Forests of the world, anthropised environments

Publié le 14/09/2023
Auteur(s) : Arthur Guérin-Turcq, doctorant en géographie - Université de Lyon
Traduction :
Charlotte Musselwhite-Schweitzer, professeure des écoles (retraitée) - académie de Rennes

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"Forest" is a word that covers several biomes and a very wide diversity of ecosystems. Most of these are shaped by mankind and even inhabited, in the geographical sense of the word, that is to say, in daily use by human populations. The myth of the primeval forest hides, in fact, a large number of practices which are sometimes made invisible by protection zones imposed from without.

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According to the French Inventaire Forestier National (the state forest management authority), "a forest is an area of a minimum of 5000 m², with trees able to reach a minimum height of 5 m at maturity in situ, with forest cover of more than 10 % and an average width of at least 20 m." This definition is internationally recognised (by the FAO for example) and in use, amongst others, at the Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN - the French National Geographic Institute). This assessment of a forest raises the question of semantics which hides the eminently social nature of forests. Unlike a technical vision of forest spaces, we present a forest as a geographical object, a coherent and complex spatial entity at the crossroads of social and natural sciences. The article aims at establishing a general and integrated view of the world's forests. The presentation is in three parts, Understanding, Use and Protection, each highlighting a particular relationship of human societies with their forests.

1. Describing forest environments

The forests of the world cover slightly more than 4 billion hectares, which is 31 % of the earth's land area. 45 % are tropical forests, 27 % boreal, 16 % temperate and 11 % subtropical.

Document 1. World forests according to FAO

carte forêts FAO

Source: FAO, 2020.

1.1. Tropical forests

The tropical forest is a biome of the intertropical zones, particularly in Amazonia, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia. It can be either humid or dry, depending on climate and soil, but it is in the humid zones that the forest has the richest biodiversity. Tropical forests are characterised as "a dense plant formation of high trees consisting of deciduous species and a hot and very humid climate" (Dures, 2020).

Tropical forests play a major role as "carbon sinks" on a global scale. In effect, the evergreen vegetation with its photosynthetic action provides storage of CO² from the atmosphere, thus reducing the proportion of this GG, with a subsequent slow release of it. The significant ecological role of the tropical rain forest for climate regulation and the water cycle makes it "common heritage of humankind" (Cadalen, 2020). More so as climate change is accelerating, and "if tropical ecosystems remain carbon sinks during wet years, they become neutral or even emitters when drought is coming along" (Huet, 2019).

Contrary to a long lasting predominant western view, tropical forest is not "virgin forest". Of course, hydrology, the soil or the climate are important factors that explain the forest environment, but these spaces are not just conditioned by their physical traits. Distribution and dynamics of forests are also "the product of agroecological management history of that space because trees and forests are not seen as distinct from agriculture"(Rossi, 1999). Indeed, tropical forest "is a space that has been inhabited and crisscrossed for thousands of years by populations mainly practicing agriculture" (Friedberg, 1996). It is nowadays possible to identify traces of past land uses in the forest by means of remote sensing data and radar signals (Oswald et al., 2010; El Hadji et al., 2013). This work revises the definition of the biogeographical zones from a regional to a global scale.

In this way, a tropical forest is not a homogenous entity. The structuring of the alluvial plains (wetlands) and the interfluvial lands (uplands) in Amazonia forms "forestry patchworks" (Lamotte, 2004) which have been taken over in different ways by human society. Moreover, forests follow the varying mountain levels, for instance in the Himalayas (de Planhol, 1970). There are specific tropical forests such as the mangrove, "a low tropical forest of maximum 30 m height, dense and rooted in the mudflats of the tidal zones" (Klein, 2003); the wooded savannah, "a plant formation of the intertropical zone generally associating a continuous grass cover with woody bush and trees" (Toulouse, 2019).

The geography of the tropical forest aims at studying the dynamics of forest landscape in the light of it being a habitat. "Each phytogeographic entity has its own way of functioning in terms of hydrous flow, heat flux and gas stream" (Puig, 1994), and each forest environment is modified by the successive actions of human society over time. Therefore forest is a socio-ecosystem, a geographical object resulting as much from natural processes as from anthropogenic changes.

1.2. Boreal forests

The boreal forest, also called "taiga", exists only in the northern hemisphere, where winters of below 0°C stretch over more than six months, with about 200 days of snow cover (Loïzzo et Tiano, 2019). It is predominantly composed of conifers (spruce, fir, pine, larch) which can tolerate the climate conditions of severe winters and a relatively short growing season. There are also some deciduous trees like birch and willow (Cantegrel, 2022).

Boreal forest is described as a "climax forest" by the followers of the theory of forest succession (Bergeron, 1999; Gautier et al., 2001). They claim that boreal forest represents a state of ultimate balance, the culmination of an accomplished succession. In terms of landscape, climax forest looks like the old forests. Against this view, those who share the theory of forest dynamics (Gagnon et al., 2001; Jasinski et al., 2005) show that "structuring a population at a given moment in history depends on sequences of perturbations and the regenerative capacity of species during these times" (Huybens, 2011). Through fires, epidemics and the human use of the environment, boreal forest may evolve into irregular even-aged or tiered forest, or into mixed (conifer and deciduous) or single-species forest, or even into forest heathlands.

1.3. Temperate forests

The forests in temperate zones are not easy to describe as these environments are generally "deeply shaped by humans, to a point that one does not know whether they are still natural." (Demangeot, 2009). However, geographers differentiate two biomes according to climate and land: "evergreen temperate forests in zones with warm summers and cool winters (...) and hardwood deciduous temperate forests with relatively regular rainfall throughout the year" (Duffey, 1980).

Hardwood forests are made up mainly of oaks, beech, hornbeam and chestnut. The latter, qualified as "bread of the poor", played a significant role in rural food supply up to the twentieth century (Bourgeois, 2004). The conifer forests comprise mostly fir, pine, spruce, cedar and cypressus. From the end of the nineteenth century one can observe an "encroachment of landscape by woodland" (Le Floch, 2005) followed by

an expansion of softwood conifers forest taking over unoccupied former farmland after the rural exodus and the gradual abandonment of agropastoralism of the medium-height French mountains (Dodane, 2010).

There are particular plants which are exposed to a variety of human pressures. Riverine or alluvial forests (Dufour et Piégay, 2006) have largely shrunk due to the drainage of valley floors since the eighteenth century in Europe. Dune forests, artificially created in the nineteenth century, are threatened by marine erosion (Petit-Berghem, 2011). Temperate forests face a strong phenomenon of ecological fragmentation which creates a patchwork of small woods, viewed as "island anthroposystems" by the biogeographers (Linglart et Blandin, 2006).

In this context, Laurent Lespez qualifies forest as "hybridised nature" (Lespez, 2020). Geographers thus approach forest nature in the Mediterranean through the cultural prism of landscape (Fourault-Cauet, 2010), or, in the Landes, as heritage (Pottier, 2014). The ordinary nature of urban space is recognised and qualified as "improbable biodiversity" (Arnould et al., 2011).

2. Operating forest areas

There are three main activities, amongst others, in forest areas: traditional practices (for food and nurturing, but also cultural, all related to "home making" in its every aspect); use of timber; tourism with or against the local population.

2.1. Traditional practices

Traditionally, forest areas have been developed by rural communities in agricultural, forestry and livestock farming where the land is used in a complementary way. To autonomise forest is a western concept inherited from the division between nature and culture, the wild and the domesticated (Descola, 2015). In antiquity, the Romans already divided rural space into three zones: ager (fields), silva (forest) and saltus (extensive breeding).

In contrast, the most widespread practice in southern countries is agroforestry. Geographers have shown that the ancient dynamics of forest regeneration allow slash-and-burn agricultural techniques, herewith creating "an essential resource for the subsistence of forest populations" (Michon et al., 1995). Supported by a survey in Indonesia and Madagascar, Jean-Baptiste Bing shows that agroforestry "reduces the dependency of rural communities on export crops by adding food crops, maintains local workforce and curbs the rural exodus, protecting the land and managing hydrology" (Bing, 2015).

There are similar outcomes in other parts of the South, such as Costa Rica (Beer, 1990), where tree protection and planting cocoa go hand in hand; Burundi, where forests and nurseries share the space (Puig, 1994); Cameroon too, where the domestic gardens integrate medicinal plants (Tchatat, 1995). The survival of agroforestry practices has been perceived as a revealer of lively aboriginal communities, in Nepal (Smadja, 1994), or in the southwest of Madagascar (Ranaivoson, 2012). Forest laws have been adopted to protect the practices of local forest communities, 1994 in Cameroon, 1999 in Indonesia (Mekouar, 2004; Gautier et Hautdidier, 2012).

Elinor Ostrom's Self-governance and forest resources (1999) shows the many ways how forest inhabitants have worked out their own operating rules of the environment, for wood as well as for non-wood products such as mushrooms (Tsing, 2017), aromatic and medicinal herbs or also game (Stépanoff, 2021). Collective governance guarantees sustainability of the forest resources over time. Geographers have confirmed Elinor Ostrom's observations by empirical research in several southern tropical forests: in Guinea (Rey, 2011), in Benin (Mehou-Loko et al., 2013), and in India (Létang, 2017).

As a result, agroforestry programmes have increased considerably through national and international public policies to aid development and fight deforestation. Camille Reyniers demonstrated their limits in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to her, these production modes decided by states are not sustainable, because they are "technical and technological solutions offering little alternative opportunities to the local populations" (Reyniers, 2019).

Document 2. Landscape showing traditional nurturing use of the forest: grazed oak forest (Hutewald) in the Rheinhardswald (Hessen, Germany)

hutewald

Hutewald (grazed forest) is a landscape associated with a traditional use of forest that consists of letting domestic animals graze in the undergrowth who may live there in semi-freedom (pannage in case of pig farming). Photo: Gerhard Elsner, 2006, GNU/GPL license.

2.2. Forestry

Forestry is the overall use and management practice of a forest with the aim of economic profit. According to Jonathan Lenglet (2018), the "term forest & wood products' sector is being used more and more to talk of all the stakeholders and activities around use and transformation of wood". Since the nineteenth century, forest administrations in most countries have established themselves as large domains taken from aboriginal territories, an example being Tunisia (Bouju et al., 2016). In France, the planting of the maritime pine forest in the Landes of Gascogne is, in this way, presented as an "interior colonisation" by the government under Napoleon III, against the agropastoral communities of the Landes (Aldhuy, 2010).

Geographical research in the global South is mostly driven by deforestation. In Amazonia, multiple causes for this are identified in the descriptions of pioneer frontiers (Scouvart, 2006). As Moise Tsayem Demaze (2008) points out, "Brazilian public policy views Amazonia as a territory that needs opening up and developing", whereas Ludivine Eloy and François-Michel Le Tourneau (2009) show that deforestation is no foregone conclusion. Maintaining slash-and-burn agriculture shows that transforming tropical forest into large fields with intensive production is not inevitable.

Deforestation is often the consequence of converting forest to grazing land or plantation. Geographers have proved this in many regions of the world, by studying the forest cover through time, on Madagascar (Vololonirainy et al., 2013) or in Senegal (Andrieu et al., 2018; Solly et al., 2020). Deforestation causes soil erosion in the mountains of Guizhou in China (Vanara, 2008), and a "biological degradation of ecosystems" in Cameroon (Ngoufo et al., 2006).

On the other hand, François Verdeaux (1998) pointed out that in Ivory Coast "deforestation is neither caused by over exploitation of resources nor through demographic explosion". In the same way and more recently, Jean-Paul Jamet (2020) criticises the FAO typology of forest land: "excluding systems comprising trees, especially agroforestry in a wider sense, (...) may lead to believe that these practices are synonymous to deforestation. Instead, they improve the resilience of the new systems and provide ecosystemic service quite similar to forest ecosystems".

Marketing wood takes place from the local to a global level by increasingly financialised markets (Hautdidier, 2004). Fuelwood has appeared in this global context, offering much economic opportunity but also generating much socio-spatial inequality. Indeed, the development of fuelwood does not help the production of significant revenue for the rural population of Burkina-Faso's forests (Ouedraogo, 2009). Although, at the same time, fuelwood is a lucrative activity for the operators and investors of the Hahas' argan tree plantations in Morocco (Faouzi, 2013).

"To use forest biomass to heat buildings or produce electricity seems appealing", as Émilie Evrad and Yves Poinsot (2013) stated. It is true, wood is seen as "green energy" promoted by public policies for the ecologic transition (Tabourdeau, 2021), aimed at reducing the proportion of fossil energy. However, the authors stress the limits of this model due to the competition between territories on the global scale: "Europe, Japan and China have more interest in getting forest biomass from America or Africa than from Eurasia. But these economic strategies playing with spaces induce disastrous ecological effects over time, through a perverted game with stocks". One may join Sylvie Pellerin (2013) in asking the question "Is fuelwood the solution of the future ?"

2.3. Tourism

Forests hold a privileged place in the western collective psyche (Harrison, 2018), between an Orphic and a Promethean vision of nature (Debarbieux, 2015). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, romanticism overturned nature perception in Europe. Artists and writers transcended the forest. A hostile environment changed into an attractive landscape. Budding tourism enhanced travel with the development of the railway.

So the ancient royal forests in Île de France, state-owned since the French Revolution, became new spaces of leisure for the Parisian bourgeoisie, and were soon transformed into "green museums" like Fontainebleau (Kalaora, 1985). The same applied to mountain forests promoted by the Touring Club de France (Schut, Delalandre, 2016). Forests as heritage undergo a labelling procedure making them newly attractive. The touristic forest lies in a tension field between conservationism and economic development, as for example in the Cariri du Ceara in Brazil (Bétard et al., 2017), in the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada (Héritier, 2019), or in the Caribbean mangroves (Klein, 2003).

3. Protecting forest territories

3.1. Conserving forest

Forest conservation policies go back to the creation of protected areas in Europe and in the USA during the nineteenth century, the latter being forerunners in the movement to preserve nature considered as "wild", influenced by thinkers like John Muir (1901). National parks (Laslaz, 2022) and nature reserves spread all over the world through the colonisation of the southern countries. Above all, protected space is a controlled space, as shown by Steve Déry, in the countries of Southeast Asia: "It is as if the state cut out [the park] to raise it to national geographical superiority; a level now accessible to ecological tourists and to both domestic and international researchers, but barring, often completely, access to local populations" (Déry, 2008). For instance, in the National Park of Niokolo-Koba, the Senegali authorities, by "evacuating humans for the benefit of 'nature', have neglected complexity and have thus removed a regulating element of the environmental management" (Larrue, 2002). Making a sanctuary of the forests goes against the use of sacred landscapes for many populations (Grésillon et Sajaloli, 2013). Guillaume Blanc (2020) qualifies this situation as "green colonialism".

Forest reserves are in a tension between protection of the ecosystem and exploitation. On Madagascar for instance, where " preserving biodiversity is confronted with anthropic pressure and illegal occupation inside the area" (Weber, 1995). In Europe, the Natura 2000 network "insists on keeping a balance between highlighting areas and conservation of habitats and heritage species" (Lepart et Marty, 2006). A similar approach exists in the Parc National de Forêts between Champagne and Burgundy (Untermaier, 2022), or in Regional Natural Parks (PNR), especially so in the PNR of Oise Pays de France in forest matters (Pour, 2022).

Taking stock of the breakdown of biodiversity started an environmental turning point in forestry politics. In India, where "forest administration had been working on valuing wood resources, it has since 1990 adopted the mission of protecting ecological functions" (Hinnewinkel et al., 2017). As in France, where geographers observe a "growing ecological awareness in the wood industry" (Lenglet, Corla, 2020). Still, this tendency must be qualified with care, as "the world of forestry remains focussed on efficiency and on the maintenance of heritage in its literal sense, i.e. as an economic, personal family heirloom" (Bouisset, Puyo, 2011).

Because of this state of facts, environmental policies meet their limits. In Argentina, the law of forest protection is bent to "favour agricultural dynamics" (Gisclard, 2015). In North America, "there are deep uncertainties about the efficiency of protective measures, especially in the light of energy challenges" (Depraz, Héritier, 2012). Forest labelling (PEFC and FSC), created to insure a sustainable forest management (Arnould, 1999), has become "a weapon of competition between economic players" (Tozzi et al., 2011), particularly in Amazonia where this "measure can hardly be sustained in the long term" (Lemeilleur et al., 2017).

3.2. Risks and adaptation of forests

Forests are vulnerable to global change, experiencing natural and anthropogenic disturbances which severely test the ecosystems' resilience. The 1999 December storm in France caused much damage (Terrasson, 2000). Forests are also exposed to strong health risks related to insect infestation (Banos, 2020) or invasive plants (Javelle et al., 2010). Some species struggle to adapt to climate change, for example, the natural range of beech in France, accustomed to a damp and cool climate, is slowly being reduced.

Nowadays forest fires impress public opinion by their intensity and recurrence, in Amazonia (Théry, 2019), in Asia (Robert, 2020), in Provence (Carrega, 2005) or in California (Bouisset, 2021). Not only dry and hot environments are struck: the summer of 2003 saw super fires ravage Canada's northern forest (Le Monde, 2023). Spacial analysis models fires as "complex systems" (Mangiavillano, 2011). Vincent Clément contextualises fires around the Mediterrean in the long term, stressing human responsability and the shortcomings of preventative policies. Geographers plead to "abandon the taboo of a non-productive forest" (Clément, 2005).

At the same time, forests were placed at the heart of the fight against climate change (Van de Maele, 2020), in particular since the implementing of the process of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing countries (REDD). These measures are designed to absorb more carbon through forest carbon sinks. The downside of it is, as Joel Bulier and Laurent Simon pointed out, "that to conduct a global policy internationally (...) contributes to the still-persisting illusion in international bodies that a sector policy can answer a given problem universally". Adding to that, "this initiative has strong commercial implications" (Tsayem Demaze, 2010) and "focusses attention on forest as an object at the expense of players concerned and their needs" (Brédif, 2008).

3.3. Conflicts of use and appropriation

The conflicts around appropriation of forest resources are not only fought on a local, but also on a global scale. A double movement of ecologisation and commodification of forest (Tordjman, 2021) leads to evaluate nature as much for its "ecosystemic services" as for its monetary value on the global markets (Oswald, 2018). In this theoretical framework the concepts of "avoided deforestation" (Karsenty, 2007) for climate policies and of "imported deforestation" for agricultural policies were born (Antoine, 2023).

In Morocco, payment for ecological services are a "mecanism which could be the base for the attribution of carbon credits" (Lahssini, 2016). However, Catherine Aubertin (2016) shows how carbon deals are inefficient in the battle against deforestation in Brazil, and that only an ambitious state policy is able to protect the forest. Nelo Magalhães (2021) even asks the question whether the "paradigm of green investment" does not implicitly support more "business as usual".

 

Thus, "forest is a battle field", in the Himalayas for instance where "control of forest areas reveals the power relations between the state and local societies with occurrences of land grabbing and new situations of property monopolies" (Létang, 2020). In Indonesia, forest policy is firmly in the hands of the elites seeking to replace natural forests with forest plantation operating massive clearcutting techniques (Durand, 2008).

Forests are often marginal spaces, "grey zones" (Kadet, 2015), stages for more or less radical violence. On Madagascar (Bertrand, 2012) or in Cameroon (Baticle, 2021), local communities fight and resist the enclosure of forest space which makes it private land (Compagnon, 2008) through building fences. This fencing is also present in the northern countries, as in Sologne (France), a forest held by private hunting (Baltzinger, 2016), or like the "walled forest" of Chambord (Robert, 2018). The Columbian forest used by the FARC guerillas sees many development projects threatening the subsistance of rural communities there (Benassaya, 2022).

Today, as urban populations are more and more attracted by nature (Dehez et al., 2022), peri-urban forests (Salaun, 2019) have become multifunctional. They are the scene for conflicts of use, between productive activities on one side (wood-, resin- and charcoal industry), on the other side recreational activities like hunting (Decoville, 2007), sports, picking or walking (Papillon et Rodier, 2011).

Conclusion

In times of the Anthropocene (Bonneuil, Fressoz, 2013), forest ecosystems represent major environmental issues because "the decline of forests contribute to speed up climate change" (Robert, 2020). Forests are as much used as natural resources as for their environmental amenities. This valuation is nowadays increasingly questioned (d'Allens, 2019).

Finally, forests reveal the contradictory relationship between human societies and all living things. The Belem summit on deforestation marks another failure to protect biodiversity (Le Monde, 2023). Beyond the critique of greenwashing, geographers show that forests are always coveted spaces (Felli, 2016) which exclude the most vulnerable populations.


References

 

Arthur GUÉRIN-TURCQ

PHD candidate in geography, RIVES-EVS, Université de Lyon

 

Translated from French by Charlotte MUSSELWHITE-SCHWEITZER

 

Web layout : Jean-Benoît Bouron

Cite this text:

Arthur Guérin-Turcq, « Forests of the world, anthropised environments: the current state of affairs », Géoconfluences, September 2023. Translated from French by Charlotte Musselwhite-Schweitzer in September 2024.
URL: https://geoconfluences.ens-lyon.fr/programmes/dnl/dnl-hg-anglais/forests-of-the-world

Pour citer cet article :  

Arthur Guérin-Turcq, Traduction : et Charlotte Musselwhite-Schweitzer, « Forests of the world, anthropised environments », Géoconfluences, septembre 2023.
https://geoconfluences.ens-lyon.fr/programmes/dnl/dnl-hg-anglais/forests-of-the-world