DL 701: the story that remains to be told

By Simón Berti, president of the College of Forest Engineers

In various publications and debates about a possible new forest promotion policy, an interpretation has once again taken hold according to which DL 701 was, essentially, an instrument through which native forest was replaced by pine and eucalyptus plantations.

That there was substitution of native forest is indisputable. What is debatable is presenting that phenomenon as the predominant explanation for the expansion of forest plantations that occurred in Chile during recent decades.

The figures help to put it in perspective.

At the time DL 701 was enacted, in 1974, Chile had on the order of 300,000 to 400,000 hectares of forest plantations, according to various historical sources. Currently, INFOR places that area at around 2.3 million hectares. The increase has therefore been close to two million hectares.

Various studies estimate at somewhat more than 200,000 hectares the area of native forest substituted between 1974 and 1992. It is a significant area and a consequence of that process of forest expansion that a future promotion policy must expressly avoid. But magnitudes also matter: those 200,000 hectares represent on the order of 10% of the increase experienced by plantations.

In other words, approximately 90% of that increase is not explained by that substitution.

Simón Berti.

What was there before the plantations?

This is probably the least known part of Chilean forest history.

For centuries, extensive areas of the subsequently forested region lost their original forest cover. The lands were cleared through cutting and burning, later used for agriculture and livestock raising, and subjected for decades to increasingly intense erosion processes. When they ceased to be sufficiently productive, many were simply abandoned.

The historical sequence of enormous extensions of the subsequently forested area was not: native forest → DL 701 → plantation.

It was, instead: original forest → cutting and burning → agriculture or livestock raising → erosion and degradation → abandonment → afforestation.

In light of the available figures, this second trajectory could explain a proportion close to 90% of the expansion of plantations, a dimension of the process that tends to remain practically absent from public debate.

The eroded and abandoned lands did not remain environmentally neutral either. Every winter they lost tons of soil that ended up in ravines, streams, and rivers. Afforestation made it possible to recover a permanent plant cover, control erosion processes, incorporate organic matter into the soil, contribute to recovering functions of the hydrological cycle, and capture CO₂.

At the same time, those lands began to produce a renewable natural resource and gave rise to an economic activity that today generates exports, employment, and productive activity in numerous regions of the country.

It is also necessary to maintain a territorial perspective. Some studies highlight specific communes where the substitution of native forest reached high percentages, even close to 30%. Those cases existed and must be considered. But there are also numerous forest communes where substitution was very low or practically nonexistent. Selecting the extreme cases and extrapolating them to the national process inevitably gives an incomplete picture.

Chile practically stopped afforesting

There is also a much more current problem that deserves our attention.

The incentive system of DL 701, amended by Law 19,561 of 1998, ended in 2012. Since then, the incorporation of new areas through afforestation has been reduced to minimal levels.

Chile continues reforesting after harvests, but it practically stopped incorporating new lands into forestry activity.

This occurs while there continue to be eroded or low-productivity agricultural lands that could recover a productive and permanent forest cover.

That is why Chile needs a new push for afforestation, but with characteristics different from those of the instrument created half a century ago.

A new promotion system should be aimed primarily at small and medium-sized landowners and focus on lands with some degree of erosion. It should favor plantations managed with long rotations, oriented toward producing solid wood and long-lived products, rather than plantations intended exclusively to supply pulp production.

This also has an obvious climate dimension: using wood in housing and other constructions makes it possible to keep the carbon captured by trees stored for decades.

The instrument should also include sufficient incentives so that the establishment of native species can become an economically attractive alternative for those landowners who choose them. Planting native species entails costs, risks, and timelines that the market alone can hardly remunerate.

However, on eroded lands, the choice of species cannot respond solely to general preferences about which ones we would like to plant. The speed with which a plant cover capable of protecting the soil is recovered is a fundamental technical consideration. Under these conditions, fast-growing species can close their canopies and protect the land in short periods, reducing the soil's exposure to rainfall impact and runoff.

Many native species, by contrast, have slower initial growth. On eroded lands they may require a considerable period before developing canopies capable of providing effective soil cover. During that time erosion continues to act and can remove soil around the plants, leave roots exposed and, in more severe cases, end up washing them out and dragging them away. Paradoxically, imposing slow-growing species to recover eroded soil can hinder the establishment of the very vegetation that is intended to be promoted.

Therefore, a new forest policy must allow the species and management to be defined according to the conditions of each site and the objectives of the afforestation, naturally respecting the protection restrictions established by legislation. Special incentives for native species can and should exist for those who choose them, but imposing them as a general solution on eroded lands could end up frustrating the very objective of recovering those soils.

And there is a condition that is sometimes forgotten when designing public policies: the landowner has to want to plant. We can design an instrument with countless environmental and productive objectives, but if the incentives, requirements, and timelines make afforestation unattractive for small and medium-sized landowners, we will have an excellent policy on paper and practically no new trees on the ground.

Chile has already shown that it can recover through afforestation extensive eroded and low-productivity areas and, at the same time, create a renewable resource of enormous economic importance.

The discussion we need is not whether we should repeat DL 701 of 1974. Obviously not. The challenge is to restart afforestation in Chile, recover eroded lands, capture carbon, and produce wood for long-lasting uses, through an instrument that is sufficiently attractive for landowners to actually decide to plant.

Column published inBiobioChile