ENVIRONMENT-WORLD: The Market Way To Save Forests

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Samanta Sen

LONDON, Mar 7 2002 (IPS) - Freedom to market forest produce by people who live in them can do more to conserve forests than tight regulation, a new report says.

The report, produced by leading forest institutions after two years of research, comes up with findings that “run counter to what a lot of environmental groups have been saying,” David Kaimowitz, director-general of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Indonesia, one of the co-authors of the report, said at its launch in London Thursday.

The report produced by CIFOR and two Washington-based organisations, Future Harvest and Forest Trends, is now due to be distributed widely to environmental agencies working in forests around the world. The report was funded by the World Bank, Ford Foundation, Wallace Global Fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and other groups.

“A lot of the way people have been thinking about tropical forests is quite wrong,” said Kaimowitz. “Forests are not vast and unpeopled areas, about 500 million of the world’s poorest people live in and around forests the world over,” he said. In China and India that comes to an average density of about 100 people per square kilometres.

The fate of the forests is linked to the fate of these people, says the report ‘Making Markets Work for Forest Communities’. “When forest communities have the opportunity to generate income by marketing forest products and services, they are motivated to protect their forest assets,” the report says.

The study cites several instances where forest communities have turned to the market for the benefit of the forests, and themselves:

– In China 30 million hectares of degraded land was allocated to 57 million households. They planted different kinds of trees, protected the new forests, and provided new sources of income for themselves.

– In Latin America about a million square kilometres of land is now being managed by local people.

– A group of 256 forest communities in Mexico stopped outsiders exploiting their forests. The community increased its income by 10 million dollars and created 1300 new jobs.

– In a joint forest management programme in India about 35 million hectares of forest has been allocated to 35,000 village organisations. Further, up to four million households make a living by harvesting and selling firewood.

– Fuel wood, timber, fruits, telegraph poles, sawdust, medicinal plants, bamboos, cardboard…a whole range of products can be marketed by forest communities while preserving forests, the report says. And it is only when local people control the forests and look to the market that the forests will be preserved.

“There are major myths that come in the way of this happening,” Sara J. Scherr, a senior analyst for Forest Trends who worked on the report, said at the launch. “It is a myth that because forests belong to governments and are often managed by big industries, that local people cannot play a role,” she said.

It is not true either that large corporations are needed to export forest produce, Scherr said. “As much as 95 per cent of forest produce in developing countries is used locally. Nor are forest communities too disadvantaged to be able to become significant players in the timber market.”

Tight regulation is not necessary for forest conservation, she said. “You cannot save the world’s forests by locking them up against local people. It’s in any case the big companies that are often into illegal logging.”

Existing regulations are hurting the small landholders, not the large plantation owners, she said. “We have to make it easy for small producers to operate legally. For most of these rural communities, commercial forestry is the only viable pathway for improving their standard of living.”

The report says that around the developing world “a transition is under way with regard to ownership and control of developing countries’ forests. Rural communities now “own or administer about a quarter of the developing world’s forests, adding up to about 300 million hectares.”

The report says an effective way for forest communities to market forest produce is to form local producer organisations and gain business expertise.

It says that “promoting commercial forest markets will require public policy changes and regulatory reforms, as well as partnerships between private sector businesses and community-based enterprises.”

The report argues that improving the lives of individuals living in and around forests is the key to conservation. It points to several ways in which local people can get access to the resources of the forests where they live. It lists some specific suggestions. Among them:

– The demand for wood is growing rapidly in developing countries, and forest communities can market wood. The sought after mahogany and rosewood are mostly located in areas controlled by forest communities.

– Investors can partner local growers to reforest land unsuitable for farming.

– Sell to environmentally and socially aware niche markets.

The report cites 57 countries where there is at least one existing partnership between forest industry and local communities. “We believe that businesses investing with local forest producers will be in a much stronger position in coming years in terms of supplies,” says Andy White, director of policy and market research for Forest Trends in the report.

Finally, Scherr says, the consumer can help – by supporting companies “producing not just environmentally but socially sustainable goods.”