The Forest Wars:A Review

4 September 2007
Extracts of a review of Judith Ajani’s Forest Wars by Miles Prosser, manager, Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council.
Is there a forest war? If so, who is fighting on each side and will it ever end? The Forest Wars by Judith Ajani (formerly Judy Clark) is a recently released treatise on the politics of forestry in Australia. Presumably the timing of its release is a function of the looming federal election.
This article reviews the case put by Ajani and examines its relevance to good forest policy and specifically to the plantation products and paper industry.
It would be naive to think that someone with this reviewer’s background and experience could summarise the book in a way that would satisfy the author.
Ajani’s basic argument is: As a result of less growth in sawn timber consumption than initially predicted, the plantation resource available in Australia is sufficient to meet all our needs. This argument is not promulgated by either major political party, the industry or the unions for a variety of reasons related to personal agendas, supply chain arrangements and manipulation by key players.
The export of native forest woodchips is grossly profitable and therefore able to drive the public and political agenda related to forests. Queensland and Western Australia have done much more to resolve the ‘forest wars’ because their premiers intervened and forced a transition to plantations and, in the case of Queensland, there was no native forest chip export industry to drive the agenda.
The recent surge in hardwood plantation Managed Investment Schemes is a modern repeat of the softwood plantation expansion story where development is driven by shoddy analysis of demand and plantation products are being undercut by subsidised native forest products.
The book concludes by calling for two strategies: shift commodity wood production to plantations; and process the plantation resource in Australia. Native forests would be managed for the provision of ecological services.
Ajani finishes with a challenge: say why you disagree with the book’s analysis or, if you can’t, explain why we shouldn’t shut down the native forest industry and get all our wood from plantations.
There are no shortage of catalysts in the book for argument and debate, including many of the points above. The book includes: deliberate or accidental misrepresentations; simplistic portrayals of individuals as good or bad; ignorance or omission of major commercial and political forces; linking of events to create an apparent conspiracy; and flawed fundamental assumptions.
Rather than debate all of these, the last warrants the closest examination and two assumptions particularly should be tested: that Australia should aim for self-sufficiency in forest products and that the major competitors to plantation products are native forest products.
It is easy to see why these assumptions are necessary to construct an argument for shutting down the native forest industry. It is less easy to see why these assumptions are in the interest of the plantation industry and even harder to see the basic validity of the statements.
The first assumption – self sufficiency - has been influential in the forest debate for close to a century and industry itself has been guilty of peddling it. However, it is increasingly untenable in an era of globalisation and free trade agreements.
If you more correctly frame the argument about native forests as ‘can we sustainably harvest native forests?’; if you view Australia’s economic aim as to produce and trade in a global context according to our strengths and weaknesses; and if you identify the major competitors of Australian plantation products as steel, concrete and imports – then it is much harder to see why plantations ‘replace’ native forests; why the policy for one forest sector should be linked to the policy for the other; and why the plantation industry, even if freed from the constraints suggested by Ajani, should join in a fight to end native forest harvesting.
Herein lies the fundamental flaw in Ajani’s argument from the perspective of the plantation products and paper industry – she is critical that the plantation industry has not done enough to join with the environment movement in enforcing the replacement of the native forest industry without ever demonstrating that it is in the plantation industry’s interest to do so.
Irrespective of the internal politics and machinations of the past, in 2007 the concerns of Australia’s plantation products and paper industry are related to its ability to develop, supply and profit from markets where it competes against non-wood alternatives such as steel framing, concrete flooring, plastic packaging and electronic communication or against imports of softwood timber and paper. In any market where plantation fibre is available and could reasonably replace native forests, it has already done so. Ajani correctly draws attention to the dominance of the plantation industry in terms of employment, value adding and supply.
The continuation, expansion or closure of the native forest industry in Australia would have a minor impact on the fortunes of the plantation products and paper industry – much less impact than currency fluctuations, emissions trading, product certification, energy prices, water policy, building codes and environmental regulation. That is why it is these latter issues that test the minds of the plantation industry and attract its input rather than the distraction of a debate over the availability of a small amount of forest and products that are sold in clearly differentiated markets.
While Ajani’s thesis doesn’t hold true in the marketplace for building materials, packaging and other forest products, it does hold true in the marketplace for media attention, government policy and public attitudes. The native forest debate, and particularly the debate about the logging of old growth forest in Tasmania, dominates discussion of the forest industry.
As for the final challenge in the book: where is the analysis wrong and if not, why not act? The analysis is fundamentally flawed from its assumed starting points of self-sufficiency and competition only between native forest products and plantation products.
There is much more in the book that is also wrong but until Ajani can demonstrate that her core argument is valid – that in 2007, plantation products compete against native forest products and that self sufficiency should be our principle, and only, objective – then the analysis need go no further.

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