| European
Tropical Forest Research Network |
III OPPORTUNITIES FOR FOREST MARKETS TO BENEFIT LOCAL LOW-INCOME PRODUCERS
Both globalisation and localisation create new market opportunities for low-income producers in tropical forest areas. Globalising markets and environmental concerns create new niche markets for certified forest products and environmental services. Localisation increases control and ownership of forest through the devolution of land rights to indigenous populations, forest communities and specific groups of forest users. The demand for socially responsible forestry provides an incentive to democratic forest governance and protected land rights (Scherr et al., 2002). The following contributions discuss whether markets for ecosystem services and non-timber forest products can stimulate sustainable forest management and how, and under what conditions and partnerships, they can benefit the poor in tropical forest areas.
TIME FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT: PUTTING MARKETS TO THE SERVICE OF THE FOREST POOR
By Sara Scherr, Any White and David Kaimowitz
Among development planners, paradigms regarding the role forests should play in social and economic development have changed dramatically over time. At the end of the colonial period, what could be called the large-scale industrial approach dominated. This was characterised by government-dominated forest industry and markets and industrial forest concessions. This model persists in many countries today, although it has been under increasing attack because of the numerous social, environmental and economic costs of public-led and subsidised industry and because of the widespread failure to recognise indigenous and other community rights.
Addressing conservation
and rural poverty
Public reactions to forest conversion and degradation in the 1970s and 1980s
led to the establishment of new public protected areas, along models from developed
countries where rural populations are now low. Growing concerns about rural
poverty led to the 'social forestry' approach in the 1980s and 1990s which focused
on forests as 'safety nets' for low-income forest dwellers and emphasised access
to forest resources for the poor to meet their subsistence needs. A variant
on this approach, the integrated conservation and development approach, developed
in the late 1980s to address both conservation and development goals and encouraged
local people to adopt livelihoods that do not damage the, usually publicly-owned,
forest.
Whose right?
By and large, these approaches have failed to reduce forest degradation or poverty
on a significant scale. All have embodied the assumption that outsiders, rather
than local indigenous and other communities, have the right to decide who benefits
and that outsiders rather than locals have the right to control use and arrange
markets to suit their interests. Moreover, all have assumed that national and
global goals of supplying timber and other forest product demands and achieving
adequate conservation can be achieved without active management by local people.
Indeed, the many ongoing struggles by local groups to gain recognition of their
rights and market their forest products, suggest that it is time to take a fresh
look at the role of forests in development and address the question of who has
the right to benefit from forests.
Market opportunities
Contrary to having a purely subsistence relationship with forests, most of the
500 million or so low-income people living in and around forests are already
integrated into market systems, although they are usually poorly served by them.
A growing body of research is revealing that not only are the forest poor active
in markets but that forest markets provide real opportunities for substantial
income gains and that the market segments where the poor are active are large,
are growing and are globally significant. Unfortunately though, these opportunities
are sharply limited by policies and market structures established by outsiders,
who presume that they have the right, as well as the authority, to determine
who should benefit from the world's forests.
A new publication by Forest Trends (Scherr et al., 2003) describes opportunities to achieve both conservation and poverty alleviation goals (goals that are held by local, national and international groups), presents a new agenda for achieving these goals and calls for new and heightened attention by development planners, industry, conservation groups and governments, as well as groups of low-income producers. The publication will be available on the Forest Trends and CIFOR websites in June 2003.
Reference:
Scherr, S., White, A. and Kaimowitz, D. (2003). A new agenda for achieving forest
conservation and poverty alleviation: making markets work for low-income producers.
Washington: Forest Trends / Bogor: CIFOR.
Further information:
http://www.foresttrends.org
and http://www.cifor.cgiar.org