A. Increasing commercialization of NWFPs
B. Declining importance of subsistence NWFPs
C. Disintegration of traditional systems
D. Devolution to community-based management
E. New policy initiatives
A number of distinctive trends can be discerned about how the use and management of NWFPs have been developing over the past few decades - interacting with socio-economic changes affecting the users and managers, as well as external factors and changes outside of the forests. In fact, one can observe different, even opposite trends simultaneously within a given country for different types of products and markets.
Though the principal incentives and disincentives influencing NWFP off-take, supply and demand can be identified with some precision, they vary in relative importance on a site-by-site basis (Nair and Merry 1995). Each site has its own unique set of interacting factors. Some site-specific and product-specific trends and scenarios will be examined in chapter 4 of this study.
There are some NWFPs for which increasing commercialization is likely to occur. Their main common attributes are that 1) they are products that become more sought after as consumer incomes rise, and 2) they are relatively cheap/easy to harvest in comparison to the prices that producers receive. Neither, however, guarantees long term survival of either the species from which a product is derived, or the market for the NWFP.
For the commercial off-take of NWFPs, robust market demand, adequate product availability, and advantageous pricing generally provide the strongest incentives for harvesters, buyers and processors. Identifying the key incentives and disincentives driving product off-take becomes more complex. Price and profit margins differ from collection site to market, to manufacturer and end-user. For example, manufacturer demand for raw rattan may be high in response to robust overseas furniture sales. But monopolistic arrangements between manufacturers and local raw material buyers can depress fair market prices. To avoid paying higher prices to collectors in one country, larger manufacturers may even establish branch operations in neighbouring countries with lower raw material prices. Thus, while raw material demand may be high, market manipulations distort prices and act as disincentives to collectors (personal communication, Fricke 1995).
The ability to control NWFP raw material prices is supported by national forest laws that provide proprietary rights to outside concessionaires for resource access, as well as exclusive rights to transport and market. To maximize profits, raw material buyers and processors intervene in local economies and downstream markets to try to keep raw material prices low. This creates a disincentive to collectors, who weigh the benefits from NWFP collection with other income-generating alternatives. So while NWFP raw material prices fluctuate in response to actual supply and demand factors, they are also very sensitive to market interventions and manipulations.
While prices for NWFP raw materials must be adequately maintained to provide collectors with sufficient incentives, local buyers and concessionaires often are able to leverage low-priced supplies. One common method is to provide collectors with credit. The debts are purposely maintained by NWFP agents, who can then demand in-kind loan repayment though delivery of NWFPs. Indebtedness, ignorance of underlying market demand and fair value, and the need to maintain good relations with creditors combine to force collectors to sell raw materials at prices well below real market value.
Price fixing compels collectors to maximize NWFP off-take as they struggle to satisfy income needs. For most products, prices paid to collectors are thus maintained at low levels, while profits are concentrated at the higher end of the market chain. Certain NWFP niche markets, such as those for 'socially and environmentally sound rainforest products' in the West, are beginning to provide notable exceptions.
Availability of natural stocks compared to demand for specific NWFPs greatly influences off-take patterns. Expanding markets for both raw materials and finished products have contributed to over-exploitation of the main NWFP species throughout the region. Resource depletion has led to geographical shifts in the location of NWFP trade, both within and between countries. Increased demand for rattan over the past decade has led to significant changes as buyers and manufacturers have relocated to be closer to abundant and cheap raw material supplies. Depletion of rattan in the Philippines, once among Asia's most important suppliers, resulted from accelerated international demand for high-quality wicker furniture. During the 1980s, increased rattan furniture demand in Europe and North America led to resource depletion in the Philippines, followed by importation of rattan from Malaysia and Indonesia.
Manufacturers later realized that it was more cost effective to relocate their operations to sites where supplies were still abundant. When Indonesia banned the export of raw rattan in 1989, Filipino manufacturers established joint ventures in Kalimantan (Peluso 1992). The decision to prohibit raw rattan export helped locally powerful furniture manufacturers gain greater control over the rattan industry. This has dampened efforts to mobilize local communities in sustainable forest management due to disincentives related to loss of local control over NWFP resources (Dove 1994a). Though the raw material export ban was designed to increase local incomes, employment and value-added, it had deleterious effects on NWFP resources as well as rural income (Safran and Godoy 1993, Nair and Merry 1995).
Short-term NWFP business strategies are ultimately self-limiting because resource depletion will eventually erode enterprise viability. Many businesses may even switch to other industries. Indeed the prime role of NWFPs in the eyes of many collectors and small-scale traders is to accumulate enough capital to be able to switch or escape from the status quo. Families may see more attractive long-term options - not only in terms of incomes but also lifestyle, healthcare and education for their children - but need to generate capital to start the new venture. In these cases, short-term exploitative harvesting of NWFPs, especially from an open-access resource, may be the easiest and quickest way to accumulate the needed capital. Any type of product or activity could suffice for any type of market, so long as it pays well!
In the case of the Saliga tribal people living in the Biligirirangan Hills World Heritage area of Karnataka, India, there is strong evidence that their biologically unsustainable exploitation of NWFPs is deliberate. It appears that they have already planned to utilize short-term NWFP income to invest in alternative livelihoods when the NWFP option becomes unattractive or infeasible.
Subsistence harvest of NWFPs is based on local dependence on these products for a wide array of uses. When income-generating alternatives become available and more attractive, NWFP collection is often at least partially abandoned. NWFPs still play important roles in local culture and religion, but the monetization of rural society throughout the region favours substitution of purchased synthetic products for some NWFPs. In areas where purchasing power and availability of consumer products are increasing, the exploitation of NWFP subsistence products tends to decline. This is a major trend occurring throughout the region.
One common trend is that plastic has replaced wooden utensils and woven baskets in many Asia Pacific region villages. In India, many rural people whose incomes are rising are switching from bidi cheroots to factory-made cigarettes, and eventually even to imported brands (as luxury/status products). The demise of certain NWFPs in response to consumer preference for and ability to afford substitutes is potentially important since it will have a significant influence on who will manage forests for what purposes. For example, will the sal forests in India still be managed by local people for sal leaf plates and/or tendu if market demand for these products collapses? The 'disintegration of traditional systems' is further examined under trend 'C' below.
The growing appetite for consumer products by forest area populations is altering NWFP harvest patterns. Some NWFP initiatives are favouring income over subsistence use. Rare products, many derived from endangered species, command very high market prices. Demand for these products is increasing in response to higher income, levels throughout much of the region. Aware of the potential financial benefits and seeing outsiders prosper from their exploitation, many local collectors have begun to focus on high-value NWFPs that were formerly only harvested on a small-scale, if at all. This trend is particularly intense in Lao PDR, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Illegally collected products are exported to Vietnam and Thailand, where most of them are re-exported to China, Korea and Taiwan (Chamberlain et al. 1996, Mittelman 1997c). Examples of NWFPs that fit this pattern include: tiger parts and parts of other rare animals used as medicinal ingredients; birds and animals prized as food or collectors' specimens; and export of orchids.
Customary law and traditional management arrangements predominated long before forest resources came under the ownership, administration and/or regulation of governments. Unfortunately, many traditional arrangements and systems are under pressure and breaking down as a result of: 1) increasing commercialization of NWFPs in response to growing market demand; 2) penetration of outsiders into remote forest areas; and 3) the spread of market economy and materialism throughout the region.
In practice, the difficulty of administering remote forest areas often creates an ambiguous mix of customary and state control. Increasingly, this ambiguity has opened opportunities for influential outsiders to secure control over state forest resources, including NWFPs, using both legal and extralegal means. The nationalization of forests in nearly all countries in the region has often accelerated forest destruction by undermining effective community management arrangements, alienating local populations from their resources, and failing to put in place viable alternative systems of control. The result has often been uncontrolled open-access (Bromley and Cernea 1989, Gilmour and Fisher 1991, McNeely 1991, Lynch and Talbot 1995).
In retrospect, since the 1950s, forests have been managed for timber rather than for NWFPs, considered until quite recently to be of relatively minor importance (Falconer 1990). Forest area communities, previously unaffected, have increasingly suffered from this short-sighted though overwhelming emphasis on timber harvesting.
National laws governing NWFP harvesting are supposedly put in place to foster sustainable resource management. In many cases, NWFP access and concession rights are given to outside entrepreneurs who are less concerned than local people with sustainable forest management. Outsiders are better equipped than most villagers to comply with government bidding procedures and other formalities required to obtain and operate concessions. This works against local collectors who, under NWFP concession laws, cannot directly market their raw materials, but must sell instead to local agents of concession holders, generally at disadvantageous rates (Mittelman 1996a, Saxena 1997). In the past, patron-client relationships between concessionaires and collectors have often degenerated into 'debt slavery' (Warner 1979).
Where government regulations and controls are less stringent, villagers sometimes extract NWFPs under open-access conditions, but more often under customary rules that allocate use rights according to traditional arrangements. While local communities derive benefits from NWFP collection, use, processing and trade, middlemen, larger-scale processors and traders usually capture most of the benefits further down the marketing chain. Where local communities have been able to obtain rights to NWFP resources, increased profitability has brought considerable benefits both in terms of rural development as well as heightened local concern for sustainable forest resource management (Fricke 1994).
As already noted, it would be naive to assume that all local collectors apply sustainable NWFP harvesting techniques. An increasing number do not. Decline in product availability and growing material aspirations have led to many traditional sustainable harvest practices being abandoned in favour of more destructive methods, even among some indigenous forest groups. At the same time, increasing scarcity of farm land has driven many people without prior NWFP experience to rely on these products for income. These types of recent NWFP collectors, mostly outsiders, have generally caused negative impacts on forest resources, fuelled escalating social tensions, and prompted local collectors to 'get what they can, while they can' (Mittelman and Alisuag 1995, Mittelman 1996c, Rambo and Cuc 1996).
One of the most important general trends of the 1980s and 1990s has been the move toward less government intervention, privatization, and the delegation of many social service/welfare functions from the State to 'civil society' and NGOs. The trend has begun to have an influence on forestry policy and practice. For local communities to become meaningfully involved in sustainable resource management, it is extremely important that their inhabitancy of forest areas and use of forest resources be legally recognized (Fisher 1995, Lynch 1995, Borini-Feyerbend 1996). Despite widespread recognition of the importance of involving local people in sustainable forest management, local communities still possess few recognized legal rights to forest resources, or other incentives for sustainable management (Khan 1995, Lynch 1995).
In an effort to ensure forest conservation and sustainable use, forest policies in nearly all countries in the region tend to be restrictive (FAO 1993, Dewees and Scherr 1996). Governments have considered forest area populations - including indigenous people - to be squatters, regardless of the length of their occupancy (Byron 1992, Lynch 1995). Such policies tend to alienate local people from forest resources, create incentives for over-exploiting NWFPs, and can provide a rationalization for the abuse of forest resources.
Meanwhile, though governments assert legal ownership over forests, they generally lack the financial or administrative capacity to manage them effectively. Exclusive rights to exploit forest resources are often provided to commercial concessionaires, but there are few associated incentives for concessionaires to manage either timber or NWFPs sustainably. In contrast to restrictive policies that limit NWFP production and sale, policies that facilitate acquisition of benefits from proper management of NWFPs can create strong incentives for local people to actively implement sustainable forest management (Ruiz Perez and Arnold 1996).
In the Pacific Island countries, however, the situation with respect to control over forest resources is reversed as almost all forests are held in customary ownership by indigenous people (Byron 1985). In Papua New Guinea, for example, local communities own more than 90 percent of terrestrial resources pursuant to undocumented, private, community-based rights (Lynch 1995). Anomaly or paradigm, the Pacific region offers valuable insights about local people being key decision-makers and beneficiaries in the management and exploitation of their local resources. While in some cases, community control has been the basis for sustainable management, in others, it has led to serious degradation when communities have opted to sell their timber rights to outside commercial forestry concerns, or to hunt or exploit flora and fauna to the point of extinction. Clearly, secure communal ownership, while encouraging sustainable forest management, is not a sufficient condition to guarantee it.
These experiences point to the need for a balanced set of policies, incentives, regulations and disincentives, which help generate income for local people based on their rights to forest resources, and thus create incentives and leverage agreements to manage forests and their resources on a sustainable basis. Creating the potential for such scenarios to contribute to accomplishing national rural development and forest conservation objectives also points to the need for capacity building at the local and community levels.
In light of all these trends, an emerging concept is to devolve the management of NWFP resources to local communities in exchange for their commitment to design and implement sustainable forest management plans. Communities would retain a greater share of NWFP profits through local value-added processing and links between local enterprises and established markets. This would provide substantial incentive to catalyze community involvement in forest management. After a decade of experience with ICDP implementation, the challenge remains to ensure that in addition to being economically viable, such arrangements are also ecologically sustainable (Wells and Brandon 1990, World Bank 1997).
Shifting the locus of resource control to forest area communities is one strategy for grafting on other incentives and disincentives required to stimulate community-based management and conservation efforts. Such a strategy would require the close collaboration of other well-equipped and interested actors such as government agencies, non-government organizations, NWFP traders, processors and manufacturers. It would signal a major shift in the way that economic benefits from the forest are shared, delivering a much higher portion of those benefits to forest area residents, particularly to those engaged in NWFP collection.
Land and resource titling for forest area communities can help increase the flow of NWFP benefits back to the communities. This would create incentives for community-based sustainable management, while removing many of the disincentives to local participation. Yet achieving sustainable management through the empowerment and mobilization of local responsibility is considerably more complex than simply addressing the issue of NWFPs. It requires a more holistic perspective with respect to forest land and resource stewardship, rather than an exclusive focus on NWFPs (Wells 1995, Graefin and Syafrudin 1996, Mittelman 1996a). Holistic community-based management approaches are emerging in the context of ICDPs, forest and buffer zone conservation, and other rural development initiatives in the region. Lessons from experience with these programmes will provide valuable insights informing future refinements, improving the prospects for new initiatives to accomplish forest conservation and development goals.
NWFPs comprise one component of the diverse and multifaceted subsistence and survival strategies pursued by forest area people throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Policies will be effective in supporting sustainable NWFP management when they provide the proper incentives and disincentives to discourage opportunistic and unsustainable use. Land titling to households creates strong incentives for more intensive and, perhaps, more sustainable agricultural land use. Fostering more productive use of agricultural lands and increasing household income might help to reduce pressures on NWFPs. But when privatization is applied to forests, the same policies can cause resource fragmentation and subvert the goal of sustainable forest management. Forest privatization and consequent fragmentation contradict traditional community-based sustainable management arrangements. It is also likely to lead to inequitable resource access and the favouring of short-term household economic interests over long-term community-wide concerns related to conservation and sustainable use.
Recent land tenure reforms in China provide many salutary lessons. In some cases where forest lands were allocated to individual households, areas that might better have been retained as forests were cleared for temporary, unprofitable agriculture (Sun 1992). In other cases, similar land tenure reforms led to increased agricultural profits and improved conservation of forests considered important for both NWFPs and ecological stability. Therefore, a mix of alternative titling principles is advisable so that agricultural lands can be privatized, and common-use and conservation areas can be placed under community governance, in accordance with specific local conditions (Fisher 1995, Borrini-Feyerbend 1996, Mittelman 1997b).
Policy reforms often aim to transform the role of government from that of an agent of authority and control to a partner and facilitator for local communities undertaking sustainable management of forests. Communities may require assistance from resource management and rural development specialists to jointly formulate management plans. This is an area where the government, NGOs and academic institutions can play a valuable role. In some countries, responsibility is gradually being devolved to the local level. With respect to NWFPs, the supports required are likely to include:
· Legitimizing customary ownership and traditional management approaches for NWFP resource areas.· Providing community proprietary rights to harvest, trade, and market NWFPs.
· Delivering extension services to upgrade the quality of local resource management and its contribution to livelihoods and conservation.
· Developing appropriate income generating alternatives to balance resource use among complementary enterprises including primary and secondary NWFP processing.
· Providing support for local product development and marketing.
· Granting preferential tax privileges and price supports for poor rural communities involved in the protection of critical ecosystems and lands.
Many such activities could be integrated into the context of local development efforts, thus enabling small local 'corporations' to borrow from conventional credit sources. Ability to purchase staple commodities and agricultural inputs at advantageous prices may seem unrelated to sustainable NWFP management. But examined from a more holistic perspective, all components of village and household livelihood systems are closely interlinked. Alternative sources of savings or income facilitated by cooperatives help reduce dependence on a limited range of activities and alleviate pressures on both agricultural and forest lands.
The devolution of joint management of forests among communities, other local stakeholders and government should employ a gradual step-by-step process in which adherence to sustainable management agreements is certified as a condition to renewing tenure and usufruct rights. Over a period of 3-5 years, forest areas could be effectively devolved to co-management committees, with their diverse stakeholder membership (Mittelman 1996c, Neumann 1996).
The continuing role of government enables a regular and participatory process of assessment to improve system performance (Gunderson et al. 1995). Government is provided with the confidence needed to continually approve re-certification based on regular evaluations of adherence to agreed management guidelines (Mittelman 1996c). The two-fold underlying objectives of such policies are: 1) achieving equitable and sustainable rural development, and 2) creating a direct stake and role for rural communities in sustainably managing forests that are vital to national ecological integrity. A comprehensive review of the successes and deficiencies of joint forest management in India has recently been completed (Saxena 1997).
Experiments in Nepal, Indonesia, and the Philippines, among others, are attempting to revise forestry policies to support national sustainable management and conservation goals. Recently enacted laws and newly revisited legal interpretations in these countries now support providing resource rights to local forest area communities (Gilmour and Fisher 1991, Republic of Philippines 1992).
Elsewhere in the region, for example, in Laos and Vietnam, forest policies have also begun to enable local residents to obtain more secure land and resource tenure (Government of Vietnam 1994, Government of Lao PDR 1996, Lecup 1996, Mittelman 1997b). In these latter cases, however, tenure or usufruct rights are being extended primarily to households rather than communities. This may lead to further fragmentation of the forest resource base instead of revitalizing traditional community-based arrangements (Ruiz Perez and Arnold 1996, Mittelman 1997b, Neumann 1996).
Three general categories of policy mechanisms and arrangements for managing state forest lands through community participation are emerging in the Asia-Pacific region: forest protection committees, community agreements, and individual stewardship agreements (Fox et al. 1991, Lai 1993). Various programmes and legal mechanisms are being initiated for vesting rights to individuals and communities in various countries (examples are presented in the table 1, see next 2 pages).
Table 1. Recent policy initiatives and mechanisms to support community-based management and conservation.
|
Country/Since When |
Programme/Implementor |
Scope |
Mechanism |
Duration/User Rights |
|
Bangladesh |
Thana Reforestation & Nursery Project (agroforestry component); Forest Department (FD) |
nation-wide in remnant and degraded sal forests |
individual contract between FD and participating farmer in agroforestry; usually 0.4-1.2 ha plot/family |
1 year, renewable contract; farmer entitled to all agricultural crops, intermediate tree products and 50% of final tree harvest; FD makes major decisions |
|
Indonesia |
Java Social Forestry Programme; State Forest Corporation (SFC) |
Java-wide on social forestry sites; usually on "critical" production forests |
individual contract between SFC and farmer participating in social forestry, usually 0.25 ha/farmer |
2-year, renewable contract; farmer gets all agriculture crops, fruit trees, fuelwood trees; timber species belong to SFC |
|
India |
Joint Forest Management (JFM) Programme; State Governments and Forest Departments (FDs) |
15 states have issued JFM guidelines in response to Govt. of India June 1990 circular |
JFM contractual or lease agreement between State FD and user groups (e.g., 2,000 Forest Protection Committees in West Bengal State) |
duration of agreement variable, sometimes indefinite (June 1990 circular prescribed 10-year, renewable Working Scheme); beneficiaries given usufruct rights to grasses, branches, "minor" forest produce, and share of timber (usually 25%) |
|
Thailand |
National Forest Land Allocation/Reserved Forest Improvement Projects; HMG of Thailand and Royal Forest Department |
primarily in occupied forest areas of north and north-east |
o individual STK land certificate to forest land occupant based on 1982 occupancy survey o in north-east, allocation of non-productive reserved forest land to landless families |
o "temporary" land-use permit; gives farmer usufruct rights; > 7 million rai allocated since 1982 o provides usufruct rights; target is > 14 million rai in 5 years |
|
Philippines |
Integrated Social Forestry Programme, now evolved to Community-Based Forest Management Programme; Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) |
nation-wide in upland areas |
o individual Certificate of Stewardship Contract (CSC) between upland farmer and DENR (3-7 ha/family); o individual or communal Forest Lease Management Agreement (FLMA) given to family, community or incorporated group o Community Stewardship Agreement (CSA) given to registered groups o Certificate of Ancestral Land Claim (CALC) given to communities or individual members |
o 25-year, renewable CSC (also for FLMA and CSA); can be inherited by offspring; provides usufruct rights to farmer o gives rights to harvest, process, sell or use products grown on forest land o only for "cultural communities" registered with Securities & Exchange Commission, Manila; provides leasing of land on communal basis o task forces survey and delineate ancestral domains to recognize rights of specific indigenous cultural communities |
|
Vietnam |
National Land Allocation Programme; State Forest Enterprises/District AF Services |
nation-wide, mostly in uplands; over 5 million ha allocated to families |
long-term production contract between government and private household or cooperative |
15-60 year renewable contract based on type of land and crop rotation; benefit-sharing defined for tree species |
|
Nepal |
Community Forestry Programme; Forest Department (FD) |
first developed in hill forests; later in Terai plains |
operational plan developed by user group and sanctioned by FD |
gives secure usufruct rights and legal control to user group; users protect and manage forests, receive all income |
Source: Lai 1993
Governments have only just begun considering the legal frameworks for the kinds of policy formulation and implementation required to ensure that such activities evolve and can be managed effectively (personal communications: Wilbur Dee, NIPA Philippines; Tran Ngoc Huong, Forests and Biodiversity Programme, Netherlands Embassy, Vietnam). At the same time, it is essential to appreciate the wide variation in the capacity of rural communities and institutions to manage natural resources equitably and sustainably (Ruiz Perez and Arnold 1996, Neumann 1996). Policies must be designed to support the kinds of local institutions required for community-based sustainable management, and be flexible enough to deal with variations in local institutional capacity, augmenting that capacity where necessary (Fisher 1995, Wells 1995, Borrini-Feyerbend 1996).
