Previous Page Table of Contents Next Page


3. FUTURE SCENARIOS


A. Scenario 1: Demise of NWFP supplies
B. Scenario 2: Domestication and cultivation of NWFPs
C. Scenario 3: Promoting fair trade in NWFPs
D. Scenario 4: Enabling policy environment

Based on the above analysis of the major significance and trends of NWFPs in the Asia-Pacific region, several scenarios have been formulated on the prospective outlook of NWFPs towards the year 2010. This scenario setting process admittedly involves perhaps more speculation than science. However, the scenarios presented below will hopefully stimulate more ideas on how the NWFP situation could unfold within the region over the next decade or two, and on the types of policy measures and on-the-ground actions that can help support the favourable scenarios and mitigate the unfavourable ones.

The next and final chapter also attempts to examine these general trends and scenarios within the context of specific sites - such as in Palawan, Philippines and Bulungan, East Kalimantan, Indonesia - and for specific NWFPs such as rattan, camphor and damar resin.

A. Scenario 1: Demise of NWFP supplies

Current trends suggest that the increasing monopolization of NWFP resources by outsiders is associated with large-scale commercial exploitation - although the direction and nature of causality is still unclear - and the reduction of access and income for many traditionally NWFP-dependent people in the region. Moreover, sustainable harvest limits are being frequently exceeded, and over an increasingly wider area (Haribon Palawan and IUCN 1994, Callo 1995, Mittelman and Alisuag 1995, Chamberlain et al. 1996).

The reduced availability of products that many people depend on for survival is causing extreme hardship, especially among the poorest for whom NWFPs generate a substantial proportion of annual income (Federation of Batak Tribes 1995).

At present, preferred species are becoming increasingly scarce due to forest degradation and over-harvesting. As scarcity leads to higher value, these products tend to attract greater outside attention and investment. This, in turn, reinforces the trend toward the alienation of local populations from their traditional resources. Many NWFPs in the Asia-Pacific region are becoming scarce, or are being harvested destructively due to increasing commercialization. These products include rattan, damar resin, gaharu trees (Aquilaria malaccensis) containing fragrant heartwood, an assortment of barks, roots, stems and leaves used as medicines (Giano 1990 cited in Peters 1996a, Callo 1995), and a large number of rare and endangered fauna.

Where NWFP supplies are limited, increasing demand can quickly result in depletion of the resource. Subsequent scarcity causes prices to rise. Sustained demand for rare products result in their being eliminated from local forests. This problem is particularly pronounced in Lao PDR and Vietnam, where rare animal and plant species favoured as traditional medicines are being harvested to near extinction to satisfy growing market demand, particularly in China, Taiwan and Korea (Chamberlain et al. 1996, Rambo and Cuc 1996, Mittelman 1997b).

While the most ecologically disruptive uses of forests are conversion to agriculture and timber removal, improper NWFP management can cause significant adverse impacts (Jordan 1987, Uhl et al. 1988, Peters 1996a). If NWFP harvest is inadequately controlled, the forest ecosystem may be jeopardized as the NWFP resources are rapidly depleted. At present, funding for implementing NWFP-based sustainable forest management initiatives remains limited, and the required supporting policies are mostly lacking. Examples of how to successfully develop such initiatives are few, and the approaches required remain poorly understood. Nonetheless, it is extremely important to take stock of lessons generated from the ample number of ICDPs and collaborative forest management projects being implemented throughout the region.

Few attempts have been made to evaluate how the integration of forest communities into regional and world markets is likely to affect household income, investment, sales and consumption, and the effect of these decisions on local use of forest resources (Ros-Tonen et al. 1995 cited in Wilkie and Godoy 1996). Lacking this understanding, it is difficult to predict how increasing marketization will alter forest resource use, or how trade liberalization will affect forest biodiversity. When market demand and profit margins spur specialized, intensive harvest, the diversity of products harvested by collectors is likely to decline, in the absence of adequate management control. Thus, extraction rates for target species could exceed sustainable limits. Rare species could be harvested to extinction, and selective harvest of high-quality individuals could result in deterioration of species genetic composition (Wilkie and Godoy 1996).

Unabated, these trends will lead to the demise of natural NWFP supplies, to the loss of critical livelihoods to forest-dependent people, and to the further degradation of forest resources and ecosystems.

B. Scenario 2: Domestication and cultivation of NWFPs

Declining supplies of natural NWFP stocks will create strong incentives for domestication and cultivation of NWFP species on degraded forest land and in agroforestry systems (Iqbal 1993, Nair and Merry 1995). NWFP cultivation poses definite advantages as opposed to collecting from natural forest stocks. Harvest is facilitated by the proximity of planted stocks to settlements, product quality can be improved by using genetically superior planting material, and higher returns to labour from cultivated NWFPs would tend to discourage forest collection, therefore possibly allowing natural stocks to regenerate.

Income-earning alternatives are increasing for forest area populations as a result of improved communication and transport between remote areas and markets. This tends to reduce pressures on NWFP collection as growing market crops or obtaining wage labour at district townships or in urban areas provide more profitable livelihood alternatives. In some cases, the development of cheaper, synthetic substitutes for NWFPs has also created disincentives for the harvest and trade of certain natural products (Iqbal 1993).

The domestication and cultivation of NWFPs in plantations and on farms may increase tree cover and the area of 'forest' landscape. For example, in Indonesia, there has been a large expansion in the area of rubber "forests" that are planted and cultivated by smallholder farmers. Nevertheless it is crucial to recognize that this trend is only likely to develop for those products that are in strong demand in the market-place, and where demand expands as consumers incomes rise. It is the potential to earn higher incomes (per unit of effort) that encourages the switch from collection to cultivation. For inferior products, where demand is likely to decline with economic prosperity, domestication and cultivation is unlikely to occur.

However, caution must be exercised so that domestication and commercialization of NWFPs do not create a 'poverty trap' that will be harmful to farmers, producers and workers linked with large-scale monocultural plantations for export markets. One way to spring this trap is by facilitating smallholder farmers to produce commercially important natural products in their agroforestry systems, building upon the rich species diversification in those systems (FAO 1996).

Possible scenarios for the evolution from 'extraction' of NWFPs to 'production' through cultivating and domesticating wild species are treated in the next chapter.

C. Scenario 3: Promoting fair trade in NWFPs

Small-scale producers of internationally traded cash crops, such as coffee, cocoa and tea, are far more vulnerable to price fluctuations in the world markets than large producers. Fair trade organizations have proven to be effective mechanisms for ensuring fair prices and protecting small-scale producers from excessive risks. The first fair trade organization that dealt directly with producers in developing countries was established in 1959. There are now about 50 such organizations world-wide, and the movement is growing rapidly across Europe, North America and Australasia (CTA 1997). In the future, these organizations may play an important role in NWFP trade and marketing.

Generally, fair trade organizations purchase directly from producers in developing countries and sell their produce, through a minimum of middlemen, to consumers in developed countries who are concerned and willing to pay a premium to support more ethical transactions. The premium is passed back to the growers. For example, over the past 10 years, the use of the Max Havelaar Quality Mark for coffee and cocoa transactions has generated US$20 million in fair trade surcharges, which have been paid back directly to the producers (CTA 1997).

Fair trade brands and organizations are committed to the following principles:

· Providing a guaranteed minimum price to producers; (which may involve a surcharge or premium above global market price).

· Improving social and working conditions of producers.

· Avoiding trade of food products that compete for land with essential subsistence farming.

· Assisting producers in product development, education, training, and improving organization and marketing.

· Supporting democratically organized producer cooperatives that follow ecologically sustainable development and equitable human resources development objectives.

With the current and projected trends of increasing demand and trade for NWFPs, fair trade organizations could play a vital role as honest brokers who can help ensure fair prices to NWFP collectors and cultivators, and assist in the empowerment process of these people.

Initiatives throughout the Asia-Pacific region have been launched to devolve resource control, improve management and decision-making, and generate more processing and value-adding opportunities at the community and forest sub-district levels (Iqbal 1993, Ruiz Perez and Arnold 1996).

Emergence of niche markets

NWFP-based strategies are enhanced by the rising trend in consumer demand for sustainably managed, natural rainforest products (Iqbal 1993). This bodes well for the development of community-based enterprises to fill emerging NWFP niche markets for natural food, medicinal, cosmetic and other products. Fair trade organizations can also serve as effective intermediaries between community producer and processing groups and emerging niche markets in developed as well as developing countries.

Despite declining natural stocks, NWFP markets are often flooded, which also contributes to downward price trends. Programmes aiming to capitalize on NWFPs to generate local interest in community-based conservation have attempted to help local collectors gain control over NWFP resources, as well as to educate them about NWFP markets, demand conditions, and fair market prices. Intervening to break long-standing control over NWFP markets, such programmes have begun to provide alternative credit sources to collectors, assisting them to assess market potential, to process raw materials locally, meet international product standards, and to develop effective market linkages (Fricke 1995).

This has helped extricate collectors from dependence on unscrupulous business people, and enabled collectors to take a more proactive role in marketing their products, and obtaining fair prices and profit margins. This may help to promote sustainable resource management, as higher local profits make reducing raw material harvest an economically feasible option.

D. Scenario 4: Enabling policy environment

To work towards the development of sound, sustainable, community-based NWFP enterprises, an enabling policy environment is essential. From the foregoing discussions, one can already discern many policy initiatives and innovative approaches to NWFP management and conservation that devolve both rights and responsibilities to local stakeholders.

Though a general realization about the significance of NWFPs has clearly emerged, a great deal more remains to be done. Clear-cut policies and a much stronger commitment and support for the conservation and development of NWFPs are required (Iqbal 1993). Governments can take an active role by establishing rural land and forest resource use policies that promote integrated forest conservation and rural development by encouraging local control as well as equitable and mutually beneficial links between local communities and private entrepreneurs, (FAO 1994c, FAO 1995b).

When formulating landuse plans, national forestry master plans and forestry project documents, or in evaluation of forestry projects, the impacts of NWFP resources and their potential role in the rural and national economy should be duly considered. Potential adverse effects of development activities on NWFPs must be considered and addressed before project implementation. In short, the goal should be to achieve social and environmental gains by means of reinforcing the status of NWFPs in landuse and forestry activities (Iqbal 1993).

During the next 5 to 15 years in the Asia-Pacific region, one is likely to witness near or total demise of the natural stocks of many currently commercially important NWFPs. Among the most obvious of these are rattan, tree resins and bamboo. An alternative is the emergence of viable NWFP policies and strategies that successfully incorporate elements of community-based management, niche market development, domestication and cultivation of NWFPs, and promotion of fair trade in world markets. Both trends will probably develop simultaneously within a given country - for different types of products and markets. In this regard, the fate of NWFPs is very much dependent on an enabling policy environment designed to promote and support the attainment of favourable scenarios. Formulating and subsequently implementing these policies present great challenges, as well as opportunities, to the wise policy makers and planners in the Asia-Pacific region.


Previous Page Top of Page Next Page