Enhancing the Benefits of Forest Products

Over the past two decades, governments, development agencies and conservation NGOs have encouraged the marketing and sale of forest products as a strategy to boost income for poor people in the tropics. Forest product development is also widely advocated as an ecologically benign use of the forest—an assumption that may not always be true.

A considerable amount of research has been done to better understand forest product use and commercialisation, yet much of it case based and the methods of analysis are highly variable. As a result, the conclusions often have little wider relevance, and may even produce conflicting results.

Now, CIFOR and 60 research partners in 27 countries are engaged in a major project to develop a more systematic technique for analysing diverse cases of forest product development to better determine the factors that correlate with the outcome of development efforts. The scientists are testing and refining the new methodology by comparing dozens of case studies in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

According to project leader Brian Belcher, the aim is to ultimately provide more reliable information about the kinds of conditions and types of forest products that are most favourable for investment. ‘Forest products are important because many people use them, especially the poor. But increasing the value of forest products, as development programmes usually aim for, isn’t always the answer’, he explains. ‘Some forest products are mainly of marginal value. People may have other opportunities that make more sense economically’.

‘We want to provide guidance on what kinds of cases are most amenable to development interventions, as well as to flag the kind of cases that may not be good investments’, adds Belcher, the team leader of CIFOR’s Forest Products and People Programme. He is managing the Asian component of the project while CIFOR scientists Ousseynou Ndoye and Patricia Shanley coordinate the African and Latin American case studies.

In the past year, the research partners met in Indonesia, Cameroon and Brazil to discuss their various cases and learn the methods for uniform data collection and analysis. The individual cases—which include products as diverse as rattan, butterflies, honey, Brazil nuts and medicinal plants—were selected because they have commercial value and have already been studied in fairly good detail, so there is existing data that can be drawn on for the study.

The researchers are recording information about the products using a standardised set of characteristics that describe aspects of the entire development process—from production and processing to marketing and trade. Is the forest product cultivated or grown in the wild? Highly processed or sold in natural form? Traded mainly locally or regionally? Subject to heavy or little regulation?

The scientists are using a variety of analytic techniques to compare the different case studies. From this, they can detect development patterns and characteristics that appear to influence the results of commercialisation efforts—insight that should help make investment and policy interventions more effective.

For Partners in Africa, a ‘Larger Perspective’

The African component of CIFOR’s forest product methodology project consists of 21 diverse cases. They range from an edible caterpillar (Imbrasia oyemensis) that is consumed by 90 percent of the population of Central African Republic to Prunus africana, a highly prized tree with a wide range of household uses and curative effects, including the use of its bark to treat prostate disease.

Ousseynou Ndoye, the head of CIFOR’s Regional Office in Yaoundé, Cameroon, says the African researchers are very enthusiastic about the project: ‘They feel the world comparison adds more value to their individual case studies. Furthermore, they are pleased to be exposed to a new approach—the conceptual framework—in analysing their individual case studies’. These were among the comments from researchers who attended a workshop in May to launch the work:

‘The project will allow comparison between different countries. For example, I am documenting a case study of rattan in Gabon, which can be compared
to other rattan cases from different African countries’.

— Jean Pierre Profizi Ministère des Eaux et Forêts de Libreville, Gabon

‘Participating in this project helps put my work into a larger perspective’.

— Louis Defo University of Yaoundé, Cameroon

‘One positive outcome will be the development of better policies for
non-timber forest products’.

— Dominic Blay Forestry Research Institute of Ghana

Bringing Research Results ‘Home’ in Cameroon

Conducting research in the tropics, scientists collect vast amounts of information. But seldom do they return to their study sites to share the results of what they learned with local people who might directly benefit. This can leave communities disenchanted and lead to ‘research fatigue’.

CIFOR scientists who are studying the marketing of forest products in Cameroon wanted to break from that practice. So, they teamed up with Tropenbos Cameroon and organised a seminar in April 2000 for local farmers, traders and representatives of rural NGOs near Yaoundé to explain
the findings of their market research. About 45 people attended.

The CIFOR team collects data in local markets about six times a year. They explained in the workshop how the farmers and traders can use such information to improve their own marketing strategies and boost household incomes. The topics covered product specialisation, reliance on close versus distant markets, and issues of storing, processing and adding value to forest products.

The participants also got a lesson on the consequences of unsustainable harvesting. Nicole Chaungueu of Tropenbos used as an example the case of Garcinia lucida, the bark of which is heavily traded in Cameroon because it is used to ferment palm wine. Demonstrating the dangers of overexploitation, Chaungueu showed photos of sites where half of all Garcinia lucida trees are dead. She then explained how the bark could be extracted without killing the trees.

The participants said they were pleased by what they learned at the seminar and asked CIFOR to organise more like it. Most felt the information they had acquired would help them better market their own forest products in the future. In a multiplier effect, the attendees also presented the seminar information to other farmers and traders in their home villages and markets.

What Future for the Rattan Gardens of Indonesia?

Haji Sulaiman lives in an area of South Kalimantan, Indonesia, where villages have cultivated rattan for a century or more. As in a lot of the local households, rattan production offered him and his family a good living. Heavy demand from Japan made the manufacture of rattan mats (lampit) an important home industry, and Sulaiman even invented a machine that cuts holes in split rattan, which earned him a major government award.

In 1987, encouraged by the local government, he borrowed money to expand production. By 1991, however, he was bankrupt and his lampit business was closed, while the debt remains to be paid off.

His situation reflects the dramatically uneven status of rattan production in Kalimantan, and Indonesia overall, over the past two decades. Once a critical source of livelihood for many small farmers, rattan ‘gardens’ have have been undermined by very low prices. The lampit industry, for which Indonesia was once the main supplier, has virtually collapsed.

A consortium of researchers from CIFOR and several partner organisations has been studying the dynamics that made the once thriving rattan gardens now a marginal economic activity in many areas. A combination of factors is involved.

Beginning in the 1980s, the government introduced a series of policies that banned the export of rattan and restricted foreign investment in rattan manufacturing, ostensibly to protect the resource and promote a domestic processing industry. The ban sharply decreased prices and demand; raw material prices have changed little in nominal terms since 1987, and have decreased in real terms. Local rattan producers lost, while the artificially low prices gave domestic processors essentially a subsidy for the cost of raw material.

Meanwhile, many rattan gardens have been displaced by plantations and other land uses, farmers are shifting to different activities and widespread forest fires have destroyed large areas of rattan.

The scientists are working to determine what policies and conditions might reverse the clock and once again make rattan gardens an attractive means of livelihood, especially in villages where the people have few income alternatives. Could a revival of the industry be supported, and if so, how? Or are rattan gardens basically outdated and uneconomic in today’s changing environment?

Ecological benefits are cited among the arguments in favour of restoring rattan gardens, which usually exist within larger forest ecosystems. ‘Rattan gardens are of high importance for biodiversity compared with oil palm or rubber plantations’, explains CIFOR researcher Rita Mustikasari, who is conducting rattan studies in several provinces of Indonesia. ‘Rattan is a climbing plant that needs big trees in which to grow’. Thus, rattan gardens function as secondary forests that provide habitat for many different forestproducts.

In social terms, rattan gardens also offer a number of benefits. They are a form of ‘savings plan’ for many villagers, who can harvest them when needed as a source of ready cash for school fees, emergencies or other household needs.

In a paper presented at an international workshop in 2000, the researchers argue that the rattan gardens of Kalimantan are basically resilient and ‘could be more economically competitive if provided with a level playing field’. Among the policy reforms they suggest is reducing barriers that have depressed prices for the raw material.

Does Devolution Translate into Greater Local Benefits?

Many national governments in Asia have been devolving authority to local communities for the past two decades in an attempt to improve forest management and empower forest users to help them improve their quality of life. Judging the effectiveness of these efforts is difficult because of different expectations, aims and interpretations. CIFOR’s Adaptive Co-Management Programme has been seeking more reliable answers through case studies of devolution at three dozen study sites in India, China and the Philippines.

The researchers have evaluated devolution policies in terms of local forest users’ demands and aspirations. Is there greater access to forest resources? Do local people derive increased forest benefits to help meet their basic needs? Who makes most of the decisions about forest use? Despite local differences, the scientists found some common patterns across the three countries.

Contrary to the fears of detractors, devolution has resulted in increased forest cover and quality. It has also legitimised local control over some forest-related decisions. But at most sites in the three countries, devolution policies have fallen short of meeting the interests of local inhabitants. Even where their forest rights have been expanded, access and benefits have been limited mainly to subsistence needs, with commercial rights—especially to timber—restricted.

In nearly all the cases, forest departments have retained control through management decisions, local organisations, and taxes and regulations. ‘The results show that, in general, devolution policies changed the manner in which central governments control forest management, rather than achieving a genuine shift in authority to local forest users’, notes David Edmunds, co-author of an upcoming book on thefindings.

Under devolution, forest departments have become more skillful in engaging local communities in forest management, Edmunds explains. Such participation has been promoted not with the aim of empowering communities, however, but to meet the forest departments’ own interests. Under joint forest management arrangements in India, for example, much of the ‘degraded’ forest land the state has claimed for regeneration has come at the expense of reduced grazing lands, ecological services and species valued by local people. ‘The labour of forest protection has often been shifted to forest users while government officials retain the right to make key decisions over what species to grow, when to harvest, where to sell and how to manage any profits’, Edmunds says.

The researchers believe some of the most important benefits from devolution have been indirect. As local forest users have gained visibility and legitimacy of access to forests, considerable assistance has come from NGOs, universities and government programmes in the form of legal literacy, community organising skills, small enterprise development, agroforestry techniques and other training to help livelihoods and strengthen civil society.

The study urges policy changes in a number of areas to improve the benefits of devolution for local communities. Among the recommended measures arethese:

• Devise clearer and less restrictive property rights at the local level.

• Create opportunities for pluralistic decision making and provide disadvantaged forest user groups with the means to influence policy.

• Include provisions for building local capacity in areas such technical skills, marketing, organisational development, communication, legal literacy and political mobilisation.

• Shift the focus of state and NGO interventions away from technical and managerial aspects of forestry and toward relevant political processes.      

‘Twenty years ago devolution policies were promoted as “win-win” situations for both forestry departments and local users’, says Edmunds. ‘We now know that while devolution allows for some joint benefits, tradeoffs are also inevitable’.

Information for Local Impact

A case study from the Brazilian Amazon shows how rural communities, when presented with reliable scientific knowledge, are often willing—and even eager—to modify their use of forest resources to ensure sustained benefits.

In eastern Amazonia, the range of species logged over the past three decades has increased from 20 to more than 300. Many are important sources of food, fibre and medicines used locally. Currently, the 15 most highly valued medicinal oil and game-attracting species in the study area are being cut down by the timber industry.

As part of her long-term research on the management of non-timber forest products in a frontier area along the Capim River, CIFOR scientist Patricia Shanley helped local communities understand what the loss of certain species would mean in terms of health care and nutrition.

The area’s inhabitants saw logging as a main source of much needed cash. But they lacked adequate information to weigh the costs and benefits of selling wood instead of conserving the trees for their non-timber benefits. Shanley’s work pointed to many ‘hidden’ benefits that were not fully recognised.

One bacuri tree (Platonia insignis), for example, can annually produce enough of its delicious fruit—which is used for ice cream, juices and jams—to generate the equivalent of $US100. In contrast, a single logged tree often brings as little as US$2. The piquia (Caryocar villosum) attracts hundreds of kilograms of game during the tree’s flowering season, providing local families with a major source of protein. And oil from the copaiba tree (Copaifera spp.), which sells for about US$15 a litre, is used to prevent infection in wounds.

Armed with such information, local forest owners strengthened their negotiations with timber harvesters, decided to preserve a higher proportion of fruit and game-attracting trees, and showed greater interest in processing fruits and medicinal plants for personal use and income.

Shanley says the informational materials developed to convey forest values have been requested by researchers and conservation programmes in other areas of the Brazilian Amazon and in Ecuador, Greece, Mexico, Peru, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia. In February 2000, she was invited to describe the work at a workshop, sponsored by the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR) in The Hague, which highlighted innovative methods for improving the ability of local communities to manage resources.

In Zimbabwe, the Challenge of Governing Common-Property Resources

Since the 1980s, Zimbabwe has had in place a system for local control of natural resources—especially shared resources such as grazing areas, wood for building and crafts, and other forest products. But it has not worked as planned, and local people are disaffected.

Scientists from CIFOR, the University of Zimbabwe’s Institute of Environmental Studies and the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology are collaborating in a three-year project to develop a more effective approach. Their work in two micro-catchment areas of southern Zimbabwe’s Chivi District produced significant results in 2000. Thanks to a series of researcher-initiated workshops, government officials and villagers found common ground and agreed to governance changes that were mutually acceptable.

‘The development has paved the way for a radical shift of authority, away from the existing command-and-control mode and toward a governing system based largely on community input’, says CIFOR scientist Bruce Campbell, a member of the research team.

Under the decentralisation plan it introduced more than a decade ago, the government of Zimbabwe made District Councils responsible for governing natural resources. The councils regulated resource use through a system of bylaws. But the regulations had been developed by the state without local participation, and did not reflect the communities’ interests. Moreover, the rules were not well enforced.

‘Essentially, there was a mismatch’, Campbell says. The most effective local systems for natural resource management were based on traditional systems. However, the District Councils had the legal mandate to manage the local resources, but were basically ineffective.

To help the community address the imbalance, the scientists organised several community meetings for village representatives and District Council officials. Using a social science methodology known as ‘scenario building’, the researchers urged the different parties to envision how they wanted local resource management to work, and to propose possible changes in the existing legislative framework that would improve the present situation.

According to Campbell, the local people were highly enthusiastic about the workshops. ‘Most of the village representatives had never had a chance to express their views and discuss such issues before with district authorities’, hesays.

In a final session, several groups presented the District Council with possible scenarios for the management of various resources and in relation to governance. To the surprise of many, the Council was highly amenable to proposed changes in the management structure. Under the new arrangement, its role would be to mainly support and coordinate community initiatives and provide arbitration when necessary.

‘Our research activities made a breakthrough’, Campbell says. Pleased with the outcome of the process, the District Council wants to expand the pilot project to other villages.

Local Governance and the Legacy of Colonial Rule

Does decentralisation of natural resource management really give previously marginalised groups greater access to power and resources, as proponents contend? Or is it, in effect, a means of achieving the aims of national elites more effectively and at a lower cost?

CIFOR research partner Alois Mandondo says Zimbabwe’s experience offers useful lessons. She traced the country’s recent decentralisation efforts back to the policies of indirect rule under the colonial regime. The national government made native chiefs and headmen responsible for enforcing certain environmental regulations. The rules did not reflect local interests, however, but furthered the colonial government’s objectives—often at the expense of the native populations. Farmers, for example, were forced to cease commercial logging, reduce their cattle herds and provide free labour for soil conservation activities.

In ‘Forging (Un)democratic Resource Governance Systems from the Relic of Zimbabwe’s Colonial Past’, Mandondo argues that little has changed. Local authorities still serve largely at the whim
of national leaders and are more accountable to party bosses than to local constituencies.

In 1988 district governments were given the authority to enact land use and conservation laws; most simply adopted the model bylaws prepared by the national government. ‘Communities have had few opportunities to participate in creating the new rules, even though the government expects them to cooperate with the council representatives who enforce the rules’, says Mandondo, who is based at the University of Zimbabwe.

In 1998 village headmen were charged, as in the past, with enforcing environmental and conservation regulations. This was supposed to increase local control, according to Mandondo. In practice, she concludes, ‘there has been little progress in allowing communities to set their own rules, generate revenue from local natural resources and democratically elect their own representatives’.

Under CAMPFIRE projects, for example, local communities are supposed to receive at least 50 percent of the revenues from wildlife safaris. But the District Councils have been reluctant to allow the communities to control those funds.

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