BBC Wildlife Archives

NOW OR NEVER

The Kew Lecture – June 1990

On 6 February 1990, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales opened a year of international concern for the world’s rainforests with a lecture at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ( which itself, in collaboration with Friends of the Earth, was launching several months of ‘rainforest events’). Far from being a royal formality, it turned out to be an incisive attack on human squandering of the planet’s most valuable assets and an eloquent call for a change in civilised patterns of thinking. It had repercussions around the world, not least among captains of the timber industry and heads of state in countries where rainforests are being ‘mined’. Now, for the first time in a periodical publication, we present the ( very slightly abridged) text on the lecture.

Listen to King Charles’ speech using the text-to-speech function

I must confess to a powerful feeling that there is nothing new to be said about the tropical forests-of which the tropical rainforests are the most rare and precious examples. So many people far wiser and more experienced than me seem to have said it all. Apart from that, the more care­fully you examine the sub­ject the more complex the issues become, and the more disturbing the ramifi­cations.

For those courageous and farsighted people who have been trying to warn us about environmental problems for longer than we care to remember, one of the most heartening developments of recent years has been to find that rather a lot of people now think the same way. People who have never been lucky enough to experience for themselves the extraordinary beauty of the forest, with its unique sights, smells and noises, now care deeply about what is happening-such is the power of the media when they switch their undivided attention to the ‘latest issue’.

Now I suspect there are many different reasons for this powerful response. Those remarkable natural his­tory films which reveal some of the mystery and vast diversity of the rainforest undoubtedly play an im­portant part, but I suspect there is also a growing reali­sation that we are literally the last generation which can save the rainforest from total destruction. The phrase ‘Now or never’ has never been used with more chilling accuracy.

Before starting to look at some of the interlocking factors which are leading to the current devastation of an irreplaceable natural resource, I believe it is import­ant to recognise the legitimacy and even reasonable­ness of other points of view. Before we place the blame for environmental deterior­ation on developing coun­tries, we must ask ourselves in how many cases the pro­cess of deterioration was started by the actions of individuals and companies from the industrialised nations of the world. We should also recognise the extent to which under­development and poverty account for the inability of the developing countries to husband their natural resources, and to under­take environmental efforts and measures.

Eight years ago the then vice-president of Indonesia put the case with brutal clarity: “How much land for the hungry today? And how much for genetic resources to be preserved for tomor­row? In the past we have neither received a fair share of the benefits, nor have we received a fair share of assistance other than inex­pensive advice and even more inexpensive criticism­ in our efforts to save the common global natural heri­tage. Unless such responsibilities are equally shared, all our good intentions will only lead to global environ­mental destruction.”

When we talk about the tropical forests we are speaking of the natural assets of other countries. Show­ing our anxiety about their problems must be done in a way which shows respect for their sovereignty and an understanding of their needs. We must also examine our own consciences. We talk about the need to avoid irreversible damage to fragile habitats, and the require­ment to guard shrinking non-renewable resources. But what about the wrong sort of afforestation in the Flow Country of Scotland, for instance, and large-scale, highly mechanised peat extraction?

” … somewhere around 1.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide is released in this way each year. And when we add in other greenhouse gases emitted by tropical deforestation, such as methane and nitrous oxide, the overall contribution to global warming can be estimated to be around 18 or 19 percent.”

It seems to me important that any discussion about the tropical forests should start by looking at the people who depend directly on them for their livelihood. This includes both indigenous people and relatively recent settlers, but the main focus of concern must be on the remaining tribal people for whom the tropical forest has been their home for many generations. Their story has been told many times and it is one of which we must all be profoundly ashamed.

Ever since the first explorers from Spain and Portugal set foot in South America, and the British visi­ted the Caribbean, the people of the so-called ‘de­veloped world’ have always treated tribal people as total savages, be it to enslave them, subdue them, ‘civilise’ them, or convert them to our way of thinking. The latter activity seems to be remarkably widespread and can cause unimaginable confusion and suffering.

It is not just those who depend directly on the tropi­cal forests who suffer from deforestation, but the entire population of tropical forest countries. The forests assist in the regulation of local climate patterns, pro­tecting watersheds, preventing floods, guaranteeing and controlling huge flows of life-giving water. Strip away the forests and there is, first, too much water (in the shape of uncontrollable flooding, as we have seen recently in Brazil and many other countries) and then too little. As the forests come crashing down, an inexorable human tragedy is set in train.

It isn’t even just the tropical forest countries which are affected by deforestation. The more we learn about our world the more we realise that events in one area can have enormous, and perhaps irreversible, conse­quences thousands of miles away.

It is not, I believe, an exaggeration to say that the whole of humanity will benefit if what is left of the tropical forests can be saved. Their role in controlling aspects of our climate is so great that they can truth­fully be said to affect every single person alive today, let alone future generations. Scientists may disagree about the extent of the phenomenon known as ‘global warm­ing’ but few now actually doubt its existence, or the role of the tropical forests in maintaining the natural balance of our planet.

At the same time; other scientists are stressing the value of the genetic potential locked up in the tropical forests. The current loss of species is quite different from the usual (and more or less natural) pattern of extinctions, ever since that pattern has been acceler­ated by humankind over the last two hundred years. To quote from the World Resources Institute’s report on biodiversity in October 1989: “If we don’t act immediately, extinctions in the coming decades may represent the most massive loss of species since the end of the Cretaceous Era, some 65 million years ago. And the single greatest cause of species extinction in the next half-century will be tropical deforestation. Scientists concur that roughly 5 to 10 percent of closed tropical forest species will become extinct per decade at current rates of tropical forest loss and disturbance. With more than 50 percent of species occurring in closed tropical forest, and a total of roughly 10 million species on Earth, this amounts to the phenomenal extinction rate of more than 100 species per day.”

Now it’s almost impossible to hold such a figure in one’s mind and to contemplate the consequences of such biological mayhem. Perhaps just two examples will help to illustrate the value to our species of the genetic potential available in the tropical forests, though I know that Professor Ghillean Prance the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens) and others who’s work in this field could provide many many more. A plant known as Jaborandi is found in eastern Amazonian Brazil. It contains the chemical pilocarpine, which is now used to treat glaucoma and has saved thousands of people from blindness. The Moreton Bay Chestnut, from the rainforests of Queensland, contains castanos­permine, which is now being tested on humans for its positive action on Aids. Thousands of plants have already been tested for their anti-cancer properties, but only an insignificant amount have been systemati­cally tested for a comprehensive range of other proper­ties and benefits. By just testing for anti-cancer effects, important though they are, we may be missing a whole range of other benefits.

If we could invest more in plant screening now there is no doubt that one day it would pay off. It isn’t just a question of drugs. There is huge agricultural potential wrapped lip in the forests. It is quite revealing to find that products which we take for granted, such as coffee, chocolate, citrus fruit, sugar, tomatoes, and even rice and potatoes, all originated in tropical countries. We now spend millions of pounds on ‘improving’ these foods-trying to make them sweeter, more colourful or tastier. Perhaps that investment might be better applied to pursuing new products from the tropical forests?

Nor is it only for new, tastier, healthier foods that we should look to the tropical forests. Our current staple crops are continuously bolstered and invigorated by genes from their wild relatives. Recently, genes from wild rice helped to combat a new disease which was threatening to wipe out much of Asia’s rice crop. As it happened, that crop-saving plant was found in the Silent Valley forest in India, which itself was only saved by the intervention of the kind of environmental activists whose activities are so often derided by those who do not share their single-minded commitment.

It really does seem extraordinary that we should be destroying our genetic inheritance at precisely the time when we most need it, and at a time when advances in science and technology are providing incredibly pre­cise and sophisticated tools to open up some of Nature’s secrets to the benefit of medicine, nutrition and industry. What possible justification can there be for systematically stripping future generations of their options in a way that defies even conventional economic logic?

“Generations of observation and bodily trialand error have honed their judgement in a process as rigorous as’any laboratory-testing. As a result, local people often have keener insights into the intricately balanced hannony of the forests … than do·the peripatetic experts.”

I read the latest information on current levels of tropical forest destruction, be it from the Overseas Development Administration or Friends of the Earth, with a sinking heart. Have you noticed how people devise cheery little comparisons as to the acreages involved, which perhaps only serve to obscure the extent of the devastation: an area two thirds of the size of the United Kingdom is destroyed every year, which is, I’m reliably informed equivalent to seven Hyde Parks every hour, or six football pitches every minute!

But of course, this is not some abstract statistical game. The latest report by Professor Norman Myers spells out very clearly what is actually happening: “According to the latest estimates, tropical forests have lost 142,200 square kilometres of their expanse during 1989. This is 1.8 percent of remaining forest.” He goes on to say, “The current rate of 1.8 percent per year does not mean that all remaining forests will disappear in another 38 years. Patterns and trends of deforestation are far from even. In South-east Asia it is likely that little forest will remain in another 20 years’ time out­side of central Kalimantan and Irian Jaya in Indonesia and in Papua New Guinea. In West Africa, except for Cameroon, hardly any forests will survive by the end of the century, but in the Zaire Basin there is a prospect that a sizeable tract could persist for several more decades. In Latin America, it’s difficult to see that much forest can last beyond another two decades except for an extensive block in ·western Brazilian Amazonia and one in the Guyana hinterland.”

The causes of this deforestation vary from region to region, but there is no doubt that the main cause is the poverty of people who live around the tropical forests in developing countries, together with the inexorable pressure of ever-growing human numbers. More than two billion people live in the tropical forest zone. Popu­lation is growing at over 2.5 percent a year. For these people, the forest is a resource for exploitation to meet basic needs, above all land for agriculture.

While the commercial logger and the cattle rancher do cause much forest depletion, often with the en­couragement of tax incentives or other government subsidies, their combined impact is only a part of that of the ‘shifted’ cultivator. He is the displaced peasant who finds himself squeezed out of traditional farmlands in areas often many horizons away from his country’s forests, whereupon he feels obliged to pick up his machete and matchbox and head for the only unoccu­pied lands available, the forests.

Land clearance for agriculture is almost always carried out by the ‘cut-and-burn’ method, which leads, of course, to much increased emissions of greenhouse gases. Dr Richard Houghton of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts estimates that somewhere around 1.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide is released in this way each year. And when we add in other greenhouse gases emitted by tropical deforesta­tion, such as methane and nitrous oxide, the overall contribution to global warming can be estimated to be around 18 or 19 percent.

With deforestation now on every politician’s lips, one would certainly like to think that we might have arrived at some solution already. Two new international organi­sations, the International Tropical Timber Organisa­tion (ITI’O) and the Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP), have,been established in the past eight years to address forestry problems. But deforestation has actually increased massively during the time that these institutions have been at work.

Clearly we should deploy both these organisations to the full and aim to make them as effective as possible, but they have not shown much inclination to look beyond the forestry sector. Since much of the pres­sure on the forests arises from social and agricultural policies way beyond the forests, there would seem to be an overwhelming case for a much broader, multi-disci­plinary approach.

Perhaps the time has come for an international agreement or convention on the world’s tropical forests. We already have a series of conventions and protocols which protect the marine environment, the ozone layer and the atmosphere, with varying degrees of effectiveness, yet for our most precious common resources we have nothing.

Any such convention would have to start by recognis­ing both the urgency of the situation, and the need for parallel action by the industrialised nations to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel power stations and transport. Another talking shop will help no one, and participation could become an alternative to action.

It seems to me that the goals of a separate Rainforest Convention would be as follows:

•          to establish a rationale for sustainable use;
•          to maintain ecological and physical processes essential to the maintenance of local, regional and global climates;
•          to maintain maximum biological diversity;
•          to establish the fundamental rights of forest dwellers;
•          to set targets for reafforestation;
•          to establish mechanisms of compensation for coun­tries that suffer financial loss by controlling destruc­tion of their forests;
•          and to establish funding mechanisms to meet the cost of such compensation.

“The current loss of species is quite different from the usual ( and more or less natural) pattern of extinctions, ever since that pattern has been accelerated by humankind over the last 200 years. To quote from the World Resources lnstitute’s report on biodiversity in October 1989: ‘ … With more than 50 percent of species occurring in closed tropical forest, and a total of roughly 10 million species on Earth, this amounts to the phenomenal extinction rate of more than 100 species per day.”

Now this is clearly a massive challenge, but it seems to me that we cannot simply go on talking about the need to protect the world’s tropical forests, and not create the kind of institutions and mechanisms which will actually make that possible. It is absolutely obvious that nothing we currently have at our disposal is going to fulfil that task. The sands of time in the tropical hourglass are running out fast, and we can’t turn it upside down and watch the sand run out all over again.

Even to start addressing the issues involved will mean harnessing the economic muscle of the developed world. To demonstrate the scale of the prob­lem it would be useful to look at the prospects for stem­ming the flow of shifted cultivators towards the forests, since their activities are the principal cause of de­forestation. Sadly, all the indications are that, far from stemming the flow, three factors are likely to lead to a considerable increase.

First, tropical forest countries will provide the bulk of population growth in the foreseeable future. At cur­rent rates that is an extra three billion people in the next 40 years. Second, alternative forms of livelihood for the landless peasant are becoming still more limited by unemployment. In the next 20 years; developing countries need to generate 600 million jobs ( or as many as all the jobs in the developed world today) in order to accommodate all new entrants into the work force. Third, there is a diminishing prospect of tropical forest countries directing enough capital investment into job-producing sectors as long as the net flow of North-South funds remain as it is. In 1989, the South paid $52 billion more to the North in the way of debt-servicing than it received in the form of foreign aid and other payments. It is problems on this immense scale which any new institution would have to tackle.

Now many of us care about the tropical forests sim­ply for their intrinsic value and their long-term import­ance to mankind. But the situation looks very different when seen from the point of view of a developing coun­try grappling with the problems of poverty, unemploy­ment and the remorseless pressure to meet interest payments on loans from the developed world. It is not surprising that their overriding requirement is to derive income from their forests.

We hear much these days about the need for ‘sustain­able development’, but its many different uses still seem to cover a multitude of ecological sins! As so often, Fritz Schumacher seemed to explain a difficult concept best by simply extending the widely understood distinc­tion between one’s capital and the interest one draws on that capital, in a financial or banking context, to the natural world. The distinction between a forest cleared in a once-and-for-all way for timber or for cattle graz­ing, and a forest harvested sustainably for a variety of non-timber products, can then be calculated down to the last dollar.

Once the forests are thought to hold a greater hope for human welfare and economic development if con­served, rather than felled, then it clearly becomes pos­sible to reconcile environmental protection and development. It’s not a question of promoting some pastoralist ideal as opposed to unfettered economic progress, but of trying to cope as best we can with the age-old conflict between our human needs and the finite wealth of this particular planet.

Now that’s easily said, but as I discovered on a visit to Indonesia recently, forestry management practices, as introduced and institutionalised by European colonists, were focused only on forest exploitation ( often based on government monopolies). This was also reflected in the type of forestry training that was pro­vided in those days. Many developing countries still have no developed traditions of forestry management other than obtaining the maximum income in the short­est time.

The majority of developing countries first obtained a level of economic viability as suppliers of natural pro­ducts for immediate consumption (such as fruit, coffee and tea) and for raw material for European industries (such as rubber). This level was adequate for the pre­independence, colonial period with its slow rate of growth, slow development and emancipation. These products require little or no processing and in their exploitation very little ‘added value’ can be generated. Moreover, such products are so-called ‘soft products’ and are very sensitive to price fluctuations on markets which, in any case, are controlled by the richer, pur­chasing countries.

Developing countries would be considerably helped if such price fluctuations could be stabilised as much as possible. They would be helped even more if they could process-fully or partially-their natural products. In this way a given and sustainable level of forest exploita­tion could yield the needed income.

In the autumn of 1988 the Government decided to provide more help to developing countries with their forestry projects. An initiative was launched under the aid programme run by the Overseas Development Administration (ODA). The aims included helping developing countries maximise the social and economic benefits they get from their forests in the long term, tackling the causes of deforestation and promoting reforestation, especially on degraded lands; increasing the productivity of forests through research; and helping conserve the vast bank of plant and animal species that are housed in forests.

“One the forest are thought to hold a greater hope for human welfare and economic development if conserved, rather than felled, then it clearly becomes possible to reconcile environmental protection and development.”

At the end of 1988, the ODA was supporting about 80 forestry projects, with a total value of about £45 million. Now there are about 115 projects, with another 50 in preparation, worth in total over £150 million. As part of the forestry initiative, the ODA has signed a special agreement for technical co-operation with Brazil. Under that agreement, eight projects are now being worked up, including one for the establishment of a biological reserve in Cachiuna national forest, and one researching the relationship between rainforest and local climate. The projects involve collaboration be­tween British Centres of Excellence, including Kew Gardens, and their Brazilian counterparts. It seems to me that this sort of partnership provides an excellent model of the kind of co-operation that is needed be­tween developed and developing countries.

What discussions I have been able to have, albeit very briefly, with forestry experts in Indonesia and elsewhere have inevitably led to the conclusion that timber extraction is almost always unsustainable, so great is the damage done even when the logging is carried out as selectively and sensitively as possible. That has been confirmed by the ITI’O itself, as well as by the International Institute for Environment and Development’s fascinating but depressing study on the true extent of sustainable management being carried out in different parts of the world.

But are we not in a position to take that conclusion even further these days? Even if countries were able to implement management systems which did not irrever­sibly reduce the potential of the forest to produce mar­ketable timber on a sustainable basis, that might still not be the best use of the forest. The highest-yielding systems of sustainable timber production still require quite drastic modifications of a forest’s ecology, eventu­ally reducing the forest to a shadow of its former richness and diversity. We’re really talking about plan­tations by any other name.

At this stage, with the tropical forests at such risk, it would seem to me to be eminently sensible to work towards the restriction of timber extraction to those forests which have already been logged over. We could then look towards future timber needs being met from hardwood plantations established on the vast area of already degraded land. The potential here is huge, and one need look no further than to the threat of global warming to provide the incentive. It is already apparent that one of the best ways of countering the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is through reforesta­tion. By far the best place, surely, to grow trees is in the humid tropics, with their year-round warmth and mois­ture, and it surely has to be in the interests of both the tropical forest countries and the developed world to promote such reforestation schemes as enthusiasti­cally as possible.

But in a world so remorselessly driven by monetary values, one has to be able to demonstrate that sustain­able harvesting really does produce a better financial return than a once-and-for-all clear-fell. I have seen various studies demonstrating that fruit and latex har­vesting comes out well ahead of clear-felling for timber purposes or cattle ranching, and I believe that this financial advantage would be further reinforced if the potential market for medicinal plants and other non­timber forest products was to be increased.

From all this reading, I am afraid I emerge somewhat baffled as to why so many politicians and economists seem to find it difficult to see the wood for the trees! If conventional economics, let alone common sense or even native wit, bears out the hypothesis that sustain­able utilisation makes more sense than outright destruction, what further objections could possibly be raised?

It would seem that one of the problems is the dif­ferent markets towards which the different products are directed. The demand for tropical hardwoods is international, earning valuable foreign exchange, whereas the demand for non-timber products is often more regional arid focal, and thus less important in national economic accounting.

In trying to assess what is possible, and, more im­portantly, what is sensible in the tropical forests, we need to find out what Nature will allow, and work within those limitations. The story of Henry Ford’s ‘Fordlandia’ in Brazil is cautionary, I think. Here the single-minded energy of American industry, aided by a welter of concessions from the Brazilian government, was unable to establish a viable rubber plantation, because of an oversight concerning some very basic laws of nature.

” … it would seem to me to be eminently sensible to work towards the restriction of timber extraction to those forests which have already been logged over. We could then look towards future timber needs being met from hardwood plantations established on the vast area of already degraded land.”

In 1927, Ford took control of what was described as “a fertile rolling plateau, forested with tall and lovely trees.” By 1929, he had cleared nearly 1,500 acres, but the project failed because the seedlings would not thrive. The main problem was that the Hevea brasilien­sis, whose sap provides the raw material for rubber, was attacked by a leaf-rust fungus. This is not a serious problem when the trees are grown singly in the jungle, but it spreads with devastating effect when they are planted as a monoculture.

This story underlines what I believe to be a crucial factor in our approach to the rainforests or, indeed, to the many environmental challenges the world faces. And that is the importance of working with indigenous tribal peoples, and respecting them for their all­embracing knowledge and experience of the forest. Generations of observation and bodily trial and error have honed their judgement in a process as rigorous as any laboratory testing. As a result, local people often have keener insights into the intricately balanced har­mony of the forests, and how simultaneously to exploit and sustain that harmony, than do the peripatetic experts.

Yet local communities have too often been ignored. We must systematically, I would suggest, bring them into efforts to safeguard the forest, right from the start of the planning process. Quite apart from their know­ledge of their environment, forestry is critically depen­dent on the goodwill of local people. Who else is to plant the trees, and then keep the goats, or whatever, away from the seedlings?

Studies of Indian communities in Brazil and Vene­zuela show that they make use of up to 78 percent of the tree species in the forests concerned-and with as many as 300 species of trees in an area a quarter of the size of a football pitch, this is no mean feat. To the Shuar Indians of Ecuador, the forest is a natural phar­macy-they know of 250 separate medicinal plants. The same kind of astonishingly diverse use of tropical forest species can be seen in their agriculture prac­tices, even when dealing with varieties of staple crops such as manioc. The idea of one tribe {the Tukano Indians of the Upper Rio Negro in the Amazon) having access to no fewer than 140 varieties of manioc makes our dependence on a mere handful of staple crops look extremely primitive by comparison!

These people are accomplished environmental sci­entists, and for us to call them ‘primitive’ is both per­verse and patronising.

Professor Prance and his colleagues have done much to point out both the importance and the value of the astonishing diversity within the tropical forests. The evolutionary idiocy of eliminating that diversity, and replacing it with short-lived monocultures of cash crops or grassland exemplifies the arrogance of the West in its dealings with the natural world. But how encourag­ing that botanists and biologists are now in the fore­front of international efforts to promote the idea of extractive reserves.

It will, of course, be a major challenge to scientists, foresters and governments to stimulate the marketing and development of these non-destructive, renewable resources. It must be done in such a way that the benefits and profits accrue fairly to the local forest communities, and to the producer country economies.

And there are good signs that this can be made to work. In Brazil, rubbertappers and Indians have over­ come their history of conflict to recognise their com­mon interests, and have signed a pact called the Forest Peoples’ Alliance, which focuses on defending the forests and the land rights of forest peoples. Extending the Forest Peoples’ Alliance to other forest groups and rural communities may well be the greatest hope for the rainforests of the Amazon.

Such initiatives will have a much harder time of it unless they are supported by their governments. I have recently seen the fascinating report by Peter Bunyard on the policies of the Colombian government for the protection of its indigenous peoples, and see this as an encouraging beacon of hope and light in an otherwise rather gloomy scene.

The Colombian government has initiated a systema­tic programme of legal recognition of land rights for all the indigenous communities in the Amazon. To date, more than 12 million hectares have been handed back to 156,000 indigenous people. The land is held as the collective property of the Indians, and is inalienable. Another six million hectares are now under considera­tion, which would bring the total area to something larger than the UK. The government has also created national parks in the Amazon region totalling more than five million hectares.

If the process of setting up national parks, ecological reserves and other conservation areas is to continue it will be essential for the governments concerned to know which areas are most in need of protection. A meeting called ‘Workshop 90’, held in the Amazon city of Manaus, Brazil, last month contributed significantly to this process. Almost one hundred biologists, physical scientists, ecologists and conservation planners ( of whom more than half came from the nine Amazon countries) spent 10 days pooling their knowledge and drawing up maps and back-up material. The final map produced covered about 60 percent of the Amazon region, and it is encouraging to know that most of the areas of maximum biological diversity are still largely intact, though the need for rapid action is underlined by the fact that many are under threat.

“Perhaps we should try to emulate the North American Indian communities that have always planned many of their actions concerning the use of Nature … by giving thought to the effect they will have on the seventh unborn generation. What a difference it would make if we gave proper thought to the effect which our actions will have on the welfare of our great great great great great grandchildren!”

But what can we do to help the tropical forest coun­tries pursue policies that will achieve the ends that I think most of us seek? In this country we can avoid purchasing tropical­hardwood products unless we are satisfied that they come from ‘sustainably managed forests’. (But how exactly we can be satisfied on that score without a proper labelling scheme, I simply can’t imagine.) The UK Government has, of course, accepted the logic of this, and it backed such a proposal at the last meeting of the ITI’O.

Failing such a scheme, a cautious consumer is almost certainly going to be more inclined to avoid tropical hardwoods altogether rather than risk con­tributing to their unnecessary demise. The obligations for planners, architects and local authorities are par­ticularly important in this respect. It is clear that with a little ingenuity, in terms of the materials specified for any contract, the built environment ‘can be designed to minimise the use of tropical hardwoods by using suita­ble alternatives.

Most important of all, we have to find a way of doing something about the burden of international debt. I really don’t see now developing countries can be expected to achieve sustainable development and at the same time meet huge debt repayments. Equally, when the nations of the developed world provide aid, they have a right to expect proper auditing and monitoring procedures, to ensure that the money is spent wisely.

It is clear that the political and economic challenge of protecting the world’s remaining tropical forest is enormous, but I suspect it goes even further than that, for the intellectual tools we are using, and the blue­prints we are drawing up, may still be flawed and corrupted by the kind of arrogance to which I have already referred.

There is more-far more-to be learned from the indigenous forest-dwellers than how to make use of 140 varieties of manioc. At one level, sustainable manage­ment, of this kind fits very easily with today’s prevailing utilitarian ethic; as such, it implies little more than simply learning how to manage our natural resources more efficiently and cost-effectively.

But that is very different from the spirit in which the tribal. Indians ‘manage’ their natural world. It is important neither to patronise nor romanticise tribal people, but the intimacy, respect and reverence which characterise their relationships with the tropical forests, mark out their concept of stewardship as being quite different from ours. Environmentalists today tend to talk of sustainable development and stewardship as if they were one and the same thing, but the degree of similarity depends entirely on the frame of mind of the stewards involved.

I fear that we will fail this particular challenge if we are not prepared to accept that sustainable develop­ment demands not just a range of different manage­ment techniques and funding mechanisms, but a different attitude to the Earth and a less arrogant, man­centred philosophy. We need to develop a reverence for the natural world. One can imagine the situation in which some might be inclined just to hoover up the sci­entific knowledge of the rainforest Indians, reduce that knowledge to our own money-making utilitarian cal­culus, create scores of new exotic products (such as 140 varieties of manioc muesli!), develop thrusting new profit centres out of the tropical forest genetic treasure chest, and then simply move on in the same old empty, mindless way.

Perhaps we should try to emulate the North Ameri­can Indian communities that have always planned many of their actions concerning the use of Nature, plantings, and land-use by giving thought to the effect they will have on the seventh unborn generation. What a difference it would make if we gave proper thought to the effect which our actions will have on the welfare of our great great great great great grandchildren!

I believe the tropical forests, and the tropical rain­forests in particular, are the final frontier for human­kind in more ways than one. Our efforts to protect them will not only determine the quality of life and economic security of future generations, but they will test to the limit our readiness to cast off the kind of arrogance that has caused such devastating damage to the global envi­ronment, and to become the genuine stewards of all life on Earth, not just the human bit of it.

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A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales titled The Rainforest Lecture for Friends of the Earth, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (BBC Wildlife magazine, June 1990)