read further here: REDD+, deforestation and illegal logging - how do these things fit toegether?

In an user response to Peter Holmgren's article "Determining deforestation and Deforestation as the determinant" a visitor comment got the heart of the matter:

Greenies (environmental NGOs) have put all of their effort in campaigning to make deforestation a problem of forestry. There is evidence for this everywhere (e.g. http://forestindustries.eu/content/deceptive-campaigning-environmental-ngos-still-ongoing). And they have been quite successful.
CBD & Co do not have any interest in arguing agriculture as the main driver of deforestation – even if it’s a matter of fact. Why? Because conservation of forests is a very important business area to all of these greenies. From the cost perspective it is much cheaper (and even much simpler) to blame forestry (= logging = chopping trees down) for pushing conservation as to blame agriculture…

Read further here: The real drivers of deforestation - (December 2012)