The Niger: Adapting fiscal and economic policy - the Second Energy Project supply component

The Second Energy Project was financed by Denmark and implemented by the World Bank in the late 1980s. It aims to assist in attaining a more rational and sustainable organization of domestic fuel supply for the larger urban areas of the Niger while preserving the environment. One of the first activities of the project was to undertake socio-economic and biophysical inventories and studies.

At an early stage of the project, personnel saw the essential need to master the economic and marketing aspects of fuelwood supply around the major centres as a sine qua non of rational and sustainable management and, what is more important, to have a legal and statutory basis for operation. Four years of analysis and negotiation culminated in the official adoption in 1992 of "legal, statutory and fiscal texts relating to the organization of wood marketing and transportation around population centres". Among other things the law recognized the existence of rural wood markets run by local groups, distinguished between different levels of woodland management and distance from markets, established clear controls and taxes and laid out the distribution of the costs and benefits between the various actors and functions, including funds for village development and for investment in wood-land management. This legislation appears to have allowed the development of sound organizations and activities that benefit the individual participants, the village groups and the government while promoting sustainable forest management.

After the studies and pilot activities "it is possible to propose simple technical innovations which, however, can only be applied if they are backed by institutional and legislative measures, including tax reform" (Peltier, Lawali and Montagne, 1994).