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EDITORIAL FORESTS AND THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS: COULD DO BETTER!

By James Mayers

Why bother with the Millennium Development Goals?

There has not been anything quite like the Millennium Development Goals before. The eight MDGs and their associated targets developed by political leaders adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals), form one of the boldest international commitments ever made. Now the clock is ticking – there are eight years to go until the MDG target date, 2015.

Dramatic action will be needed to achieve the MDGs. High-income nations will need to reform their domestic and international policies related to agriculture, trade and sustainable development; enhance the effectiveness of their aid programmes; and help poor countries to reduce their debt burdens. Low-income nations will need to address fundamental issues related to governance, rights and social justice.

So, will they do it? Or is this another case of lofty goals that create the illusion that something is being done whilst being allowed to quietly fizzle out as short political attention-spans move on? Some say that the MDGs are irrelevant anyway – that only the aspirations of people who experience poverty and environmental degradation on a daily basis are worth listening to. Yet many local groups and social movements see the high profile of the MDGs as a crucial lever with which they can call their governments to account.

In 2006 the combined UN agencies took stock of progress on the MDGs. They estimated that some of the targets were within sight, but a good many are falling well short as the half way mark to 2015 is approached. In particular, the overarching goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (MDG 1) is looking increasingly like a pipe dream, as is the goal to ensure environmental sustainability (MDG 7). But the heads of state at the 2005 World Summit had already reaffirmed their commitment to the MDGs and declared “We underline the need for urgent action on all sides, including more ambitious national development strategies and efforts backed by increased international support” . They seem to be serious.

Where are the forests in the MDGs?

Forestry’s protagonists are good at making goals too. Since the 1980s there has been a proliferation of international dialogues dealing with forests and, a bit like the football World Cup, every four years or so they come up with a feast of goals. If forestry goals were all we needed to make progress then sustainable and pro-poor forestry would long since be a worldwide reality. Of course, implementation as yet lags well behind aspiration but at least there exists a considerable body of international knowledge and agreement on how forests can contribute to development.

But where are the forests and trees in the MDGs? There is no sign of them in the eight Goals, nor in the eighteen Targets. Target 9 seems to come close to giving forests a mention: ‘Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; and reverse the loss of environmental resources’ . But only in one indicator for Target 9 (Indicator 25 out of 48 indicators in total) does a small spotlight shine on forests: “proportion of land area covered by forest (FAO)” . Yet unlike the other MDG targets, Target 9 has neither a quantitative measure, nor a target date whilst this Indicator is about the physical area of forests, asking us nothing about their quality, the goods and services they provide, and the capacities and governance systems that most reliably ensure environmental management for poverty reduction.

It may be clear in the world of forestry that all life on earth, and thus people’s well-being, depends on environmental services like those provided by forests, that MDG7 must therefore be understood as a foundation for all other MDGs, and that the MDGs form an integrated set demanding integrated responses. But this is poorly recognised in the wider world, as evidenced by the country reports to the UN on progress towards the MDGs: less than 5% of countries report that they will achieve environmental sustainability by 2015; some countries barely report on MDG 7 at all; and those that do report on MDG7 invariably give little attention to the environmental aspects of the other MDGs.

This seems to confirm the fears of many that foresters have been spending far too much time and money talking to each other, and have not made enough effort to understand and influence macro-planners and economists, health professionals and educationalists, governance gurus and political strategists. The forest world needs to shoulder at least part of the blame for its failure to be recognised.

How can forests contribute to the MDGs?

There are good reasons why those concerned with poverty reduction are wary of forests. Forest resources have become known as a ‘resource curse’ in some contexts, and as a ‘poverty trap’ in others. The sector has been a political minefield for donors and institutions like the World Bank. Some consider it best left well alone. Despite this, and forests’ poor showing in the MDGs, the opportunity to re-affirm and improve the links between forests and development, specifically poverty reduction, is not yet lost.

Two main outcomes for poor households seem to be possible from the use of forest resources: poverty avoidance or mitigation – in which forest resources serve as subsistence ‘safety nets’ (to fall back on in lean times or when crops fail) or low income ‘gap fillers’ (to make a little cash from a few products managed or cultivated as a sideline); and poverty reduction – in which forest resources help lift the household out of poverty by functioning as a source of permanent increases in income, assets, services, civil and political rights, voice and the rule of law.

Considerable emphasis in analysis and dialogue has rightly been put on the safety net functions of forests in poor peoples’ lives – and on what forms of management and control of forest resources are appropriate for this. Much less emphasis has been put on the prospects for pulling people out of poverty – and the attention that has been given has tended to focus on the potential of non-timber forest products (and, more recently to a lesser extent, on environmental services). Rather little evidence has yet been marshalled for direct or economy-wide poverty reduction from commercial timber use.

What is the evidence?

It is remarkable how much recycled assumption, and how little hard evidence, there is about how crucial forests are to poverty reduction and development. This edition of ETFRN News makes a small contribution to rectifying this. The articles that follow provide a wide variety of perspectives on the issues. Below I attempt to draw out some of the main nuggets of evidence relating to each of the MDGs.

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (MDG 1)
The fight against poverty is the overarching goal of the MDGs. Many millions of people use forest and woodland resources to sustain livelihoods, or as a basis for risk mitigation and provision of contingent needs. Some examples from particular developing countries:

• In Tanzania, amongst the 833 villages (approximately 2.22 million people) of Shinyanga region, the value of restored woodlands to rural people’s livelihood is US$14 per person per month (or about US$1,200 per household per annum), which is significantly higher than the national average monthly spending per person in rural Tanzania of US$8.50 (Barrow et al , p.17).
• In Lao PDR, 3,600 households (approximately 24,000 people) in 160 villages, bordering the Nam Et-Phou Loei Protected Area, use forest assets to the value of US$229 for subsistence, and to generate a cash income of US$84 per household per year. These assets support 44% of subsistence needs, 55% of cash needs and account for 46% of the total household economy (Barrow et al, p.17)
• In Malawi, poor households tripled their annual income from US$43 to US$130, and withstood a drought-induced famine, through sustainable forestry activities, especially guinea-fowl rearing, baobab fruit juice production and beekeeping, following a donor-supported programme in Mwanza District (Thies and von Pfeil p.20; Brodbeck, p.65)
• In South Africa, a charcoal producing company in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Black Gold, is 10% owned by Mondi the large timber and paper company, 30% by a trust owned by a previously disadvantaged community, and 60% by local entrepreneurs. It has 10 kiln sites using timber waste from Mondi’s plantations. The charcoal is sold to an intermediary which in turn supplies an international market that includes the supermarket chain Tesco. This lowenvironmental impact business has created jobs (80% of the workforce are women) and enhanced entrepreneurial capacity (Wilson, p.36)
• In Cameroon, harvesting Prunus africana bark is a lucrative activity around Mount Cameroon. Nine villages have set up the Mount Cameroon Prunus Management Common Initiative Group to develop the resource sustainably. Average monthly income for each Group member from Prunus bark is about US$67. Members have used their income to: send children to school (71%), build houses/toilets (51%), buy food/medicine (40%), buy a radio/TV/cell phone (41%) and buy clothes (8%) (Chupezi et al, p.38)
• In Ethiopia, smallholders in Amhara Region growing eucalyptus have become self-sufficient in fuel and construction wood and they derive about 26% of total family income and an important source of savings and security from the trees. Labour input is low compared to growing crops (Asnake, p.63)
• In Indonesia, there is an increasing call for government to throw its weight behind small-scale fast-wood forestry where environmental and social conditions are right. It is estimated that one full-time job equivalent is created for every 3.5 hectares of land planted with fast-growing species such as Acacia mangium and this provides a net present value profit of $4.5 per day over eight years (Purnomo, p.41)
• • In Nigeria, a study of 180 peri-urban households in the state of Abia, showed that 31 percent were involved in multistorey home gardening , to ensure family food security, provide different fruits all season long, maintain soil fertility and generate additional income (Gauthier, p.76)
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, the multipurpose commodity gum-arabic from the soilfertilizing tree Acacia senegal Willd is collected by smallholders in countries like Senegal, Niger, Cameroon and Kenya, and traded on both local and international markets. It is worth about US$0.5 per kg to the smallholder families who can collect up to 10 kg per day yielding a potential income of about US$150 per month (Lesueur and Chikamai, p.91).

• Non-timber forest products can play an important role in gap filling for the rural poor, and under certain conditions can provide a stepping-stone out of poverty. International review work reveals a critical combination of factors required to create such stepping stones in: the enabling environment, product characteristics, market conditions, sustainable use and household capacity to engage in different activities (Marshall and Schreckenberg, p.58; Pinto and May, p.55)
• Participatory forest management has been supported initially for conservation reasons and more recently on the assumption that it reduces poverty. But solid evidence on impacts is weak. New work shows the differences between newly established and more mature PFM programmes. In some Nepali communities, community forests host valuable enterprises, and user groups manage activities benefiting the poorest people. But in some new PFM approaches in Kenya and Tanzania, communities are expected to invest a great deal of unpaid labour in ‘their’ forests for little gain (Schreckenberg and Luttrell, p.60)
• Timber is often out of poor people’s reach but new international review work shows that small-medium forestry enterprises represent some 80-90% of forestry enterprise in many countries and more than 50% of forestry employment in many. One estimate puts the value added of SMFEs worldwide at more than $130 billion per year. Where the rights and policy framework is favourable, evidence is growing that small and medium forestry enterprises can reduce poverty (Macqueen, p.82; Stoian and Donovan, p.28).
• Industrial scale commercial forestry jobs and income have at best avoided exacerbating poverty - evidence that they have reduced poverty is scarce. However, some see prospects for the social standards in industrial-scale sustainable forest management bringing major potential for poverty reduction and leading other sectors in sustainable development (Street, p.31; Pacheco, p.87)

Achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women (MDG 2 and 3).
Use of forest resources can mean costs as well as benefits. If you have to search far and wide for fuelwood, you have no time for school or beating gender inequities. But forest assets can help build schools, cover school fees and provide access to clean water and natural fruits to strengthen children and women.

• In Tanzania ’s Shinyanga region, forestderived contributions to education average about US$23 per household per annum, amounting to a regional total of approximately US$8.5 million a year. Woodland restoration has also reduced the time taken to collect fuelwood by up to four hours and has freed up women’s time to engage in activities that empower and improve gender equity (Barrow et al, p.17 )
• In eastern Nepal, over the last ten years community forest user groups have reinvested US$327,000 generated by the sustainable use of forests in schools, literacy programmes for women and the poor and grants for needy pupils (Thies and von Pfeil, p.20)
• New international review work shows how forestry, within a broader framework of sustainable natural resources management, can provide the means to tackle the interrelated areas of schooling, health, poverty and nutrition in rural areas (Taylor, p.79)

Reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases (MDG 4, 5, and 6).
Forests can provide a wide range of benefits to health. Medicinal plants can be vital where formal health care systems are too distant or costly to access. Restoring woodlands can reduce the time spent collecting water, fuel and food – enabling mothers to spend more quality time with their children and face less hardship during pregnancy. Clean and easily available water, often associated with forests, can reduce the incidence of water born diseases. Disease burdens often rise when forest is degraded.

• In Tanzania, improvements in health from restored woodland are impressive. 10- 30% percent of households in Shinyanga region note an improved availability and quality of water in the dry season. The value of the improved dry-season water was estimated to be worth between US$2 and US$50 per household per year and that of medicinal plants sourced in the forest is up to US$36.3 million for the region as a whole (Barrow et al, p.17) .
• Foods from tropical forests are extremely important in many contexts. New international review work confirms that they often supply vital nutrients to forest communities and serve as sometimes life-saving safety nets during seasonal shortfalls and crises (wars, severe droughts, floods etc.) (Colfer et al, p.67)
• Forest people are badly affected by disease because their remote locations make public health facilities inaccessible and because national health systems tend not to prioritise them, due to the higher costs for fewer people (Colfer et al, p.67)
• Industrial-scale logging operations are often closely linked to the spread of HIV/ AIDS and malaria . In some cases, forms of forest clearing resulted in improvements in health; but more often the reverse seems to be true. The development of new habitats in which diseases and vectors flourish and the introduction of new animals, as well as the mixing of indigenous people with migrants, all make a potent mixture for exacerbating diseases (Colfer et al, p.67; Counsell, p.70).
• In India, which reportedly harvests 90% of its medicinal plants from uncultivated sources, there are an estimated 9000 manufacturing units with an annual domestic market valued at almost US$1 billion. Manufacturers of plant-derived pharmaceuticals have entered into contracts with local communities for large volume production of certain species, e.g. groups of rural cultivators and collectors are eligible to buy shares and supply direct to the Gram Mooligai Company Ltd (Bodeker, p.72)
• In China, cultivation of high demand medicinal plant species has been initiated by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture. Over 300,000 hectares are now under cultivation with seabuckthorn ( Hippophae rhamnoides ) alone employing 10,000 people and generating over US$40 million annually (Bodeker, p.72)
• Popular compounds from plants with medicinal value include cola, caffeine, chocolate, chili pepper and cocaine. In the absence of ‘modern’ alternatives, systems of traditional healing are thriving. In many areas, however, medicinal plants are threatened by commercialization and global markets, loss of traditional mechanisms and competing uses of the same species (Colfer et al, p.67)
• In the USA, the Urban Ecosystem Analysis of the Washington DC metropolitan area concluded that tree cover had reduced storm water storage costs by US$4.7 billion and generated annual air quality savings of US$49.8 million (Gauthier, p.76)
• In China, strategic urban forestry plans anticipate that 70 percent of China’s cities will have 45 percent of tree and forest cover by the year 2050. Today, several Chinese cities, e.g. Changchun, Nanjing and Guangzhou, have a forest cover of more than 40 percent. Cities located in different parts of the country emphasise different forest functions but all prioritise urban forestry’s ability to retain dust and absorb SO2, NO2 and other pollutants (Gauthier, p.76).

Ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development (MDG 7 and 8).
Policy that fails to deal with the complex relationship between conservation and poverty reduction risks failure. Poor people depend more on forest assets than the non-poor, and yet they find these assets both difficult to access and increasingly degraded. Elites are able to capture the benefits, often whilst degrading the resource. Partnerships need to be at the heart of attempts to tackle these issues.

• In eastern Nepal , forest user groups have managed some 20% of the forests in the area. Forest cover and quality has improved significantly, compared to state owned forests not managed by communities. Plant and animal biodiversity in community forests has risen again. In three districts, 62,000 households have taken part in the 350 forest user groups linked to the 309 community forests covering 54,000 hectares. Nationally, the Federation of Community Forest User Groups of Nepal, representing 14,000 user groups has become an important political player (Liss and Thies, p.88)
• The International Model Forest Network is a voluntary partnership approach to bringing about sustainable development over large landscapes. Whilst only a few of the 40 model forests to date are in developing countries, they show much promise in delivering some of the MDGs because they are explicitly long-term processes that begin by tackling the social aspects of sustainability (Bonnell et al , p.24)
• In the Congo Basin a partnership of agencies is working with a decisionguiding modelling tool on the synergies and trade-offs between conservation and development in the Tri-National de la Sangha landscape (of over four million hectares) spread over three nations: Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Central African Republic (Sayer et al, p.26)
• In Africa and Asia fuelwood as a source of energy is particularly vital. The number of people using fuelwood and other biomass fuel in Africa is estimated to grow by 40% to 700 million by 2030, and there will still be about 1700 million users in Asia. Whilst in most regions there is no fuelwood crisis requiring major interventions devoted just to the provision of fuelwood, its importance for poverty reduction and environmental stability demands major new partnerships (Arnold, p.46)
• Forest-based associations can play a key role in poverty reduction according to new international review work in China, Brazil, Guyana, India, South Africa and Uganda. For example, there are 2000- 3000 active forest-based associations in Uganda alone. Some fail, but many succeed and are particularly effective where support improves information flows, e.g. on bureaucratic procedures, product design, markets, finance and technological innovation (Macqueen, p.82).

How can forestry’s protagonists do better?

This evidence helps demonstrate the significant contribution that forests can make to poverty reduction, improved health, education and gender equity. It calls for greater recognition of the value of sustainably managed forests. The value of forests, biodiversity and tree-based assets is hugely underestimated in national statistics and accounting and largely unrecognised in investment and development decision-making.

But knowing that forestry can contribute to many aspects of poverty reduction, knowing that it can be a cost-effective way of achieving the MDGs, is not enough. Whilst forestry can deliver, often it does not. Even where forestry does deliver, how do we know if another investment might have done better for poverty reduction and sustainability? We need still better evidence, better used. How can the role of forests be better recognised by those primarily concerned with health, education, child mortality and gender? How can forest-linked priorities be better integrated in poverty reduction strategies, other macro planning frameworks and investment decisions? Practical answers to these are context-specific and really should be attainable.

After several years of dwindling world attention, forests are now set to return to ‘flavour of the month’ status. Climate change discussions will bring incentives for ‘avoided deforestation’ to the serious negotiations stage. Biofuels and other energy issues linked to forest and land use will be the focus of increasing attention. The continuing economic rise and resource needs of middle-income nations - notably Brazil, Russia, India and China – bring many new issues to the fore. The MDGs are silent on these dynamics and all of them are political minefields that need to be negotiated with trees and people in mind.

Governance frameworks that work with these dynamics and enable poverty reduction and forest sustainability should be the central focus of attention. Instruments that encourage investment in the pro-poor productivity of forest assets are a key component of this, as are capacities and tools geared to developing and assessing this productivity. Increased resource mobilization will be needed for the above, all of which will require dedication to make new partnerships work. Forestry’s protagonists can and should rise to this challenge and help install environmental investment as the key driver to achieving the MDGs.

Contact:

James Mayers, Head - Natural Resources Group
International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED),
4 Hanover Street, Edinburgh EH2 2EN, UK.
Phone: +44 131 624 7041
Fax: +44 131 624 7050
Website: http://www.iied.org

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