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Trees For Fuel - The Forester's View
Extracts from an article by PM Bradley in the Stockholm Environment Institute (SKI) Newsletter, December 1993. As a result of the oil crisis of the 1970s it has now been recognized that for the rural poor of the developing countries, energy supplies and consumption have little to do with oil products. Theirs is a world of woodfuel and domestic hearths where there is another fuel crisis. In 1983, FAO painted a picture of widespread deforestation, supposedly caused by increasing woodfuel collection. The woodfuel gap theory was established and ESMAP (World Bank) focused increasingly on household energy and woodfuel. Only through expanded tree planting could the woodfuel gap be filled. The donors fixed the agenda and governments of developing countries were only too keen to increase their inflow of foreign capital. Donor support was also linked to the campaign for environmental conservation. The story of these faulty analyses and faulty solutions is shown from the forestry point of view in the diagram (figure 1). [top] [end]The problem ill definedThe gap theory was shown by Leach and Mans, in 1988, to be based on false assumptions - that woodfuel consumption is the principal cause of deforestation and that people do not economize on fuel in the face of scarce resources. Massive, donor-led intervention was seen as the only answer to these questions of the inevitable increase in the woodfuel gap. This view is still too readily held even in the face of IS years of evidence to the contrary - there are still many trees left in vast regions which were predicted to be completely treeless. Slowly, national forestry departments have entered the argument, recognizing that trees exist outside their plantations and that people need trees and their products for many purposes.
The idea that farmers could participate, contrasted sharply with the forestry ideology which was to keep people away from trees and to fence and guard the plantations. It was these people who were cutting down the trees and destroying the forests! It was hard for forestry departments to accept that village people could plant trees on their own, although in fact they had been doing so for decades and nurturing them in vast numbers as they did with their agricultural crops. It took a long time for the authorities to accept that community woodlots, overseen by village authorities, were not popular. Memories of guarded colonial plantations and enforced land management were still strong in the late 80s in Tanzania, Zimbabwe and West Africa. Even where the tree planting programmes have been successful it is not clear that they have relieved the pressure of scarce woodfuel resources. At the same time, in Kenya for example, tens of millions of tree seedlings were being raised every year by unassisted farmers on their own land. The response from local people to the disappearance of natural woodlands and forests was not related to woodfuel needs, it was the normal mix of problems poor village people face. Woodfuel shortage ranks low and is usually local rather than national and the principal reason for widespread forest clearance is for agricultural land. Evaluating the success of fuelwood tree planting programmes is difficult and cannot be measured by the number of seedlings distributed. Ultimately the proof of success is whether women find it easier to secure their necessary firewood. More directly, it is the extent to- which the planting spreads of its own accord and increases the availability of fuel. [top] [end]Editorial commentThis article is included in Boiling Point because of the way in which cookstove programme development has paralleled that of fuelwood forestry. These are generally seen respectively as the short and longterm answers to the fuel problems of the developing world. Stove programmes have passed through similar phases with misconceptions of the problem which have resulted in little benefit to the firewood user the cook and her family. Improved cookstove programmes were seen as a panacea for household energy shortages and deforestation, but were dropped by the major aid funders when they accepted that domestic firewood use was not the cause of deforestation and improved stoves were not universally welcomed and did not spread automatically.First the dissemination methods were blamed and the social scientists offered their solutions. When this did not work, the stove designs were said to be unattractive, not very fuel saving or too smoky and expensive. Even environmental arguments did not carry much weight. Fortunately, household energy programme funding was then helped by the strong evidence provided by Kirk Smith and others that smoke from open fires and inefficient stoves was very dangerous to health. It can cause serious diseases and chronic ill-health for women and young children who spend long periods in the kitchens (or will this prove to be just another 'statistical' crisis?) For foresters and stove workers, firewood shortages are still an unsolved problem although in a few countries improved stove dissemination is taking off. Planners are learning that changes in basic cultural habits such as the domestic hearth, take place over several decades rather than the 5-10 years of most stove programmes. Nevertheless, these early years are a necessary and important part of the learning process for engineers, social scientists, funders and for the hundreds of local stove programmes as well as for the cooks. [top] [end]Contents: Boiling Point 35: How Much Can NGO’s Achieve
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20 August 2007; Last edited:
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Pagename: TreesForFuel-TheForestersView @HEDON: ATGA | ||||||||||
