BREAKING THE RINGS OF FOREST CORRUPTION: STEPS TOWARDS BETTER FOREST GOVERNANCE

Abstract

ABSTRACT Corruption appears to be the major factor which prevents proper control of long-term forest harvesting concessions by government agencies in Guyana, South America. Corruption is easily affordable because of very low forest taxes and high profits on under-declared log exports. Three “rings of power” or social compacts mutually foster the prevalent illegalities. 1. In the highest level social compact, the State itself behaves as a criminal enterprise', allowing the available technical regulations for improving forest management to be ignored, or used selectively against those loggers who lack political influence. 2. Senior and junior forest officers keep out of each other's relations with loggers. 3. Small-scale loggers allocated non-commercial forest restore their income by over-quota and out-of-coupe felling, for which they pay off the junior government staff to forestall field inspections. Steps towards solutions include: • the links between loggers and government staff could be broken by implementing the 1997 national forest policy and 2001 national forest plan (GFC2, 1997, 2001) for strategic allocation of concessions, and matching the capacity of the loggers to concession stee, location, duration and quality of forest; • inter-sectoral action by many actors. The establishment of open forums for spreading information and debating contentious issues in a non-confrontational setting, under the auspices of civil society organisations which have demonstrated durability and effectiveness in securing positive responses from the Executive branch of government; • an increase in the motivation for civil society to participate in such forums; • the provision of openings for international NGOs to aid local NGOs, including harassment-free registration of civil associations; • the strengthening of parliamentary democracy with the motivation and means to call the Executive to account. All these suggestions run counter to the nexus between the three social compacts, which make it difficult for any one actor to break free of the consequences of regulatory capture3.