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Sustainable commercial firewood: the role of Forest Replacement Associations in Brazil and Nicaragua
This article has been adapted from a paper presented to the XII World Forest Congress, FAO, Quebec City, Canada, September 2003 by the author. [top] [end]IntroductionA frequently asked question in the developing world is ‘How can we finance reforestation for rural farmers, without international aid?’ In the developing world, reforestation is usually needed to counteract deforestation and forest degradation that results from the need for fibre, timber and energy. The depletion of the natural forests is easier and cheaper than reforestation, and often, tropical forests superficially seem inexhaustible.However, tropical forests are one of the fastest disappearing ecosystems worldwide, since they are usually associated with less developed countries. In these regions, the unspoken policy is ‘privatize the profits from the country’s forests, while socialising the external costs from the degradation of these same forests’. Local governments usually lack human and logistical resources to monitor deforestation. Also, when the proposed solution is reforestation, the long-term return on investment is not attractive for local farmers, and, if accepted, the money is most likely to come from foreign aid. An alternative solution to this problem is taking place in countries like Brazil and Nicaragua. The creation of regional Forest Replacement Associations among small-scale wood consumers and producers is proving to be an appropriate measure for developing countries and, by the mid-term, it is independent of foreign aid. [top] [end]MethodologyForest Replacement Associations (FRAs) are a ‘win–win’ solution for both industrial consumers and rural producers of wood products. This solution is based on four basic assumptions for the production of any agriculture commodity (Miranda, R.C., 1998):
Small or medium-scale farmers usually have land available for reforestation. A small percentage of the land, from 5% to 20%, could be dedicated to a reforestation crop, which could mean anything from a quarter of a hectare to 10 hectares of land. The same farmers usually have labour available to invest in the project, mostly family labour that will not cost them a cash investment. However, these farmers do not usually invest in reforestation due to the lack of capital or cash to buy the seeds or seedlings (the expected cost for the establishment of a hectare, for instance, may range from US$200 to $300, depending on species, soil preparation, fertilization, fences, etc.). Farmers also have to wait usually five to seven years to harvest for energy (fuelwood) and 12 to 25 years to harvest for timber, and recover the cash investment. Furthermore, farmers usually do not have a guaranteed market for their investment. Either there is no formal contract or contact with buyers, and the market might be at quite some distance, with high transportation costs. On the other hand, small woodconsuming industries usually have neither the land available for reforestation to sustain their need for wood products nor the rural labour to plant and care for the plantation. However, as consumers, they are the market, and can guarantee a demand from any supplier. Furthermore, because they are the ones that ultimately define the prices of the final product in which wood is used as raw material or energy, they can make a larger profit in the process – consumers do have the control over the profits. In the forest replacement system, farmers and consumers of a given region (one or several clustered municipalities) form a partnership to create a Forest Replacement Association, which should be a legal entity. In Brazil there are models where some state governments and an FRA federation can assist with advice. In Nicaragua, PROLEÑA and the Ministry of Energy can advise as well. Usually, consumers and producers together arrange to set up the tree nursery infrastructure, in which the consumer industry finances the seedling production, as well as the technical assistance to oversee the nursery operation and to assist farmers with training and assistance in reforestation techniques and maintenance. Each farmer associated or enrolled in the reforestation programme has free access to seedlings, and also a guarantee from the industry that they will buy the wood produced, once a fair market price is agreed upon at the time of the harvesting. Farmers have total ownership of their land dedicated to the reforestation and its products, and furthermore have no obligation to sell the wood to the industry, but can either keep it or sell to the highest bidder. Table 1 summarises this scheme by presenting the contribution of resources in a partnership for a forest replacement programme.
[top] [end]OpportunitiesThe concept of FRAs was first developed in Brazil where, since 1975, the forest legislation requires that every industrial or commercial wood consumer should guarantee the sustainability of its wood products needs (Toledoe Guimaraes, 1993). If it is a small consumer with demand below 12 000 cubic metres of wood per year, it should establish its own reforestation project, or it could pay a fee to a forest replacement fund operated either by the government or as an alternative by private FRAs (Figure 1).However the preferred contribution method today is to FRAs, since consumers in this way have a guarantee that their contribution will then create reforestation projects within their region, increasing in the near future a sustainable supply of industrial quality wood, with much lower transportation costs. An additional benefit of the FRA is that the contribution fee is significantly lower than the one paid to the government. This is due to the efficiency of the FRA administration.
In Nicaragua, based on a feasibility study done by Miranda 2000, a local NGO called PROLEÑA took the initiative to establish three FRAs with the three leading fuelwood consuming industries in that country. PROLEÑA also facilitated technical and financial co-operation from the Nicaraguan and the Brazilian governments through the National Energy Commission (CNE) and the Brazilian Cooperating Agency (ABC) respectively, as well as from Trees, Water and People (TWP), an US-based NGO that supports reforestation initiatives in Central and South America. In this case, the small rural industries were brick manufacturers, lime manufacturers and fuelwood merchants for the capital city of Managua (Figure 2). It is estimated by PROLEÑA-ESMAP that Managua alone consumes about 100 000 tonnes of firewood per year. In this initiative, each cluster of industry provided the land for the establishment of the nursery, the Nicaraguan government provided the infrastructure, while the Brazilian government, PROLEÑA and TWP provided the expertise for the FRA methodology and the nursery tubete technology (including the hardware). A tubete is a recycled small rigid plastic container used for cultivation of seedlings in the nursery, which is raised above the soil and irrigated by a mist system. [top] [end]ResultsTo date, each FRA in Nicaragua has the capacity to produce 95 000 trees annually, which has been in full operation since March 2002 (Figure 3). These FRAs are established in the Pacific region, where the deforestation process has been among the most severe in the country and the demand for rural industry and urban domestic fuelwood is still very substantial in terms of Nicaraguan energy needs (Miranda and Alves-Milho, 1999).Small farmers of the region are expected to have additional security with their investment in reforestation, since the region suffers from time to time from agricultural crop losses from natural disasters such as drought caused by the El Niño meteorological phenomenon and floods such as hurricane Mitch of 1998.
In Nicaragua, where there is no incentive for reforestation, and the forestry authorities do not have the resources to enforce sustainable management or control fuelwood consuming industries, FRAs can fill this gap by leveraging private resources instead of public resources to accomplish the sustainable forest management goal. [top] [end]ConclusionsFor developing countries where small industries rely on wood as both timber and energy source, the government has no resources to enforce forest sustainability policies, and there are no public resources to provide reforestation incentives, FRA is a valuable model to address these problems.Firstly, it guarantees a continuous supply of wood for those industries that need it to operate; secondly, it provides a sustainable supply of better quality wood and lower transportation costs with no deforestation consequences; and thirdly, it provides the necessary incentives for small farmers to incorporate forestry into their income generating activities. For farmers it can become a strategically resistant crop to mitigate hard times when agricultural crops are lost, and to alleviate pressure on the remaining natural forest stands. In the medium term, FRA avoids using public, and in most cases donor aid funds in favour of private funds to mitigate an environmental impact created by private industries. An amount of opposition can be expected, since there is often rejection from private businesses that are reluctant to assume the social and environmental costs of their profitable operations. Continuous education of public opinion as well the consuming industries about the key role of FRA for sustainable development will slowly strengthen the FRA concepts in the eyes of forestry authorities, enabling them to implement and enforce FRA as a desirable modern forest policy. [top] [end]References
[top] [end]Download original aritcle Sustainable commercial firewood: the role of Forest Replacement Associations in Brazil and Nicaragua by Rogerio Carneiro de Miranda, Stuart Conway and Afranio Cesar Migliari (111 KB)[top] [end]Contents: Boiling Point 49: Forests, fuel and food
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28 June 2007; Last edited:
28 June 2007; Version: 1 | |||||||||||||
Pagename: SustainableCommercialFirewood @HEDON: HFFA | |||||||||||||
