Cut less, leave longer: decades of data show we are over-exploiting tropical rainforests
Cut less, leave longer: decades of data show we are over-exploiting tropical rainforests
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
We are logging more than can be sustained by tropical forests. Plinio Sist, Fourni par l'auteur
Posted by
FTA communications
Tropical rainforests currently cover 1070 million hectares of the world’s surface. More than 90% of them are located in three regions: Central Africa, in the Congo Basin; South America, mostly in the Amazon; and in Southeast Asia, in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.
It is estimated that 400 million hectares of these forests are currently given over to timber production. But our research over many decades shows the rules that govern timber harvesting in tropical forest – currently based on logging intensity and cutting cycle – do not allow for the long-term recovery of the timber volume being harvested from these ecosystems.
These observations question the very foundations of the so-called “sustainable management” of these forests, and indicates that we will see further degradation of the planet’s last timber-producing tropical rainforests. It is therefore urgent that we seek out new sources of timber. Natural forests alone will not be able to meet current and future demand.
The principles of tropical silviculture – the management of forests to meet the needs of diverse groups and industries – must also be completely revised.
No time to recover
Timber harvesting in tropical forests concerns only a very small number of trees of commercial interest: one to three trees per hectare in Africa, five to seven in the Amazon, and eight in Southeast Asia. Just a few species, including ipe, cumaru, okoumé and sapelli are exploited worldwide.
Among these, only the largest trees of more more than 50 to 80 cm in diameter are felled and harvested. The forest is then left to rest, generally for 25 to 35 years, depending on a specific country’s legislation. These rest periods, known as “rotations”, should theoretically allow the forest to recover the stock of harvested timber.
But our data shows that, in reality, these resting periods are vastly underestimated.
Since the early 1980s, CIRAD and its partners have set up experimental plots to monitor tropical forest dynamics in order to assess the effects of selective logging on the reconstitution of the timber stock. This information now allows us to simulate the trajectories of exploited tropical rainforests according to the harvesting intensity, but also other variables – including rainfall and soil type.
Using this information, we calculated the reconstitution of a forests’s biomass, the commercial volume of timber and the evolution of biodiversity within the Amazon basin to highlight significant differences within the same region.
We found that, in general, the rotation times of 25-35 years in force in most tropical countries are insufficient to fully reconstitute the timber volume removed. On the other hand, biodiversity and biomass seem to recover fairly quickly within 20-25 years, after which more than 80% of biodiversity remains at the level of the pre-harvest level.
Unsustainable production
In the Brazilian Amazon, current forest protection legislation is based on a 35-year cycle, with an harvesting intensity of 15-20 m3 per hectare and an initial proportion of commercial species of 20%. At this rate, and considering a harvesting area of 35 million hectares, the level of production cannot be maintained beyond one harvesting cycle of 35 years, and will then decline each year until the resources are depleted.
Only by reducing harvesting intensity by half and a 65-year cutting cycle would ensure sustainable and constant timber production; however, in this situation, only 31% of current demand could be met.
In Southeast Asia, the cutting cycle period is 20 to 30 years, and logging intensities in primary forest, on average 80m3 per hectare, can exceed 100m3 per hectare. But data from forest dynamics monitoring indicate that only an intensity of 60m³ per hectare every 40 years would ensure sustainable and consistent production over time.
Finally, in Central Africa, the recovery of the stock of timber removed 25 years after logging is only 40%, suggesting a recovery of barely 50% over a 30-year rotation.
A new system for harvesting timber
The idea behind tropical silviculture, designed more than half a century ago, is that natural tropical forests are capable of producing timber in a sustained manner. In light of our results, this position must be completely revised.
The monitoring of tropical forests dynamics after logging shows that, in most tropical countries, they will not be able to meet the growing market demand for timber within 30 years, according to the rules established by forestry legislation.
In the vast majority of cases, true sustainability would require a considerable reduction in the harvesting intensity and a significant increase in the duration of logging cycles, which compromises the economic sustainability of selective logging in the current legislation system.
Natural tropical forests can no longer be perceived as a simple source of timber: the environmental services they produce should also be taken into account. For example, we could consider pricing timber from natural forests higher than that from plantations, with intended use linked to the higher quality of their wood. This higher price would increase the economic profitability of timber harvesting in natural forests, while plantation wood could be used for less noble purposes.
There is an urgent need to promote diversified tropical forestry now, combining timber production from natural forests, mixed plantations, agroforests (human-created forest systems with a multi-level vegetation structure similar to natural forests), and secondary forests (those regenerated on deforested areas left to be abandoned).
The rising international interest in tropical forest restoration under the Bonn Challenge – a plan to restore 350 million hectares of deforested land by 2030 – or the very recent proclamation of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), are both opportunities to implement this new approach in the tropics.
But no new system aimed at sustainable timber production will be successful without also introducing effective policies to combat illegal logging and deforestation, which continue to supply the timber market at lower costs and compete with any logging system aimed at long-term sustainability.
From governments down to local realities: Sentinel communities in the Congo Basin
From governments down to local realities: Sentinel communities in the Congo Basin
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Aerial view of a Transition Forest area in Bokito, Cameroon. Photo by Mokhamad Edliadi/CIFOR
Posted by
FTA communications
If it wasn’t for mankind chopping down trees, you get the sense that tropical rainforests around the world would be doing quite well.
According to the recent Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, deforestation is decreasing – but is still an inconceivable 4.7M hectares per year. Global Forest Watch reports that in 2019 we lost enough tropical primary forest to cover an area nearly the size of Switzerland.
This is disastrous news – but it’s not like we humans are chopping down trees for fun. Yes, standing forests absorb our carbon emissions and regulate our weather – but for hundreds of millions of people around the world, felled forests are our factories and our farms.
Nowhere are the competing human needs to both expand and exploit forests more apparent than in the Congo Basin.
Sprawling over no fewer than ten countries in Central Africa, the Congo Basin is an almost unimaginably enormous area. It’s bigger than India. 80 million people depend on its woodlands and wetlands for their livelihoods. Imagine the entire population of Germany living in a forest: that’s the Congo Basin.
It’s a wonder that any trees are still standing in the Congo Basin at all. The pressure on these forests is immense, from supporting those growing local communities, to supplying timber and cocoa for national and international markets, while keeping up with the rapacious demand for the precious minerals buried deep in the soil: essential components for the device on which you’re reading this story.
That’s why, when an international collaboration of scientists launched an urgent health check of the world’s forests, they made sure to come to the Congo Basin. The Congo Basin, with its ancient forests butting up against twenty-first century development, is the very definition of a Sentinel Landscape. The third for which the CGIAR Research program on Forests Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) has produced a report after a 10-year research, the other two being the Nicaragua-Honduras site and the Borneo site.
A closer look at the Congo Basin
The CAFHUT Report [PDF]Located in Cameroon, the scientific partners of the Central Africa Humid Tropics Transect Sentinel Landscape (CAFHUT) carefully analyzed four sites where the pressures of urban development, population growth and forest commercialization are rapidly changing the landscape.
Denis Sonwa was the coordinator of the CAFHUT Sentinel Landscape and lead author on the recently published stocktaking report: “The CAFHUT area was chosen to represent the different ecosystems and socioeconomic conditions in the Congo Basin in such a way that we can learn what are the drivers of deforestation, what forest models could be developed and what institutions could be useful as we develop responses to reduce/stop/reverse the anthropological ecology footprint on forest and natural ecosystems.”
The four sentinel study sites were chosen to represent different points along the forest transition curve:
Mintom: a transition zone between mature old growth forest and logged-over forest, with a mixture of forest concessions, including community forests, but also the largest expanse of undisturbed tropical rainforest in Cameroon. The opening of a major road in the area has brought access to markets and promises more radical change in the near future.
Lomie-Kongo: an area composed of degraded mature forests, where concessions, community forestry and timber exploitation are influencing the forest structure. Lomie-Kongo is very sparsely populated and the inhabitants are primarily subsistence farmers without easy access to markets.
Ayos: a more degraded peri-urban landscape, where vegetation is characterized by gallery forests surrounded by swamp forests of raffia. A well-established road network provides access to large markets and ensures economic investment in cocoa, coffee and oil palm plantations.
Bokito: a forest-savanna or deforested landscape, where successful reforestation means farmers can grow cash and subsistence crops, including cocoa and oil palm. Good road access means that locals can sell their produce more profitably at larger markets.
Position of the four sites along the forest transition curve
From soil to satellite: Why Sentinel Landscapes matter
All eight of the world’s Sentinel Landscapes, from the Amazon to the Mekong, use the same underlying methodology. Land health data collection, for example, uses the respected Land Degradation Surveillance Framework and, in Cameroon, 1280 soil samples from 640 plots were taken and sent for analysis to the Soil-Plant Spectral Diagnostics Laboratory at World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya.
Socioeconomic information is gathered using a combination of primary and secondary research. This means boots on the ground: in the CAFHUT Sentinel Landscape, researchers held focus group discussions and surveyed 927 households in 38 villages across all four sites. The granularity and consistency of the research means that the results are comparable across the world and the data can be exploited by everyone from farmers to politicians.
Soil analyses and advances in tree domestication are evidently vital for individual farmers looking to increase yields of their cocoa plantations today. Meanwhile, socioeconomic research into the value chains of non-timber forest products (NTFP) and crops such as bush mango kola nuts or safou can help farmers diversify their income for tomorrow.
But the significance of the Sentinel Landscape goes far beyond the concerns of local farmers. “It’s a multi-strata system,” Sonwa says, “from the national arenas considerations down to the local realities. The Sentinel Landscapes project is a good opportunity to bring science and policy together. The data provides an overview of the situation before they can move ahead.”
Cameroon is signed up to the United Nations REDD+ programme, which pays governments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This funding is increasingly urgent. According to a 2020 study published in Nature, the world’s rainforests are absorbing less carbon than they were in the 1990s. Rising global temperatures and harsher and more frequent droughts hamper the forests’ carbon absorption capacity and, by 2030, the trees of the Congo will soak up 14 percent less carbon than they did in the early 2000s.
At a certain point – perhaps as soon as the next decade – our tropical forests could become carbon sources instead of sinks. At the moment, projections of the disastrous impact of climate breakdown are predicated on the world’s forests continuing to mop up our excess carbon emissions. If that assumption proves false, then… It’s fair to say that research like the Sentinel Landscapes becomes an existential necessity.
“The Congo rainforest is the most important on the African continent,” Sonwa adds, “so the Sentinel Landscape data is important for the international community as well.”
“Substantial contributions”
Peter Minang is Principal Science Advisor for the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and one of FTA’s Flagship leaders. He’s been working on the landscapes of the Congo Basin for 25 years.
“Although it was building on work we were already doing,” Minang says, “the CAFHUT Sentinel Landscape was about developing databases and learning whether we were making progress in the sites on a landscape scale. It was extremely important.”
Minang continues: “I think there is enough evidence in CAFHUT that our partners were able to make substantial contributions, collect data and advance knowledge and awareness – and to some extent make an impact on those landscapes.”
Ten years of CAFHUT research has identified three key land management issues in the Congo Basin:
reducing deforestation and forest degradation;
raising people out of poverty; and
improving cocoa and other tree commodity agroforestry systems.
Poverty, as Denis Sonwa says, is one of the “key drivers” of deforestation. This means that any attempt to curb the logging rights of farmers and smallholders must simultaneously offer them an alternative livelihood.
At one of the sentinel sites, Bokito, the sustainable conversion of savanna grasslands to cocoa agroforestry helps resolve all three land management issues – at least partially.
Anything but timber: routes out of poverty
Bokito lies 150km from Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. The landscape is forest-savanna or totally deforested. Poverty is a problem for local communities and contributes to drive deforestation, as farmers seek more fertile lands. Deforestation is itself a problem for local biodiversity as well as being one driver of the global catastrophe we all share: climate breakdown.
One of the problems with forests is that they aren’t directly profitable for local communities, whereas, as Peter Minang says, cutting down trees to plant cocoa is. “That automatically makes standing forests less competitive,” Minang says. “Outside timber, which is itself a forest degradation activity, there is a big question about how to make the forest directly productive.”
Aside from cocoa, one solution is for farmers to harvest non-timber forest products (NTFP), including fruit trees, nuts, medicinal plants and even insects such as maggots. But it’s not always easy to cash in on NTFPs as ICRAF scientist Divine Foundjem Tita explains: “Non-timber forest products are now more valuable for farmers, but the farmers are not always connected to the markets.”
That’s why, eight years ago, the CAFHUT partners helped link farmers to traders so that they could sell their NTFPs. The impact on communities has been “significant” according to Foundjem Tita, especially for women.
“During the school term, women take advantage to collect products and sell them,” Foundjem Tita says. “They can earn $100-1000 USD per year. This is significant.” In a country where GDP is only $3206 USD per capita, it certainly is.
“It’s about building connections, trust and relationships between collectors and traders,” Foundjem Tita says. “The money helps send their children to school, buy books for the kids—or participate in festivals like Christmas. It is very significant.”
Muscling in on ‘women’s cocoa’
As communities find alternative solutions, the economic landscape is changing. Historically, harvesting and selling NTFPs was women’s work. “They even call NTFPs ‘women’s cocoa’,” Foundjem Tita says. “But once the market starts increasing, more men start competing.”
Men are muscling in on the business. “Some men buy at a low price from women and sell high to traders,” Foundjem Tita says. “In one area, men now control 30 percent of the NTFP market.” As profitable as they have become, NTFPs will never be the whole solution. “They won’t completely eradicate poverty,” Foundjem Tita says. “But they will help farmers and have become a major income source for some.”
Nevertheless, Foundjem Tita believes that NTFPs could be more of a success story. In Cameroon, the sale of all forests products is regulated by a system of permits. These permits were designed to help preserve forests and regulate the supply of timber, but the authors of the report state that the procedures to obtain such permits for NTFPs are “complex, costly and beyond the capacity of most traders in agroforestry tree products, who are often operating at a small scale.”
“There are a lot of transaction costs in selling NTFPs, especially for communities who have to travel to the city,” Foundjem Tita says. “The consequences are high: it means that they end up selling locally without permits for a lower price.”
However, these legal roadblocks are well known and Foundjem Tita is optimistic that they will be corrected, as the government concludes its decade-long review of the law.
Driving deforestation
The most infamous causes of deforestation and forest degradation in the public imagination is logging, particularly illegal logging done without permits or accountability. But, as Peter Minang explains, it’s not so simple.
“Legal and illegal logging go together,” Minang says. “Once concessions are given, the people doing the logging don’t keep to the area where the legal concession was granted. A lot of the logging is not compliant with any traceability or accountability mechanism, so you have a lot of illegal logging.”
But the problem is not limited to logging companies overreaching their authorization. “Once a logging company opens the road,” Minang says, “illegal loggers can walk in with their chainsaws and take what they want. If there was no road, they wouldn’t have access.”
Illegal logging might loom large in the headlines, but Minang explains that the biggest driver of deforestation “by far” in the CAFHUT Sentinel Landscape is actually agriculture: cocoa, oil palm and, to some extent, rubber. Indeed, the stocktaking results found that the total area dedicated to the cultivation of palm oil is expected to double by 2030 compared to baseline of 2010. Meanwhile, cassava, groundnuts and maize were discovered to be the main drivers of cropland expansion.
This growth can only mean further deforestation. For example, the CoForTips project led by Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) found that deforested areas in Mindourou and Guéfigué in the Bokito subdistrict are predicted to increase twofold over the next decade, compared to 2000–2010. And, recently, that deforestation is being pushed from a surprising direction.
Middle class guilt
Historically, there have been two types of agricultural foresters in the Congo Basin: local smallholders who manage 1-2 hectares for subsistence and national or international companies who open up 100 hectares of forest. But there’s a new game in town.
“In the last ten years, there has been a new trend of middle level local investors,” Minang says. “Imagine Peter sitting here realises that oil palm is good business. Instead of having 1-2 hectares as a local farmer, I come back as an elite and open up 20 hectares.”
These middle class investors have made their money in the city and club together to buy medium-sized plots of primary forest to turn into cocoa and oil palm plantations.
“If it was only smallholders, there wouldn’t be a problem,” Minang says. “They can’t expand too much: 1-2 hectares, maybe 3-4 hectares if you’re a really great family man,” he explains. “There is some evidence that this middle level is a growing driver of deforestation compared to the past.”
Power to the people
One obvious way to stop deforestation is to pay people to protect the forests. In conservation terms this is called ‘payment for ecosystem services’ and Cameroon has trialled carbon payments on a small scale.
“The pilot studies have had very mixed results,” Minang explains. “One of the big problems with payments is that they can dis-incentivize conservation in nearby places. Unless you do it at scale, payments can be counterproductive and this means that you can’t draw conclusions from pilot studies.”
But Minang is optimistic: “I think payments for ecosystem services is the future and it is important to scale up those payments to see whether they would actually work.”
One solution that has been tried at scale is community forestry. The 1994 Community Forest law was introduced in Cameroon to help local communities become financially sustainable while also conserving the forest.
“Community forestry is a key feature in this landscape,” Minang says. “It’s still thin, but there is some emerging evidence that community forestry can improve livelihoods and support the forests so that they are not susceptible to logging or intrusive farming.”
The benefits are clear. “Some communities have been able to get drinkable water,” Minang says. “Some are using the proceeds from community forestry to put roofs on schools, build football pitches and equip health centres.”
Help needed!
But community forestry isn’t working as well as it could be. Critics argue that most of these community forests are in secondary forests, which means that there isn’t much timber to be harvested and the community have to peddle in the much less profitable NTFPs – made even less profitable by the expenses of the permit system.
According to Peter Minang, communities need a lot more help. “On top of the list is improving the enterprise abilities of farmers: marketing, cooperatives and financing for the improvement of cocoa, food crops and NTFP – that’s one major part,” he says.
“The other part is the sustainable intensification and diversification of agriculture,” Minang continues. “Once you get farmers to produce more on a smaller piece of land, hypothetically you won’t get people clearing forest. People are clearing because they are going for more fertile lands.”
“The third part is enabling forest practise, making sure there are better policies for forest conservation, payments for ecosystem services and community-based management for forests. These are big areas for solutions to conservation of the landscape.”
The cocoa agroforestry solution?
Could cocoa agroforestry be the solution? As well as being a valuable cash crop, according to ICRAF’s Alternatives to Slash and Burn report, well managed cocoa plantations can maintain up to 60 percent of the carbon stock of primary forest. This is an improvement on the carbon capture of other food crops and represents hope for the heavily degraded savannah.
In a 2017 study published in Agroforestry, Denis Sonwa and his co-authors also found that the amount of carbon captured by cocoa agroforestry varies hugely depending on how the plantation is managed. For example: a cocoa plantation mixed with timber and NTFPs tree species stores more than twice the carbon of either an intensively-managed cocoa plantation, or even a cocoa plantation mixed with high densities of banana or plantain and oil palm.
Cocoa agroforestry is one of the dominant land uses throughout the Congo Basin. That means that advances in cultivation have the potential for huge knock-on benefits for both farmers and forests. Six projects in the CAFHUT Sentinel Landscape were focussed on improving cocoa agroforestry in terms of both yield and farmer incomes, while also reducing forest clearance for agriculture.
So are these projects delivering results for the three key land management issues in CAFHUT?
Peter Minang runs through his end of term report for the cocoa agroforestry interventions in Bokito: “Improving the livelihoods of the cocoa farmers by increasing cocoa productivity and helping communities in terms of NTFP? Excellent,” he says. “Reducing the carbon emissions of the cocoa farms? Of course – because of tree planting and the trees that are being kept.”
“However, we cannot 100 percent say that the project hasn’t increased deforestation in any way,” Minang concludes. “To get the results you want, you have to improve cocoa production and stop illegal logging. We think there is a weakness on the enforcement side.”
Two out of three ain’t bad?
Unfortunately, Bokito’s two out of three is about as good as it gets in the CAFHUT Sentinel Landscape. “I don’t think there are any places where they are getting it right,” Minang says. “Standards of living are still low and deforestation is increasing.”
“There has been some improvement in the productivity of cocoa, but because there are few alternative jobs in the city, people will always need to cut down trees to survive,” Minang continues. “I can guarantee you now with Covid-19 that there are people leaving the cities and going back to the countryside because there are more opportunities in the forests than in the city.”
Foundjem Tita agrees. “A more holistic approach needs to be developed to deal with deforestation and degradation, logging, cocoa agroforestry and other programmes like NTFPs.” he says. “In order to improve farmers’ livelihoods we will need a basket of solutions.”
Denis Sonwa is looking ahead to how the Sentinel Landscape data can be used for the good of both farmers and forests. “The information needs to be presented in a format that is understandable and digestible to those who are taking the decisions,” he says.
Despite the Congo Basin’s prominence as a global carbon sink, a 2019 CIFOR study found that over 2008–2017, Congo Basin forests received the least funding (USD 1.7 million) of the tropical zones, compared with the Amazon Basin (USD 5.1 million) and Southeast Asia (USD 8.1 million). There is scope and opportunity for donors to increase funding in the region: by mapping out the scale of the problems of poverty and deforestation in the cocoa-rich agroforestry of the Congo Basin, the data of the CAFHUT Sentinel Landscape can make a real difference by helping to source private funding for research.
“Take the chocolate companies, for example,” Sonwa says, “they’re now moving to what we call a zero deforested value chain.” Since 2017, investment from some of the world’s biggest chocolate and cocoa companies, including Mars, Guittard and Mondelēz, has been helping to fund both conservation and livelihoods in the forests of the Congo Basin.
It’s exactly this kind of international cooperation that our global forests need, as Denis Sonwa says: “from national arenas considerations down to the local realities”.
By David Charles. This article was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with ICRAF, The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
In Southeast Asia, Viet Nam is a leader in characterisation and classification of agroforestry systems for various eco agricultural zones. The book pushes the country further into the lead.
Diversity of agroforestry practices in Viet Nam [PDF]“This publication describes the high diversity of agroforestry practices in Viet Nam,” said Rachmat Mulia, agroforestry researcher with ICRAF Viet Nam and one of the editors of the book, “and supports a wider development of agroforestry.”
“We provide information about the main characteristics of the systems, such as plant components and common design, including their distribution across the country,’ added Nguyen Mai Phuong, agroforestry researcher with ICRAF Viet Nam and the other editor of the book. ‘In addition, for most of the systems presented, we provide photos for better illustration.”
Agroforestry has been practised in Viet Nam for decades in the form of traditional models, such as forest–garden– fishpond–livestock systems in the lowlands and fruit or timber tree-based models in the uplands. According to the Spatially Characterized Agroforestry online database, the total area of agroforestry in the country had reached about 900,000 hectares during 2013–2014.
Owing to agroforestry’s potential for addressing the global challenges of food insecurity and the climate crisis, enhanced knowledge of its scope, diversity and potential benefits are considered necessary for the authorities, agricultural practitioners, and the research and development sectors. In addition, knowledge of, and work towards, removing barriers to agroforestry adoption at national and sub-national levels will help accelerate agroforestry development and help meet its fullest potential.
Docynia indica is considered as one of Viet Nam’s special fruits. Here, it is growing with upland rice in Son La Province, North West Region. Photo: World Agroforestry/Nguyen Mai Phuong
Agroforestry development can also support Viet Nam in achieving targets of several national policies. The country has included agroforestry in its 2020 Nationally Determined Contributions as a measure for land conservation to maintain food production and for carbon sequestration to combat the climate crisis.
“This book will become one of the most important publications by ICRAF Viet Nam,” said Nguyen Quang Tan, country representative for ICRAF Viet Nam. “It can generate longer-term and broader positive impact for the country, in particular, and for research in development of agroforestry worldwide. We purposely selected 21 March 2021 as the day to launch the book, that is, the International Day of Forests and Trees, to signify that agroforestry, through its capacity to generate various products and services, can also contribute to forest conservation.”
The book is divided into three parts. First, it provides main characteristics of 48 agroforestry systems spread across 42 provinces in Viet Nam during 2013–2014, as found in the Spatially Characterized Agroforestry database. Second, it presents agroforestry systems documented in different projects and studies implemented by ICRAF Viet Nam. And the third part is other agroforestry systems in Viet Nam documented in the literature.
CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with ICRAF, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR and TBI.FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
The increased consumption and production of a range of raw material and commodities, so-called “Forest-risk commodities” such as palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee, rubber, timber and beef, contributes significantly to global tropical deforestation and forest degradation.
As both global and domestic demand grows for such commodities, they constitute one of the biggest threats to forests, leading to tree and vegetation removal – often due to burning – biodiversity loss and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Often their cultivation through large industrial-scale estates can also pose threats to the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
How to secure the sustainable production and consumption of such commodities, without impinging on forests, is therefore a key challenge for public and private actors. But acting on commodities and value chains to reduce deforestation is complex because of several factors.
First, value chains can be very long or complex, making the link between production and consumption very distant. Second, the way production chains, logistics and markets are organized make products difficult to trace, making attribution and accountability difficult. Third, how these value chains operate within landscapes is often not controlled either at the value chain or the landscape level. How public and private actors can effectively work together in landscapes and along value chains is key to solving these problems.
Expansion of trade in forest-risk commodities led to increased pressure from civil society organizations, consumers, international banks and shareholders of consumer goods companies to develop and implement a diverse array of instruments and tools to promote sustainable or deforestation-free sourcing, and as a way to reduce their exposure to reputational, financial and regulatory risks. Multi-stakeholder platforms and commodity roundtables also emerged, in response to criticisms of government failures.
The multiplication of sustainability initiatives has also been driven by the growing complexity and diversity of conditions under which agri-food and timber supply chains operate. Private sector actors increasingly define and monitor their own sustainability performance by using certification standards or by developing their own procedures and criteria.
More recently, a discernible shift from supply-chain-based or sectoral approaches toward landscape or jurisdictional approaches has been seen as a way to meet sustainability goals. However, the growing complexity of policy regimes results in ambiguities and can lead to trade-offs between gains and losses. The findings of the FTA review suggest that many aspects of complex policy regimes are not yet well understood by policymakers, scientists or the public.
Amongst the supply-chain based and sector-based approaches, Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS), are market-driven mechanisms introduced to ensure that social economic and environmental sustainability issues are addressed in the production, processing and trade of agricultural and forestry commodities.
“Although VSS have been widely adopted, they have come under greater scrutiny in recent years and are often associated with high transaction costs (usually transferred to the end-consumers), the need to meet increasingly complex sustainability and legality standards, the exclusion of smallholders, the frequent lack of any premium for certified products and weaknesses in compliance,” said Andrew Wardell, a principal scientist with CIFOR.
The scientific evidence on the economic, environmental and social outcomes of tropical forest certification is encouraging although regional differences do occur. Take, for example, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which since the early 1990s ensures that the chain of custody for production, transformation and sales of timber complies to specific voluntary, third-party audited standards, including covering sustainable forest management and avoiding deforestation.
“There is no doubt that the FSC has achieved a great deal of progress, but it’s not an unqualified success,” said Marie-Gabrielle Piketty, a researcher with CIRAD and a joint author on a review of FSC in Brazil. “Like most sustainability standards, it faces the classic dilemma of balancing stringency needed to ensure the sustainability of FSC-certified forest management, while becoming more inclusive.”
As a result, new public and private commitments have emerged to reduce deforestation and include initiatives based on either sectoral approaches with a focus on supply-side interventions, or mixed supply-chain and territorial approaches at the jurisdictional level. Government-led regulations can guide the private sector to ensure greater third-party accountability and reduce reputational risk.
Similarly, environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are increasingly engaged as intermediaries to help companies address social and environmental risks in the supply chain, and to support sub-national governments in meeting their sustainability commitments.
“We need greater transparency to ensure that companies aren’t just paying lip service to environmental sustainability initiatives, but that they can substantiate claims that deforestation has been reduced,” Wardell said.
Jurisdictional approaches, which align governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations, social organizations and local stakeholders in specific areas around common interests in land-use governance, are now often considered to have the most potential. They can ensure and provide incentives for sustainability compliance across a whole geographic area, a key issue which value-chains or sector-based approaches fail to address, or often only partially address given the existence of spatial leakage (when some areas in a landscape are not compliant) or sectoral leakage (when some value chains in a landscape are not covered by a sustainability scheme). Some of these initiatives have been developed around the notion of enhancing regulatory frameworks and enforcement, while others constitute partnerships for improving the uptake of good practices for a specific commodity within wider land-use planning and service provisions schemes. Others involve de-risking schemes for financial actors when they invest in forest-risk landscapes or constitute wider partnerships to advance sustainability at the jurisdictional level.
“Some corporate actors are actively developing place-based solutions not only as a risk management strategy to delink their supply chains from deforestation, but also to benefit from longer term investments in the sustainability of the landscapes or jurisdictions on which their sourcing depends,” said Pablo Pacheco, global forests lead scientist at WWF.
“We shouldn’t focus only on the negative consequences associated with the expansion of forest-risk commodities, but also contribute to the development of a more positive agenda, which supports livelihoods and local people’s rights, protects nature and restores forests in addition to slowing deforestation,” he added.
“Trying to bring together disparate people to achieve common goals isn’t easy because supply chains and jurisdictional governments have different priorities,” Wardell said.
“Several teams – and some through FTA – have started to better highlight some possible impact pathways and shortcomings of jurisdictional approaches, but empirical knowledge remains incomplete,” Piketty said. “Lessons from existing case studies need to be systematized.”
“There’s a clear need to better understand how interactions between state regulations and non-state sustainability initiatives can combine supply chain management and jurisdictional approaches to stimulate wider uptake of improved practices by smallholders,” Wardell said.
“As well, determining how to evaluate impact is a key challenge, due to the many variables that come into play, thus research and science will continue to have an important role to play,” he added.
This article was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with ICRAF, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR and TBI.FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
Public procurement can boost demand for legal timber in Central Africa
Public procurement can boost demand for legal timber in Central Africa
17 August, 2018
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Notice: Trying to get property 'post_excerpt' of non-object in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
A woman carries wood in Yangambi, DRC. Photo by A. Fassio/CIFOR
Central African governments and their development partners account for a significant proportion of the region’s demand for domestic timber, mostly to meet infrastructure needs in sectors such as education, public works and healthcare.
This demand is growing, as more development projects are implemented in the region. However, experts say that not enough attention is currently given to the legality of the wood used for development projects, resulting in countries missing out on a crucial opportunity to promote a sustainable, legal supply chain of timber for national consumption.
A recently published policy brief by the Central African Forest Observatory (OFAC) discusses how, until now, the governments and international organizations in the region do not include a legality clause in their calls for tenders for public procurement.
“In the current state of affairs, the states and development actors are contributing indirectly to the informal and illegal practices that prevail in the timber sector in Central Africa,” says Richard Eba’a Atyi, lead author of the policy brief and director of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Central Africa hub. “The different actors in the public procurement supply chain are violating the countries’ commitments to processes such as the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan, and the 2008 Sub-Regional Agreement on Forest Control in Central Africa.”
In the policy brief Eba’a Atyi and the contributing authors call for a change in national public procurement policies across the region to enforce public purchases of timber exclusively from legal sources.
Currently, public procurement of timber follows a certain sequence of events. National governments lead infrastructure projects, often with support from international donors, and award projects via public tender to national or international enterprises, which then carry out the construction work. Most of these companies source their wood from local urban markets supplied by small-scale loggers, who do not take into consideration resource renewal rates. The supply chain is thus informal – and essentially illegal – and is contributing to the deterioration and depletion of Central Africa’s forests.
International donors, in most of the cases, abide by national laws, meaning that here they do not have to ensure that wood is sourced legally for public procurement projects. While some enterprises and donors do have internal operating guidelines that recommend legally sourced timber in their projects, but most of the time these guidelines are not monitored and implemented.
A tree weeps sap after being cut down to produce charcoal in Yangambi, DRC. Photo by A. Fassio/CIFOR
Furthermore, certified or legally sourced wood is often difficult to obtain in Central Africa, either because the industry is not interested in low-profit national markets, or because of the incapacity to meet national demand.
However, attitudes are slowly changing, and governments and development actors are increasingly turning their eyes to the issue. “A few initiatives taken across Central Africa indicate that countries are prepared to promote legally sourced timber in public procurement,” says Guillaume Lescuyer, contributing author of the policy brief, and coordinator of CIFOR’s ESSOR project that aims to boost demand for legal wood in Cameroon.
“The Cameroonian Ministry of Forests and Wildlife (MINFOF), for example, has formed a working group on the issue and is now preparing a draft text on the promotion of legally sourced timber in government contracts.” The Cameroonian government’s demand for timber is calculated to be at least 13,000 cubic meters per year – an amount that can potentially have a very high impact for the betterment of the industry.
Other initiatives across the region can be found in Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “In Gabon in 2016, for instance, the Ministry of National Education sought to showcase the quality of Gabonese wood by purchasing 150,000 tables and benches of assumedly legal origin from the Gabon Wood Hub,” highlights Eba’a Atyi. “In the DRC, the Faculty of Sciences at Kisangani University recently sourced certified timber for a infrastructure project with financial support from the European Union.”
These individual initiatives, though relatively small on the regional scale, help create awareness about the issue and need to be encouraged and scaled-up in other countries, the experts say.
In order to require legally sourced wood in public contracts, the authors of the policy brief suggest three options to the national governments in the region. First, governments should make a political statement announcing their intention to promote the exclusive use of legally sourced wood in government contracts. Second, they should issue a legal act – a binding decree, for example, signed by a president or prime minister, or a joint order from national agencies involved in forestry resources management, public contracts and infrastructure – on wood legality in government procurement orders.
Men process wood at a company in Kisangani, DRC. Photo by A. Fassio/CIFOR
And third, they should include a clause on the use of legally sourced timber in public contracting codes, so as to directly target the mandates of providers and suppliers.
Finally, regional cooperation, especially through the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC), also offers an opportunity to push for changes in public procurement policies at the intergovernmental level.
“Considering the implementation of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) and the growing interest in promoting intra-African timber trade, it should be a priority for COMIFAC Member States to urgently prepare and adopt public procurement policies that impose and promote timber from legal sources,” says Eba’a Atyi.
And international partners, he says, should stand ready to help prepare these policies and apply them to their development support actions in Central Africa.
By Ahtziri Gonzalez, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
This research was supported by the FAO-EU FLEGT Programme, CIRAD, Foret Ressources Management (FRM Ingenerie), and the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL).
Public procurement can boost demand for legal timber in Central Africa
Public procurement can boost demand for legal timber in Central Africa
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Notice: Trying to get property 'post_excerpt' of non-object in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
A woman carries wood in Yangambi, DRC. Photo by A. Fassio/CIFOR
Central African governments and their development partners account for a significant proportion of the region’s demand for domestic timber, mostly to meet infrastructure needs in sectors such as education, public works and healthcare.
This demand is growing, as more development projects are implemented in the region. However, experts say that not enough attention is currently given to the legality of the wood used for development projects, resulting in countries missing out on a crucial opportunity to promote a sustainable, legal supply chain of timber for national consumption.
A recently published policy brief by the Central African Forest Observatory (OFAC) discusses how, until now, the governments and international organizations in the region do not include a legality clause in their calls for tenders for public procurement.
“In the current state of affairs, the states and development actors are contributing indirectly to the informal and illegal practices that prevail in the timber sector in Central Africa,” says Richard Eba’a Atyi, lead author of the policy brief and director of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Central Africa hub. “The different actors in the public procurement supply chain are violating the countries’ commitments to processes such as the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan, and the 2008 Sub-Regional Agreement on Forest Control in Central Africa.”
In the policy brief Eba’a Atyi and the contributing authors call for a change in national public procurement policies across the region to enforce public purchases of timber exclusively from legal sources.
Currently, public procurement of timber follows a certain sequence of events. National governments lead infrastructure projects, often with support from international donors, and award projects via public tender to national or international enterprises, which then carry out the construction work. Most of these companies source their wood from local urban markets supplied by small-scale loggers, who do not take into consideration resource renewal rates. The supply chain is thus informal – and essentially illegal – and is contributing to the deterioration and depletion of Central Africa’s forests.
International donors, in most of the cases, abide by national laws, meaning that here they do not have to ensure that wood is sourced legally for public procurement projects. While some enterprises and donors do have internal operating guidelines that recommend legally sourced timber in their projects, but most of the time these guidelines are not monitored and implemented.
A tree weeps sap after being cut down to produce charcoal in Yangambi, DRC. Photo by A. Fassio/CIFOR
Furthermore, certified or legally sourced wood is often difficult to obtain in Central Africa, either because the industry is not interested in low-profit national markets, or because of the incapacity to meet national demand.
However, attitudes are slowly changing, and governments and development actors are increasingly turning their eyes to the issue. “A few initiatives taken across Central Africa indicate that countries are prepared to promote legally sourced timber in public procurement,” says Guillaume Lescuyer, contributing author of the policy brief, and coordinator of CIFOR’s ESSOR project that aims to boost demand for legal wood in Cameroon.
“The Cameroonian Ministry of Forests and Wildlife (MINFOF), for example, has formed a working group on the issue and is now preparing a draft text on the promotion of legally sourced timber in government contracts.” The Cameroonian government’s demand for timber is calculated to be at least 13,000 cubic meters per year – an amount that can potentially have a very high impact for the betterment of the industry.
Other initiatives across the region can be found in Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “In Gabon in 2016, for instance, the Ministry of National Education sought to showcase the quality of Gabonese wood by purchasing 150,000 tables and benches of assumedly legal origin from the Gabon Wood Hub,” highlights Eba’a Atyi. “In the DRC, the Faculty of Sciences at Kisangani University recently sourced certified timber for a infrastructure project with financial support from the European Union.”
These individual initiatives, though relatively small on the regional scale, help create awareness about the issue and need to be encouraged and scaled-up in other countries, the experts say.
In order to require legally sourced wood in public contracts, the authors of the policy brief suggest three options to the national governments in the region. First, governments should make a political statement announcing their intention to promote the exclusive use of legally sourced wood in government contracts. Second, they should issue a legal act – a binding decree, for example, signed by a president or prime minister, or a joint order from national agencies involved in forestry resources management, public contracts and infrastructure – on wood legality in government procurement orders.
Men process wood at a company in Kisangani, DRC. Photo by A. Fassio/CIFOR
And third, they should include a clause on the use of legally sourced timber in public contracting codes, so as to directly target the mandates of providers and suppliers.
Finally, regional cooperation, especially through the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC), also offers an opportunity to push for changes in public procurement policies at the intergovernmental level.
“Considering the implementation of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) and the growing interest in promoting intra-African timber trade, it should be a priority for COMIFAC Member States to urgently prepare and adopt public procurement policies that impose and promote timber from legal sources,” says Eba’a Atyi.
And international partners, he says, should stand ready to help prepare these policies and apply them to their development support actions in Central Africa.
By Ahtziri Gonzalez, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
This research was supported by the FAO-EU FLEGT Programme, CIRAD, Foret Ressources Management (FRM Ingenerie), and the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL).
Can the production of wild forest foods be sustained in timber concessions?
Can the production of wild forest foods be sustained in timber concessions?
18 May, 2018
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Can the production of wild forest foods be sustained in timber concessions? Logging and the availability of edible caterpillars hosted by sapelli (Entandrophragma cylindricum) and tali (Erythrophleum suaveolens) trees in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Sapelli (Entandrophragma cylindricum) and tali (Erythrophleum suaveolens) are among the most important timber species harvested from Congo Basin forests. They also host edible caterpillars, Imbrasia oyemensis and Cirina forda, respectively, which are important to the nutrition and income of rural and urban populations. This study evaluated the density of these tree species within a 10 km radius around each of 4 villages and in the 2012 annual cutting areas of two timber concessions in the region of Kisangani (DRC). Sapelli and tali trees ≥20 cm dbh and their stumps were identified and measured on 21 five ha plots around each village and 20 five ha plots on each concession. Around villages and on concessions, sapelli trees occurred at densities of 0.048 ± 0.008 harvestable trees (≥80 cm dbh) ha −1 and 0.135 ± 0.019 precommercial trees ha −1. Harvestable tali trees (≥60 cm dbh) were seven times more abundant at 0.347 ± 0.032 ha −1, while pre-commercial tali trees occurred at densities of 0.329 ± 0.033 trees ha −1. Between 25% and 40% of the harvestable sapelli trees had been logged as compared to < 3% of the harvestable tali trees. Production per tree, derived from another study, was extrapolated to estimate caterpillar yields on a half circle of 15,700 ha within 10 km of villages, using these estimates of tree densities. Depending on the village, yields were estimated as 11.6–34.5 Mg year −1 of I. oyemensis from sapelli trees, and 65.8–80.9 Mg year −1 of C. forda from tali trees, an average of 0.74–2.2 kg ha −1 year and 4.2–5.2 kg ha −1 year, fresh weight, respectively (0.23–0.68 kg ha −1 year −1 and 1.3–1.6 kg ha −1 year −1, dry weight, respectively). Harvestable trees yielded more caterpillars, providing most of the C. forda caterpillars. However, because harvestable sapelli trees occurred at low densities, the bulk of I. oyemensis caterpillar production would be hosted on precommercial trees. Logging practices that reject poorly formed or hollow trees and guidelines that call for high minimum diameter limits and retention of seed trees or prohibit logging on slopes or riparian zones, safeguard edible caterpillar production. Multiple resource management for multiple stakeholders would require more deliberate planning and management approaches based on negotiations with local communities and approaches like setting aside collection zones or collection trees that would be protected from logging.
Local wood businesses find better global opportunities with sustainability certification
Local wood businesses find better global opportunities with sustainability certification
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Women carve wood side by side. Photo by Deanna Ramsay/CIFOR
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Sitting in Mbak Njum’s tiny office in the coastal Central Java town of Jepara, Indonesia, talk was of exports, trends in furniture styles, cargo containers and logistics.
“Business used to be much better, and Western Europe used to be my biggest market,” said Mbak Njum, who has had her business since 1997. She added that Indonesian customers now make up 10 percent of her sales. A whiteboard in her office noted where else her items were headed: Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia.
Jepara’s economy – almost completely dedicated to wood products – has experienced booms and busts over the decades. The 1998 Asian financial crisis actually opened up its export market, but 2008’s global economic collapse meant declines and a pivot to local buyers.
Scientist Herry Purnomo from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has been working in the area for years, supporting the use of certified and legal wood and improved supply chains to benefit the town’s many small- and medium-scale enterprises, with research that forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA).
“Almost 30 percent of Jepara’s economy relies on furniture. If furniture disappears from Jepara, then the woodcarving culture will disappear too. Woodcraft carving and furniture-making are essential to Jepara and they need raw materials, and those raw materials are trees – specifically teak and mahogany,” he said.
Just last year, Indonesia’s timber legality assurance system (SVLK) was the first in the world to be approved for the European Union’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) license, which allows legal timber and timber products to smoothly enter Europe’s markets. With this license, people are hoping for a boon for Jepara’s small businesses.
To say that Jepara’s economic life is centered around wood and woodcrafts would be an understatement. The town’s streets are littered with scenes of logs being loaded onto and off of trucks, women carving intricate designs at roadside stalls, men cutting and measuring slabs of teak, and a motley assortment of furniture available for sale at shops both large and small.
Pak Tafrikhan owns one of those stores, complete with a workshop in the back where his furniture is made and sold to Jakartans, and people in Dubai and Taiwan. Like any true entrepreneur, he is passionate about his craft and a keen observer of trends.
“My father’s principle was, don’t be afraid to make things; they’ll always sell. I still remember that message, so I never hesitate to produce. They’ll definitely sell because furniture has an extraordinarily wide-ranging market share. It depends on which segment we direct it towards,” he said, gesturing to an intricately grained teak coffee table of his own design.
Jepara has definitely cornered the market in Indonesia, so now the question is certification and licenses to expand. Many in the town aren’t yet knowledgeable about how to get their products certified, or are avoiding the levels of bureaucracy involved.
“Is the SVLK beneficial in financial terms? Perhaps it hasn’t been yet. But if this can be done, at least it will change the furniture industry’s culture in Jepara,” small business owner Pak Trisno said as the sun set at his warehouse.
Women carve wood side by side. Photo by Deanna Ramsay/CIFOR
PASSION PLAY
As a carved relief of the Beatles serenaded men wrapping coffee table tops and women prepping stools and chairs to be sent to Australia, a carving of Jesus laid hobbled on its side, waiting for the final touches of arms and a crucifix – and hopefully a church to purchase the finished piece.
Nur Hamidah, who had been carving a decorative wood piece together with a lively group of women along a small lane, said, “This is work we all have been familiar with since we were kids – this job is like our own family, it’s in our blood.”
Here, markets, certifications and international agreements are only the finishing touches to an industry based on tradition, passion and creativity.
“People have been using teakwood for centuries, and for hundreds of years it has sustained the lives of Jepara’s people. It’s given birth to many artisans; many great works. Carvings, reliefs and many things from these trees – from this teak – have been exported to many countries, and have made Jepara famous throughout the world,” Purnomo said.
Helping craftspeople out by giving them access to sustainable wood and markets is the next step, he added, and SVLK or FLEGT licensing can help with both.
“If we see these teak trees standing tall there is huge potential to preserve the furniture industry in Jepara. And on Java small-scale forestry is actually developing rapidly. Many people are planting trees because the industry is good on Java. We want this to continue so we can preserve Java’s forests with economic incentives,” Purnomo said.
A woodworking student practices his craft at a workshop that doubles as a classroom. Photo by Deanna Ramsay/CIFOR
CRAFTY
In an interview at a CIFOR workshop on the topic, Inah Nuroniah, head of the Department of Industry and Commerce in Jepara, said, “Jepara now has approximately 1.2 million people, and the furniture industry is the central source of income. We’re now working together to look for ways in which the furniture industry can better support small enterprises now and into the future.”
As Pak Tafrikhan put it, “Jepara must return to its earlier creativity,” as well as utilizing the wisdom of people centuries before who planted vast forests of teak with specific knowledge of the best land to allow the trees to flourish.
“We really hope this business community can always be creative and innovative together. So we’re not left behind by other regions or other competitors, because we’re now in the era of globalization; there’s Vietnam, there’s China; maybe there are other countries too who are our competitors,” Nuroniah said.
“It’s these challenges that we must turn into opportunities; how we can improve performance into the future, improve quality, be more innovative, be more creative – together with the regional government we can do all of that,” she added.
Pak Trisno circled back to the forests themselves, the trees that are sustaining this unique corner of the world. “My long-term hope is for there to be wood so the timber, the raw materials can be renewed. So we should plant them as well – not just cut down and use trees.”
By Deanna Ramsay, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
For more information on this topic, please contact Herry Purnomo at h.purnomo@cgiar.org.
Silviculture techniques help farmers improve incomes, develop more productive agricultural systems
Silviculture techniques help farmers improve incomes, develop more productive agricultural systems
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Staff measure timber volume in a demonstration plot in Gunung Kidul. Photo by Riyandoko/ICRAF
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Staff measure timber volume in a demonstration plot in Gunung Kidul. Photo by Riyandoko/ICRAF
Two new studies reveal the importance of silviculture for increasing farmers’ incomes in Java and East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.
Planting timber in agricultural systems is a common practice in Indonesia. Farmers often cultivate timber together with other crops to diversify and increase their incomes. Timber acts as a savings bank, only being harvested when large funds are needed. To ensure the best growth of timber, experts recommend that farmers practise silvicultural techniques, which, despite the numerous benefits, are still not widely adopted.
“At the research sites, timber and non-timber forest products contributed significantly to the economy,” said Gerhard Manurung, research leader and agroforestry scientist with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Indonesia. “We found that the most important factors affecting whether farmers would use silvicultural techniques or not were ease of access to the knowledge found in forestry extension services and farmers’ groups, how well they understood government policies on timber and non-timber forest products [NTFPs], the number of land parcels held by each farmer, and the number of tree and other species that the farmer managed.”
He pointed out that most available research on silvicultural practices was usually done in the context of natural forests, whereas this study offered a fresh perspective because it focused on agroforestry systems, or trees on farms.
Silviculture helps farmers develop more productive systems and reap greater benefits. For example, pruning leads to knot-free timber, which attracts premium prices; thinning young trees so that the remaining trees do not have as much competition for light and nutrients generates the highest percentage of heartwood volume, meaning bigger trees for harvest and more timber to sell; and intercropping teak with nitrogen-fixing shrubs helps to increase the trees’ diameter while at the same time improving soil conditions, which facilitates faster and stronger growth and bigger trees.
A staff member prunes a teak tree. Photo by Riyandoko/ICRAF
Timber and NTFPs contributed more than 60 percent to household incomes at the three sites, which was greater than that from agricultural and plantation crops, yet the adoption of silviculture remained low. The researchers found that a lack of resources and access to information stopped farmers from adopting better practices. In Sumbawa and South-central Timor, when there was more access to forestry extension services and farmers’ groups where knowledge was exchanged, the likelihood of farmers adopting better silvicultural practices rose 2–4 times.
The researchers recommended that policymakers, researchers and extension providers should collaborate more robustly, using approaches that put farmers’ livelihoods at the forefront. Research and training should incorporate participatory techniques, which are renowned for their success in fostering problem-solving skills and speeding learning. Additionally, government research centres should provide on-farm support, such as demonstration plots, that allowed farmers to observe changes brought about by improved techniques.
In terms of policies, the researchers proposed that governments encourage intensification of smallholders’ tree products through intercropping, which escalates the rate of adoption. Regulations on the sale of tree products should be simplified and information provided about grading and pricing mechanisms.
The other study, The significance of planted teak for smallholder farmers, focused on Gunung Kidul, where teak is a valuable investment and an important part of cultural heritage. When grown together with other commercial crops, teak agroforestry systems in Gunung Kidul contributed 40 percent of household income.
Typically, teak produced by smallholders has a diameter of 30 centimeters, which is considered suboptimal by the industries in Jepara in Central Java that produce much of the nation’s teak furniture. Thinning trees helps to improve the size and quality of those that remain but often farmers are unwilling to thin because they fear they will lose income. Also, most farmers use wildlings, sourced from forests or natural regrowth on farms, instead of high-quality seedlings or seeds produced in nurseries. Wildlings typically do not grow as well as those produced by skilled nursery operators.
In Indonesia, the value chain for teak consists of smallholders, local traders, wholesalers and processors. Farmers typically sell logs at prices based on information from other farmers. There is a general lack of knowledge about market prices and grading systems, resulting in sales often below market value. Because traders bear the major risk in the transaction, they lower their offers to farmers so as to cover the cost of the risk.
Echoing Manurung and team’s findings, the researchers recommended the use of on-farm trials as a way of stimulating farmers’ interest in improvements. Further, silviculture needed to be aligned with farmers’ needs for short-, medium- and long-term income. For example, by thinning trees farmers could plant short-rotation tree species, which could be harvested in 5–8 years, in between the teak.
The researchers also urged the development of win-win partnerships between farmers and industry, with governments providing incentives and simplifying timber regulations. Information about price and quality needed to be widely disseminated along with silvicultural extension programs. Research centres and industries could provide access to high-quality seeds and seedlings.
Carving a niche in the global market: The woodworkers of Jepara
Carving a niche in the global market: The woodworkers of Jepara
23 March, 2018
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Based on a long tradition of skilled family trade, the woodworking industry in Jepara, Indonesia, is branching out into global markets by investing in sustainable timber. With the national timber legality license now compatible with export licenses to the European Union, trade opportunities are expanding beyond borders. Scientists at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) are finding the connections between sustainable supply chains and better business for local people.
What does restoring the world’s forests mean for women’s rights?
What does restoring the world’s forests mean for women’s rights?
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Around the world, millions of hectares of land are being reforested as part of global efforts to combat climate change, restore ecological integrity and improve human well-being.
But it’s not just a matter of planting trees on empty lands. As in any landscape, the areas where restoration efforts are taking place are overlaid with uses, histories and political dynamics – including different rights and responsibilities for men and women. Researchers are just beginning to look at the implications of Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) for gender equality.
The movement presents both challenges and opportunities for improving women’s rights, says Markus Ihalainen, a research officer at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the lead center of the CGIAR Research Program on Forest, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), with women’s access to land as a major issue.
“In a lot of countries you already have good policies, guaranteeing women’s rights to land,” he says. “But then you find on the ground both a lack in implementation and a lack of awareness of those rights, and often social pressure that hinders women from claiming the land rights they hold legally.”
At the same time, FLR offers opportunities for women to be better included in land-use decisions and to participate in planting and restoration work, with potential benefits for their overall well-being.
“Research from Mali shows there are opportunities to leverage synergies between restoration and women’s well-being, and that restoration options involving certain indigenous species, as opposed to fast-growing timber species, can enhance women’s adaptive capacities,” Ihalainen says.
“But unlocking this potential often requires identifying, negotiating and reconciling trade-offs between different restoration goals. That is why it is so important to conduct a thorough gender analysis and involve women as stakeholders in the process,” he adds.
In a conversation with Forests News, Ihalainen shared more about the ongoing research on gender and restoration, and how it’s being put into practice around the world.
FLR is gaining a lot of political momentum, and there’s a lot of focus on it now. But in terms of gender and FLR, the discussion so far has been quite general and quite broad. And so what we have been interested in doing is to really look at what is happening on the ground: What are some of the ways in which FLR is implemented on the ground? What are some of the concrete challenges and opportunities to address gender equality? And really have a grounding discussion about that.
In terms of literature on gender and FLR, it’s still quite thin. Even FLR as a concept, in terms of what it’s become now – there’s quite little solid research on that. So what we wanted to do was to look at the broader literature, including the literature on REDD+ and other initiatives, and to really look at what some of the key entry points are for gender analysis when it comes to FLR.
And so we posed questions such as: What are some of the key risks to women’s rights? What are some of the possible synergies between various restoration goals and gender equality? And also looked at some of the trade-offs, and how they can be reconciled.
A woman carries gnetum in Minwoho, Cameroon. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR
And what did you find?
A big issue for gender and FLR is around land tenure. That is, on what land is restoration taking place? In areas where women don’t have land titles they’re not necessarily included as stakeholders in the FLR process at all. Then again, in many countries or in many contexts you have women planting trees, you have women nursing the seedlings, but in 20 years’ time it might be that they’re not able to reap the benefits.
We had a very telling example of this during a recent workshop in Nairobi, where Janet Chihanga from the Komaza Foundation had been working with women on the coast of Kenya to restore and plant trees in degraded lands that weren’t really claimed by anyone.
She found that some eight years later — when it wasn’t even time for harvesting, but just thinning — the men who previously showed no interest in the land which the women had been working on for all this time, suddenly turned up and claimed the land. Because there were trees there.
What does the research suggest for action going forward?
I think what’s really important is to look at what is actually happening on the ground. That is really what needs to inform this discussion. It is a long process and it will require everything from policy to addressing issues to do with the implementation of policy, to changing and transforming norms on the ground.
That will, of course, require the collaboration of a lot of different partners. It won’t necessarily happen overnight, but I think in the short term with restoration initiatives, some of the really critical things will be to implement and ensure that the principles of FPIC — or free, prior and informed consent — are upheld and implemented in a gender-responsive way.
What needs to be done next?
When we look at FLR and gender, because there are so many stakeholders involved, and because there are so many different approaches, it’s very difficult to make a broad statement about what needs to be done.
But I think one of the reasons for me, personally, why I am engaged in this, is because this is really an opportunity to bring these issues up to the forefront of discussions.
Now there is a lot of focus — a lot of political emphasis — on these areas, these lands, that have not necessarily been the priority of a lot of policymakers for a long time. Now there’s more and more emphasis on these areas, and so bringing the issues of rights and gender equality into that discussion is really critical.
Beyond timber: balancing demands for tree resources between concessionaires and villagers
Beyond timber: balancing demands for tree resources between concessionaires and villagers
01 February, 2018
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Extensive areas of the Congo Basin forest are allocated to timber concessionaires. These forests also harbour and support village populations, including indigenous Baka people, who depend on forest foods obtained directly from trees (fruits, oils and caterpillars). Most food-producing tree species are harvested by concessionaires for timber. We documented the availability and abundance of three food tree species around four villages and in two neighboring timber concessions in Cameroon. Data was used to determine the importance of timber concessions as sources of food for local people to provide a foundation for governance arrangements that consider local needs for foods from timber trees. Discussions with concessionaires revealed that some of them have voluntarily refrained from extracting timber species of interest to villagers for their nontimber products. This is either to avoid conflict with villagers, or because regulations have been promulgated to safeguard these resources. The interplay between internal village dynamics, regulations and their implementation by forest guards, and the actions of timber concessions create a complex arena for addressing rights to forest resources. This paper provides information on the accessibility and availability of multiple use timber species as a foundation for negotiations and governance arrangements between concessionaires and local communities.
Tree plantations could help Peru meet forest restoration goal
Tree plantations could help Peru meet forest restoration goal
18 December, 2017
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
A regenerated forest and agroforestry system is seen in the Nueva Ahuaypa indigenous community area in Peru. Photo by Juan Carlos Huayllapuma/CIFOR
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
A regenerated forest and agroforestry system is seen in the Nueva Ahuaypa indigenous community area in Peru. Photo by Juan Carlos Huayllapuma/CIFOR
Peru has set a goal of restoring forest on some 3 million hectares of degraded land, but the country still lags behind its neighbors when it comes to scaling up tree plantations to meet both environmental and societal needs.
Although tree plantations could provide ecosystem services, as well as income for communities and businesses, there is a need for more research, training, financial and fiscal incentives, and secure land tenure, according to a new study by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) that was also supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA).
“At present, it is estimated that about one-third of the global demand for sawn timber is satisfied by commercial tree plantations, and this proportion is expected to increase over time,” says Manuel Guariguata, CIFOR principal scientist and leader on forest management and restoration, and the lead author of the study.
Many countries have begun promoting plantation forestry rather than timber from natural forests, and Peru is taking initial steps in the same direction. Some progress has been made in recent years, with simpler regulations for tree plantations and several model projects, but the country still needs a long-range roadmap for realizing the potential of forest plantations in the coming decades, Guariguata says.
Peru’s forestry legislation has historically emphasized timber production from government-sanctioned concessions across its Amazonian natural forests, rather than plantations. But well-managed plantations could yield a greater return than production in natural forests, says Héctor Cisneros, coordinator of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s forestry program in Peru.
“Peru has a very rich tropical forest, but it is complicated from the standpoint of forestry production,” he says. “Plantations should be a tool for helping to protect the natural forest. If the industry is more closely tied to tree plantations, that will reduce pressure on natural forests.”
Plantations can produce a greater volume of timber per hectare because managers can ensure uniformity in growth, diameter at harvest, and timber quality, Cisneros says. But that requires access to high-quality genetic material, adequate soils, and managers and workers trained to manage the entire value chain, from plantation to consumer.
Although 15 Peruvian universities offer forestry majors, none has a specialty in tree plantation management, and the few courses that are offered are insufficient to meet the need for trained personnel, says Carlos Llerena, dean of the School of Forestry Sciences at La Molina National Agrarian University in Lima.
The limited area under tree plantations in Peru, estimated at just a few tens of thousands of hectares, means there are few jobs for specialists, he says. At the same time, the lack of specialists also slows development of additional plantations.
A forest trail in the Unamat forest, Puerto Maldonado, Madre de Dios, Peru. Photo by Marco Simola/CIFOR
Universities could help break that vicious circle by providing more detailed information about species, helping students obtain fellowships to study with experts abroad and return to Peru to apply their knowledge, and working with sub-national governments that seek to promote tree plantations, Llerena said during a panel discussion at the presentation of the CIFOR study in Lima in June 2017.
Universities can also contribute to improving the quality of timber from plantations, through research to improve both genetic material and timber management techniques. Peru’s National Institute of Agrarian Innovation (INIA) also plays a role, with experimental plots in different types of ecosystems around the country, Eloy Cuellar, who heads INIA’s Agrarian Technological Development Office, said during the panel discussion.
Peru’s varied ecosystems — from the dry desert coast to the Andes Mountains to the Amazonian — offer possibilities for different types of plantations, using both native and introduced species, says Leoncio Ugarte, director of forest studies and research at Peru’s National Forest Service (SERFOR).
While some plantations could produce timber for industrial use, others could meet different needs. In the Andean highlands, where only relicts of native forests remain, plantations of native species could help protect the upper parts of watersheds, providing ecosystem services for water users downstream.
Instead of harvesting the timber, communities or other landowners in those areas could receive payment for the ecosystem services their plantations provide, Ugarte says.
Although Peru has millions of hectares of degraded land that could be used for plantations, some regulatory hurdles hamper the sector’s expansion.
First is the lack of a clear definition of “degraded”, Ugarte says.
SERFOR is currently conducting a detailed calculation of the area suitable for tree plantations. Because different species have different needs and some are better adapted than others to different soil types and climate niches, planners must consider which species are best suited for various areas of the country, Ugarte says.
That implies land-use planning on a broad scale — designating certain areas for agriculture, forestry concessions, protective forest and plantations, for example — as well as more local zoning, to determine which species are most suitable based on soil type, precipitation and other factors.
Most of the area suitable for tree plantations is likely to consist of relatively small fragments, rather than large, continuous expanses suitable for large plantations, he says. Some may be in the hands of smallholders, while others may be located in indigenous communities. In many cases, land ownership may not be clear, which is a disincentive to private investors interested in the tree plantation business.
Ensuring clear tenure is crucial for plantations, where producers require long-range investment over two to four decades, Ugarte says. Lack of clarity about land tenure can lead to social conflicts over plantations. Once tenure is clear, however, financial incentives can be designed for different types of plantations at different scales.
“People who invest in tree plantations seek to diversify their portfolio and make a profit, but they are also committed to climate change mitigation,” says Robert Hereña, general manager of Reforestadora Bánati Bosque S.A.C., a company growing teak in central Peru.
“They also know this can result in social benefits, because tree plantations are often installed in areas where a large percentage of the population lives in poverty or extreme poverty,” Hereña said during the panel discussion.
Small-scale tree producers can also play an important role across the value chain, but they need technical assistance, financing schemes appropriate for local conditions and needs, and access to markets. Private investors could also partner with indigenous communities in the Andean highlands or the Amazon region to develop plantations, although that will require building trust between the private sector and communities, which often distrust each other, the FAO’s Cisneros says.
An indigenous woman harvests goods in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by Juan Carlos Huayllapuma/CIFOR
TARGETING FUTURE MARKET NEEDS
In planning industrial tree plantations at a small or medium scale, investors and operators must consider future market needs, says Jessica Moscoso, executive director of CITE Madera, a government-sponsored technological innovation center that focuses on sustainable timber products and assistance to furniture makers in a Lima industrial park.
Too often, plantation operators focus on the species they could grow, rather than on the species required to manufacture specific products that the market demands—or which it may need in 15 to 30 years, when the trees are ready for harvest, Moscoso said during the panel discussion.
“Plantations allow us to tailor supply to demand,” she says, adding that they also enable growers to project future needs and scale up timber volumes. “It is extremely important that we define what we want to plant, focusing on future demand.”
That implies developing — and training personnel for — the entire market chain, Cisneros says. Most plantations currently produce sawn wood, but Peru could emulate neighboring Brazil and Chile, where the industry also produces wood chips, pulp and even paper, he says.
The CIFOR study concludes that Peru still lacks a clear road map for developing the tree plantation sector so it can contribute to the country’s restoration and climate change mitigation commitments.
Planning must include not just the National Forest Service and Ministry of Agriculture, but also ministries with responsibility for economy and finance, production and trade. And it needs a long-range vision that continues from one government administration to the next.
The country should establish varied pilot initiatives in different ecoregions, which can serve as models, allowing planners to choose the ones with potential for scaling up at the subnational or national levels, Cisneros says.
All of those steps will contribute to the road map, which he says will be constructed “little by little.”
By Barbara Fraser, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
For more information on this topic, please contact Manuel R. Guariguata at m.guariguata@cgiar.org.
Tree plantations could help Peru meet forest restoration goal
Tree plantations could help Peru meet forest restoration goal
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
A regenerated forest and agroforestry system is seen in the Nueva Ahuaypa indigenous community area in Peru. Photo by Juan Carlos Huayllapuma/CIFOR
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
A regenerated forest and agroforestry system is seen in the Nueva Ahuaypa indigenous community area in Peru. Photo by Juan Carlos Huayllapuma/CIFOR
Peru has set a goal of restoring forest on some 3 million hectares of degraded land, but the country still lags behind its neighbors when it comes to scaling up tree plantations to meet both environmental and societal needs.
Although tree plantations could provide ecosystem services, as well as income for communities and businesses, there is a need for more research, training, financial and fiscal incentives, and secure land tenure, according to a new study by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) that was also supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA).
“At present, it is estimated that about one-third of the global demand for sawn timber is satisfied by commercial tree plantations, and this proportion is expected to increase over time,” says Manuel Guariguata, CIFOR principal scientist and leader on forest management and restoration, and the lead author of the study.
Many countries have begun promoting plantation forestry rather than timber from natural forests, and Peru is taking initial steps in the same direction. Some progress has been made in recent years, with simpler regulations for tree plantations and several model projects, but the country still needs a long-range roadmap for realizing the potential of forest plantations in the coming decades, Guariguata says.
Peru’s forestry legislation has historically emphasized timber production from government-sanctioned concessions across its Amazonian natural forests, rather than plantations. But well-managed plantations could yield a greater return than production in natural forests, says Héctor Cisneros, coordinator of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s forestry program in Peru.
“Peru has a very rich tropical forest, but it is complicated from the standpoint of forestry production,” he says. “Plantations should be a tool for helping to protect the natural forest. If the industry is more closely tied to tree plantations, that will reduce pressure on natural forests.”
Plantations can produce a greater volume of timber per hectare because managers can ensure uniformity in growth, diameter at harvest, and timber quality, Cisneros says. But that requires access to high-quality genetic material, adequate soils, and managers and workers trained to manage the entire value chain, from plantation to consumer.
Although 15 Peruvian universities offer forestry majors, none has a specialty in tree plantation management, and the few courses that are offered are insufficient to meet the need for trained personnel, says Carlos Llerena, dean of the School of Forestry Sciences at La Molina National Agrarian University in Lima.
The limited area under tree plantations in Peru, estimated at just a few tens of thousands of hectares, means there are few jobs for specialists, he says. At the same time, the lack of specialists also slows development of additional plantations.
A forest trail in the Unamat forest, Puerto Maldonado, Madre de Dios, Peru. Photo by Marco Simola/CIFOR
Universities could help break that vicious circle by providing more detailed information about species, helping students obtain fellowships to study with experts abroad and return to Peru to apply their knowledge, and working with sub-national governments that seek to promote tree plantations, Llerena said during a panel discussion at the presentation of the CIFOR study in Lima in June 2017.
Universities can also contribute to improving the quality of timber from plantations, through research to improve both genetic material and timber management techniques. Peru’s National Institute of Agrarian Innovation (INIA) also plays a role, with experimental plots in different types of ecosystems around the country, Eloy Cuellar, who heads INIA’s Agrarian Technological Development Office, said during the panel discussion.
Peru’s varied ecosystems — from the dry desert coast to the Andes Mountains to the Amazonian — offer possibilities for different types of plantations, using both native and introduced species, says Leoncio Ugarte, director of forest studies and research at Peru’s National Forest Service (SERFOR).
While some plantations could produce timber for industrial use, others could meet different needs. In the Andean highlands, where only relicts of native forests remain, plantations of native species could help protect the upper parts of watersheds, providing ecosystem services for water users downstream.
Instead of harvesting the timber, communities or other landowners in those areas could receive payment for the ecosystem services their plantations provide, Ugarte says.
Although Peru has millions of hectares of degraded land that could be used for plantations, some regulatory hurdles hamper the sector’s expansion.
First is the lack of a clear definition of “degraded”, Ugarte says.
SERFOR is currently conducting a detailed calculation of the area suitable for tree plantations. Because different species have different needs and some are better adapted than others to different soil types and climate niches, planners must consider which species are best suited for various areas of the country, Ugarte says.
That implies land-use planning on a broad scale — designating certain areas for agriculture, forestry concessions, protective forest and plantations, for example — as well as more local zoning, to determine which species are most suitable based on soil type, precipitation and other factors.
Most of the area suitable for tree plantations is likely to consist of relatively small fragments, rather than large, continuous expanses suitable for large plantations, he says. Some may be in the hands of smallholders, while others may be located in indigenous communities. In many cases, land ownership may not be clear, which is a disincentive to private investors interested in the tree plantation business.
Ensuring clear tenure is crucial for plantations, where producers require long-range investment over two to four decades, Ugarte says. Lack of clarity about land tenure can lead to social conflicts over plantations. Once tenure is clear, however, financial incentives can be designed for different types of plantations at different scales.
“People who invest in tree plantations seek to diversify their portfolio and make a profit, but they are also committed to climate change mitigation,” says Robert Hereña, general manager of Reforestadora Bánati Bosque S.A.C., a company growing teak in central Peru.
“They also know this can result in social benefits, because tree plantations are often installed in areas where a large percentage of the population lives in poverty or extreme poverty,” Hereña said during the panel discussion.
Small-scale tree producers can also play an important role across the value chain, but they need technical assistance, financing schemes appropriate for local conditions and needs, and access to markets. Private investors could also partner with indigenous communities in the Andean highlands or the Amazon region to develop plantations, although that will require building trust between the private sector and communities, which often distrust each other, the FAO’s Cisneros says.
An indigenous woman harvests goods in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by Juan Carlos Huayllapuma/CIFOR
TARGETING FUTURE MARKET NEEDS
In planning industrial tree plantations at a small or medium scale, investors and operators must consider future market needs, says Jessica Moscoso, executive director of CITE Madera, a government-sponsored technological innovation center that focuses on sustainable timber products and assistance to furniture makers in a Lima industrial park.
Too often, plantation operators focus on the species they could grow, rather than on the species required to manufacture specific products that the market demands—or which it may need in 15 to 30 years, when the trees are ready for harvest, Moscoso said during the panel discussion.
“Plantations allow us to tailor supply to demand,” she says, adding that they also enable growers to project future needs and scale up timber volumes. “It is extremely important that we define what we want to plant, focusing on future demand.”
That implies developing — and training personnel for — the entire market chain, Cisneros says. Most plantations currently produce sawn wood, but Peru could emulate neighboring Brazil and Chile, where the industry also produces wood chips, pulp and even paper, he says.
The CIFOR study concludes that Peru still lacks a clear road map for developing the tree plantation sector so it can contribute to the country’s restoration and climate change mitigation commitments.
Planning must include not just the National Forest Service and Ministry of Agriculture, but also ministries with responsibility for economy and finance, production and trade. And it needs a long-range vision that continues from one government administration to the next.
The country should establish varied pilot initiatives in different ecoregions, which can serve as models, allowing planners to choose the ones with potential for scaling up at the subnational or national levels, Cisneros says.
All of those steps will contribute to the road map, which he says will be constructed “little by little.”
By Barbara Fraser, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
For more information on this topic, please contact Manuel R. Guariguata at m.guariguata@cgiar.org.
CIRAD research featured in new book on corporate governance
CIRAD research featured in new book on corporate governance
Notice: Undefined variable: id_overview in /home/ft4user/foreststreesagroforestry.org/wp-content/themes/FTA/template-parts/content.php on line 64
At a sustainably certified sawmill in Jepara, men carefully cut logs of wood that are then measured and marked. Photo by D. Ramsay/CIFOR
Posted by
FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
A sustainably certified sawmill in Jepara, Indonesia. Photo by D. Ramsay/CIFOR
How does the complex pattern of shareholdings and subsidiaries – entangled, hierarchical and pyramidal – influence actions, decisions, policies and strategies? It could be said that the behavior of conglomerates and mega corporations is influenced by their ownership structure.
How the structure of commodity corporates could impact the sustainability of agricultural landscapes is of direct interest to the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), one of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry’s (FTA) partner institutions.
Jean-Marc Roda speaks about the new book. Photo by IDEAS
This is because many activities linked to deforestation; forest management; the sustainability of palm oil, rubber and timber plantations; biomass and biofuel strategies are driven by the choices of international finance and mega corporations.
CIRAD’s activities concern the life sciences, social sciences and engineering sciences, applied to agriculture, the environment and territorial management. Its work centers on food security, climate change, natural resource management, the reduction of inequalities and poverty alleviation.
In particular, in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, research by CIRAD and its public- and private-sector partners focuses on natural resource management, food security, biodiversity studies and the sustainability of tree crop-based systems, paying particular attention to island agro-ecosystems, which are particularly sensitive to climate change.
ET Gomez presents during the book launch. Photo by IDEAS
The paper’s coauthor Norfaryanti Kamaruddin, who also contributed to the recently launched book, previously completed a PhD that was partially supported by FTA.
An important debate on global trade and sustainability relates to the role that corporate governance has on the uptake of sustainability standards. The paper suggests that financial factors, such as ownership structure and flexibility in decision-making, may have a fundamental role in understanding the adoption of sustainable standard systems in the corporate sector. This is based on the analysis of four major Asian agribusiness transnationals comprising about 931 companies.
In addition, this paper explores as a way forward the convergence of environmental sustainability with long-term family business sustainability.
The new book looks at corporate ownership and control in Malaysia.
Research tools developed throughout the project proved extremely accurate for deciphering any kind of corporate financial structure. Such quantitative methods of ownership structure analysis, initially designed for the analysis of the forest and agriculture financial sectors, were successfully employed to independently confirm and illustrate previously published results from ET Gomez.
Roda and his team were able to demonstrate how a core of 26 corporations controlled the Malaysian corporate sector and to provide details on how that control spread throughout the financial network, leading to the chapter “Understanding the network typology of the seven government-linked investment companies (GLICs)”.
The book was launched by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) in August 2017. It covers all Malaysian financial sectors, with Chapter 4 focusing on the plantation sector and on quantitative methods used for comparison and validation.
Adapted from the article by Jean-Marc Roda, originally published by CIRAD.
This work is linked to the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), which is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors.
Restoration 
Plantations and tree crop commodities 
Enhanced nutrition and food security 
Biodiversity, safeguarding and conservation 
Nationally determined contributions 
Bioenergy and biomaterials 
Blue carbon and peatlands 
Climate change adaptation 
Landscape governance 
Gender 
Silvopastoral systems 
Market-based agroforestry-forestry 
Farm-forest policy interface 
Agroecology 
Livelihood trajectory modelling and assessment 
Inclusive finance and business models 
Innovating finance for sustainable landscapes 
Public and private commitments to zero deforestation 
Orphan tree crops 
Effectiveness of approaches to sustainable supply 
Quality of FTA research for development 
Sentinel landscapes 
Foresight 
Seeds and seedlings delivery systems 
Smallholder tree-crop commodities 
