4.1 The multiple benefits of forests
4.2 Devolution of management to user-groups and communities.
4.3 Farm forestry
Multi-purpose sustainable management of natural forests for non-wood forest products, and for non-, consumptive uses (watersheds, bio-diversity, sensitive priority areas etc) is in all the Country reports -the question is how it is implemented! The actions of many forestry agencies and companies, suggest wood production was the only priority, and all the other values (watershed, wildlife, aesthetics, recreation, etc) are tolerable to the extent that they do not interfere too much with wood production. Alternatively, minimum standards for the provision of all these (non-timber production) benefits have been set, and thereafter commercial wood production can be maximised.
There is increasing evidence that the value of conservation, non-timber products and non-consumptive benefits may be greater than commercial logging profits, but are not readily captured. Benefits of commercial logging typically accrue to certain groups in society, and the costs to others. This suggests a need to more equitably resolve rights and responsibilities, and terms of tenure. Natural tropical forests have been exploited as if only two productive resources have value - the timber and the potential (low-quality) agricultural land under it. A third has been consistently overlooked - the forests' capacity to generate income from hundreds of non-wood products. Repetto & Gillis (1988) estimated that the Net Present Value of leaving an Indonesian forest intact was double the NPV of logging it; Myers (1988) calculated the NPV of a Palawan logging operation as $8.6 million, but the loss of revenues to fisheries and tourism was estimated as $32 million.
How can a process be set up, for formulation implementation and monitoring of policies and strategies, which enables ALL the values of the forest to be recognised and, whenever possible, quantified so that if trade-offs have to be made, they are clear deliberate and public?
As we have seen, conventional management systems (public ownership, concessions, "State Forestry") have not worked very well in many instances throughout the region. Institutional regimes seem close to major changes, and the Philippines paper points to a new direction in a frank, constructive and radical way.
In Nepal, indigenous and traditional forest management systems, by local "User Groups" is now recognised. The process is now well underway to devolve effective management responsibility back to those groups: what to cut, when, who, at what prices, what to do with the revenues, protection, regeneration, etcIn the Philippines and China, there are now major moves towards devolution of forest management responsibility and authority to local people, as individuals or as communities (assisted by experienced NGOs in the Philippines). Under the old Philippines legislation, local people were permitted to deliberately clear forest for settlement, but not to commercially utilise forests as a sustainable livelihood.
The directions of the Philippines, China, Nepal and to a lesser extent India - who are devolving "forestry" vigorously - contrasts with Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia where current conditions may not necessitate such radical reforms.
There are risks attached to the devolution of management to local communities, but in some cases it could hardly be less successful than the status quo. The origin of these reforms comes from a "people-centred" approach to forestry: concentration on the achievement of welfare goals, rather than the measurement of inputs and outputs in the forest management process. "The only way to keep our natural forests is through sustainable use of direct benefit to local people - if they do not derive any benefits, the forests are unlikely to survive." Such benefits do not come mainly through logging; other products may be more valuable per unit weight, more labour-intensive, more diverse and less environ men tally destructive. However, this potential remains largely unproven. What are the prospects for generating rural incomes and employment through careful harvesting of the Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFP)? Is there a danger that increased commercialisation may threaten their existence, at least in the short run before their production becomes "domesticated"? If that happens, will there still be any demand for the wild materials collected from the forests by local people?
Promotion of farm forestry, agroforestry, trees to support and sustain agricultural productivity, and trees in household farming systems is definitely important throughout the region, particularly in Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal, India and China. It is low priority in Indonesia & Malaysia, because of the abundant natural forests (in most but not all regions), their focus on industrial' forestry, and because, in Malaysia especially, few people wish to remain (semi-subsistence) farmers.
The viability of farm forestry to produce logs for sale, depends on log prices and farmers often have to compete with "State Forestry". Some governments seem unaware that under-pricing of the logs from state forests has serious negative consequences for private tree-farming that they claim to be promoting. Yet in many countries the extension strategy of assisting poor and marginal farmers to grow their own forest produce is already failing visibly. Apart from deficiencies of the extension delivery system, the quality of the message and of the messenger, there may well be many reasons why allocating household effort to tree-growing is simply not a viable alternative option for the household. Policy research could reveal the impediments to adoption, and enable more efficient targeting of assistance measures.
Farms are not charitable institutions. Telling farmers they should plant trees for "the national interest" to "save the environment" or to "stop global warming" is unlikely to be effective. However, where farmers see tree-growing can fit in with their existing activities in a way that is not too risky or too expensive, and will generate real benefits for them, they generally adopt tree-growing spontaneously. The benefits may be the profit from sale of timber, but it could be through the increased yields of crops and livestock as a result of shelter from winds, reduction in soil erosion, amelioration of soil salinity or acidity, etc. Groves of well-selected and well-maintained trees will even increase the capital value of a farm if it has to be sold. In richer countries, the major benefit that private forest owners seek may be aesthetic or recreational - as the Japan paper notes, 95% of private forest owners rarely make commercial sales!
Foresters have to work with farmers and landowners, to know their needs and how forestry and agriculture can be mutually beneficial. Agro-forestry and tree-growing outside Reserved Forests is not just for farmers, but by them. Farmers will make the decisions about what to produce and how - government officials can support, permit or impede, but not do it.
