The recent move of International Organizations on Tropical Forest Research cooperation stems from the serious concerns on global environmental issues caused by large-scale energy consumption and on deterioration of land resources due to the population expansion pressing the land use development for agriculture and industries. The awareness on Sustainable Development forced the reexamination of development investment in the past. The World Bank Project Review in 1988:”Renewable Resources Management in Development-Lessons from World Bank Experiences in Agriculture and Forestry" pin-pointed the failure of agricultural investment and the lack of sufficient development efforts in forestry sector. The deterioration of tropical forest urged World Bank, FAO and WRI to form and establish TFAP(Tropical Forestry Action Plan) in 1986. TFAP is expected to formulate country and regional action plans in the tropical developing countries, which may require the fund of 1 billion US$ anum and technical project support from more advanced nations. Japan presently offers US$ 390 000 to TFAP programs, and sent forestry experts to 7 TFAP country missions.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) working on global warming issues formed by WMO (World Meteorological Organization) confirmed the importance of forest conservation, particularly of tropical rainforest as a part of the measures to be taken against global warming. The tropical rainforest absorbes carbon dioxide, while its poor management due to agricultural development and shifting cultivation by burning may become a significant source of CO₂ in the global atmosphere. The 1980 Survey of tropical forest by FAO/UNEP provides the basal data on this problem and pointed out that unsustainable commercial logging also poses a great problem. For example, Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia, Cote d’ Ivoire, Thailand and Laos share more than half (1.2 billion tons) of the total evolution of CO₂ in the global atmosphere due to tropical deforestation (1.66 billion tons).
FAO started in 1990 the second global survey on tropical forest, by means of satelites and database analyses, which will be completed in 1992. The Interim Roport published in 1991 adimitted the underestimation of 1980 Survey on the degree of deforestation in 62 countries. It estimatied that 16 785 200 ha of forest was lost in 1990. The annual rate of forest loss is 1.2%. Also, large tropical forest areas have become fragmented into smaller pieces of forest to accelerate the present rate of deforestation.
As the measures to control CO₂ evolution, the introduction of agroforesty to replace shifting cultivation, improved forest management and logging practices and reforestation are being reviewed. The reforestation program is being proposed in the tropics under the asumption of available land area for reforestation of totally 621 million ha.
Based on the Tropical Timber Trade Agreement adopted in 1983, ITTO (Tropical Timber Trade Organization) has been established in Yokohama, Japan, and been greatly contributing not only to international tropical timber trade issues but also to tropical forest conservation, sustainable development and reforestation. Japan assumes the major donnor to the IITO since its establishment.
While the strengthening TFAP, the support to ITTO programs, both multilateral and bilateral aid programs and the exploitation of Debt for conservation exchanges is emphasized, the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Reseach), which is basically international donnors’ association supporting 13 international centers of agricultural reseach (IARCs), proposed the integration of forest and forestry research within its activities, under such recognition that the impacts of agricultural development to forest conservation is great in tropical developing countries, that deforestation is being caused by agricultural practices including shifting cultivation, and that forest is essential for agriculture. CGIAR proposed first the integration of ICRAF as the Center for agroforestry research and second the establishment of a new International Institute for Tropical Rainforest Research possibly in Southeast Asia, which has not been exsisting by now, although each country of the Region has its own national research center of forestry.
The Australian group was assigned the task of studies on implementing this proposal and the new research center will be visualized in one of the Southeast Asian countries not too distant in future. Japan is requested to assume a major donnor, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided contributing significant resources to the new center. The key function of this new ’International Tropical Forest Research Center' is primarily conducting the basic studies on biology, Physiology, ecology of tropical forest, and the the sustainable management of tropical forest. It should not compete with national forest research institutions of the Region, but rather should well coordinate by transfering the results of basic research at international level to the technical applications in the institutions at national level. Amongst a renge of research areas, the studies of land use and zoning problems will be of utmost importance.
Since its inauguration, two NGOs of the USA have played an important role in CGIAR System, The Rockfellor and Ford Foundation. This encourages the potential Japanese foundations and NGOs that may also join and support this new international forestry research. The responsibilty of Japan is increasingly high in international cooperation in forestry research.