Objectives, beneficiaries, and key strategic issues

Objective

To enhance the well-being of local people by identifying and promoting strategies in support of small-scale private and community involvement in the industrial forest sector

Which forest industries?

This research area encompasses the activities on both the large-scale forest industries (logging-based and forestry plantation-based enterprises), and the small-scale industries, which include smallholder tree growing and small scale wood processing (e.g. downstream processing).  The small scale wood processing industry plays a significant role as the intermediary between tree growers and the large-scale industries.  Small-scale furniture industries are also taken into account.

Targeted beneficiaries 

The research outcomes are expected to benefit:

1. Communities living inside and in the surrounding forest industry areas, including smallholders, landless people, and those who are in disadvantaged groups (e.g. local people with no required skills to enter the forest industry jobs)
2. Commercial users or those who are responding to market opportunities (most likely not the poorest of the poor group, but the research will investigate how these groups contribute to improving the livelihoods of the poorest groups).

Key strategic issues 

1. Better understanding of the characteristics of the livelihood strategies of people involved in forest industry activities

Large numbers of low-income people are involved in processing and marketing forest products.  Progress in developing and supporting small-and medium-scale enterprises shows scope for further improvements.  Detailed empirical evidence will provide a better understanding of the impacts of forest industry on employment absorption, local multiplier effects, contribution to the total local household income, and community involvement in the decision making process of resource management.

2. Impacts of the increasing redistribution of resource rights to smallholders and communities

Lessons learnt from this research are important to identify the strategies in transferring the actual management authority to the communities. It is then equally important to ensure that such a transfer really benefits the poor by identifying ways to access or capture forest rents.

3. Identifying the most promising opportunities for small-scale and community producers to be competitive suppliers of raw material to industry.

Increasingly, the forest industry is looking towards small producers to secure additional supplies of raw materials. Consumer demand for ‘green products’ and ‘fair trade’ products can help to make small-scale producers competitive in these markets. But this will depend on the extent to which the forestry companies (or others), to which the producers sell their stocks, effectively market the products as ‘green’.

4. Facilitating mutually-beneficial institutional partnership arrangements

A wide range of partnership strategies are used by rural communities with companies, governments, market brokers and others to develop forestry enterprises that meets multiple objectives. Strategies to form partnerships include outgrower schemes, cost-benefit sharing agreements, grower cooperatives and market brokers. However, existing arrangements vary considerably in their ability to be mutually beneficial. Rural villagers are particularly wary of committing to risky long-term contracts, and so tend to avoid investing their time and land in forestry. There is also the major problem here of the disparity of knowledge, resources and power, and how to even out these disparities so that the outcomes are equitable.

5. Empowering the economic capacity of small-scale and community producers through better understanding of the financial and economic feasibility and market intelligence, specifically the most important one is the market information

For the long-term viability of small-scale producers, it is important to identify lower-risk small-scale enterprise management that is more sustainable for the period of the investment and beyond, and which have demonstrable positive impacts on the social and economic well-being of local people.