The need to increase forest cover is widely recognized, but there are a number of factors commonly limiting the extent to which reforestation actually occurs.
Recurrent disturbances
There are numerous causes of forest degradation. Whatever the underlying causes, the final agent is often a factor such as fire or weeds or grazing. Reforestation is impossible if these underlying causes as well as these final agents are not dealt with effectively.
Otherwise, the reforested areas themselves will be also damaged. Disturbances such as fires are often particularly difficult to prevent, especially when previous fires have promoted grasses which, in turn, have made sites even more prone to fires.
|
Land users or managers are unlikely to be interested in reforestation using trees that require long rotations unless they (or their families) will benefit. Full land tenure is most preferable |
Site attributes
Many sites available for reforestation are poor, with the better land usually being used for agriculture. Sites available for reforestation often have poor soils (shallow, low nutrients, high acidity), long dry seasons or steep terrain. These marginal site conditions may be the factors that accelerated the rate of degradation at the site in the first place. Many of these problems may be expensive to correct.
Some difficult sites may need a sequential reforestation programme such as at some tin-mined sites in Malaysia, where the site is first reforested with tolerant exotic species in the expectation that these can be subsequently under-planted with higher-value species. Such methodologies are still under development.
Land tenure
Land tenure and access rights are crucial issues. Land users or managers are unlikely to be interested in reforestation using trees that require long rotations unless they (or their families) will benefit.
This usually necessitates that they be given long-duration land leases with rights to own, harvest and sell their tree crops. Full land tenure is even more preferable. Attempts to reforest land subject to conflicting land-ownership claims are unlikely to be successful because of deliberate vandalism by disadvantaged parties.
Funding
Reforestation is usually expensive. This is particularly true for degraded areas where current methods are simply too expensive for rehabilitation to be carried out. Rehabilitation of sites that are difficult to reach and steep areas can be especially costly.
Reforestation can also be unattractive because of the long growth periods required before any harvesting and financial return is possible. This means high returns are needed when harvesting does take place to overcome the costs that have accrued over these periods.
Tree crops are further subject to considerable risk (e.g. fires, droughts, disease and changing markets). Forest owners, besides having to pay for the cost of replanting, rarely receive any financial return for the ecological services their reforestation efforts might provide to the community. That is, there is a mismatch between public benefit and private cost.
These disadvantages are lessened when rotations are short, and when reforestation is carried out by large corporations with access to tax specialists and financial advisers. But such disadvantages are a significant disincentive to smaller growers.
One mechanism for dealing with these constraints is through joint ventures between landowners and an industrial partner involving a sharing of financial costs and risks, as well as the returns. Other forms of assistance to facilitate reforestation might include direct subsidies, low-interest loans, micro-credit or tax concessions. (Enters et al. 2004)
Payments for carbon sequestration or other ecological services such as clean water may be another possibility. The types of financial assistance available will vary with both local and national circumstances.
Care should always be taken to ensure that incentive payments can be administered efficiently and that they achieve their intended objectives.
Cases have occurred, for example, where payments made to encourage reforestation have prompted further clearing of nearby intact forest to provide land to reforest using the subsidies.
Markets
Markets may not be a problem for growers where an existing industry such as a paper mill or plymill is already established. In fact, such industries often act as stimuli to tree growing. Of course, the disadvantage of such single-market situations is the risk involved for the growers who are dependent on the price offered, and who may have no alternative if the particular industry fails.
In other situations, the absence of an established local market can be a major disincentive because it is difficult for many potential growers to understand the conditions and prices that might be obtained at markets considerable distance away.
In a landscape with few remaining areas of natural forest and without a continued supply of highvalue timber species, local sawmills often shift to utilize large, old fruit trees present in home gardens. In these circumstances, it is difficult to predict the value of other high-value tree species that might potentially be grown, especially if these are only episodically produced and only small volumes are available at any particular time.
In such cases, the range of options often narrows to a few well-known species such as eucalypts that are seen as "safe bets".
There is also the dampening effect of liberalizing imports which can drive down the price of domestic wood and discourage reforestation (e.g. as has happened in parts of India).
Silviculture
Limited silvicultural knowledge is a common impediment to successful reforestation and most foresters currently rely on a handful of well-known species for plantation development. Across the region, surprisingly little is now known of the identity, ecology, silviculture or site requirements of many indigenous species, although a large number of these species were once harvested from the natural forests.
The identity of species acceptable to timber users is well established and their relative value is reflected by their market prices. Some of these species have also been tested in plantation conditions (e.g. Appanah and Weinland 1993, Soerianegara and Lemmens 1993, Krishnapillay 2002, Do Dinh Sam and Nguyen Hoang Nghia 2003). But, in most countries, this testing has been limited and little is known of the site requirements or of the attributes of these species.
Administrative control
Finally, reforestation can be severely constrained by administrative requirements. These include the need for harvesting permits, cutting restrictions, transport permits, checkpoints, export controls, excessive taxation, marketing permits and burdensome documentation and paperwork requirements.
Reforestation entirely administered by centrally regulated government agencies runs the risk of being unable to respond to local initiatives and local needs. At the same time, reforestation managed by local agencies lacking the background knowledge of previous reforestation programmes elsewhere in the country may be doomed to "re-inventing the wheel".
A balance needs to be found between the use of well-founded silvicultural prescriptions based on extensive experience, and the rigid application of administrative rules that may be less relevant in certain field situations. This dilemma is likely to sharpen as decentralisation of government activities occurs, and as joint government-community forestry activities develop. The other side of this coin is that strong and coordinated government promotion of reforestation can produce impressive outcomes under certain circumstances (see Box 3).
