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Fuelwood and the poor in the last decade 

Woodfuels, both firewood and charcoal, earn more money for the rural poor than most other forest products.

The immediate conclusion one might draw from this is that more and more trees are being cut down. In fact, the reverse may be true. increasing urbanisation, and rising incomes appear to be slowing down the use of fuelwood.

Fuelwood and charcoal are the principal domestic fuel for huge numbers of the rural and urban poor in developing countries. This has given rise to concerns that this could often be decimating forests, and needed major interventions in order to maintain woodfuel supplies and prevent forest destruction.

However, in the late 1980s this interpretation of what was happening was increasingly challenged. In Fuelwood Revisited: What has changed in the last decade? Michael Arnold, Gunnar Köhlin, Reidar Persson and Gillian Shepherd looked at new information that had become available in the past decade, to determine what the situation now appeared to be.

They found that the data and analysis now available indicate that demand for woodfuels is not growing at the rates earlier estimated. Increasing urbanisation, and rising incomes appear to be slowing down the use of fuelwood.

Much of the fuelwood used today comes from tree sources outside forests, like scrub, bush fallow, deadwood, pruning and lopping. Much of what does come from forests is from land that is being cleared for agriculture. Farm-grown trees are also supplying more woodfuels. In the largely deforested province of Cebu, Philippines, the bulk of traded woodfuels comes from farm-grown trees

“Nevertheless,” says Michael Arnold, “Woodfuel issues deserve more attention than they are getting from forestry policies and programmes today. Especially in the rural areas of less-developed countries where wood remains the most important source of fuel.”

Patterns of use

Global consumption of fuelwood peaked at about 1600 million m3 in the mid-1990s. In much of Asia it is now declining. In Africa, where people use much more fuelwood than in Asia, consumption is growing, although less rapidly than population. However, consumption of charcoal is increasing rapidly, in particular in Africa and South America.

In urban areas, as incomes rise and cities become larger, there is a transition from high wood use to fuels like gas and electricity, with charcoal as the principal fuel that people shift to first from fuelwood. Consumption of woodfuels in much of urban Asia is growing only slowly, if at all. In Indonesia, cheap kerosene has largely displaced wood as an urban fuel. In Hyderabad, in India, the population trebled in 13 years but the quantities of woodfuels used stayed the same.

"But in Africa, the rapid growth in population size in urban areas and persistently low urban incomes in many of them, probably mean there is continuing strong growth in woodfuels use," says Arnold.

In rural areas supplies of fuelwood are often decreasing, because of privatisation of woody resources on land that was previously accessible to all. This can encourage more tree growing by farmers, but can cause hardship to those without land.

Earning an income

"Collecting woodfuels provides income for huge numbers of people," says Arnold. Easy access to the resource and entry into the trade, together with widespread rural demand, attract very large numbers of the landless. Overall, selling woodfuel is a major source of income for the poor, including some of the poorest. For example, it has been estimated that about 2-3 million people are engaged in fuelwood ‘headloading’ in India, making it the largest source of employment in the energy sector in the country. Farmers can also profit, by growing farm trees on land not needed for food production for local woodfuel markets.

Protecting the poor with policy changes

Wood is likely to remain the main fuel for the poor for foreseeable future. But woodfuels are not receiving the attention they used to. "Forest policy needs to act in concert with energy policy, and other related policy areas," says Arnold.

Wood is a low density form of energy used in thermally inefficient devices. So energy policies focus on helping users move from woodfuels to more efficient fuels. Within the forest sector, the importance of woodfuels means that policy should work to make it easier for the poor to gain access to supplies and the market.

For rural households, governments need to create policies that allow users to develop solutions that they can implement themselves. "It is usually the poorest within the community who depend most on woodfuels, but who are often least likely to have fair access to the resource," says Arnold.

At the national level, supply is likely to be difficult in urban areas where demand for woodfuels is still growing, in particular where this demand is for charcoal. This can present considerable challenges in ensuring sustainable supplies, and equitable returns to rural suppliers. There is a widespread problem of urban traders simply commandeering supplies of fuelwood.