3. Moving beyond facts and figures and making more sense of the forestry- poverty nexus – Some major challenges ahead

The facts and figures presented in Section 2 show that there is a relationship between forestry and poverty, and they provide some indications on the magnitude and nature of the dependency of the poor on forest. However, they are desperately inadequate when it comes to making sense of the quality of this relationship, how it evolves over time and how it relates to non-forest livelihood strategies. Indeed, despite ample evidence of the crucial role forest resources often play as safety nets and sources of income for the rural poor, the relationship between forest resources and poverty alleviation is far from straightforward. Promoting this link is challenging because of the very nature of some forest products and services, and the fact that these links often hinge on relationships between the poor and other actors in he forestry sector.

This is a complex matter, i.e.

Some cons:

The long rotation of forest trees entails low short-term profitability of sustainable forest management (SFM) and tree-planting, compared to goods that produce faster returns, typically agricultural products (including horticultural goods)[1];

Timber production attracts powerful “outside” interests, and therefore requires sufficient bargaining power; which the poor often lack;

Forests may provide more environmental services than agricultural land, but, to date, mechanisms to make these services competitive with other land uses for the poor are still lacking;

The poor have often little comparative advantage when it comes to making sufficient income out of forest resources. While there are less and less doubts about the value of indigenous knowledge as regards the “tending” of natural resource, this knowledge seldom concerns the commercialisation of forest goods, and in particular timber. Moreover, the poorest of the poor are sometimes at a disadvantage due to a shortage of manpower to harvest forest products in such households compared to wealthier ones.

Forest often provides a safety net to the poor because the harvesting or hunting of its products does not require strong rights to the land, as opposed to agriculture. The poorer households with sufficient manpower often sell forest products to wealthier families, e.g. in some villages of Mali (Kerkhof, 2000);

Utilisation of some forest products (e.g. non-wood forest products) do not necessarily require heavy investments;

Where sufficiently strong, traditional rules sometime contain poverty adjustments. For instance in the Alamodiou traditional ruling system that covers fifty villages in the Bankass district of Mali, villages known to be poor pay less taxes and fees in relation to access forest resources (Kerkhof, 2000);

The relationships between people and forests often expand beyond commercial exploitation in that forest has often a strong cultural value to forest dwellers. However, the extent to which these values provide enough incentives for conservation and/or sound use depends on several factors, including the strength of traditional leadership and the pressure on the forest itself. Furthermore, where lacking or lost, it is often a daunting task for change agents to create/recreate such spiritual incentives. In such cases, such incentives do not constitute a useful entry point for bringing about change;

Forest and trees can often be combined with other resources in ways that achieve multiple uses for the poor with satisfactory production-environment trade-offs, e.g. the case agroforests in Indonesia (Foresta and Michon, 1990).

The above shows that there are no simple causal links between forest management and pove rty. The four types of associations described by Mayers (1997) and presented in Figure 1 further illustrate this.

Figure 1: Four possible associations between poverty and forests

‘Poverty increase’

‘Poverty Reduction

‘Forest Reduction’

Poor do not benefit from unsustainable use of forest resources (e.g. some high impact logging in Central Africa)

Poverty is reduced by forest conversion to e.g. extensive farming

‘Forest increase’

Poor are affected by reduced access to land and forests (e.g. through protected forests)

Less pressure on forest due to e.g. agriculture intensification or employment opportunities in environmentally-friendly enterprises, or outside forests

Adapted from Mayers (1997)

This Figure shows in particular that:

Only the environment-friendly enterprises can implement forest management likely to reduce poverty (i.e. situation D). The other situations are likely to actually enhance a separation between forests and people;

However, context is all-important, and shifts between the situations described above can occur over time. For instance, a logging company might have different influences on poverty and forests according to its logging practices or employment policies (e.g. % of local versus outside workers); influence of agriculture as a source of income will affect the links differently depending on local farming practices, etc.

Linking active participation to poverty reduction might prove quite challenging when it comes to collaborative forest management (CFM). Not only are the poor often those finding most difficult to “self-mobilise”, but once self empowered through CFM, they might find it more rewarding to engage in non-forest activities. CFM actions aimed at bringing or keeping forest dwellers close to the forest might actually end up reducing the relationship. But is it such a bad thing, if one sees this dynamic from a livelihood perspective? Is the objective of CFM to maintain the forest, or to raise people livelihoods? Surely it is a success if through collaborative forest management, other options open up and people are released from their dependency on their forest. Likewise it is positive since the type of livelihood chosen by newly empowered people is their prerogative. In short, depending on the type of new livelihood chosen by these newly empowered rural people, pressure on the forest might be reduced (e.g. if they engage in off-farm work) or increased (e.g. if they increase their farming areas).

To complicate matters further, forestry is often in competition with other livelihood options when it comes to achieving better livelihoods for the poor. A particular point in case relates to the mutual interactions between agriculture, forestry and poverty. Some recent work by CIFOR (Angelsen and Kaimowitz, 2001) has significantly helped us understanding some important dimensions in the agricultural technology change-deforestation link. But not much comprehensive work has been carried out regarding how these interactions in turn influence poverty beyond anecdotal examples. This is illustrated in Figure 2, and shows one example of the scope of our knowledge gap regarding these matters.

Figure 2: Important dimensions in the agricultural technology changes- deforestation links and deforestation

In short, while there certainly are important links between many rural poor and forest resources, the potential of forest-based poverty reduction should not be exaggerated. Some would argue that it is actually rather limited (Wunder, 2001; Poschen, 2002). Most potential seems to lie in the safety net function of forest resources in times of hardship for the poor. On the other hand, the advantages of forestry are likely to be much less obvious when it comes to income generation, especially in comparison to other livelihood options. In this case it is often at best a complement to other income-generating activities. However, one should not underestimate the indirect importance of forest resources, i.e. as a means to access and/or secure other capital assets that directly affect the poor, such as water supply and quality, soil fertility, and bargaining power.