Commercialisation of Non-Timber Forest Products: Review and Analysis of Research Roderick P. Neumann and Eric Hirsch CIFOR CENTERFORINTERNATIONALFORESTRYRESEARCH © 2000 by Center for International Forestry Research All rights reserved. Published in November 2000 Printed by SMT Grafika Desa Putera, Indonesia ISBN 979-8764-51-X Cover photos: Brian Belcher Christian Cossalter Published by Center for International Forestry Research Bogor, Indonesia Mailing address: P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB, Jakarta 10065, Indonesia Te l.: +62 (251) 622622; Fax: +62 (251) 622100 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org with support from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy Te l.: +39.0657051; Fax: +39.0657053152 Web site: http://www.fao.org Table of Contents Foreword vi Acknowledgements ix Chapter One: Introduction 1 Origins of this Study 5 Purpose and Scope 6 Methods 7 About the Literature 8 Organisation of the Work 12 Chapter Two: Socio-Political Aspects of NTFP Commercialisation 17 Land and Resource Tenure 17 Gender and NTFP Commercialisation 28 Poverty, Wealth Distribution and NTFP Commercialisation 33 Summary 42 Chapter Three: Economic Considerations in NTFP Extraction and Trade 45 Estimates of the Potential Value of NTFP Resources 46 Economics of Depletion and Sustainability 56 Marketing Networks: Structure and Function 63 Summary 74 Chapter Four: Management Issues for Commercial NTFPs 77 State-led Management of Commercial NTFPs 78 Customary Management of Commercial NTFPs 85 Participatory and Co-Management 90 Summary 98 Chapter Five: Ecological Aspects of NTFP Commercialisation 101 Ecological Effects of Commercial Harvesting 102 Ecological Influences on Commercialisation Potential 113 Methods and Purpose of Ecological Studies 118 Summary 124 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Six: Directions for Research 127 Socio-Political Issues 127 Economic Issues 133 Management Issues 136 Ecological Issues 140 Summary 147 Bibliography 149 Appendix A 173 Acronyms BATH Belize Association of Traditional Healers (Belize) CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research CPR common property resources FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FPCs forest protection committees (India) GSCS Girijan Service Cooperative Societies (India) IFTA Insect Farming and Trading Agency (PNG) JFM Joint Forest Management (India) LAMPS Large Scale Agricultural Multipurpose Societies (India) MAPs medicinal and aromatic plants MPCS Multipurpose Cooperative Societies (India) MSY maximum sustained yield NGO non-governmental organisation NTFP non-timber forest product PAE Projeto de Assentamento Estrativista – Extractive Settlement Project (Brazil) PFM participatory forest management (India) PFMU Participatory Forest Management Unit (Ghana) RTADCF Rajasthan Tribal Area Development Cooperative Federation (India) SFDP Social Forestry Development Project (Indonesia) TDCCOL Tribal Development Cooperative Corporation of Orissa Limited (India) TSI tree stand improvement Foreword Commercial opportunities for non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are emerging throughout the world as economic liberalisation is opening new markets and governmental decentralisation and democratisation is enabling communities to have a greater role in the management of forest resources. But what will be the impact of increasing commercialisation on forest resources? Or to reframe the question: can there be both commercialisation and conservation of resources? In a strategy that supports the linking of conservation of the forest with income generation activities, development agencies and donors are developing initiatives that attempt to link income-generation (especially for the rural poor) and conservation objectives: integrated conservation and development projects. An underlying assumption is that a community and its members (potential entrepreneurs) will conserve and protect forest resources, if it receives the economic benefits from sustainable forest use. But is this an oversimplification? If we look at the history of forest products we often find overexploitation of the product combined in many instances with economic exploitation of the forest dweller that actually harvested or collected the product. The result was the degradation of the resource and poverty or even indebtedness of the collector. Current initiatives are attempting to achieve development of enterprises based on products from the forests (and the trees outside the forest) without the environmental and social exploitation that occurred in the past. This study is one in a series of activities undertaken by CIFOR to reach a better understanding of the role and potential forest products in development and conservation. For example, two international workshops were organized by CIFOR in 1995 and another the following year to analyse key research issues in the field of NTFP development. The first, entitled ‘Research on Non- timber Forest Products’, was organised in conjunction with the University of Zimbabwe, and held in Hot Springs, Zimbabwe, Aug. 28 – Sept. 2, 1995. The proceedings were published in the book Current Issues in Non-timber Forest Products Research (Ruiz Pérez and Arnold, eds., 1996). A follow-up meeting, hosted by the Centro de Investigación de Espacios Protegidos Fernando González Bernáldez in Soto del Real (Madrid), Spain, Feb. 11-16, 1996. A joint CIFOR-IUCN meeting held in Cianjur, Indonesia, May 21-23,1996, FOREWORD vii resulted in the book Incomes from the Forest: Methods for the Development and Conservation of Forest Products for Local Communities (Wollenberg and Ingles, eds.,1998). These workshops recognized that the process of NTFP commercialisation interacts with people’s welfare, forest management, tenure and control of resources, and forest structure and function (through ecological processes). Earlier review and analysis had generated a number of hypotheses, theories and conclusions related to the effects of commercialisation. For example, there is wide acknowledgement that many NTFPs are important to poor people because they are accessible and because they act as important buffers during times of hardship. However, the poor often lack the necessary knowledge, capital, or legal rights to be able to exploit market opportunities where they do exist. Outsiders who have knowledge, commercial networks, and product concessions commonly capture the greater portion of the benefits of NTFP commercialisation. In the past (and continuing into the present) this resulted in the forest dependent often losing access to forest resources when there was increasing market demand. Can this be avoided by current initiatives? Forest and resource tenure are likely to both affect the way a resource is managed and utilized, and be affected by changes in value due to commercialisation. From the conservation perspective, what is the impact of the harvesting of NTFPs on forest resources? On biodiversity? Many authors have suggested that NTFP harvesting will be less damaging to biodiversity and other environmental values than management for timber. Others suggest that market pressures are likely to lead to the decline and eventual disappearance of valuable products and to severe impacts on the ecosystem. Or will market pressures deflect pressure from particular products? What is clear from these questions is that while there is a growing understanding (and acceptance) of the economic importance of forest products, especially for the poor, the potential impact of NTFP commercialisation needs to be better understood. One of the recommendations arising out of the workshops was to undertake a thorough overview of the available literature to synthesize the key lessons about these areas of interaction. It was intended that such a review would critically examine the available information and analyses and identify key research areas needing further attention. FAO and CIFOR worked together to address this recommendation. We sought potential authors and were rewarded with a high level of interest and enthusiasm among prospective collaborators. In the end Dr. Rod Neumann and Mr. Eric Hirsch accepted the daunting task of reviewing and synthesizing a large and diverse literature. The NTFP literature is notoriously unstructured _ studies relevant to understanding the key questions have been done by authors viii FOREWORD from a wide range of disciplines, using diverse methods and investigating a host of different questions on an equally wide range of systems. It is fertile ground for contradictory hypotheses, but also, with the right questions, a rich source of new insights. The product of their work is valuable at different levels. First, it is an excellent overview of the English language literature on various aspects of NTFP development. The authors have taken pains to sample from the full breadth of this literature. The manuscript will no doubt prove to be a valuable resource for other researchers. The analyses and syntheses make a novel contribution. The authors have created a structure for their review and in doing so have added value to the literature. And their conclusions help set the stage for new research that is needed in this area. They have identified problems inherent to the field of study, including difficulties of inter-disciplinary research, highlighted difficulties arising out of inconsistent nomenclature and definition, and identified the relatively poor baseline of systematically collected data about NTFPs and commercial harvesting and marketing