Rainforest by Sara Oldfield. 2002. Published by New Holland Publishers, UK. 160pp. £24.99 hardback
Reviewed by Robin Sharp CB

This is a ‘big picture’ book, both literally and metaphorically. It is full of big, stunningly beautiful pictures of rainforest landscapes and rainforest creatures. At first sight it appears to be a coffee-table book if people still have coffee tables. Personally I would rather see it as a guest-room book for bed-time reading and looking. From the Toco toucan on the front cover to the jaguars, tigers, hornbills, proboscis monkeys, tree frogs, pitcher plants and many others, the principal rainforest species adorn the pages in a way that makes the reader feel that this is paradise indeed. In fairness it should be added that it is rather easier to access the biodiversity of the rainforest by looking at this book than by standing on the floor of the real thing! Exotic species are thinly distributed and hard to see, especially those which inhabit the canopy.

However, in addition to its outstanding visual qualities, Rainforest is different from most other pictorial wildlife volumes. For in between the glorious images there is a succinct and authoritative account of all the main tropical and temperate rainforest areas of the world and the challenge we face if rainforests are not to continue to eroded at a truly alarming rate. In the opening chapter Sara Oldfield reminds us that while rainforests occupy 6% of the earth’s surface and are home to a possible 30 million species, their ecology is far from fully understood.

Refreshingly she begins with people, pointing out that most rainforests are not wildernesses but have been shaped by humans, in the case of the Amazon for some 10,000 years. Some 350 million of the world’s poorest depend directly on forests for their survival, including 60 million indigenous forest dwellers who take everything for their daily lives from the forests. For the rest of us there are the ecological services of climate regulation, species and genetic diversity and products. Among the latter, timber (logs, fuel wood, sawn wood and pulp), rattan, fruits (the genetic sources for coffee and cocoa included) and medicinal plants are the most important in descending order. Slash-and-burn agriculture is another powerful economic driver in forests as human populations grow.

The bulk of the book is devoted to regional descriptions which seem generally very well balanced, though there is a lack of detail on Canada in the temperate rainforest section. (On a real point of detail I question the picture text on p.106 which says that motmots are confined to continental South America.) Most interesting are the accounts of initiatives where local people, such as the native Indians and caboclos (rubber tappers) in the Amazon region, operate extractive reserves where they can decide collectively how to manage the land and can collect nuts, rubber and other natural products.

The author argues convincingly that those who want to slow the loss of biodiversity rainforest areas (only 2% of tropical forests are designated for conservation) must work with people at various levels to improve management. The Rio Summit of 1992 failed to deliver an international forest convention, though it has evolved an inter-governmental International Forest Forum (IFF) which reviews voluntary guidelines but has no teeth. Efforts to achieve widely acknowledged sustainability guidelines through the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) have not yet borne fruit, while the more recent Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) which aims to exert leverage via a certification scheme for consumers is only touching a small proportion of tropical timber. Yet analysis shows that less than ten tropical countries are the source for the major flows of tropical timber. If the powerful countries of the world were to put environmental degradation, including rainforest depletion, at the top of their global agenda in place of you know what, sustainable forestry regimes could be implemented with amazing speed for enormous human benefit. Perhaps someone should be sending a copy of this book to certain well-known addresses.

Robin Sharp CB is Chair of the European Sustainable Use Specialist Group and Consulting Editor, Sustainable. E-mail: robinsharpcb.freeserve.co.uk

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