Previous PageTable Of ContentsNext Page

Conclusions

This paper has described the WISDOM approach, a methodology for the spatial analysis of wood energy systems aimed at identifying wood fuel priority areas in terms of a set of pre-defined criteria. The document has also outlined the material and human resources needed to conduct this type of analysis as well as indicating a set of relevant databases that are available worldwide for this purpose. Finally, the WISDOM approach has been illustrated with a case study for Mexico.

A detailed spatial representation of the woodfuel situation is clearly one of the requisites for promoting the sustainable use of these fuels within developing countries. This spatial analysis also constitutes a powerful tool for strategic planning: it helps in both achieving a better understanding of the current wood energy situation and its future trends and helping to direct scarce financial and human resources to those areas requiring most attention. Combined with other series of energy planning tools, the WISDOM approach can help in the design of robust policies and more effective actions.

A long road still lies ahead in terms of further methodological development and potential applications of WISDOM. Firstly, the approach needs to be tested against a variety of case studies characterizing a diverse and contrasting set of circumstances. Case studies that deserve attention include:

The new challenges coming from these contrasting case-studies will serve to make the methodology more robust and adaptable to the variety of circumstances that may be found in different countries.

Two additional issues that need to be incorporated into the spatial analysis outlined in the document are:

a) Rank woodfuel resources by accessibility categories. Not all woodfuel resources are equally accessible to the population, either in terms of physical constraints (i.e. distance to towns or villages, existence of roads, slope, etc.) or in terms of social/ legal constraints (i.e. the presence of natural protected areas or areas that cannot be harvested because of land-use ownership or specific regulations). Therefore, total woodfuel resources need to be ranked according to an “accessibility factor” that will better reflect the amount of fuel actually available and the forest areas that may be most affected by wood harvesting. Currently, Geographic Information Systems allow detailed analysis of the physical accessibility to forest resources, which can take into consideration a diverse set of local biophysical constraints, to be performed using a relatively straightforward procedure (see for example the accessibility analysis conducted for the last Global Forest Resource Assessment at FAO (FAO, 2001)).

b) Develop clear linkages between the WISDOM analysis at the national/regional level and interventions at the local level. Having identified the “woodfuel hot spots” at a national/sub-national level, a more detailed spatial analysis needs to be conducted within each of the priority areas. For this purpose, a better understanding of the local woodfuel system (i.e. the different ways in which wood resources are produced, harvested, transformed and converted finally to energy, taking into account the larger context of forest resources) is needed. Masera et al (1998) shows an example of this type of analysis for a region in Central Mexico. The analysis of the local woodfuel system will enable concrete topics and issues for actual interventions to be identified. Thus, a logical chain of actions, from national planning to local intervention, can be established. It should be noted that this last step will need additional planning and implementation tools as well as a participatory approach that effectively incorporates the local population.

Previous PageTable Of ContentsNext Page