Elizabeth Forwand
Luce Scholar, 2007-2008
Master of Environmental Management and Master of Forestry
Duke University, May 2007

Liz Forwand is deep in the Indonesian forests. She is one of 15 Luce Scholars living and working in Asia this year. The Henry Luce Foundation of New York City established the program in 1974 to increase awareness of Asia among future leaders in American society.

“There will always be a demand for exotic wood products, and with that demand goes the destruction of tropical forest,” Liz points out. “The trick is to figure out an incentive for conservation that works within that market, so that demand can actually preserve forest, rather than only destroy it. That is what forest certification is all about.” Liz is working with the Indonesian Ecolabeling Institute (LEI), an Indonesian nonprofit that creates sustainable forest management standards for forest certification. Forest certification is a market-based tool to promote forest conservation: Independent organizations develop standards for sustainable forestry while independent auditors assess forestry operations and issue certifications verifying that those standards have been met. “Certification is about giving consumers a choice,” Liz says. “The certification label on a wood product, like a chair or a table coming out of Indonesia, lets consumers know that the forest the wood came from is well managed, according to ecological, economic and social standards. In this way you can use your buying power to promote sustainable forestry.”

Sustainable forestry isn’t possible without good governance, Liz points out. Most wood coming out of Indonesia is illegally logged. Therefore, the work at hand is to combine government advocacy with sustainability practices. It involves people in management, science, forestry and government sectors, working with community leaders, workers, private companies and activists.

“What I like about this work is that it is community-based,” Liz says. “It has community development elements and business elements and a strong base in forestry planning. It gets at the heart of what success in conservation is about: equal parts human management and scientific management. The system has to be dynamic; it changes as the community does, as the market does, to fit different needs—but still sustaining the forest resource.”

Liz left Milton for Stanford, heading for a concentration in studio art. “When I look back, though, I realize that growing up I spent all the time I could outside, playing in the woods in Vermont,” she says. She took a freshman course in human biology and then applied to work with a professor studying high-altitude butterfly populations in Colorado. “It was pretty mind-blowing for a 19-year-old,” she says. “That area (near Crested Butte) was experiencing big development; we were doing biological science, but we were witnessing how development was affecting local ranches. It was my first taste of the connection between biology and livelihood.” Liz’s focus on that combination came with her Stanford thesis, which looked at the relationship of environmental management, rural development, and ranching economies in Montana. 

She moved to Montana after graduation and worked for the Nature Conservancy, which was involved in the struggle between rural development and invasive species. Her next job was in San Francisco, in the communications department of Earthjustice, the legal arm of the Sierra Club. It was a “fabulous job,” she says.

“I felt very motivated by the excellent goals and work. But it wasn’t the right fit. ‘You don’t want to be in the back of the house,’ one of my supervisors said. ‘You want to be on the program side.’” The next job was more hands-on: working as an eco tour guide, giving lectures on a boat in Hawaii. “It’s easy to become unmotivated, though, when you’re not helping anyone, when you’re not part of the solution.” Bored, she began to think about graduate school, despite the astonishment of her friends that she might trade Maui for North Carolina.

From a graduate program she wanted what she calls a professional, or “terminal” degree—a degree that prepares you for a specific field. She found that in the masters of environmental management program at Duke, but a year into the program found it insufficient, and added a master’s in forestry to her program. “I never thought that forestry would be a focus, but it was the best thing I did. It included that core combination of sustainability practices and concern for livelihoods.

“I didn’t have a specific job idea in mind. The more I learned about this field, the more I saw that there were a ton of things that would make me happy.” Liz has taken risks in the worlds of academia and work. She’s ready for more risk taking. “But sometimes, it’s not fun,” she says. “Sometimes it can be lonely. What’s challenging about Indonesia is full immersion into a new culture. Everything takes so much effort because you have to navigate every situation; I’m culturally exhausted by the end of the day. I love the challenge of learning the language, though. At least language skills are concrete.”

This work will never be finished; it’s always evolving, Liz points out. “There are a thousand Haitis out there, about to happen,” she says. “In the energy conservation world, science and technology can take us as far as we can go. Although technology can change forestry too, there’s really only one way to cut down a tree, and people think they can cut them down forever. Conservation forestry is about convincing people that ‘this is a better way to do the same old thing,’ but the real thing is not to be doing it at all. You’re cutting down a natural system, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

CDE

Back to Magazine