Partnerships in Sustainable Forest Resource Management: Learning from Latin America
CEDLA Latin America Studies (CLAS) series CLAS Editorial Board Michiel Baud (Chair), CEDLA, Amsterdam Pitou van Dijck, CEDLA, Amsterdam Patricio Silva, Universiteit Leiden Edward F. Fischer, Vanderbilt University Anthony Bebbington, University of Manchester Rachel Sieder, University of London Anthony L. Hall, London School of Economics and Political Science Eduardo Silva, University of Missouri at St. Louis Barbara Potthast, Universität zu Köln
CEDLA Centrum voor Studie en Documentatie van Latijns Amerika Centro de Estudios y Documentación Latinoamericanos Centro de Estudos e Documentação Latino-Americanos Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation The Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA) conducts and coordinates social science research on Latin America, publishes and distributes the results of such research, and assembles and makes accessible documentary and scholarly materials for the study of the region. The Centre also offers an academic teaching programme on the societies and cultures of Latin America. Keizersgracht 395-397; 1016 EK Amsterdam; The Netherlands Phone: +3120 5253498; E-mail:
[email protected] URL: www.cedla.uva.nl
Partnerships in Sustainable Forest Resource Management: Learning from Latin America
Mirjam A.F. Ros-Tonen, Editor (in collaboration with Heleen van den Hombergh and Annelies Zoomers)
CEDLA Latin America Studies
[p.m. copyright notice]
Table of Contents
v v vi ix
List of Figures List of Tables List of Acronyms Preface Part I – Exploring Potentials and Opportunities 1
Partnerships for Sustainable Forest and Tree Resource Management in Latin America: The New Road towards Successful Forest Governance? Mirjam A.F. Ros-Tonen, Heleen van den Hombergh and Annelies Zoomers
3
2
Alliances for Sustainable Forest Management: Lessons from the Ecuadorian Chocó Rain Forest Laura Rival
23
3
Organising Partnerships for Ecuador’s Emerging Bamboo Sector Herwig M. Cleuren
39
Part II – Framing around Public-Private Partnerships 4
Partnership on Paper: Power Struggles and Strategic Framing around Industrial Forestry in Southern Costa Rica Heleen van den Hombergh
53
5
Partnerships for Sustainable Timber Production in Trinidad: Dealing with Social and Ecological Dynamics James Fairhead and Melissa Leach
67
Part III – Company-Community Partnerships 6
Partnerships between Forestry Companies and Local Communities: Mechanisms for Efficiency, Equity, Resilience and Accountability Sonja Vermeulen and James Mayers
81
7
Do Partnerships between Large Corporations and Amazonian Indigenous Groups Help or Hinder Communities and Forests? Carla Morsello and W. Neil Adger
93
8
A Company-Community Partnership for FSC-Certified Non-Timber Forest Product Harvesting in Brazilian Amazonia: Requirements for Sustainable Exploitation Tinde van Andel
107
Part IV – Multi or Intersector Partnerships 9
Sustainable Forest Management and the Guiana Shield Initiative Pitou van Dijck
119
10
Impacts of Multi-Scale Partnerships on Miskitu Forest Governance in Nicaragua Mary M. Brook
131
v
11
Partnerships across Scales: Lessons from Extractive Reserves in Brazilian Amazonia Sergio Rosendo
143
12
Partnerships for Ecological Paper Production in the State of Pará, Brazil Key Otsuki
159
Part V – Political Partnerships 13
Negotiating Solutions for Local Sustainable Development and the Prevention of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Imme Scholz
175
14
Lessons from International Community Forestry Networks Marcus Colchester
189
Index
203
vi
List of Figures 1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 4.1 5.1 7.1 8.1 9.1 10.1 11.1 12.1 14.1
Factors favouring the formation of partnerships in forest and tree resource management The study area in the Cayapas basin in the Chocó rain forest, Ecuador Organisational structure and activities SUBIR Phase I (1991-1993) Organisational structure and activities SUBIR Phase II (1994-1997) and Phase III (1998-2002) Costa Rica and the location of Osa Peninsula’s major conservation areas Trinidad with the Victoria Mayaro Forest Reserve The Kayapó area in the state of Pará, Brazil Euterpe oleracea palm The Guiana Shield Region Nicaragua and the North Atlantic Autonomous Region Extractive reserves in Rondônia, Brazil Actors and agents involved in the Amazon Paper Project Mapping change: scaling up and scaling down
List of Tables 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 8.1 9.1 9.2 11.1 12.1 13.1 14.1 14.2 14.3
Typology of company-community forestry partnerships by partner Overview of key country case studies of company-community partnerships Efficiency and equity in company-community forestry partnerships: examples of key constraints and successful innovations Resilience in company-community forestry partnerships: examples of key constraints and successful innovations Accountability in company-community forestry partnerships: examples of key constraints and successful innovations Production and export value of Euterpe oleracea products from the Guiana Shield Estimated diversity and endemism of Guiana Shield flora and fauna Estimates of water availability in the Guiana Shield Federal Extractive Reserves in Brazil Commercialised plants (NTFPs) in the Amazon Paper Project Main characteristics of civil society organisations in Altamira and Santarém Summary of the emergence of key international community forestry networks Changing visions of ‘community forestry’ Networking tools
vii
List of Acronyms ABC ACICAFOC
AECO BICU CARE
Atlantic Biological Corridor (Nicaraguan portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor) Asociación Coordinadora Indígena e Campesina de Agroforestería Comunitaria Centroamericana; Central American Indigenous and Peasant Coordination for Community Agroforestry Asociación Ecologista de Costa Rica; Costa Rican Ecologist Association Bluefields Indian Caribbean University Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere
CARICOM
Caribbean Community
CBD CDE CDM CEPISA CIFOR CNS
Convention on Biological Diversity Capacity Development in Environment Clean Development Mechanism Carribean Pine logging and processing company, Nicaragua, Centre for International Forestry Research (Bogor, Indonesia) Conselho Nacional dos Seringueiros; National Council of Rubber Tappers (Brazil) Corporación de Manejo Forestal Sustentable; Corporation for Sustainable Forest Management (Ecuador) Corporación para la Promoción del Mecanismo de Desarrollo Limpio; Corporation for the Promotion of the Clean Development Mechanism (Ecuador) Corporación de Promoción de Exportaciones e Inversiones; Corporation for Export and Investment Promotion (Ecuador) Commission for Sustainable Development Department for International Development (United Kingdom) Directoraat Generaal voor Internationale Samenwerking; Directorate General for International Development (the Netherlands) Ação Ecológica Guaporé; Guaporé Ecological Action European Union Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Forests Absorbing Carbon dioxide Emissions Foundation (the Netherlands) Forest Stewardship Council Federación de Centros Chachi del Ecuador; Federation of Chachi Centres of Ecuador Friends of the Earth International Forest Resource Inventory and Management section of Trinidad’s Forestry Division Forest Stewardship Council Global Environment Facility Guiana Shield Initiative Geselschaft für Technologische Zusamenarbeit; German Technical Co-operation International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis; Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources Integrated Conservation and Development Project
COMAFORS CORDELIM
CORPEI CSD DFID DGIS
ECOPORÉ EU FAO FACE FSC FECCHE FoEI FRIM FSC GEF GSI GTZ IAITPTF IBAMA
ICDP
viii
IEF IFF INAFOR IIED IIRSA ILO IMAFLORA IMF INAFOR INBAR INCRA INDIA INEFAN ITTO IUCN JICA MAG MBC MDTX
MLTC NC-IUCN NGO NTFP OECD ORS OSR PBS PLANAFLORO POEMA POEMAR POEMATEC POLONOROESTE PPG7
RAAN RECC
Instituto Estadual de Florestas; State Institute of Forests (Rondônia, Brazil) International Forum on Forests Instituto Nacional Forestal; National Forestry Institute (Nicaragua) International Institute of Environment and Development (United Kingdom) International Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America International Labour Organisation Instituto de Manejo e Certificação do Brasil; Management and Certification Institute of Brazil International Monetary Fund Instituto Nacional Forestal; National Forest Institute (Nicaragua) International Network for Bamboo and Rattan Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária; National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (Brazil) Instituto de Pesquisa em Defesa da Identidade Amazônica; Research Institute in Defence of the Amazonian Identity Instituto Ecuatoriano Forestal de Áreas Naturales y Vida; Ecuadorian Forestry Institute for Natural Areas and Life. International Tropical Timber Organisation World Conservation Union Japan International Cooperation Agency Ministerio de Agricultura; Ministry of Agriculture (Ecuador) Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (conservation project in Central America) Movimento pelo Desenvolvimento da Transamazônica e do Xingu; Movement for the Development of the Transamazônica and the Xingu (Brazil) Meadow Lakes Tribal Council (Canada) Netherlands Committee for the World Conservation Union (formerly: International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Non-governmental organisation Non-timber forest product Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Open Range System (sustainable forest management system) Organização dos Seringueiros de Rondônia; Organisation of Rubber Tappers of Rondônia Periodic Block System (sustainable forest management system) Plano Agropecuário Florestal de Rondônia; Rondônia Natural Resources Management Project (Brazil) Programa Pobreza e Meio Ambiente na Amazônia; Poverty and Environment in the Amazon Programme (Brazil) Núcleo de Ação para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável; Action Centre for Sustainable Development (Brazil) Comércio de Tecnologia Sustentável para a Amazônia, Brazil Programa Integrado de Desenvolvimento do Noroeste do Brasil Programa Piloto para a Proteção das Florestas Tropicais do Brasil; the G-7 Pilot Programme for the Protection of Brazil’s Tropical Forests Región Autónoma del Atlántico Norte; North Atlantic Autonomous Region (Nicaragua) Reserva Ecológica Cotacachi-Cayapa; Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve (Ecuador)
ix
SCA SEDAM SNV SUBIR TNC UN UNCED UNDP UNFCCC UONNE USAID VHC WCS WRM WWF
Secretaria de Coordenação da Amazônia; the Coordination of Amazonian affairs Secretariat (Brazil) Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Ambiental; State Secretariat for Environmental Development (Rondônia, Brazil) Netherlands Development Organisation Sustainable Use of Biological Resources (Ecuador) The Nature Conservancy United Nations United Nations Conference on Environment and Development United Nations Development Programme United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Unión de las Organizaciones Negras del Norte del Ecuador; Union of Black Organisations of North Ecuador United States Agency for International Development Viviendas Hogar de Cristo; Christ’s Home Dwellings (Ecuador) Wildlife Conservation Society World Rainforest Movement World Wide Fund for Nature
x
Preface When I organised the Congress on ‘Globalisation, localisation and tropical forest management in the 21st century’, that was held in Amsterdam on 22-23 October 2003, it became clear that Latin America was a fertile breeding ground for partnerships for sustainable forest (resource) management in Latin America. It was exciting to listen to the many cases in which strong civil society organisations, which had entered into partnerships with international donors, non-governmental organisations and researchers, had successfully claimed (and in the case of indigenous peoples: re-claimed) a say in forest governance. Simultaneously, it became clear that conflicting interests, severe power imbalances and the structural causes of deforestation were continuing and that the larger-scale application of success stories (‘scaling-up’) was by no means easy. Heleen van den Hombergh of Oxfam Novib and Annelies Zoomers of the Centre for Studies and Documentation of Latin America (CEDLA) – respectively co-chair and discussant of the panel on ‘Global-local partnerships for conservation and sustainable forest use: a Latin-American perspective’ – strongly supported the idea of taking these issues further and of turning the papers and vivid discussions into a book. In addition to co-authoring the first chapter of this book, they provided invaluable feedback during the editing process. Heleen and Annelies, thanks a lot for your input, which I very much appreciated. Some of the papers in this book originated in the session on ‘Opportunities for forest markets to benefit local low-income producers’ convened by Andy White from Forest Trends in Washington. I would like to thank Andy for his comments on the first drafts of some of the papers that are now part of this book. The participants in both sessions were an important source of inspiration. Thanks are also due to the Amsterdam Institute for International Development (AIID), the Board of Governors and the Amsterdam research institute for Global Issues and Development Studies (AGIDS)1 of the University of Amsterdam who provided core funding to the event. I am also grateful for the additional financial support provided by the Research School for Resource Studies for Development (CERES), the International Agricultural Centre (IAC) in Wageningen, Oxfam Novib, the Netherlands Organisation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO) and the Wageningen-based CTA (Centre Technique de Coopération Agricole et Rural ACP-EU). Without these sponsors, this book would not have been written. Finally, I would like to thank Christian Smid and Hans de Visser of UvAKaartenmakers for drawing the maps and Howard Turner of Turner Translations for language editing. Amsterdam, May 2006 Mirjam A.F. Ros-Tonen
1
After having merged with the Amsterdam research centre for the Metropolitan Environment (AME), AGIDS was renamed AMIDSt (Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies.
xi
PART I
Exploring Potentials and Opportunities
1. Partnerships for Sustainable Forest and Tree Resource Management in Latin America: The New Road towards Successful Forest Governance? Mirjam A.F. Ros-Tonen*, Heleen van den Hombergh** and Annelies Zoomers***
Forest management in Latin America is facing new challenges. Having been claimed as the exclusive domain of central government agencies since colonial times, today the formulation and implementation of forest policies has become a complex interplay of multiple actors. As a result of the decentralisation of management responsibilities by the state (Colfer and Capistrano 2005; Ribot and Larson 2005), local and municipal governments are nowadays playing an increasingly important role in the formulation and implementation of forest policies. Local populations – including indigenous peoples and traditional forest users – are, often successfully, (re-)claiming their rights to forest land and resources. In addition, international organisations, non-governmental and other civil society organisations are demanding a say in the management of what is in their view a common good or global heritage. The growing complexity of the forest governance arena, combined with the need to deal with competing claims, diverging interests and increasing pressure on forest resources has led to strategic alliances and partnerships between various actors in an attempt to reconcile what have previously been conflicting interests. The traditional ‘command and control’ of state-led forest governance seems to be making way for a multi-stakeholder approach to accommodate diverging claims. At local level, numerous partnerships for the protection and co-management of forest resources are emerging between international donors, government agencies, national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), private sector actors, research organisations and community-based organisations. Tropical forest protection and management are increasingly the product of negotiations and joint actions between players at multiple scales – even more in Latin America with its strong civil society than on any other continent.1 This book brings together experiences with a rich variety of such partnerships for sustainable forest and tree resource management from various countries in Latin America – Trinidad, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guyana, Brazil and Ecuador. The authors reflect on the scopes, objectives and institutional organisation of partnerships, on the actors involved and excluded, on the benefits, and the hindrances to overcoming cultural differences, institutional barriers, power imbalances and diverging interests. The question that runs as a common thread through this book is what can we learn from these cases in Latin America with regard to the conditions under which partnerships for sustainable forest and resource management can reconcile multiple interests and contribute to pro-poor, socially just and environmentallyfriendly forest governance. Before summarising these lessons learned, this chapter first defines and classifies various types of partnerships and analyses how partnerships for sustainable forest and tree resource management fit in with mainstream forest management thinking, general development paradigms, Latin American forest policies and the broader academic debate on social movements and multi-spatial interactions.
*
Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies (AMIDSt), University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, the Netherlands. E-mail:
[email protected]. ** AMIDSt and Oxfam Novib, P.O. Box 30919, 2500 GX Den Haag, the Netherlands. E-mail:
[email protected];
[email protected]. *** The Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation and Radboud University, Keizersgracht 395-397, 1016 EK Amsterdam, the Netherlands. E-mail:
[email protected].
3
Definition and types of partnerships In all honesty, the term partnership is a tricky one to use because it has a warm and positive connotation. It suggests that the parties involved participate and collaborate on equal terms. In this way, partnerships may mask power asymmetries and exploitative relationships and become symbolic power in the hands of the most powerful who, by engaging in them, can demonstrate their good intentions quite easily. We do not, however, opt for a normative definition of partnerships in order to be able to include a broad spectrum of them in our discussion. Instead, we come up with a number of conditions for partnerships to contribute to fair and sustainable forest management agreements at the end of this chapter. From this perspective, we conceive partnerships as more or less formal arrangements between two or more parties from various sectors (government, civil society and/or private sector) around (at least partly) shared goals, in the expectation that each party will gain from the arrangement. The goals of the partnerships that are presented in this book are related to forest conservation, responsible forest use and/or the sustainable production of forest and tree resource products. With respect to the latter, we define forest products in a broad sense as products that originate from natural forests but can also be a part of man-made forest types or farming systems. Depending on the actors involved and the main goal of the partnership, several kinds of partnerships can be identified. 1. Public-private partnerships are arrangements between the state and a company or a group of private sector actors (for instance the public-private partnership for reforestation with bamboo in Ecuador (Cleuren, Chapter 3) and between the Trinidad government and woodcutters for sustainable timber exploitation (Fairhead and Leach, Chapter 5). 2. Company-community partnerships are oriented towards the production of forest and tree resource products, with mutual benefits being the expected result. Examples in this book are the timber harvesting agreements between logging companies and Chachi communities in the Ecuadorian province Esmeraldas (Rival, Chapter 2), the partnership between The Body Shop and A’Ukre-Kayapó villages in Brazil (Morsello and Adger, Chapter 7) and the partnership between palm heart and açaí fruit juice company Muaná Alimentos Ltd and various communities on the Marajó Island in the Brazilian Amazon delta (Van Andel, Chapter 8). If the deal is directly between growers/landholders and the processing industry, in which the first contractually agree to grow bamboo or trees for pulp, wood fibre or timber, such partnerships are usually referred to as out-grower schemes. Examples of outgrowing arrangements are those for bamboo production between small farmers and banana producers in Ecuador (one of the options explored by Cleuren in Chapter 3) and between the wood fibre industry and private and community landowners (Vermeulen and Mayers, Chapter 6). As Vermeulen and Mayers show in Chapter 6, various modalities of companycommunity partnerships exist in the wood fibre industry, involving actors that operate at various scales and various degrees of collectivity. In addition to out-grower schemes, these include product supply contracts, lease agreements, joint ventures, crop share arrangements, corporate social responsibility contracts and co-management schemes. An example of a leasing agreement can be found in Chapter 4 where Van den Hombergh deals with such an agreement between a transnational paper company and farmers in Costa Rica. The latter case in particular raises the question of whether the various types of supply arrangements are rightly categorised as partnerships. This case shows that these kinds of company-community partnerships are actually or potentially exploitative relationships. As an anonymous referee rightly suggested, such arrangements could be better called supply or business agreements as their reconstruction as partnerships may facilitate ‘green wash’ or fake social responsibility. We include them in the discussion, however, as such agreements and their connotation of ‘partnerships’ have become part of the international development discourse as employed, for instance, at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. 3. NGO-community partnerships can be seen as a special variant of the company-community partnership, as in the case of the partnership for sustainable bamboo production in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Cleuren, Chapter 3) which entails one NGO manufacturing low-cost 4
housing for the poor in the slums, while another acts as a broker and watchdog to overcome the farmers’ lack of negotiation skills. 4. Multi-sector or intersectoral partnerships involve actors from multiple sectors (government, business, civil society) who often operate at multiple scales. Examples of such actors are international donors and organisations, national and local government agencies, non-governmental organisations, private corporations, research organisations and community-based organisations. These partnerships bring together political power, donor funding, management capacity, technological skills and local knowledge, as a result of which the actors in the partnership are able, at least in theory, to achieve much more than they would achieve individually. Multi-sector or intersectoral partnerships are generally aimed at the conservation and responsible use of tropical forest areas. Examples in this book are the integrated conservation and development programme Sustainable Use of Biodiversity Resources (SUBIR) in the Chocó area in Ecuador (to which Rival refers in Chapter 2 as a coalition), the Guiana Shield Initiative (Van Dijck, Chapter 9), the forestry initiatives in Nicaragua’s North Atlantic Autonomous Region (Brook, Chapter 10), and the partnerships related to extractive reserves in Brazil (Rosendo, Chapter 11). Multi-sector partnerships are usually part of what is referred to in natural resource management literature as multi-stakeholder processes (Hemmati 2002).2 5. Research partnerships involve universities and/or private research organisations which explicitly cooperate with multiple actors with a view to generating change towards sustainable and pro-poor forest use. An example is the Amazon Paper project initiated by the University of Pará in Belém, Brazil (Otsuki, Chapter 12). 6. Political partnerships involve various civil society organisations engaged primarily in advocacy for equitable and pro-poor forest management or forestry arrangements. We decided to depart from a broad definition of partnerships, in order to be able to include this type of political cooperation that often involves broader policy goals. Some authors refer to these political partnerships as alliances, coalitions or networks. Examples at national and sub-national levels include the coalition against the paper giant Stone Container Corporation in Costa Rica (Van den Hombergh, Chapter 4) and the political mobilisation of social movements and NGOs in protest at two large public infrastructure investment projects in the Brazilian Amazon (Scholtz, Chapter 13). Examples at international level are the international community forestry networks presented by Colchester in Chapter 14. This type of partnership is basically different from the formal public-private partnerships and multi-sector partnerships because it does not (officially) involve the corporate sector or government and is mostly oriented towards more fundamental (policy) changes instead of the management of a particular area. The cases in this book show that the scope of partnerships for sustainable forest and tree resource management is wide-ranging, including (1) sustainable production of forest and tree resources; (2) (community-based) forest management; (3) conservation of biodiversity and/or genetic resources; and (4) lobbying for sound and pro-poor forest policies at national and/or international level. The sub-objectives often include (1) securing communal and other tenure arrangements; (2) strengthening community-based organisations for the management of forest and tree resources; (3) capacity building in sustainable forest and tree resource management; (4) implementing sustainable forestry and agroforestry systems; and (5) income generation. In general, public-private and company-community partnerships evolve around the objective of the sustainable production of forest and tree products, while multi-sector partnerships tend to pursue the objective of integrated sustainable and pro-poor forest management, and political partnerships focus on lobbying for forest policies that meet the interests of specific groups. Partnerships and mainstream thinking on sustainable forest management This book deals for a large part with partnerships for sustainable forest (resource) management, which we understand as being deliberate efforts to maintain the forests’ ecological values, production services and their role as source of livelihood for the rural poor. These days, it is commonly acknowledged that forests need to be managed for economic, 5
social and ecological ends. The notion that sustainable forest management encompasses ecological, economic and social aspects is, however, a relatively recent one (Wiersum 1995). When German foresters launched the concept of sustainable forest management as the ‘Nachhaltigkeitsprinzip’ in 1804 (Wiersum 1995, 321), the assumption, for a long time, was that it only dealt with sustained timber yields. The primary driving force behind the forest management concept was the need to provide strategic industries with secure supplies of timber (Colchester et al. 2003). Colonial forestry acknowledged the need to maintain the forest’s ecological characteristics, but this was generally interpreted in rather narrow terms of maintaining heterogeneity of ages and species, the capacity for natural regeneration, the forest’s hydrological functions in a watershed and soil protection through continuous forest cover (Schmidt 1987). The function of forests as a productive and cultural asset for forestdwelling people was neglected until late into the 1970s (and in practice sometimes until well into present), while the preservation of biodiversity and wildlife was considered to be the task of conservation agencies and international environmental NGOs. Conservation, too, has been characterised for a long time by a neglect of human needs and interests, to an extent that can be labelled as ‘ecototalitarian’ (Dietz 1996, 13). The Brundtland Report entitled Our Common Future (WCED 1987) provoked a change in the prevailing forest management and conservation narratives (Campbell and Vainio-Mattila 2003). By promoting ‘a type of development that integrates production with resource conservation and enhancement, and that links both to the provision of an adequate livelihood base and equitable access to resources’ (WCED 1987, 39-40) it was made clear that forest resource management and conservation could no longer overlook peoples’ needs and their rights to a stable livelihood base. Since then, the notion of sustainability as a three-tiered concept encompassing ecological, economic and social aspects has gained wider acceptance. This was further strengthened at the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where the international community reached a broad consensus on the principles, guidelines, criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management. It recognised the cultural and spiritual value of forests, the necessity of stakeholder participation, the vital role of forests in maintaining ecological processes and balance, the need for biodiversity conservation, the protection of indigenous rights and the right of forest dwellers to have an economic stake in forest use (UNCED 1992). 3 In addition, the forest-related aspects of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, also adopted at UNCED, acknowledge that forests should also be managed on the basis of their role in biodiversity conservation and climate change. Many definitions of sustainable forest management have circulated since then (Wiersum 1995; Higman et al. 1999), all of which share the following features: - It is now being recognised that forests can be managed to different ends – not only for sustained timber production, but also for the preservation of nature and wildlife, for traditional uses or to protect the habitat of indigenous peoples. - All definitions share the conception that sustainable management should be ecologically sound, economically viable and socially acceptable. As a result, the concept of sustainable forest management is now a more dynamic one, aimed at finding and negotiating a balance between various land-use options (Foahom and Jonkers 2005). At international level, these negotiations became institutionalised in 2000, when the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) created the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) as part of a new (legally non-binding) International Arrangement on Forests. The idea behind the UNFF was to create a more permanent home for the international dialogue on forests and exchange experiences among governments and other stakeholders in sustainable forest management (UNFF 2004). Unfortunately, the UNFF process has shown recently that international consensus over the actual implementation of the principles of sustainable forest management is lacking and hampered by diverging interests across the globe. What has become increasingly clear, however, is that there is universal recognition of the fact that sustainable forest management or conservation is impossible without the active participation of local populations and without due consideration for their livelihood needs 6
(Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2000; Lawrence 2000). In forestry circles, many see the VIIIth Forestry Congress of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which was held in 1978 under the title ‘Forestry for People’, as a turning point in this respect (Arnold 2001). Social or community forestry was launched as an approach to forest management aimed at increasing community participation in the development and management of forest resources and at providing the rural poor with fuel, food and other products to meet basic needs (Arnold 2001). Although it initially focused on tree planting, attention later shifted to participatory and cooperative management schemes and social forestry became an important supplement to the industrial, timber-oriented approach to forest management. In the context of conservation efforts as well, several approaches have been developed to enhance ‘participation’ and combine conservation and development objectives (Western and Wright 1994; Fisher 1995; Borrini-Feyerabend 1996). Examples of such efforts include transition zone management, Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), community-based conservation, participatory resource management (also known as co-management or joint forest management), adaptive or negotiated forest management, and strategies based on the commercial exploitation of non-timber forest products (Campbell and Vainio-Mattila 2003; Ros-Tonen et al. 2005a). Participation has become a ‘master frame’ (see Van den Hombergh, Chapter 4) – a broadly accepted desired direction of society. These changes in the discourse on forest management and conservation have provided a fertile breeding ground for partnership thinking in forest governance, albeit with mixed consequences in practice. Partnerships in the international development discourse In addition to the changes in forest management thinking, several other factors and processes have played a role in the emergence of partnerships for sustainable forest and tree resource management. Some of these are of a global nature, while others refer to local level processes (Figure 1.1). As regards the former, the partnership idea featured in the international ‘good governance’ debate in the 1990s. In its document ‘Local partnerships for better governance’, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2001) puts forward that: To improve governance, governments throughout the OECD have recently created and supported networks of area-based partnerships. Through partnerships, agreements on long term priorities involving a wide range of stakeholders may be used as a guide to deliver programmes and services consistent with local conditions and allocate resources in a way that is conducive to sustainable development. These partnerships facilitate consultation, co-operation and co-ordination. They are, in short, a tool to improve governance (OECD 2001, 13). The Millennium Development Goals, launched in 2000, also embrace the objective to ‘develop strong partnerships with the private sector and with civil society organisations in pursuit of development and poverty eradication’. Two years later ‘partnership’ was the buzz word at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, which promoted partnerships for sustainable development as ‘voluntary multi-stakeholder initiatives contributing to the implementation of Agenda 21, Rio+5 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI)’. 4 Partnerships for sustainable development received an important impulse in the WSSD process, with over 300 partnerships having been registered at the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) Secretariat to date.5 The philosophy behind partnerships fits in well with neo-liberal reforms through which the role of Latin American states has been reduced and more important roles have been assigned to the private sector and civil society (Kirby 2002). Neo-liberal thinking – that became widespread through Structural Adjustment programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – recommends that tasks which were formerly the responsibility of governments are transferred to private enterprises or are carried out jointly 7
Neoliberalism
Global environmental governance
Globalisation CSR1
Partnerships
‘Good governance’ thinking
Decentralisation
3
Devolution
SFM2 as the norm
Democratisation & civil society development
1
CSR = Corporate social responsibility SFM = Sustainable forest management 3 Devolution = transfer of decision-making powers from the central state to local actors, such as indigenous populations, local community organisations or organised groups of forest users. 2
Figure 1.1 – Factors favouring the formation of partnerships in forest and tree resource management by governments and private sector companies in public-private partnerships. Under the denominator of ‘good governance’, the same and other international organisations have forged partnerships with civil society organisations with a view to solving social issues and promoting sustainable development. These neo-liberal policies with regard to governance and partnerships have also had an influence in the field of forest and natural resource management. Another important factor favourable to the creation of partnerships is the increasing awareness of global environmental problems from the 1970s onwards. The depletion of the ozone layer, ocean pollution and climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gases were among the first problems to be recognised as having a global impact (Speth 2002). Moreover, tropical deforestation and the consequent loss of biodiversity and other environmental services like carbon sequestration and watershed protection started to be regarded increasingly as problems of global concern. This led to more and more forest-related conventions and agreements intended to protect these global values, as part of a process referred to as global environmental or forest governance (see Brown 2001 for an overview). Rischard (2002) goes a step further in this respect, arguing that treaties and conventions, intergovernmental conferences, groupings like the G-8 and multilateral organisations are incapable of solving what he calls ‘global issues’. He therefore calls for ‘networked governance’ to solve these issues, through the inception of Global Issues Networks involving representatives of national governments, international civil society and global businesses. Although the need for concerted action with regard to global issues is undisputed, Rischard rather naively expects these individuals to act as global citizens rather than the defenders of their sector’s interests once they have become part of such a network. Finally, there is the pressure of consumers worldwide for environmentally friendly and socially responsible production conditions. More and more often, companies are being held responsible for the adverse social and environmental effects of their activities. This pressure led an increasing number of private businesses to operate deliberately under the label of Corporate Social Responsibility (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002). By engaging in
8
partnerships with (indigenous) communities for the sustainable production of forest products and other commodities, some of these enterprises have developed a ‘green’ and socially conscious image that allows them to operate on profitable niche markets. Several examples of companies that have entered into deals with indigenous and other forest-dwelling communities can be found in this book, such as The Body Shop’s involvement in the production of Brazil nut oil (Morsello and Adger, Chapter 7), the export by Munuá Alimentos of certified palm heart and açai fruit (Van Andel, Chapter 8) and Mercedes Benz do Brasil (Daimler Chrysler), which made car products from fibres extracted from coconut husks mixed with natural latex (Otsuki, Chapter 12). All these new global players in the forest management arena have been able to link up more and more with national and local actors, because globalisation is making the world smaller each and every day. Internet, e-mail, and fast means of transportation facilitate communication between actors operating at different levels of scale. This enables them to spread their ideas rapidly, to establish and maintain contacts with distant partners, to negotiate forest policies and undertake joint activities. In contrast to the situation in which forest policies are the mandate of national governments, negotiating and formulating forest policies is now a multi-scale process which integrates three major competing interests. In this process, forests represent a global common resource, a sovereign resource to be used by the state to further national interest, and a local common resource to which local forest dwellers and indigenous peoples have primary property rights (Brown 2001, 896). Local factors that encourage partnerships in forest management For a long time, policies aimed at forest areas in most Latin American countries have not been conducive to participatory or partnership approaches. The prevailing perception and attitude towards forests was one of an unproductive ‘green hell’ that should be opened up, developed and integrated into the national economy. Even a country like Costa Rica, now perceived as one of the most progressive in terms of environmental policies, implemented an active frontier policy in the 1950s which supported the conversion of forest into farmland and pasture on the basis of favourable credits and granted property titles to those who ‘improved’ (read: cleared) forestland (Pellegrini, n.d.; Carriere 1990). Agricultural colonisation was also the dominant strategy in the Amazon basin (for instance in Brazil), in eastern Paraguay and in the lowland area to the east of the Andes in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. It also took place – but to a much lesser extent – in Uruguay, Venezuela, Central America and Mexico (see Kay 1998; Dorner 1992, cited in Zoomers and van der Haar 2000, 19). Even though a lot of governments designed programmes for ‘official colonisation’ (the prior selection of target groups, pre-established criteria for land adjudication, food support, etc.), the majority of the ‘colonists’ settled spontaneously. From the moment a colonisation area was opened up by roads, landless and land-poor people decided to leave minifundia areas and settle in the colonisation areas by occupying the land. As soon as they were recognised as de facto occupants (ocupantes de hecho), they claimed the land. Most governments responded ex post by consolidating the situation in these frontier areas through the provision of infrastructure and the granting of land titles. However, the majority of the ocupantes did not succeed in becoming the legal owners of their land. This policy was considered an easier way of dealing with extremely skewed landownership than implementing land reform. Thus, the prevailing practice was, for a long time, one of highly centralised government interventions geared towards opening up and clearing forests rather than conserving or sustainably using them. This began to change from the mid 1980s onwards, mainly due to international pressure. Since then, policies have shifted in the direction of decentralised and sustainable forestry, in which a balance is sought between conservation and development needs. Decentralisation (or more precisely, de-concentration) transferred decision-making powers, including those in forest management, from central to provincial or district levels, as well as to municipal authorities (see Ferroukhi 2003 and Larson 2003 for a review of the roles of municipal governments in forest management in six Latin American countries). It is generally expected that the involvement of actors living in closer proximity to the forest than the representatives of central government provides, in theory at least, an incentive to preserve 9
the forest and manage it on a sustainable basis, while offering better opportunities for local participation and poverty alleviation. Recent studies (Colfer and Capistrano 2005; Ribot and Larson 2005) have shown, however, that this is not always happening due to local elite capture, poor coordination and planning, a lack of local community skills and empowerment, inadequate funding and commitment from higher government officials, plus a tendency to overexploitation. However, decentralisation and the associated entrance of new actors in the forest governance arena provided a stimulus to the formation of sustainable forest management partnerships as actors expect to win from joining power, assets, knowledge and skills with actors at other levels of scale. In addition to the downward extension of state powers, decentralisation also encompasses delegation – the transfer of managerial responsibility to organisations indirectly controlled by the central government such as regional development agencies or parastatal organisations – and devolution (Agrawal and Ribot 1999; Gregersen et al. 2005). In the latter case, decision-making powers are transferred from the central state to local actors, such as indigenous populations, local community organisations or organised groups of forest users. Widespread devolution of forestland to indigenous peoples – with some 100 million hectares set aside for indigenous populations of the Amazon region between 1960 and 1996 (Roldán Ortega 1996, in Assies et al. 2000, 98) – occurred because several conventions advocated an increase in the autonomy and rights of indigenous peoples to manage their own resources. Firstly, the ratification of ILO Convention 169 in 1991, which deals with the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples, led several Latin American governments to adopt new constitutions that recognise the multiethnic and pluricultural character of their countries (Assies et al. 2000). This convention, which has been incorporated into national law in many Latin American countries, facilitated the protection of ‘the total environment of the areas which the peoples occupy or otherwise use’ (Art. 13-2), and focused on ‘safeguarding the rights of the peoples concerned to use lands not exclusively occupied by them but to which they traditionally had access for their subsistence and traditional activities’ (Art. 14-1). In addition, the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted in 1992 recognises the rights of indigenous people to manage their own resources. Another example of devolution of forestland to local communities and forest users can be found in Brazil where, in 1990, the federal government created the possibility of demarcating extractive reserves in which forest-dwelling communities can sustainably exploit the forests for rubber, Brazil nuts and other forest products, while being offered protection from encroachment by farmers and loggers. Until 2000, twelve extractive reserves had been created in the Amazon region, covering 3.3 million hectare and involving about 42,000 people6 (see also Rosendo, Chapter 11). This tendency towards the devolution of forestland to indigenous and other traditional peoples has led to a doubling of the share of forest land reserved for, or actually owned by, indigenous or community groups over the past 15 years, to 21.9 percent (White and Martin 2002 on the basis of data on 24 of the 30 countries with the largest forest cover). Scherr et al. (2003) expect this share to increase in the near future because traditional forest users are continuing to reclaim their rights and an increasing number of countries are implementing laws which recognise these rights. An important side-effect of the increased autonomy and rights to land for local groups in terms of partnerships is that these communities turn into interesting partners for forestry companies which aim to secure access to roundwood and pulpwood in situations of increasing scarcity of forest resources (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002; Scherr et al. 2003). The democratisation wave following the collapse of authoritarian regimes since the early 1980s was another factor that stimulated a partnership approach to forest management, as it has paved the way for a stronger participation of civil society organisations in the formulation of forest policies. One of the consequences of the ‘good governance’ debate mentioned above was a massive increase in the sponsorship by international donors of the development of civil society organisations, whose number grew dramatically in Latin America during the last decade of the twentieth century.7 These organisations increasingly
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form alliances with both national and international actors to shape forest policies and management (see also Chapter 13 by Scholz). To summarise, the combined effects of trends in mainstream development and forest management thinking, shifts in governance, claims for more democracy and the demand for corporate social responsibility led to new types of actors playing a role in forest management, often alongside central governments. At local level these include provincial and municipal governments, indigenous and other forest-dwelling communities and the organisations representing them, and NGOs and civil society organisations. At global level, these include multilateral agencies and environmental organisations like the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN), donors, internationally operating companies and research organisations. These actors find each other in a globalised environment and, at the same time, in a decentralised institutional setting in which there is more potential than ever for the formation of partnerships. Partnerships in the academic debate Forest and tree management partnerships are not only ‘fashionable’ in policy and forestry circles, but are also a relevant topic for numerous academic debates. Partnerships often combine private with public agencies and agents from global, national and local levels of scale. These actors pursue multiple goals, ranging from conservation to livelihood improvement and the reduction of vulnerability. This complexity requires improved insights into the nature of partnerships, the motivation and cultural values of the actors participating in them, and the power imbalances between them. Political environmental geography (see Dietz 1996), in combination with environmental and rural sociology, environmental economics and social forestry, provides such insights. It does so by studying the foundation for environmental behaviour in people’s varied and often conflicting endowment and entitlement systems, in their contrasting valuations of environmental costs and benefits, and in their different capabilities as regards dealing with adversities and opportunities (Ros-Tonen et al. 2005b, 415). The theoretical stances that are most relevant in this respect are the Sustainable Livelihood Approach (Chambers and Conway 1992; Carney 1998; DFID 1999), the entitlement approach (Dietz 1996; Leach et al. 1999; Njogu 2003); the politics of scale debate (Swyngedouw 1997; Peck 2002; Sheppard 2002; Kurtz 2003) and social movement theories (for example Mc Adam et al. 1996; Klandermans et al. 1998, Alvarez et al. 1998). The Sustainable Livelihood Approach, notably the concept of social capital embodied in this approach, offers useful tools with which to analyse the costs and benefits of partnerships. A relevant question in this respect, which is not addressed in any greater detail in this book, is related to whether the partnership forms an essential social asset that increases or decreases access of the poorest sectors of society to natural, human, physical, financial and political-juridical capital, and helps increase the human capability to survive and attain a sustainable livelihood (Chambers and Conway 1992; Bebbington 1999; De Haan 2000; Henkemans 2001; Van den Hombergh 2004). Social and political-juridical capital (including access to financers, decision-making and the legal system) are relevant to further studies in the social context of partnerships, as outside actors involved in partnerships can build bridges to local actors’ wider goals, but may also interfere with these in a negative sense (Cleaver 2005). When developing partnerships between local communities and external (development) organisations, particular attention therefore needs to be paid to the ‘interfaces’ or ‘critical points of intersection or linkages’ between social groups (Long and Van der Ploeg 1989). At these interfaces, power imbalances and conflicting interests with respect to forest and tree resources have an important impact on the structuring and functioning of partnerships. Insofar as power imbalances are grounded on diverging rights and access to resources, they can be understood by using the entitlement approach, which deals with the rights to own, the rights to use and the rights to intervene in resource situations (Dietz 1996, 41; see also the endowments and entitlements concepts in Leach et al. 1999). Njogu (2004) combines this entitlement approach with stakeholder theories developed by BorriniFeyerabend (1996) and Mikalsen and Jentoft (2001), on the basis of which he has drawn up a checklist of actors. Conflicting interests are also based on different ways in which different 11
stakeholders value forest and tree resources. Such a normative pluriformity is particularly strong when the points of view of professional state conservation and management organisations are compared with those of local communities (Long and Long 1992; Wiersum 1999). The fact that the actors involved in partnerships for sustainable forest and tree resource management operate at multiple spatial scales gives rise to ‘politics of scale’ (Swyngedouw 1997; Peck 2002; Kurtz 2003). This involves such questions as the divergence between the scale at which environmental problems such as deforestation occur and the scale(s) at which they can and should be tackled, how the various governance levels can be linked (a question taken up by Mary Brook in Chapter 10), how actors can strategically articulate (or ‘jump scale’ in the terms of Smith 1984) with actors at another scale in order to increase leverage (see Sergio Rosendo in Chapter 11) and the use of scale as a means of legitimating the inclusion and exclusion in political debate (Kurtz 2003). The latter is a problem dealt with by Colchester in Chapter 14, where he notes that one of the main challenges international community forestry networks are facing is to link with local communities and prevent their exclusion from the forestry debate due to not being duly represented. Although the ‘politics of scale’ are not the explicit focus of this book, the chapters that deal with them provide useful insights into the human geography debate on how processes at distinct spatial levels interact and influence each other. Finally, social movement theories can provide crucial insights into the construction of public-private and other partnerships and into how they are debated as panaceas for sustainable development. Political partnerships as vehicles for protests against forest destruction and social exclusion and lobbies for pro-poor and sustainable policies can be the outcome of successful struggles of environmental and other movements. Examples in this book are the alliance against the industrial forestry contract between the Costa Rican government and a paper giant (Chapter 4 by Van den Hombergh), social movements against infrastructure investments in the Brazilian Amazon (Chapter 13 by Scholz) and the international community forestry networks which are the subject of Chapter 14 by Colchester. More so than in the case of the other types of partnerships, political partnerships deal with the underlying causes of deforestation rather than easing them through contracts or forest management projects. The conditions under which political partnerships, through alliances, coalitions and social advocacy networks are able to gain both short-term political success and deal with such underlying causes have been addressed by authors like Alvarez et al. (1998), Mc Adam et al. (1996) and Van den Hombergh (2004), while Kaimowitz (1996), Silva (1997), Keck and Sikkink (1998) and Colchester et al. (2003) addressed the extent to which, and under what conditions, such partnerships can enhance environmental and forest management. Dangers and pitfalls Whether in terms of social or symbolic capital, the general assumption behind partnerships is that, by joining assets, funds, political power, skills and knowledge, the parties involved gain from participation in the partnership and engage in the partnership in the expectation of mutual benefits. Often, this assumption is justified. For example, the A’Ukre Indians in the Brazilian state of Pará would not have gained access to a profitable market for Brazil nut oil were it not for the partnership with The Body Shop (Chapter 7 by Morsello and Adger) and the rubber tappers in the western Brazilian Amazon state of Rondônia would never have gained secure access to forest land in the form of extractive reserves if they had not entered into partnerships with international NGOs that had the political power to influence the World Bank (Chapter 11 by Rosendo). The cases assembled in this book teach us, however, that there are numerous dangers and pitfalls. Below we review the major risks which include failure to deal with diverging interests and power asymmetries, the use of discourses or ‘strategic frames’ to obscure such power imbalances, failure to recognise ecological and social dynamics, exclusion of crucial actors (local and regional governments in particular), adverse effects on local governance structures, a disabling policy environment, high
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transaction costs, limited capacity of partnerships to alleviate poverty and the problem of scaling-up successful initiatives. The challenge of diverging interests Parties involved in a partnership do not necessarily pursue the same objective and may have different reasons for participating. What is most important is that all the partners recognise a common ground which justifies the partnership, that they share the expectation that the partnership will generate benefits and that they recognise each other’s goals in order to create a win-win situation. For instance, by entering into a partnership with a paper company (Van den Hombergh, Chapter 4) the Costa Rican government tried to defend its ‘green image’ of pursuing sustainable development and reforestation, while the paper company sought to secure a cheap supply of pulpwood. Similarly, government actors might be primarily motivated to participate in multi-sector partnerships by the opportunity it offers to attract donor funding, while international environmental organisations seek to promote conservation, and local communities participate in the expectation of improved livelihoods. Whether the stakeholders’ end goals are practically compatible is an issue that needs to be considered in any kind of partnership. The examples in this book demonstrate that such multiple objectives can often be reconciled, but that there is also a serious risk that the agenda of the most powerful will dominate. Several authors therefore stress the importance of brokers who act as ‘watchdogs’ (for instance Cleuren, Chapter 3; Vermeulen and Mayers, Chapter 6; Morsello and Adger, Chapter 7). Such a watchdog is an organisation (governmental, non-governmental or international) that defends the interests of the least powerful, both in the stage of negotiating the goals and terms of the partnerships and during their implementation. Failure to reduce power asymmetries Marginal population groups remain dependent on external actors for access to markets and often lack the skills and power to negotiate prices and conditions in their favour. This holds true for most company-community partnerships, particularly those involving indigenous populations living in isolated areas, with poor knowledge of the official language and little experience with outside markets, contracts and marketing arrangements. Although the A’Ukre Indians in Brazil who are involved with The Body Shop benefit from premium prices, the Chachi Indians in Ecuador who are engaging in a company-community and a multi-sector partnership for sustainable community forestry (Chapter 2 by Rival) feel that income and services from trading logs in the partnerships are not any better than in the business-as-usual scenario. Moreover, donor funds can create new dependencies which render the projects unsustainable when donor support comes to an end. Capacity building and empowerment of the least powerful may help to address these power asymmetries. Framing as a means to obscure power imbalances The risk of framing partnerships as relationships based on shared interests is that power imbalances are neglected. Several authors (Escobar 1995; Fairhead and Leach 2003; Van den Hombergh 2004) have stressed the fact that such notions as ‘partnerships’, ‘sustainable management’, ‘biodiversity conservation’, ‘decentralised governance’ and ‘community participation’ are politically charged and represent diverging conceptions by communities, NGOs, international donors and other actors that are part of the partnership. As Van den Hombergh makes clear in Chapter 4, such discourses or strategic frames may obscure actually or potentially conflicting interests. In the case she describes, a paper company was able to create goodwill with the Costa Rican government by using a ‘green’ discourse (‘esta compañia reforestadora’ – this re-afforesting company), despite the fact that its primary interest was to secure the supply of pulpwood on cheap terms through leasing arrangements with farmers (who in the end were caught in the ‘partnership’ that prevented them from benefitting from more lucrative land uses). Frames may also obscure power imbalances at community level. For instance, by framing all villagers as ‘poor and marginalised’ (Rival, Chapter 2), partnerships neglect gender, ethnic and generational differences which may lead to the unequal distribution of benefits from the arrangement. 13
In the analysis of partnerships it is important to consider frames or discourses in two respects. Firstly, it is important to reveal how the prevailing discourse is the result of a power play (‘the discursive battlefield’), the winner of which is capable of determining what options are being considered. Silva et al. (2002, 64-66), who adapt the classification by Dryzeck (1997), distinguish four major paradigms as far as the sustainable management of forest resources is concerned. They use these paradigms to explain the ‘political will’ for policy reform in a number of countries, but they can also be used to explain the shape and direction that a partnership takes. The paradigms in question are: - The market paradigm, the proponents of which rely on markets rather than on government interventions. This paradigm is reflected in the company-community partnerships described in this book; - The technocratic planning paradigm which considers forestry issues as technical problems for which government regulation and intervention is needed. This one is reflected in the public-private partnerships, in particular the Trinidad case described by Fairhead and Leach in Chapter 5; - The social forestry paradigm which prefers local communities to be in control of forests and benefit from them. Examples which reflect this paradigm are the multi-actor partnership with Chachi Indians described by Rival in the next chapter and the international community forestry networks described by Colchester in Chapter 14). - The conservation paradigm which emphasises environmental services to be conserved either through market mechanisms (for instance the Guiana Initiative described by Van Dijck in Chapter 9), government interventions or community-based approaches (reflected in two of the multi-scale partnerships described by Brook in Chapter 10). As proposed by Lebel et al. (2004), it is useful to add a fifth perspective to these, namely the ‘Nobody Knows Best’ perspective which recognises multiple actors and mixed interests in forest management. This paradigm prevails in most of the multi-sector partnerships described in this book, for instance in the case of extractive reserves (Chapter 11 by Rosendo) and a multi-sector partnership for ‘ecological’ paper production (Chapter 12 by Otsuki). In many of these cases, however, the discourse of international donors tends to dominate (see also Chapter 14 where Colchester mentions this as one of the bottlenecks in international community forestry networks). A second reason to pay attention to discourse development or framing is that the deconstruction of frames provides insight into the real environmental and socioeconomic effects of partnerships and who are being affected by them. Failure to recognise ecological and social dynamics One of the framings specific for partnerships for sustainable forest management relates to the desired outcome of the management effort and the assumed stability of the management system – an issue raised by Fairhead and Leach in Chapter 4. Fairhead and Leach argue that the framing of stability – both in ecological and social terms – should be contested for ecological dynamics and social unpredictabilities inherent in the system. Failure to take these into account may lead to tensions between the partners (in this case woodworkers and the Forestry Division of Trinidad), based on a frustration that goals and rules are constantly adapted or that commitments by the Forestry Division are not met due to ‘unexpected’ events such as fires resulting from prolonged droughts. The same applies to social dynamics, such as the power plays of large-scale sawmill operators who, despite the fact that they are not part of the partnership, gain preferential access to timber resources thanks to their political connections and influence. Like Rosendo in Chapter 11, Fairhead and Leach argue for nonequilibrium thinking and the application of adaptive management principles in order to deal with these dynamics. The risk of exclusion Partnerships may exclude crucial social actors, thus creating new inequalities by preferring some villages or actors to others and by unequally distributing funding, training and resources. The exclusion of whole villages has been observed by Rival with respect to Chachi 14
villages in the multi-sector community forestry partnership in Ecuador described in the next chapter, and by Brook (Chapter 10) with respect to the multi-scale co-management initiatives with Miskitu Indians in Nicaragua. In both cases, exclusion also occurred in other manners. In the Chachi case, the better-off (leaders and teachers) were the ones who benefited most from capacity building, while the Miskitu Indians were hardly involved in decisions regarding the implementation of the forestry initiatives. A similar situation can also occur involving individual poor farmers who are considered to be the ‘less promising’ partners, as in the case of the leasing arrangement with the paper company in Costa Rica (Chapter 4). Here, the company preferred relatively larger and more fertile tracks of land than those of poor farmers. In Chapter 14, Colchester points to a particular kind of social exclusion, caused by mediating NGOs which do not represent local communities but do replace their voice in multi-scale political partnerships. A disabling policy environment Several pitfalls occur where partnerships are based on neo-liberal ideas about a retreating role of the state. Several authors in this book argue that a strong public actor is needed for several types of partnerships to thrive. This holds true for multi-sector partnerships like the one described in the next chapter by Rival which failed to translate the aim of reconciling conservation and development goals at the regional policy level due to overlooking the regional government as a partner for social reform. It is also observed by Cleuren in Chapter 3 who notes that excessive bureaucracies hamper small producers to successfully engage in public-private partnerships for the sustainable production of bamboo in Ecuador, while the government is a relatively weak partner for such partnerships due to lack of expertise, financial means and vision. Vermeulen and Mayers argue in Chapter 6 that the voluntary arrangements in company-community partnerships based on corporate social responsibility are insufficient to guarantee sustainable and socially just practices and that an adequate public policy is needed to set the regulatory framework under which the companies are to operate. A combination of these arguments can be found in Chapter 13 by Scholz with respect to political partnerships against the adverse effects of large-scale infrastructural investments in the Brazilian Amazon region. She concludes that local governments lack the capacity to be a partner of much better informed civil society actors in the analysis of the risks of such investments and the possible solutions for them, while the legal institutions are too weak to provide adequate protection of the environment. Adverse effects on local governance structures As Brook makes it clear in Chapter 10 and Rosendo in Chapter 11, multi-scale partnerships involving external and international actors may erode traditional governance structures by introducing new leaders, or by neglecting or replacing local leadership. This is a serious threat to the sustainability of the partnership as local people might not feel part of the process. Transaction costs Particularly in multi-sector partnerships, the danger lies in the limits of managing complexity. The involvement of a large number of actors, often operating at different geographical scales, implies high transaction costs, which may prejudice the success of the partnership. As Vermeulen and Mayers note in Chapter 6, this might also be the case in company-community partnerships when a business has to deal with a large number of farmers. Partnerships and poverty alleviation It is highly questionable whether poverty can be alleviated through forest conservation and management alone. Various cases presented in this book make it clear that partnerships are not a panacea for lifting people out of poverty. Moreover, the majority of the poor in Latin America live outside the forest and many of those living in the forest try to escape from poverty by moving out. However, be it through conviction or circumstance, others do depend on the forest as a means of livelihood. Ways will have to be found to alleviate poverty among those population groups living inside and outside the forest and those who are and who are 15
not willing to stay there. Examples such as the case described by Otsuki in Chapter 12, where a multi-sector partnership aimed at the sustainable production of ‘ecological paper’ in the Brazilian Amazon region deliberately involves the urban poor, are in a minority. Scaling up Of course there are also success stories in which there only seem to be winners. The partnership between Muaná Alimentos Ltd and poor communities in Brazilian Amazonia exploiting (açaí) and palm heart of the Euterpe oleracea palm (Chapter 8 by Van Andel) seems to be such a case. However, the up-scaling of successful experiences is a problem. Partnerships should not be romanticised. The political power of large landowners and multinational corporations is strong and the public sector is weak. For the time being, the influence of outsiders such as the Church, NGOs and international donors remains essential. Conditions for successful partnerships In the light of the potential dangers and pitfalls highlighted above, the question is raised of what are the conditions for successful partnerships. ‘Success’ is interpreted here primarily in terms of (1) the capacity of partnerships to reconcile multiple interests and power imbalances; and (2) their potential to contribute to ecologically sustainable and socially just forest and tree resource management. We thereby distinguish between success factors related to partnerships as a social process which is unrelated to the specific objective of that partnership, and conditions related to the specific aim of achieving sustainable forest and tree resource management. Power balancing When constructing partnerships, account should be taken of diverging interests, social inequalities and power imbalances between partners (for example according to gender, ethnicity, resource availability and being rural or urban). In order to deal with them brokers might be needed, as well as empowerment of community-based organisations and producer associations. Traditional governance structures and local knowledge should be integrated into multi-scale initiatives in order to do justice to cultural diversity and legal pluralism. The objectives of the partners should be compatible or at least be mutually respected. Partners may participate on the basis of different motivations, but they should at least acknowledge each other’s goals and interests. This requires a fair negotiation process during the formation of a partnership, involving local groups in all stages of planning in order to ensure ownership. Care should also be taken to ensure that all stakeholders are identified, since negotiations will be ineffective if partnerships exclude people or prevent important actors from participating. Security, trust, access to information, feedback mechanisms, a transparent dialogue and preparedness to compromise are other prerequisites for successful negotiations. Rights (for instance to a sustainable livelihood) rather than stakes should be the leading principle in negotiating the aims of the partnership. Realism Objectives and the prospects of benefits should be realistic in order not to raise false expectations – participants should believe and obtain evidence that they benefit from the partnership, that there is ‘something in it’ for them. Local value adding is important in this respect, as well as the inclusion of multiple components in forest and tree resource-related livelihoods (timber and non-timber products, including the provision of environmental services where feasible; natural and domesticated forest products; forest production and farming). Sound business should be combined with broader development goals, which in addition to implementing sustainable forestry and agroforestry, requires lobbying for pro-poor forest policies at national and international level. Furthermore, the number of partners should be limited as dealing with a high number of partners involves high transaction costs. By forming associations and producer groups, these transaction costs can be lowered. In order to generate a realistic view of ecological and socioeconomic impacts, frames like ‘sustainable forest management’ and ‘reforestation’ should be duly deconstructed and their desired 16
conditions made clear. Finally, a realistic and long-term timeframe should be set, but one that is sufficiently flexible to deal with changes. Partnerships require mutual trust between the partners and hence long-term commitment. Risk and conflict management Agreement should be reached on the responsibilities between the partners (for specific tasks, environmental damage, etc.) in accordance with the scale at which an actor operates and the assigning of complementary rather than overlapping or conflicting tasks. Care needs to be taken to make sure that risks are equally shared and that mechanisms are in place to cope with risk (diversification, insurances, etc.). It should be realised that partnerships cannot act as a substitute for the role of government and that public investments – and hence the participation of public actors in partnerships – remain crucial. Proper monitoring and conflict resolution systems should be created in order to be able to solve conflicts might these arise between the parties in the partnership. An enabling institutional environment With respect to the objective of realising sustainable forest and tree resource management that also contributes to poverty alleviation, the cases in this book make it clear that the following institutional conditions play a crucial role: - Secure tenure and resource-use arrangements; - A clear legal framework for the forest and tree resource products; - An enabling, de-bureaucratised policy environment specifically at regional and local level, which may require ‘environmental capacity’ building of public sector actors through lobbying and exposure to global civil society networks; - Capacity building of small farmers and forest dwellers in sustainable exploitation techniques; - Access to markets, with particular attention for the potential of markets for environmental services and domestic markets, for well-functioning marketing channels and the grading of smallholders’ production to the required market standards; The structure of this book The cases presented in this book are arranged according to the type of partnership under discussion, with the next two chapters covering several kinds of partnerships. Rival (Chapter 2) and Cleuren (Chapter 3) both deal with Ecuador and compare various types of partnerships ranging from public-private and company-community partnerships to multi-sector or intersectoral partnerships (referred to as ‘coalitions’ by Rival) and political partnerships. While focusing respectively on community forest management and sustainable bamboo production, they pay attention to the conditions that make partnerships successful in terms of environmental sustainability, economic feasibility and poverty alleviation. The two chapters that follow focus on public-private partnerships In Chapter 4, Van den Hombergh describes the political discourse relating to a public-private partnership for the sowing of Gmelina arborea trees for pulpwood on farmland between the Costa Rican government and a paper industry, and the political coalition against it. Fairhead and Leach (Chapter 5) focus on a public-private partnership between government foresters and artisanal woodworkers for the sustainable production of timber in Trinidad. In both chapters, the authors argue for the deconstruction of frames like ‘sustainability’, ‘equilibrium’ and ‘stability’. Chapters 6-8 deal with company-community partnerships which combine business goals of corporate social responsibility and ‘green’ marketing with the development goals of poor rural communities. The authors highlight conditions for the success of these partnerships, each from a different perspective. Based on a review of company-community partnerships in the wood fibre industry all over the world, Vermeulen and Mayers (Chapter 6) deal with operational features affecting the efficiency, equity and durability of the partnerships, presenting the lessons learned with respect to transaction costs, power sharing, risk, conflicts and the policy environment. Morsello and Adger (Chapter 7) focus on benefits 17
and drawbacks of a partnership between The Body Shop and a community of A’Ukre Kayapó Indians in the Brazilian Amazon region as far as income distribution, social and cultural disruption, empowerment and conservation are concerned. Van Andel (Chapter 8) focuses primarily on the conditions under which fruit (açaí) and palm heart of the Euterpe oleracea palm can be harvested in a sustainable manner within the framework of a partnership between a Brazilian company and poor communities in Brazilian Amazonia . The four chapters in Part IV present multi or intersectoral partnerships for sustainable forest and tree resource management which involve actors that operate on multiple scales. The case of the Guiana Shield Initiative (GSI), presented by Van Dijck in Chapter 9, differs from the other multi-sector partnerships presented in this book because it does not primarily implement sustainable forest management, conservation and/or sustainable livelihood projects, but prioritises the creation of financial mechanisms for the conservation of ecoservices such as carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation as a basis for generating the funds for such projects. The three chapters that follow illustrate the main challenges of multi-sector partnerships, such as dealing with diverging goals and interests, power imbalances and donor dependency. In Chapter 10, Brook does this on the basis of four multisector partnerships in indigenous Miskitu villages in Nicaragua, while Rosendo (Chapter 11) focuses on partnerships relating to the creation, legal implementation and development of extractive reserves in Rondônia, Brazilian Amazonia. Otsuki (Chapter 12) uses an ‘ecological paper’ project in the Brazilian Amazon region to demonstrate how institutionally complex it is to set up multi-sector partnerships for localised production chains. She argues that this complexity is needed in order to be able to link the funds, markets, research capacity, technical skills and institutional support needed to produce the paper in an ecologically sustainable and economically feasible manner to the benefit of both the rural and urban poor. The last two chapters deal with political partnerships, alliances or networks. In Chapter 13, Scholz examines the environmental capacities (the ability to devise solutions for environmental problems) of the actors involved in two such partnerships relating to unsustainable infrastructure investments in Brazilian Amazonia. In the last chapter, Colchester looks at factors that determine advocacy effectiveness, communications, relationships with donors and linking with communities and social movements. He does so on the basis of a review of international community forestry networks, with a focus on networks that are based in, or are particularly relevant to, Latin America. Considering the power imbalances inherent in all types of partnerships reviewed in this book, his main message is of universal value. According to Colchester, all actors involved in partnerships need to reflect on the extent to which the voice of local communities is heard, whether they are adequately represented in decision-making and whether agendas are not imposed on them. Failure to do so may lead to new forms of social exclusion. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Eduardo Silva, Anthony Hall and Freerk Wiersum for their constructive comments to an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks are also due to the participants in the congress on ‘Globalisation, localisation and tropical forest management in the 21st century’ that was held in Amsterdam on 22-23 October 2003 for their contribution to the discussion on partnerships. References Agrawal, A. and Ribot, J.C. (1999) ‘Accountability in Decentralization. A Framework with South Asian and West African Cases’, Journal of Developing Areas, Vol. 33, pp. 473-502. Alvarez, S.E., Dagnino, E. and Escobar, A. (eds) (1998) Culture of Politics, Politics of Cultures. Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements. Boulder: Westview Press. Arnold, J.E.M. (2001) Forests and People. 25 Years of Community Forestry. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
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Mikalsen, K.H. and Jentoft, S. (2001) ‘From User-Group to Stakeholders? The Public Interest in Fisheries Management’, Journal of Marine Policy, Vol. 25, pp. 281-292. Njogu, J.G. (2004) Community-Based Conservation in an Entitlement Perspective: Wildlife and Forest Biodiversity Conservation in Taita, Kenya. (PhD thesis University of Amsterdam). Leiden: African Studies Centre. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2001) Local Partnerships for Better Governance. Paris: OECD. Peck, J. (2002) ‘Political Economies of Scale: Fast Policy, Interscalar Relations and Neoliberal Workfare’, Economic Geography, Vol. 78, No. 3, pp. 331-360. Pellegrini, L. (n.d.) ‘A Forest Policy Analysis of Costa Rica, Mexico and Brazil: from the Outcomes to the Hypothesis. Amsterdam: IVM Institute for Environmental Studies (URL: http:/www.unisi.it/santachiara/aree/conf_phd_econ2003/conference_siena/ papers/pellegrini.doc). Ribot, J.C. and Larson, A.M. (eds) (2005) Democratic Decentralization through a Natural Resource Lens. Oxon: Routledge. Rischard, J.-F. (2002) ‘Global Issue Networks: Desperate Times Deserve Innovative Measures’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26, No.1, pp. 17-33. Roldán Ortega, R. (1996) ‘Notes on the Legal Status and Recognition of Indigenous Land Rights in the Amazonian Countries’. Background Paper of the Expert Seminar on Practical Experiences Regarding Indigenous Land Rights and Claims, Whitehorse, Canada, 24-28 March 1996, UN-ECOSOC, E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/1996/6/Add.1. Ros-Tonen, M.A.F., Zaal, F. and Dietz, T. (2005a) ‘Reconciling Conservation Goals and Livelihood Needs: New Forest Management Perspectives in the 21st Century’, pp. 329 in M.A.F. Ros-Tonen and T. Dietz (eds) African Forests Between Nature and Livelihood Resources: Interdisciplinary Studies in Conservation and Forest Management. Lewiston NY and Lampeter, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press. Ros-Tonen, M.A.F., Dietz, T., Adano, W.R. and Njogu, J.G. (2005b) ‘Sustainable Forests and Livelihoods: Romantic Illusion or Environmental and Social Necessity?’, pp. 393-419 in M.A.F. Ros-Tonen and T. Dietz (eds) African Forests Between Nature and Livelihood Resources: Interdisciplinary Studies in Conservation and Forest Management. Lewiston NY and Lampeter, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press. Scherr, S., White, A. and Kaimowitz, D. (2003) A New Agenda for Achieving Forest Conservation and Poverty Alleviation: Making Markets Work for Low-Income Producers. Washington: Forest Trends / Bogor: Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Schmidt, R. (1987) ‘Tropical Rain Forest Management: A Status Report’, Unasylva, No. 39, pp. 2-17. Sheppard, E. (2002) ‘The Spaces and Times of Globalization: Place, Scale, Networks and Positionality’, Economic Geography, Vol. 78, No. 3, pp. 307-330. Silva, E. (1997) ‘The Politics of Sustainable Development: Native Forest policy in Chile, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Mexico’, Journal of Latin America Studies, Vol. 29, pp. 457-493. Silva, E., Kaimowitz, D., Bojanic, A., Ekoko, F., Manurung, T. And Pavez, I. (2002) ‘Making the Law of the Jungle: The Reform of Forest Legislation in Bolivia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, and Indonesia’, Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 63-97. Smith, N. (1984) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Speth, J.G. (2002) ‘The Global Environmental Agenda: Origins and Prospects’, pp. 11-30 in D.C. Esty and M.H. Ivanova (eds) Global Environmental Governance: Options and Opportunities. New Haven, CT: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Swyngedouw, E. (1997) ‘Neither Global nor Local: “Glocalization” and the Politics of Scale’, pp. 137-166 in K.R. Cox (ed.) Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local. New York: Guilford Press.
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United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) (1992) Agenda 21: Programme of Action for Sustainable Development: Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. Washington DC: United Nations. United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) (2004) ‘United Nations Forum on Forests. Global Partnership for Forests for People’. Fact Sheet 1. URL: http://www.un.org/esa/forests/pdf/factsheet.pdf. Valencia, E. and Winder, D. (1997) El Desarrollo una Tarea en Común. México DF: The Synergos Institute/Red Observatorio Social Idea. Western, D. and Wright, M. (1994) ‘The Background to Community-Based Conservation’, pp. 1-12 in D. Western, M. Wright and S. Strun (eds) Natural Connections. Perspectives in Community-Based Conservation. Washington: Island Press. Wiersum, K.F. (1995) ‘200 Years of Sustainability in Forestry: Lessons from History. Environmental Management, Volume 19, No. 3, pp. 321-329. Wiersum, K.F. (1999) ‘Normative Pluriformity in Forest Management: Professional and Community Perspectives’, pp. 365-379 in FAO (ed.) Pluralism and Sustainable Forestry and Rural Development. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. White, A. and Martin, A. (2002) Who Owns the World’s Forests? Forest Tenure and Public Forests in Transition. Washington: Forest Trends. World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987) Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zoomers, A. and Van der Haar, G. (eds) (2000) Current Land Policy in Latin America. Regulating Land Tenure under Neoliberalism. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers/Vervuert.
Endnotes 1
2
3
4 5 6 7
Notwithstanding the trend towards alliances and partnerships, the quest for conservation – now or never! – is also still leading to exclusion or expulsion of local populations without due compensation or dialogue on alternative forms of use and management. The cases presented in this book focus, however, on situations in which cooperation with local population groups is sought. Hematti (2002) describes multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) as ‘processes which aim to bring together all major stakeholders in a new form of communication, decision-finding (and possibly decision-making) on a particular issue. They are also based on recognition of the importance of achieving equity and accountability in communication between stakeholders, involving the equitable representation of three or more stakeholder groups and their views. They are based on democratic principles of transparency and participation, and aim to develop partnerships and strengthened networks between stakeholders. MSPs cover a wide spectrum of structures and levels of engagement. They may consist of dialogues on policy or grow into consensus-building, decisionmaking and the implementation of practical solutions. The exact nature of any such process will depend on the issues, its objectives, participants, scope, time lines, etc.’ (URL: http://www.earthsummit2002.org/msp/#Introduction). Relevant forest-related documents adopted at UNCED include the ‘Forest Principles’ and Chapter 11 on Combating Deforestation in Agenda 21. URL: http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/partnerships/csd11_partnerships_decision.htm.index. URL: http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/partnerships/partnerships.htm. URL: http://www.ibama.gov.br. Citing Valencia and Winder (1997), Balbis (2001) mentions 200,000 non-profit-making agencies in Brazil and 10,000 organisations in Mexico, covering a broad range of social welfare organisations, advocacy groups, groups and associations for the defence of civil rights or specific interests, and groups for the promotion of arts and culture. According to the same author, a census of communal action associations carried out in Colombia in 1993 revealed that there were 42,582 such associations or juntas, 5,437 NGOs, 2,700 sports clubs and over 600 voluntary organisations.
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2. Alliances for Sustainable Forest Management: Lessons from the Ecuadorian Chocó Rain Forest Laura Rival*
This chapter compares and contrasts two alliances that formed and developed over the last fifteen years in one of the most endangered ‘hotspots of biodiversity’, the Ecuadorian Chocó rain forest. Both have actively promoted the sustainable forest management of remaining portions of the Chocó forest owned by indigenous communities. One alliance, a coalition of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), promotes the cooperative commercialisation of community timber and puts pressure on timber merchants to raise the price they pay to producers. The other refers to a company-community partnership, comprising a large forestry and wood-processing group which has joint ventures with a number of indigenous communities and which is now seeking green certification for its logging operations. Both alliances operate locally by promoting and implementing community forestry projects, and nationally by participating in the elaboration of Ecuador’s new forest law. This chapter analyses their sustained effort to reform unsustainable logging practices by comparing their intervention in four domains: land titling, the implementation of sustainable forestry and agroforestry), social development (including capacity building and the creation of new community institutions) and national policy reform. In accordance with Vermeulen and Mayers (see Chapter 6 of this volume) we define partnership in this chapter as an arrangement between two or more parties (in this case a business and indigenous communities) with the expectation of mutual benefit (in this case: income from harvesting timber for the community and secure timber supplies for the company) (compare Vermeulen and Mayers, this volume). We distinguish partnerships from coalitions (or multi-sector partnerships as they were called in Chapter 1) because the latter involve various additional actors, not as direct stakeholders but as facilitators. The term alliance is used as a general term that covers all kinds of formal and informal interactions between multiple stakeholders aimed at achieving a common goal. Finally, the term network is used here for loosely related individuals and organisations which exchange information, knowledge, and (as in the case of networks of Afro-Ecuadorians) sometimes resources. In the case of NGO networks (for instance a community forestry network) or a company network (for example the Corporación de Manejo Forestal Sustentable (COMAFORS; Corporation for Sustainable Forest Management) discussed later in this chapter), joint actions around a common goal might also be undertaken. In this case the network corresponds with what was called a policy-oriented or political partnership in Chapter 1. This analysis is based on ethnographic research in various Chachi villages in the River Cayapas basin (Map 2.1). Several focus-group discussions were also carried out with villagers and NGO staff. Ethnographic fieldwork was complemented with an extensive review of project documents. The last section presents the views of Chachi forest dwellers, who feel that their basic economic needs, values and development aspirations have not been fully understood or attended to by either of the alliances. Whereas indigenous communities have benefited to some extent from land legalisation and training programmes, they are bitterly disappointed that, far from improving, the price they obtain for their logs has continued to fluctuate and even fall. The chapter ends with some of the lessons learnt from this case study, in the hope that they will contribute to the successful building of pro-poor alliances.
*
International Development Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, Mansfield Rd, Oxford OX1 3TB, United Kingdom. E-mail:
[email protected].
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Figure 2.1 – The study area in the Cayapas basin in the Chocó rain forest, Ecuador The Ecuadorian Chocó rain forest and its traditional inhabitants As can be seen in Figure 2.1, the Ecuadorian portion of the Chocó rain forest lies in the province of Esmeraldas, which produces over 60 per cent of the country’s timber and plywood. Esmeraldas, which is one of the poorest and most marginal regions of Ecuador, has had a long history of being cut off from the country’s main poles of development, Guayaquil on the Pacific coast and Quito in the Highlands. Similarly to the rest of Ecuador, its economic development was triggered by the oil boom. 1 The trans-Andean pipeline terminates near Esmeraldas city, where the country’s main refinery and modern port facilities were built in the early 1970s. The oil boom triggered a construction boom2 which gave rise to industrial logging. Until the early 1960s, logging in the dense forests of the Ecuadorian Chocó region was restricted to areas around natural harbours and the banks of larger rivers, where loggers exclusively extracted precious hardwood species such as guayacán (Minquartia guianensis or Tabebuya guayacán) and chanul (Humiriastrum procerum). Large veneer and plywoodproducing firms were created in the late 1970s (Salazar et al. 1998), approximately a decade after the opening up of the agricultural frontier in Northwest Esmeraldas (Redclift 1978; Little 2001). Logging companies opportunistically followed colonists that grabbed public forest land along new roads and deforested their newly acquired properties (Southgate and Whitaker 1994, 24-26; Little 2001, 107-109). Industrial logging also triggered a unique deforestation dynamic in the region under study, where it encouraged wide-spread logging with chainsaws to supply its under-utilised sawmills3, built a complete road infrastructure and self-financed the maintenance of state roads (Sierra 2001, 332). With one quarter of its biodiversity lost in the last twenty-five years, the province has, according to some sources (for example Sierra and Stallings 1998), become one of South America’s most rapidly deforested areas. The forest cover has been reduced to 6 per cent of its original range due to commercial logging and agricultural activities, in particular African palm plantations and cattle ranching (Sierra and Stallings 1998). Most of the remaining forest cover lies around and within the 204,420 hectare Reserva Ecológica Cotacachi-Cayapas (RECC; Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve). The RECC was the first protected area to be created on mainland Ecuador in 1968. Because it was designed to represent a maximum number of life zones (eleven) from the Cotacachi volcano (at 4,939 m above sea level) all the way down to the lowest tropical rain forests of the River Cayapas watershed (at 30 m above sea level), the RECC protects only a small portion of the Chocó forest, the bulk of which actually lies outside the reserve, in what has become the RECC’s buffer zone, a region
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relatively densely populated with Afro-Ecuadorian and indigenous communities (see Map 2.1). The rural population of the province of Esmeraldas, which is distributed along the main rivers, has developed a mixed economy relying on a combination of extractive activities, shifting cultivation, cattle ranching and trade, in which forest products have come to occupy a central role. For the past twenty years, selling timber has constituted the principal – if not the exclusive – source of cash income for a majority of households. Forest resources were not traditionally perceived as limited and access to forested land was subject to little regulation or control. Land was not owned as such, but was under the control of those who cultivated or used it. This situation is completely different today since permanent settlements with legal status have been created and communal lands titled. Whenever most communities close to markets exhaust their forest reserves, the least accessible ones are still in possession of valuable natural resources. Although both the Chachi Indians (or Cayapas) and Afro-Ecuadorians are very poor and marginalised, and although their adaptation to the environment and to the regional market economy is broadly similar, there are some notable differences between them. For historical reasons that fall beyond the scope of this chapter, the Afro-American population is varied and highly mobile. Afro-Ecuadorians travel extensively between the Colombian and Ecuadorian Chocó regions, as well as between urban centres and remote rural communities. Each adult depends on a vast network of relatives, fictive kin, trade partners and friends. These networks extend from the upper course of the numerous rivers that criss-cross the tropical forest to their lower course and to the coast, where the main towns are located, both in Ecuador and in Colombia. In addition to connecting rural folks with urban dwellers, these networks connect better-off people with less well-off people and play an essential role in the mobilisation of resources. It is through them that Black people gain access to labour, goods and services. Since their historical participation as slave labour in gold mining, Chocoan Afro-Americans have formed an ethnic identity based on extractivism and trade. In Northwest Esmeraldas, logs are today the principal forest product they extract and trade. Having steadily moved upriver in the aftermath of the banana boom (in the 1960s) to settle in what the Chachi Indians consider their homeland, Afro-Ecuadorians greatly outnumber the latter. Being fluent speakers of the national language (Spanish) and being much more integrated into the regional economy than native Indians, they feel racially, socially and culturally superior to the Chachi. The Chachi feel dominated and exploited by the Afro-Ecuadorian population, which despise them as backward, poor and ignorant. This is particularly true in the context of the timber trade, where patron-client relationships tie Chachi forest owners and log producers to Afro-Ecuadorian traders and intermediaries. The Chachi have tried to protect their ethnic identity with strict rules against mixed marriages and a series of institutions aimed at preserving ethnic endogamy. The research findings also suggest that Chachi and AfroEcuadorian families differ in terms of their development aspirations. Whereas AfroEcuadorian families tend to see their remote river dwellings as safety homes to return to when things go wrong in the cities where they work, Chachi people continue to be attached to their traditional subsistence economy. They are extremely proud of their system of bilingual, intercultural education and their main concern today is to secure sufficient financial resources to maintain an adequate level of health and education provision, as well as to finance the schooling and professional training of their own teachers, doctors and foresters. Environmental degradation in the region is directly related to the fact that cash is, on the whole, generated by selling wood from the forest.4 It is also related to the fact that the wood commodity chain is strikingly asymmetrical. Those located at the beginning of the chain (typically Chachi Indians) massively exploit natural resources and their own labour force. Sierra (2001, 334) has found that excessive waste during felling and sawing amounts to up to 60 per cent of the original timber volume, an estimate corroborated by this research. The introduction of chainsaws in the later 1960s considerably changed labour arrangements. Chainsaws are rented, lent or given in exchange for timber, and this with a mix of cash and goods and services between wood producers and intermediary traders. Typically, groups of Chachi extract wood from forested land they own as a family or as a community and sell it to
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an intermediary who has capital, for example a shop, a small sawmill and/or a party with close links with large timber companies. Women participate indirectly in this activity by cooking for the men and by ensuring the family’s subsistence when the men are away cutting or transporting wood. Traders and intermediaries, who are located closer to the end of the commodity chain, realise substantial profits. However, maximum profits are realised in the processing plants owned by white urban industrialists.5 Implementing sustainable forest management through alliances Community forestry was introduced in Ecuador by various actors (bilateral aid agencies, timber companies, conservation NGOs and others), who sent government officials, foresters and indigenous leaders to Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula of Southeast Mexico. Mayan foresters were also invited to visit Northwest Ecuador. Both the voluntary and the industrial sectors used the Quintana Roo model in the mid 1990s to develop social forestry programmes. The significant ecological, geographic, institutional, economic, social and cultural differences existing between the two regions and their forests were largely ignored or overlooked. However, the heraldic reference to Quintana Roo allowed antagonistic alliances to define a common – albeit implicit – objective. They would both work at implementing community forestry as the most efficient way to raise local living standards and protect the environment, while competing acrimoniously on the issue of who is the best partner for local communities and the most legitimate agent of sustainability (Rival 2003). The general features of the two alliances are presented in more detail below, after which their characterisation as respectively a partnership and a coalition is discussed. Sustainable Use of Biological Resources (SUBIR) SUBIR (1991-2002) was the largest United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-financed integrated conservation and development programme (ICDP) in the world. Launched in 1991, after two years of negotiation and preparation, SUBIR was USAIDEcuador’s response to the country’s unsustainable use of natural resources. In a 1986 USAID document, worries were expressed that natural resources were not being developed as longterm economic resources: Ecuador has more biological diversity per unit area than any other country in Latin America and, perhaps, the world. More importantly, much of this diversity is endemic to Ecuador. Ecuador has already sacrificed substantial future economic opportunities as a result of careless and short-sighted management of natural resources. The mismanagement of natural resources makes poor sense for the environment and for development. Efforts must be made to ensure that Ecuador’s remaining valuable soil, water, forests and coastal resources are managed rather than destroyed, as they are developed in the coming years (USAID 1986, 3). SUBIR, which was allocated US$ 15 million over a ten-year period, proposed to identify, test and develop economically, ecologically and socially sustainable resource management models in selected conservation units and their buffer zones in order to preserve the biodiversity and improve the economic well-being of communities through their participation in the management of renewable natural resources (USAID 1986, 4). As Figure 2.2 shows, this ambitious pro-conservationist programme was implemented for the first four years (Phase I) by a consortium comprising The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), under the directive of USAID in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture (MAG). Phase I combined five areas of activity carried out in five different regions of Ecuador: regional organisational strengthening, protected area management, ecotourism, sustainable land use, forestry and agroforestry, and research and monitoring. This
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Project directorate Ministry of Agriculture – USAID SUBIR Consortium – CARE, TNC, WCS Regional Coordination Borbón office
Regional Coordination Ibarra office
Regional Coordination Borja office
Regional Coordination Coca office
NGOs, Second level organisations (SLOs) and government agencies working in partnership with SUBIR on the five components Organisational strengthening
Protected area management
Ecotourism
Sustainable land use, forestry and agroforestry
Research & monitoring
Counterpart organisations (recipients of aid) SLOs and communities Figure 2.2 – Organisational structure and activities SUBIR Phase I (1991-1993) was far too ambitious. The scale of intervention (five major protected areas and their buffer zones) and the number of partner organisations (three major international environmental NGOs, two important Ecuadorian environmental NGOs, twelve government agencies and at least forty regional and local indigenous and peasant organisations) were far too big for efficient management and field implementation. Besides, there were serious tensions between CARE, which gave priority to social development, and TNC and WCS, which gave priority to biodiversity conservation. There was no consensus within the consortium on objectives, priorities, roles or responsibilities, and expectations were unrealistic. Moreover, planned activities for protected areas overlapped – when they did not openly conflict – with parallel government activities funded under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) . Fundación Natura, the main Ecuadorian NGO involved in SUBIR for Phase I left the consortium to work with the government on strengthening the national protected area system. It was then decided that SUBIR would focus exclusively on the buffer zones of two protected areas, the RECC in Northwest Ecuador (the Chocó region) and the Yasuní National Park in eastern Ecuador (the Amazonian region). Phase II (1994-1997) saw a complete reorganisation of the coalition in charge of implementing the ICDP (see Figure 2.3). The project was also reoriented, both geographically and in terms of priorities. CARE, which became the coalition’s leader, was in charge of the project’s overall management, as well as of the social and human development components (such as legal and social work training and local participation), fair trade, land legalisation and environmental policies. CARE selected two newly-formed Ecuadorian conservation NGOs, namely Ecociencia and Jatún Sacha, to replace Fundación Natura. The former was responsible for biodiversity research, GIS mapping, data management and ecotourism and the latter for implementing natural resource management and biodiversity protection and, more specifically, for promoting sustainable land use through community forestry and agroforestry. With operations now taking place via Ecociencia and Jatún Sacha, the Ecuadorian partners developed one of the first large-scale biodiversity monitoring initiatives in Ecuador. Forest cover was monitored through the comparative analysis of satellite imagery. Between 1999 and 2002, various parts of the ecosystem were measured bi-annually, namely birds, amphibians, 27
Funding Agencies – USAID and others Sector Manager USAID (monitoring & evaluation)
SUBIR project
CARE
Social & human development
Commercialisation (fair trade)
National NGO partners
Land legalisation & environmental policies
Ecociencia • Biodiversity research • GIS mapping • Data management • Ecotourism
Jatun Sacha • Land zoning • Community forestry • Agroforestry
Partners (aid recipients): RECC buffer zone communities, SLOs & Ministry of the Environment Figure 2.3 – Organisational structure and activities SUBIR Phase II (1994-1997) and Phase III (1998-2002) scarab beetles and aquatic vertebrates. Ecociencia developed a rigorous experimental design to measure and compare the impacts of different forest use intensities with the scientific assistance of WCS. Thus, after reorganisation, ICDP activities around the RECC comprised five components: (1) social and human development, including institutional strengthening and organisational development; (2) commercialisation and marketing of sustainably produced wood and non-wood products through fair trade mechanisms; (3) policy and legal intervention; (4) biodiversity research and monitoring; and (5) improved land use through land zoning, community forestry and agroforesty. Phase II put special emphasis on the legalisation of traditional communal lands (particularly for the benefit of Afro-Ecuadorian communities) and on the training of community ‘paralegals’. The latter are elected community members who have received formal training and a diploma in law in Quito and who are involved in conflict resolution. Phase III (1998-2002), which involved the same basic set of partners, shifted the emphasis from land titling to agroforestry and sustainable forest management. Two commercial networks were organised, one for agricultural products, and one for wood products. In the last two years of the project, efforts were geared towards strengthening local participation and people’s sense of ownership over the project, and SUBIR collaborated more closely with regional organisations, particularly the Unión de las Organizaciones Negras del Norte del Ecuador (UONNE; Union of Black Organisations of Northern Ecuador). Harvest agreements between logging companies and Chachi communities A leading Ecuadorian wood-processing group anxious to secure its long-term wood supply forms the core of the company-community partnership discussed here. A large part of the wood it processes comes from Esmeraldas Province. The commercial group’s long-term objective is to rely exclusively on timber from its own plantations and from privately-owned
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natural forests which are managed sustainably. To this effect, it developed an ambitious plan of plantation, afforestation and reforestation in the early 1990s, but failed to secure World Bank funding to implement it, due to the international political hostility towards logging companies operating in tropical rain forest areas (Rival 2003). As explained elsewhere (Rival 2003), this leading commercial group took advantage of government schemes intelligently, investing capital in technological improvements and making the most of tax relief and other measures aimed at promoting afforestation. It also benefited from a government ban on log exports, which kept the price of unprocessed wood artificially low (Salazar et al. 1998). More recently, the group’s major productive constraint has been to secure regular and cheap supplies of wood in a region where the most accessible timber has already been cut and where the agricultural frontier has been stabilised. Although the group would prefer, if given the choice, to acquire more private land or operate in forest concessions owned by the state, it finds the signing of long-term agreements with indigenous communities to be a satisfactory solution, mainly because these communities are made up of a relatively small number of families (twenty to thirty) owning sizeable extensions of primary forest (between 2,000 and 12,000 hectares). This for-profit commercial organisation designed a sustainable forestry project based on the Quintana Roo participatory community forest management model, which led to the signing of twenty-year harvest agreements with several Chachi communities. Its main actions have been (1) to obtain the legalisation of Chachi communal forest land; (2) to strengthen local and regional Chachi organisations; (3) to implement agroforestry programmes; (4) to encourage community-based forest management; and (5) to rationalise land use in each community through ‘zoning’ plans. The wood-processing group has also played a major role in the creation of the COMAFORS, which represents the industrial and commercial interests of the Ecuadorian forestry sector in national and international forums and lobbies the national government on forestry issues. The group is now seeking green certification for its wood products from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). In order to understand the nature of the three harvest agreements signed between the wood-processing group and three Chachi communities in 1993, one must take into consideration the particular structure of the wood-processing group, which constitutes a holding. The holding comprises a complex and vertically integrated set of companies engaged in logging, timber processing, veneer and plywood production, furniture-making, retailing, and more. In addition to sharing commercial interests, these companies are also linked through close family ties. Despite being an integral part of the holding, the private foundation in charge of silviculture, plantation development and sustainable forest management must work hard to convince the other parts of the holding that its activities are essential to the group’s overall economic growth and business prosperity. Whereas environmental NGOs, particularly militant NGOs such as Acción Ecológica (close to Greenpeace), refuse to regard the private foundation as an NGO because of its obvious links with the private sector which finances it, the wood-processing group’s direct competitors remain highly suspicious of its professed green and ethical business position. To gain trust nationally and acceptance internationally, the wood-processing group has thus involved a third, ‘civil society’ party – a leading Ecuadorian environmental NGO in one case, and an international development agency in another one. Alliances, partnerships or coalitions? Although they both try to find solutions to forest destruction and short-term profit seeking, and although they both involve the building of trading relations with primary producers in economically vulnerable communities, the two alliances under discussion differ markedly. One gives priority to human development and conservation values, the other to business. For SUBIR, the development of ethical trading is part of a wider set of actions aimed at creating social and economic incentives to enrich human capital and protect the environmental integrity of a region rich in biodiversity over the long term. For the commercial group, managing forests sustainably in partnership with local owners and producers is a business imperative and economic performance has to be the driving force. Unsurprisingly, therefore,
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the structure of the two alliances is markedly different and they do not involve the same number of partners. While SUBIR comprises a great number of NGOs and local communities, the company-community partnerships essentially involve one of the companies belonging to the commercial group, its private foundation responsible for sustainable forestry and a Chachi village. Various additional actors are involved in SUBIR, not as direct stakeholders but as facilitators, such as the Federación de Centros Chachi del Ecuador (FECCHE; Federation of Chachi Centres of Ecuador), foresters and consultants from aid agencies, who offer their technical and financial support, and a national environmental NGO. Therefore, we propose to use the term ‘coalition’ for the SUBIR alliance (for which multi-sector partnership was used in Chapter 1) and reserve the term ‘partnership’ to describe the development of timberharvesting operations between the private sector and forest dwellers.6 Comparative analysis of the two sustainable forest management projects Sustainable forest management is a highly contested concept (see for example Lele et al. 2000; Putz et al. 1999; Lugo, 1999; Bawa and Seidler 1998). The wood-processing group uses the criteria and indicators of the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) for sustainable forest management in natural tropical forests, which it applies exclusively to species producing roundwood. SUBIR, in contrast, has adapted internationally recognised protocols to develop simplified management plans for harvesting all marketable wood in community and family-owned native forests. However, the stated objectives (decelerate deforestation and reduce poverty by setting up community forestry schemes) of both alliances have much in common. Below, some common issues that both alliances are dealing with are discussed, namely land tenure, the implementation of sustainable forestry and agroforestry programmes, social and human development (including institutional strengthening) and efforts to influence national and international level forest policies. Land tenure Ecuador ratified ILO Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples in 1998, the year when it also adopted a new constitution which formally recognises the multi-ethnic and intercultural character of the Ecuadorian state and gives special land rights to indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian peoples.7 These changes have led both alliances to focus greatly on communal land titling as part of their sustainable forest management initiatives. This is entirely consistent with current policy thinking, which calls for the massive devolution of ownership and access rights from national governments to local communities (White and Martin 2002). It is during Phase II that SUBIR focused on communal land rights. Its support went primarily to communities in the RECC buffer zone, but it also intervened on behalf of AfroEcuadorian communities living close to the Colombian border, in a desperate attempt to stop oil palm culturists from transforming 20,000 hectares of Chocó primary forest into African oil palm plantations. SUBIR has been instrumental in helping Afro-Ecuadorians transform their status from poor landless settlers encroaching on state forests to traditional communities with exactly the same legal rights as indigenous people. SUBIR’s original aim was to obtain from the Ecuadorian government the legalisation of an ethnic reserve (territorial circumscription) around the RECC, but this plan proved very controversial and was abandoned. SUBIR’s land titling programme was highly participatory. Over sixty Chachi and Afro-Ecuadorian legal paratechnicians (paralegales in Spanish) were formally trained in law. Working collaboratively with partner NGO Ecociencia, the communities were actively involved in drawing local maps and establishing community boundaries. The business-community partnership also managed to bring about the legalisation of indigenous communal lands, but exclusively for the three Chachi communities that signed a harvest agreement with the wood-processing group. The group’s private foundation views the uncontrolled colonisation of public forests as a major threat to sustainable forest management. It has used its political influence to get the army to expel land invaders from the natural forests and the plantations it owns, as well as from the Chachi forests it plans to log over the next twenty years. Finally, the foundation has also been involved in a complex and lengthy
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process of land purchase, allowing for sustainable forest management activities on its own land. Forestry and agroforestry Both alliances have been very active in designing and implementing forestry and agroforestry programmes as part of their general sustainable forest management strategy. Both ensure that the forest is inventoried and that the community land is divided into different use zones. Areas for agriculture are clearly demarcated from areas for timber harvesting and reforestation, and communal forests are separated from family-owned parcels. Protected forest reserves are also created. SUBIR started to experiment with sustainable logging during Phase II, when other NGOs active in the RECC buffer zone intensified their fight against the low stumpage prices paid to producers (see below). Forestry came to the fore during Phase III, but not as an independent activity. For SUBIR, community forestry (sustainable timber extraction) and agroforestry and agro-silvo-pastoralism (improved agriculture and animal husbandry for family consumption and commercialisation) were two sides of the same coin – improved land management. Improved land management, the responsibility of the NGO Jatún Sacha (with technical assistance from WCS) was conceived as a conservation priority. As a result, SUBIR community forest and family farm management plans were far more pro-conservation than government legislation required them to be. SUBIR was pursuing in parallel a programme promoting the commercial development of wood, non-wood and farm products, a problematic undertaking in an area with few comparative marketing advantages and high transport costs. The coalition found it very difficult to integrate forestry, agroforestry and marketing activities coherently, and soon realised that local villagers did not have the capacity to participate in the three areas simultaneously. The private foundation in charge of sustainable forest management on behalf of the business-community partnership has developed detailed forest management plans for each of the Chachi communities which signed a harvest agreement. These plans, which are extremely detailed, technical and costly, have not been written with, or for, the villagers. As such, they clearly illustrate the more technocratic approach to competence and management found in the private sector. Forestry, reforestation and afforestation activities have varied a great deal from case to case and from year to year. On the whole, the private foundation tends to be pragmatic, responding to specific local demands or government regulations, rather than taking initiatives. As forestry operations are highly specialised and mechanised, minimal skill transfer has taken place. For a few years, substantial resources were allocated to develop forestry and agroforestry experiments in one particular community, and the programmes developed were as impressive and as successful as those implemented by SUBIR in terms of community participation and land-use improvements. Social and human development Both the SUBIR coalition and the company-community partnership consider social and human development as being an intrinsic part of sustainable forest management. Both have included local participation, capacity building and skill transfer in their programmes, and both have worked at fostering new community organisations to support sustainable forest management and conservation actions. Social development has often meant offering economic incentives and subsidies. SUBIR rationalised the use of incentives and subsidies on the ground that poverty causes environmental degradation. Subsidies in the companycommunity partnership were justified more pragmatically. Although for the logging company, social investments are more costly than direct payments, it prefers to pay for logs with services as this is the most efficient way of motivating local populations to trade their timber and of securing exclusive access to particular tracts of forest. From the villagers’ perspective these services allow for the acquisition of public goods of greater value than the direct distribution of – relatively meagre – profits for timber sales. Social investments and services also have the great advantage of lessening the risk of the corrupting influence of money or market integration of indigenous people. However, villagers have criticised both the SUBIR
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and company’s approaches. SUBIR was criticised for introducing unwanted economic activities (such as the husbandry of goats or chickens) supported with the wrong economic incentives (such as the gift of unnecessary community buildings), while the logging partners have been criticised for keeping timber prices extremely low, not generating higher community benefits than those obtained without sustainable forest management and not offering valued investments such as medical attention, scholarships and access roads on a continued basis. Villagers are well aware that companies are paying for the wood with services that the government should provide, and that this is the main reason why prices are low. However, they feel they have no other alternative to obtain badly needed roads, medical attention and support for education. Both alliances have also included capacity building and skill transfer in their programmes. The level of literacy and numeracy is low in Esmeraldas Province, where a significant proportion of rural dwellers have only a few years of primary schooling. The task of communicating highly technical and legalistic bodies of knowledge is therefore daunting, and so is that of strengthening local organisations, starting local producer networks and building community forestry committees. This is especially the case with the Chachi population, which uses the vernacular Chapalaa’chi in all its public meetings. SUBIR provided excellent training in very specialised fields (law, social planning, accountancy, forestry, botany, biology, marketing, and others), both for its Ecuadorian NGO partners and for the buffer zone communities, where more than 200 para-technicians were trained. SUBIR initiated the documentation of Chachi indigenous ecological knowledge during Phase I and II. A significant number of NGO workers and community members participated in workshops and conferences held in Ecuador, the USA or Central America, and visited other Latin American ICDP project sites. The main criticism heard in the communities is that, whereas the training programme benefited students and young professionals (foresters, ecologists and agronomists employed by the NGOs), it did not benefit the local population to the same extent. There was resentment that the best qualified jobs went to ‘nationals’ and not to ‘Esmeraldeños’, while unskilled positions invariably went to villagers. People were also disappointed that the training certificates issued by SUBIR were not recognised by employers. However, the depth and scope of the knowledge acquired by indigenous para-biologists, as well as their evident passion for their newly acquired science, represent real achievements. The timber company’s pragmatic response to the community’s demand for mainstream education has in many ways satisfied the Chachi population more than SUBIR’s more long-term approach to human development and capacity building. The company routinely pays the wages of primary school teachers and offers scholarships in the communities that control forest tracts it wishes to exploit. As part of the more formal, legallybinding harvest agreements with Chachi villages, this practice has been expanded to include paying for the upgrading of school buildings, for the training of teachers and other professional development activities and for college studentships (which have benefited primarily the children of teachers and leaders). The company even helped one community to obtain help from the government for the creation of a new technical college specialising in agroforestry. Teaming with various NGOs, the company has also organised capacity building workshops in its partner Chachi villages to strengthen their level of socio-political organisation and develop their awareness of the links between development and the environment. Finally, whereas SUBIR ‘specialised’ in Afro-Ecuadorian culture and supported numerous artistic events, the wood-processing group took the survival of Chachi culture as its cause célèbre and employed a young Ecuadorian anthropologist to document Chachi lore, ethnobotany and shamanism. Both alliances have also worked at fostering new community organisations to support sustainable forest management and conservation actions. SUBIR’s activities in this field did not last long enough to help communities capture some of the potential value added in exploiting timber for higher value markets. CARE produced a number of illustrated booklets written in Spanish and Chapalaa’chi on various aspects of forestry. Ecociencia published a number of oral traditions and folkloric tales. During Phase III, CARE focused its efforts on Afro-Ecuadorian Second Level Organisations which are regional organisations created by
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federate black villages and communities to defend their common ethnic interests and their shared interests in relation to government authorities and private companies. However, given that these organisations depended almost entirely on SUBIR’s financial and technical aid, they found it extremely difficult to continue to function when the project ended. National level sustainable forest management policies Like many countries that are rich in biodiversity, Ecuador went through an intense period of legal and institutional reform in the 1990s. Both alliances actively participated in the debate on the governance of biodiversity, and both contributed to the design of new national policies involving land tenure and forestry. What started as a fierce, regional market dispute ended up as a national policy-reform dialogue. It was not until the late 1990s, when Fundación Natura began to promote the introduction of FSC standards in Ecuador, that environmental NGOs gradually relaxed their hostility towards the private sector, seen as the main culprit for the destruction of the Ecuadorian Chocó rain forest. For almost ten years (1988-1997), environmental NGOs active in Esmeraldas Province combined efforts to help Chachi and Afro-Ecuadorian log producers strengthen their bargaining power, and to force the logging companies to raise their prices. There were several attempts to form a local producer cooperative, break the monopoly of the few large companies operating in the region and find niche markets abroad. A range of obstacles prevented the success of these initiatives. SUBIR’s strong disagreement with other NGOs on the commercialisation of timber from private family plots was a major obstacle. SUBIR objected to the ethical trading of logs produced with no management plan and proceeding from forest lands earmarked for agriculture. Whereas SUBIR could not support the community forestry network proposed by other campaigning NGOs, the latter could not help local producers receive a higher share of the final product value. Although, by the end of the 1990s, SUBIR had failed to reform the wood market, it had nevertheless acquired considerable knowledge of the timber trade in Ecuador, and had come to realise that the powerful plywood and veneer companies were there to stay. It had also realised that alternative economic activities, such as non-timber forest product commercialisation and ecotourism, had very limited prospects. Wood remained the most valuable product of the Chocó forest, and prices would remain below international levels for a long time to come. SUBIR therefore concentrated all its efforts on influencing national forestry policies. SUBIR used its local forestry activities to foster policy change at national level. Without being multi-scalar in the true sense, SUBIR intervened on multiple fronts at various scales, with a view to defending the biodiversity of one specific region, namely the Ecuadorian Chocó. Land titling, forestry policies, forest management plans or economic incentives were not ‘spatialised’ interventions. Rather, they formed a combined set of actions, all directed towards one objective: influence the design and the implementation of the policy framework that was to govern the sustainable management of Ecuador’s native forests. Sustainable forest management was therefore a political campaign for SUBIR, which adopted a wide range of strategies to bring policy issues to the forefront of the national debate. Ecuadorian foresters who led Jatún Sacha’s community forestry programmes were instrumental in re-writing the Forest Law. In (often uneasy) collaboration with the private sector, they also wrote a number of law enforcement decrees that permit the application of the sustainable forest management principles found in the new law, before its actual ratification by Congress.8 These norms, which in many ways represent a compromise between the industrial and the conservation NGO sector, were agreed after many heated discussions and were then adopted by the Ministry of the Environment. Known as ‘Norm 32’, they govern the preparation of forest management plans and timber licenses. SUBIR foresters also proposed the regencias forestales (forest engineers who are granted the authority to supervise the implementation of forest management plans) and vigilencia verde (the monitoring of timber shipments at key road sites by NGO members), which are now fully incorporated into the proposed forest law and associated operative norms. These two concepts have been derived from Chilean and Costa Rican pilot projects carried out jointly by the government, the private sector and environmental NGOs.
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If SUBIR can be said to have been proactive on multiple policy fronts, the community-company partnership has had a more reactive role in the national forest policy debate. It has basically opposed or amended the proposals coming from SUBIR. Both alliances include highly qualified and competent foresters with a wealth of experience in community forestry, and both have collaborated closely with the Ministry for the Environment. If the private sector’s input in the policy debate regarding the new forest law has been more reactive than proactive, this is changing with the new debate on environmental services and carbon trade, in which COMAFORS is taking the lead (Barantes et al. 2001). It will be interesting to see what types of alliances will arise in the future to implement the provision of environmental services, and what the involvement of local partners will be. Local governments were almost entirely absent from the two alliances analysed here, despite the fact that indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian leaders highly value this form of political representation. Conclusions This chapter compared two alliances in the Ecuadorian Chocó rain forest which both aim to promote sustainable community-based forest management. Both alliances emerged in response to global campaigns to save the world’s remaining tropical rain forests. With a biodiversity conservation agenda, SUBIR (the multi-sector partnership) moved from leading the planning of a national, protected area management system to implementing an integrated conservation and development programme in one buffer zone. In a response to growing wood scarcity, international pressure, the impossibility of securing financial aid for plantation development and new market opportunities, the wood-processing group implemented company-community business partnerships with several indigenous communities, from which it initially acquired timber through intermediaries. The two alliances differ considerably with regard to the number of actors involved. Whereas the coalition encompasses a wide variety of direct and indirect stakeholders and facilitators, the company-community partnership involves just the direct partners needed to harvest, process and commercialise the wood. Notwithstanding this difference, their scope of action shows a remarkable similarity, as they are both engaged in securing land tenure arrangements, implementing sustainable forestry and agroforestry, investing in social and human development (including capacity building and organisational strengthening), and efforts to influence national and international forest policies. However, the company engaged in the wood harvesting agreements with Chachi indigenous communities adopted a more pragmatic approach in these respects, as the company’s activities were geared towards securing a sustainable supply of wood for the plywood industry. The coalition, in contrast, had a broader scope of action, in accordance with its objective of combining biodiversity conservation with development objectives and income generation on a sustainable basis. The achievements in terms of securing communal property rights, implementing sustainable community forestry and capacity building of both initiatives were, however, not necessarily more impressive or satisfactory. Both initiatives succeeded in securing communal property rights for traditional forest dwellers, but neither of the alliances was able to alter the power imbalances between the partners involved in the coalition or partnership. This partial success corresponds to the overlap between global consensus (the devolution of state-owned land is a good thing in itself, and even more so when the new proprietors are indigenous or traditional communities) and local aspirations (communal land is perceived as an important local asset). However, one should not overlook a whole range of complex rights issues that are emerging, which involve gender and generational inequalities, as well as new tensions between individual, family and collective rights. This is particularly true of Afro-Ecuadorian communities, where wealthier families and successful urban migrants prefer the market freedom afforded by individualised land titles to the constraints and limits of inalienable collective rights. As a result, it is most likely that the land issue, far from being resolved, will become explosive in the near future. The Chachi Indians continue to be dependent on external actors for the price and services they receive for the logs without much power to influence the situation. They realise that the benefits of sustainable forest operations are not better or longer lasting than in the business-
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as-usual scenario. Benefits from capacity building are also unequally distributed, favouring the teachers and leaders, urban dwellers and NGO staff more than the rural poor. In neither of the initiatives have the poor been equal parties in the partnerships. Both initiatives helped promote sustainable community forestry in a region experiencing rapid and wasteful deforestation, but it has proven very difficult to institutionalise change without reforming regional wood markets and price structures since this requires a more comprehensive regional effort. This was attempted in 1996, when the Provincial Government of Esmeraldas, the national forest and parks government agency Instituto Ecuatoriano Forestal de Areas Naturales y Vida (INEFAN; Ecuadorian Forest Institute of Natural Areas and Life) and the German agency for development cooperation (Geselschaft für Technologische Zusamenarbeit; GTZ) signed a cooperation agreement to promote a multi-stakeholder debate, define a regional strategy for the sustainable development of Esmeraldas, and agree an emergency action plan. In addition to representatives from the pro-conservation coalition and the business partnership, many other actors were invited to participate in this initiative. These included members from other NGOs active in the province, government institutions, local universities, international aid agencies, indigenous organisations and professional organisations representing the timber industry. A dialogue on prices was initiated between these various actors and a fledgling community forestry movement comprising villages that had elected forest committees and had formed a commercial association. 9 Lively discussions took place on the development priorities for Esmeraldas, the creation and strengthening of a system of public administration and control, and the generalisation of community forest development schemes as a means to improve social welfare. However, actors soon disagreed on priorities. While some advocated the design of a rational road system financed in partnership by the Ministry of Public Works, the Prefecture of Esmeraldas, the private sector and local communities through their harvest funds, others defended low-impact technology and the self-management of natural resources by small communities. The latter were opposed to large companies managing natural resources on the communities’ behalf (Rival 1997). The political views were too divergent to result in any meaningful consensus and local communities were too under-represented for the process to be really democratic. However, this initiative was a positive first attempt to widen the debate on the sustainable economic development of Esmeraldas. It showed that solutions to conflicts between conservation and development priorities, and between business and social priorities, require the setting up of a more comprehensive region-focused coalition and a more decisive effort to involve local and regional government agencies, particularly those involved in socioeconomic welfare. Whereas local governments should play a key role in propoor coalitions, the two alliances discussed here did not consider Esmeraldas’ regional government as a partner for social reform. They processed land rights for communities with the national land titling agency and lobbied various ministries for legal reforms in the forestry sector. However, neither addressed the regional development of the province of Esmeraldas in its entirety. Their priorities for action were framed by the assumption that Chachi and AfroEcuadorian villagers are equally poor and marginalised, a condition assumed to cause environmental degradation, hence requiring intervention. SUBIR, in particular, tended to offer ready-made solutions based on assumptions, preconceptions and pre-determined social categorisations, instead of carrying out preliminary research on actual household budgeting and other basic local economic conditions, or on local needs, views, values and aspirations. Local people were often treated as project recipients or targets rather than as true partners in research, development and conservation. The challenges faced by producer associations in remote and marginal areas such as the River Cayapas are daunting. The poor forest dwellers of Esmeraldas know that their communal forests are relatively small and that the volumes of remaining timber are dwindling rapidly. They produce primarily for their own subsistence10 and use wood sale revenues to cover large, unexpected costs. Many families depend heavily on government benefits paid directly to mothers and on the material aid received through state schools. Many Chachi people think that if education and health were entirely free, and if transport was cheaper, their worst economic difficulties would be solved. They would like to have access to basic services
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(health, education, road infrastructure and public transport) provided by government agencies, rather than by NGOs or the private sector. Only the latter has so far benefited from protected market conditions, through subsidies, tax breaks, soft loans, and guaranteed international niche markets (see Hall 2000, and Angelsen and Wunder 2003). This trend can perhaps be curbed if the initiative for the sustainable development of Esmeraldas gathers fresh momentum. Acknowledgements This chapter is based on a research project carried out between 2000 and 2003. I gratefully acknowledge the funding provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (ROOO238375). Field research included thirty-two weeks in Chachi villages along the Cayapas, Santiago and Onzole rivers and twenty weeks in the offices of NGO, private companies and government agencies. I am very grateful for the research contribution of Dr Nathalie Walker, who is documenting the biodiversity of the Ecuadorian Chocó rain forest and its representation by international conservation NGOs. Our research objective was to document empirically the processes by which actors understand change and modify their practices, build better institutions and challenge previous structures of power. References Angelsen, A. and Wunder, S. (2003) Exploring the Forest-Poverty Link: Key Concepts, Issues and Research Implications. CIFOR Occasional Paper 40. Bogor: Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Barrantes, G., Chaves, H. and Vinueza, M. (2001) El Bosque en el Ecuador. Una Visión Transformada para el Desarrollo y la Conservación. Quito: Comafors, IPS, GTZ. Bawa, K.S. and Seidler, R. (1998) ‘Natural Forest Management and Conservation of Biodiversity in Tropical Forests’, Conservation Biology Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 46-55. Hall, A. (ed.) (2000) Amazonia at the Crossroads. The Challenge of Sustainable Development. London: Institute of Latin American Studies. Landell-Mills, N. and Ford, J. (1999) Privatising Sustainable Forestry. A Global Review of Trends and Challenges. Instruments for Sustainable Private Sector Forestry Series. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Lele, U., Kumar, N., Husain, S.A. and Kelly, L. (2000) The World Bank Forest Strategy: Striking the Right Balance. Washington DC: The World Bank. Lewis, D. (2000). Promoting Socially Responsible Business, Ethical Trade and Acceptable Labour Standards. Report for DFID, Social Development Department. Electronic document available at URL: http://66.102.9.104/DFIDstage/Pubs/files. Little, P. (2001) Amazonia. Territorial Struggles on Perennial Frontiers. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lugo, A. (1999) ‘Will Concern for Biodiversity Spell Doom to Tropical Forest Management?’, The Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 240, pp. 123-131. Mayers, J. and Vermeulen, S. (2002) Company-Community Forestry Partnerships. From Raw Deals to Mutual Gains? Instruments for Sustainable Private Sector Forestry Series. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Putz, F.E., Dykstra, D. and Heinrich, R. (2000) ‘Why Poor Logging Practices Persist in the Tropics’, Conservation Biology Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 951-956. Redclift, M. (1978) Agrarian Reform and Peasant Organisation on the Ecuadorian Coast. London: The Athlone Press. Rival, L. (1997) Evaluation of Assistance to Durini’s Participatory Forest Management with Chachi Communities in the Province of Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Unpublished Report for Department For International Development (DFID). Rival, L. (2003) ‘The Meaning of Forest Governance in Esmeraldas, Ecuador’, Oxford Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 479-501. Salazar, P., Southgate, D., Camacho, C., Stewart, R., Barreto, P. and Arguello, M. (1998) Distorciones en el Mercado Forestal del Ecuador. Quito: USAID.
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Sierra, R. (2001) ‘The Role of Domestic Timber Markets in Tropical Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Ecuador: Implications for Conservation Planning and Policy’, Ecological Economics Vol. 36, pp. 327-340. Sierra, R. and Stallings, J. (1998) ‘The Dynamics and Social Organization of Tropical Deforestation in Northwest Ecuador, 1983-1995’, Human Ecology Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 135-61. Southgate, D. and Whitaker, M. (1994) Economic Progress and the Environment: One Developing Country’s Policy Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press. USAID (1986) ‘Natural Resource Management and Conservation of Biodiversity and Tropical Forests in Ecuador. A Strategy for USAID.’ May 26, 1986. Mimeo. White, A. and Martin, A. (2001) Who Owns the World’s Forests? Forest Tenure and Public Forests in Transition. Washington DC: Forest Trends.
Endnotes 1
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Until the oil boom in the mid-1970s, Ecuador was one of the poorest countries in Latin America, largely dependent on agricultural exports and with very little industry. According to Sierra (2001, 331), the Ecuadorian construction sector consumes 60 per cent of the sawnwood produced from natural forests in Ecuador, one-third of which comes from Northwest Ecuador. According to Sierra (2001, 337), sawmills currently work at 60 to 77 per cent of their capacity. He also mentions that veneer exports increased by 268 per cent between 1982 and 1993. Chocoan rural dwellers participate in both hardwood and softwood markets, each with its own challenges and advantages. Several people interviewed estimate that logging companies make a profit of over 200 per cent by purchasing standing trees from poor farmers and indigenous peoples. Lewis (2000), Landell-Mills and Ford (1999) and Mayers and Vermeulen (2002) all offer similar definitions of business partnerships between private companies and communities, to be differentiated from alliances between cooperating civil society associations. The controversial notion of ‘indigenous territorial circumscription’, which links territorial affiliation to ethnic identity has yet to be approved by the National Congress. Given the industrial sector’s hostility to the proposed forest law, the law is still under review by the Ministry of the Environment and has yet to be passed by Congress. This short-lived network called ‘red de manejo forestal comunitario and frente de comercialización de productos forestales’ made various attempts to improve logging techniques and commercialise community wood at better prices in the late 1990s. A large number of families are still producing for their own consumption and subsist on less than US$ 12 per month.
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3. Organising Partnerships for Ecuador’s Emerging Bamboo Sector Herwig M. Cleuren*
In Ecuador, bamboo is gradually evolving from a natural forest product into a crop growing in patches of forested land. The bamboo species with the largest potential is Guadua (Guadua spp.) and this species is at the centre of debate today in Ecuador. The main question is how to harness a promising forest product in a sustainable way and reconcile the different needs of smallholders and the industry. It is also necessary to identify how growers and consumers are going to find each other and under which conditions a balanced bamboo market can develop. In Ecuador, various types of partnerships for the sustainable production and marketing of bamboo are becoming operational, involving small-scale producers, bamboo -processing or consuming industries, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and/or international organisations such as the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR). This chapter analyses under which conditions the parties involved are willing to participate, what the opportunities are for developing the production of bamboo in Ecuador and under which conditions partnerships can generate an income for smallholders. We will highlight several bottlenecks and pitfalls that hamper the development of the bamboo sector and how the situation is exacerbated by a lack of sound governmental policies. We will argue for a type of partnership that incorporates plantations into a mosaic of land use, of which small-scale farming, the provision of environmental services and other livelihood components form a part. However, a number of bottlenecks should be removed before such multi-scale and multisector bamboo partnerships can become successful and offer a win-win scenario for all the parties involved. Approach and research questions This chapter analyses experiences with the production of bamboo in Ecuador that the author gathered between 2000 and 2003 as an INBAR collaborator. The INBAR established a regional office in Guayaquil in 2000 in order to stimulate bamboo sector development in South America. INBAR has a pro-poor focus and stimulates low-income farmers in the first place, but it also considers the collaboration with industrial partners essential for the sector’s development. Ecuador has been chosen as the focal point because Ecuador’s coastal region still possesses large areas of bamboo combined with a rural tradition of its utilisation and a strong urban construction sector that uses bamboo poles. This situation offers a variety of entry points for further sector development. The central research question of this chapter is whether multi-sector bamboo partnerships are viable in Ecuador and what kind of partnerships are likely to be the most successful. A crucial issue in this respect is whether stakeholders are willing to collaborate and which partnership format is the most suitable for the delivery, processing and marketing of raw or semi-processed bamboo. An additional question concerns the conditions under which partnerships should operate in order to meet the goals of environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation and economic viability. The fact that the bamboo sector is slowly emerging as one that has only recently been recognised as a part of the formal economy of Ecuador gives this chapter an exploratory and hypothetical character. This chapter first presents the particular biological, processing and marketing characteristics of bamboo that determine the product range and processing opportunities. Secondly, it investigates the pros and cons of applying bamboo in construction, furnishing and handicraft. Thirdly, it indicates what environmental services bamboo can perform as a *
Department of Latin American Studies, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands. E-mail:
[email protected].
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forest product and what opportunities this offers as regards linking up with the currently developing markets for carbon credits. Subsequently, the focus is on various experiences with partnerships that are aimed at sustainable and pro-poor bamboo production and the segments of the economy in which the development of such partnerships looks particularly promising. The domestication of bamboo Bamboo in its wild form originates from tropical forests. However, farmers often reshape the natural forest into small agroforestry plots with managed bamboo stands. This process of integrating wild forest species into agro-ecosystems is referred to as domestication. In Ecuador, the domestication of bamboo seldom means that new plantations arise in agricultural zones, but rather that farmers plant and manage bamboo on small dispersed patches of unused, marginal parts of their land along riverbanks and slopes. Researchers and development agencies consider small farmers living in forested areas to be the main beneficiaries of bamboo domestication and commercialisation, and assume that planting and managing bamboo could enable them to become crucial agents in forest protection, sustainable resource management and rural livelihood development. Bamboo domestication as such is nothing new and has already been going on for centuries. However, the difference is that it is now being promoted as an economic strategy for smallholders in developing countries with (legal or illegal) access to forested land that contains bamboo stands. Such a strategy is complex due to the incongruence that often exists between policies relating to crops and forest products, the barriers that hamper opportunities for smallholder farmers and the different actors controlling the resource, the various aspects of domestication, and commercialisation. Today, the interest in bamboo commercialisation and the related market, policy and institutional aspects have become a policy issue in Ecuador, but a number of failures and disillusions have also generated scepticism about the economic viability and ecological sustainability of bamboo production. The current debate focuses on domestication and possible multi-sector partnerships that may enhance the value of bamboo through improved harvesting, utilisation, trade and marketing. Major goals are sustainable utilisation, combined with an equitable distribution of the benefits by closely involving local people. Income generation and the contribution of bamboo to poverty alleviation and livelihood security of rural people are as important as product development, industrial output and export. Bamboo: a worldwide potential that fails to take off Bamboo is recognised as one of the most versatile non-wood forest products, supplying raw material for a wide range of applications and contributing to the livelihood of forest-adjacent people (Vantomme et al. 2002). It is typically an auto-regenerative grass and harvestable every four years, allowing low-income farmers and women to be involved in harvesting and processing. A crucial difference exists between woody bamboo, with diameters between ten to thirty centimetres that can be grown commercially, and grass-like herbaceous species, with thinner diameters and less economic value. Woody species are abundantly present in all tropical forests worldwide. Resource management and recent technical improvements mean that woody bamboo can now be converted into a durable raw material for construction purposes and a wide range of semi-industrialised products such as paper, bamboo board, flooring, furniture, furnishes, activated carbon and edible shoots. However, a sector-wide take-off of a thriving bamboo sector has been reported only for China (Zhu et al. 1998), while in other countries the strategy has failed. In China’s Southeast provinces it is now a multi-billion dollar industry where the state government and local authorities stimulate, control and monitor out-grower partnerships in which smallholders supply large industrial companies with semi-processed poles. These factories manufacture industrialised products for China’s domestic market as well as for export (Zhu et al. 1998; Ruiz Pérez et al. 1999). In India and Costa Rica integrated bamboo development projects based on multi-scale partnerships have ended in failure. In India, several states had a thriving bamboo paper industry that functioned under partnerships between private companies and forestry
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departments, employing thousand of rural workers in bamboo harvesting. The rigidity and stubborn attitude of the state institutions that supervised the deal were important reasons for the collapse (Vasundhara 2001; Sharma 2002). In Costa Rica, the Dutch development agency DGIS initiated a community-based bamboo housing project that was a showcase of a multisector partnership involving farmers’ organisations, NGOs, the private sector and the ministry of housing. The project covered the entire process from cultivation to the allocation of the houses (Janssen 2000). When the donor money stopped in the early 1990s, the project went bankrupt soon afterwards and two of the main reasons of the failure were the large bureaucratic structure and high overhead costs of the coordinating agency. Guadua bamboo as a much used but ill-managed resource in Ecuador’s lowlands Guadua (or gadua) is a genus of tropical, clumping bamboo with approximately thirty species native to Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela and has been introduced in various other Latin American and Caribbean countries. Guadua or caña Guadua is most abundant in the upper Cauca valley in Central Colombia and the Pacific lowlands of Ecuador. The economically most developed species, Guadua angustifolia, is characterised by erect, green culms that reach a height of thirty metres and attain twenty centimetres in diameter after five years (Judziewicz et al.1999; Kirkby 2001). Guadua poles have physical and mechanical properties that make it one of the strongest existing bamboos and thus suitable for construction purposes (Giraldo Herrera and Sabogal Ospina 1999; Moran Ubidia 2001). Since pre-Colombian times, forest dwellers and rural people have used Guadua for fencing, construction and a range of other utensils at farm and household level. Guadua is still part of today’s rural and urban culture in Ecuador’s lowlands and poles are used for houses, scaffolding and shacks in the coastal slums. It is a cheap and easily available material in the countryside and can be further processed by hand. The use of Guadua for furniture making and small handicrafts is limited to the Pacific coast, where local artisans and small workshops offer low-quality products. Culms are rarely preserved and consequently untreated bamboo exposed to the elements is prone to insect attacks and rotting (Parsons 1991; Moran Ubidia 2001). Guadua is exploited on a sustained-yield basis and has a harvesting cycle of five years with one hectare of mature Guadua perhaps yielding up to 1,200 poles annually. Conservative figures calculate that, under current market conditions in Ecuador, a mature pole with an average height of eighteen metres has a farm-gate price of approximately US$ 1,50, bringing the total yield per ha to US$ 1,800/ha per year.1 The total investment costs amount to US$ 1,200/ha for the first four unproductive years of a plantation. These figures show potentially interesting benefits, especially because the annual natural regeneration of bamboo guarantees constant production (Cleuren and Henkemans 2003). Despite these favourable characteristics, Guadua is in a critical condition in Ecuador and is struggling to gain recognition. The fundamental reason is that there is a stigma locally which associates bamboo with poverty, marginality and low-class status. Traditional rural houses and shacks in the shantytowns use Guadua to cover walls. Occupants, however, consider it as a material for temporary shelters, designed to last until the resources are acquired to replace it with cement blocks (Gutierrez 2000; Parsons 1991). A more practical reason for bamboo’s critical condition is the depletion of the resource base. The last natural stands of Guadua in Ecuador are gradually disappearing. A national inventory in 1985 reported 15,000 hectares of small, dispersed stands of Guadua in the coastal provinces. Of the 75,000 plots counted, only six hundred were larger than six hectares (Mantilla 1985). In 1999, an inventory of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) calculated approximately 10,000 ha for the whole country, including patches in Ecuador’s Amazon region (Moran Ubidia 2001). In 2003, a national inventory by the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) calculated an estimated 3,000 ha plantations and 5,000 ha of natural stands, of which 3,500 ha is economically accessible (SNV 2003). This decline of the natural stands is a consequence of over-harvesting, poor management and unabated exploitation and is also due to a more general problem of uncontrolled cutting and conversion of forested land into arable land. The latter is related to
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the attitude of farmers and landowners who consider Guadua a weed that occupies fertile patches of land that need to be cleared. This attitude is not surprising considering the fact that bamboo has traditionally had a very low market value that did not weigh up against the costs of harvesting and transport. Nevertheless, farmers are aware that bamboo thrives in humid areas and maintains the water table and the humidity of the soil. Consequently, the majority of the last patches are situated along riverbanks and in humid valleys. Bamboo in another light: fulfilling a range of environmental services In the case of most forest-based raw materials, donor agencies and forestry agencies in Ecuador have often adopted a limited approach to forest management. The focus was on preventing illegal timber extraction and large-scale reforestation programmes with exotic tree species such as Eucalyptus in the Andean highlands. In recent years, authorities have started to show an interest in using bamboo in reforestation schemes and in cooperating with smallholders as partners in the maintenance of the planted seedlings. Managed or planted bamboo at critical locations can fulfil a number of environmental functions such as erosion control, protection of riverbanks and regulation of water tables. Bamboo helps control soil erosion through its intricate root network that fixes soils on hillsides and slopes. This is particularly valuable for Ecuador’s coastal area that gets hit hard by large-scale flooding and landslides every time the weather phenomenon El Niño reaches the Pacific coastline area of South America. At municipal level, there are examples of smallscale partnerships between landowners and the local authorities aimed at planting bamboo seedlings to protect riverbanks and increase the water retaining capacity of the soil. In most cases, the municipality offers free bamboo seedlings and farmers organise the planting on their own land and receive training in maintenance and proper harvesting. The next severe El Niño and the related flooding will be the litmus test for the success of these public-private partnerships. The use of bamboo species for the rehabilitation of degraded lands has generated good results in Asia (Basri Hamzah 2002; Kutty and Narayanan 2003). Bamboo complies with the necessary characteristics of a species suitable for rehabilitation: a high survival rate, productivity and soil stabilising abilities, multiple-use potential, local acceptance and quick growth. In theory, cultivating bamboo in wastelands and along denuded forest fringes could offer a quick solution for degradation. However, governmental agencies and international projects in Ecuador have not yet explored this opportunity because marketing mechanisms for bamboo are poorly developed and farmers are unable to reach potential buyers. The same lack of a market outlet exists as regards incorporating bamboo into existing carbon sequestration programmes within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. Bamboo sequesters atmospheric carbon faster than many fast-growing trees due to its low rotation period of four to six years. It is estimated that a mature Guadua plantation fixes between fifty and one hundred tons per hectare (F. Botero, personal communication). These figures have not yet been scientifically verified and biomass production can vary largely depending on the species, site quality and climate conditions. A negative factor for worldwide acceptance is that bamboo culms degenerate and decompose in the forest much faster than trees, and unpreserved bamboo used in utensils starts to decay much more rapidly than timber. Thus the carbon sink is for a short period of time only, reducing the utility to CO2 credit purchasers who take the time of sequestration into account. The technical solution to this problem lies in prompt harvesting when the culms are mature and in applying preservation techniques in order to prolong the utility time of the bamboo material. However, the real challenge is to establish an organisational framework that creates a partnership between growers, buyers of Guadua culms and CO2 credit purchasers. Several coordinating agencies, such as the Dutch FACE (Forest Absorbing Carbon dioxide Emissions), are active in Ecuador but they have focused on trees rather than on bamboo (Jara 2002). Ecuador’s semi-public organisation Corporación para la Promoción del Mecanismo de Desarrollo Limpio (CORDELIM; Corporation for the Promotion of the Clean Development Mechanism) is interested in exploring the use of bamboo plantations for carbon sequestration, but lacks solid scientific data and funding to convince interested parties to set
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up a pilot project (D. Valenzuela, personal communication). Finally, it is highly likely that the first beneficiaries of the trading of carbon emission credits will be a few agri-businesses that run large plantations and not the dozens of poor smallholders who own a mosaic of agroforestry plantations. Exploring possible partnerships for sustainable and pro-poor bamboo production in Ecuador Several types of partnerships seem to be promising in the Ecuadorian context or have already been set up. They respectively involve the banana industry, the construction industry, a bamboo flooring industry and a combination with handicrafts. The potentials and bottlenecks of these partnerships are reviewed below. Corporate-community partnerships The banana industry, with around 180,000 ha of plantations in the coastal region (INEC 2001), is Ecuador’s largest export sector and the major consumer of bamboo in the country. The upper part of the bamboo poles (cuje) are used to prop up banana bunches. An SNV report (2003) estimates the present annual demand to be 20 million cujes in Ecuador and, although that may be an overestimation, it is evident that several million cujes are produced annually to satisfy the needs of the banana plantations. Half of the producers use bamboo to support bunches and a number of them have planted sufficient bamboo to supply their own demand, while the rest buys cujes through intermediaries. The other half of the producers use polyethylene rope and would be interested in converting to bamboo if there was a sufficient and stable supply of cujes near their plantations. For them using rope is less expensive than transporting cujes over large distances (Quelal 2001; SNV 2003). It seems, therefore, an interesting option for smallholders, who live near banana plantations, to start planting bamboo and sell props to the banana producers. In theory, corporate-community partnerships in the form of out-grower schemes between banana producers and small landowners can potentially be beneficial and offer a winwin scenario for both players. Firstly, growing bamboo and cutting it into cujes may fit well into the livelihood strategy of smallholders because it does not require any sophisticated processing or investment. Secondly, banana producers are interested in adopting bamboo because it involves lower labour costs per hectare than rope and because it meets environmental requirements for green certificates that prefer bamboo to the biologically undegradable rope. In this respect, the introduction of the European Good Agriculture Practice Certification Programme (EUREGAP), which will become the norm for the import of fruits into the EU market in the near future, may give an impulse to accelerated conversion from rope to cuje in the coming years (Estrada 2003). A crucial factor hindering the emergence of partnerships between bamboo growers and banana producers is the high costs that intermediaries charge for their services. The intermediaries – usually the owners of trucks – fulfil a broker role between growers and banana producers as they are able to connect banana plantations situated in Ecuador’s southern provinces of Azuay and El Oro with the major supply areas of bamboo located several hours drive away in the central provinces of Pichincha and Los Ríos. The intermediaries can also provide the plantations with the large amounts of poles which they need on a regular basis and which individual or small farmers’ associations are unable to supply. However, the substantial commissions for these services limit the benefits for smallholders. In order to solve this problem, development NGOs are now investigating the viability of plans by which farmers’ cooperatives would organise the transport themselves with leased trucks. NGO-community partnerships, The second largest outlet market for Guadua poles is the construction industry in the coastal provinces. Bamboo is the favourite building material for traditional rural houses and dwellings in the shantytowns of Ecuador’ coastal cities. In the coastal port town of Guayaquil with its 2.5 million inhabitants, half of the population lives in bamboo shacks in the
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shantytowns. The accumulated housing deficit in Guayaquil is more than 100,000 houses and this is continuing to grow by 10,000 annually, due a continuous rural-urban migration (Diacon 1998). People build their houses with flattened bamboo (caña picada) which has not been preserved and which originates from immature bamboo poles. This leads to rapid rotting and the need to replace the dwelling within a period of five years (Gutiérrez 2000). The largest single buyer of Guadua for construction is Viviendas Hogar de Cristo (VHC; Christ’s Home Dwellings), a Christian NGO based in Guayaquil that manufactures pre-fabricated houses for the poorest. The houses are made of a wooden frame and walls of caña picada and require flattened Guadua at the lowest cost to keep the price of the units down. VHC is inclined to buy low-quality Guadua and applies it in its wall panels without any further preservation. Each year the factory needs around 300,000 flattened six metres long bamboo poles and 600,000 1.5 m laths (latillas) and has always relied on a number of intermediaries for sufficient supply (VHC 2000). These traders buy the standing culms from small landowners as far away as 400 km from Guayaquil. Their dominant market position has important consequences. Firstly, their harvesting teams clearcut the entire bamboo stand resulting in the destruction of the subterranean clump’s regenerative capacity because they have a cut-and-run mentality with no concern for sustainability. Secondly, because these intermediaries are the owners of the trucks, they have a monopsonistic market position and are price makers in the market of bamboo poles. Typically, they pay farmers low stumpage values of US$ 0.10 to 0.70 depending on the distance to the market and the quality of the poles and then organise the cutting, flattening and transport. Predatory harvesting is leading to depletion around the major cities and transporters have to travel further every year to find sufficient bamboo stands. This inflates transport prices. Consequently, the VHC is finding it increasingly difficult to find a sufficient supply at an affordable price. Since 2004, the VHC has negotiated a partnership deal with farmers’ associations around Santo Domingo de los Colorados for the supply of latillas. Individual farmers grow bamboo on their land and after cutting they transport it to a collection centre where the farmers’ association manages a simple splitting machine and organises the transport by hired truck to the VHC in Guayaquil. The deal entails a fixed minimum price per bundle of 50 latillas that can increase according to market prices and a guaranteed supply per month. It is a win-win situation because farmers have higher profits because they bypass the intermediaries and the VHC is offered a regular and sustainable supply. Since smallholders have an interest in avoiding clearcutting bamboo stands, they apply sustainable harvesting techniques. The partnership has been brokered by a development NGO that operates within the framework of a bamboo development project funded by INBAR and the European Union. The NGO’s brokering role was necessary to overcome the farmers’ weak negotiation skills and to fulfil a crucial watchdog role. The partnership is still new and negotiated volumes are small in this first stage, in which all parties are still cautious. Neither farmers nor the VHC want to be at loggerheads with the intermediaries who remain the main buyers and suppliers of the bulky flattened bamboos. Industrial bamboo development and out-growers schemes Ecuador’s bamboo development is presently in a stage of speculative planting without rational planning. Since 2001, a few agro-industrial consortia have planted a total area of 5,000 hectares. Half of this is currently harvestable, while the rest is to become available in the next three years (SNV 2003). These large players plant Guadua on abandoned pastures and agricultural land, while a number of private landowners are planting as an investment. The large majority of them are planting Guadua without thorough cost-benefit analyses, market information or business plans and speculate that a ‘bamboo boom’ is going to take off once their plantations become productive. The risks involved became dramatically clear when Ecuador’s first industrial bamboo flooring factory went bankrupt in 2003 after two years of operation, destroying a US$ 2 million investment. The main reasons for the failure were hasty planning, a lack of research and insufficient high quality bamboo poles. Because it was the first bamboo-flooring factory in Latin America the management had a tendency towards
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secrecy and concealed planning activities and thus avoided collaboration and partnerships (Cleuren and Henkemans 2003). Policymakers who promote bamboo as a promising export product have intensified the bamboo hype. Ecuador’s institute for export promotion, Corporación de Promoción de Exportaciones e Inversiones (CORPEI; Corporation for the Promotion of Exports and Investments) and the Ministry of Agriculture have declared bamboo one of ten to fifteen nontraditional export products that will be promoted with the objective being to generate an extra export income for the country of US$ 1 billion within a period of ten years (MAG 2003; Estrada 2003; CORPEI 2002). Ecuador’s policymakers and businessmen want to target niche export markets with high-value products such as flooring. They still underestimate the enormous potential of the domestic market for banana props and housing. Their strategy is a highly ambitious and risky one that ignores small, but sustainable rural development and is blinded by windfalls on international markets. In reality, Ecuador’s chances are weak abroad because Ecuador’s dollarised economy and its leeway in productivity, quality and marketing make it hard to compete with cheap Asian bamboo products. Nevertheless, the planting boom is crucial and a blessing for the future development of Ecuador’s bamboo sector. It is expected that, from 2005, sufficient mature Guadua plantations will be coming into production, offering a standardised source of raw material, which is the necessary condition for whatever kind of industrialisation stage. It can solve the classic chicken-and-egg problem of newly emerging sectors being confronted with insufficient supply of raw material to justify industrial investment while nobody is interested in investing in the supply because there is no industry. The present trend raises the question of whether Guadua development in Ecuador is a speculative planting hype for large landowners or perhaps also a new sustainable incomegenerating option for smallholders. The majority of the farmers have sufficient land available and if they can organise the propagation of the seedlings in community nurseries, they can reduce direct investment costs considerably and obtain a low-risk crop that yields cash every year. Out-grower schemes involving smallholders who plant Guadua in agroforestry systems could offer an interesting partnership model for low-income farmers and industrial consumers. In that case, farmers could become interested in managing existing bamboo stands on their land and in planting new ones. Several factors hinder the development of out-grower schemes. On the one hand, farmers do not manage the small stands left on their land and prefer short-term benefits. Major obstacles to altering this destructive attitude are a lack of knowledge, a lack of investment capital for proper management and the rural poverty of the people which makes them require instant cash. Moreover, most smallholders have a tendency to spread their risks and prefer to plant small dispersed patches of land and land covered with secondary vegetation rather than arable plots for larger areas of bamboo. These marginal plots limit the productivity up to a point that the efforts and investments never reach an economical breakeven point. On the other hand, companies so far have been reluctant to engage in contracts with farmers and prefer to buy bamboo poles on an open market or leave it to intermediaries who bear the risks of dealing with smallholders. A second tendency is that companies that really intend to establish a bamboo factory follow a strategy of vertical integration in which the plantation management is an integrated part of the industrial development. The vulnerability of the collaboration between out-growers and the industry became clear in 2002 when the aforementioned bamboo-flooring factory set up several collection centres in Ecuador’s main bamboo production area and started to buy bamboo poles from landowners. The company wanted to increase its supply of raw material and to educate landowners about proper bamboo management in order to gradually increase quality. However, progress was minimal and quality problems meant that the majority of the poles had to be rejected because of defects, lack of maturity and fungi. The absence of clear grading standards complicated the negotiations between the parties and led to disputes and finally to a collapse in the deals. Landowners were confronted with transport costs for poles that were finally rejected and the company lost money grading large quantities of poles that did not meet its standards of raw material for its flooring plant. It is arguable that problems could
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have been solved if a mediating agency had stepped in to settle disputes and mitigate the intrinsic irritation between poor and illiterate smallholders and representatives of the business elite in four-wheel drives. A multi-sector partnership of Panama hats and bamboo Craftsmen in Ecuador’s coastal area are the main producers of the world famous Panama hats. The weaving is entirely done by hand using a palm fibre (toquilla) and the cottage industry in the coastal district of Manabí exports most of its production to the US and Europe. The palm species is widely available and hundreds of households have specialised in the growing and harvesting of the palms and, especially, the labour-intensive splitting in order to obtain very thin fibres. The weaving itself is the exclusive domain of a few dozen family enterprises concentrated around the town of Montecristi (Chandrasekharan et al. 1996). Although the product has a brand name that is known worldwide, the sector has always had a marketing problem illustrated by the fact that, historically, the name has erroneously been linked to neighbouring Panama, where no hats are woven. Traditionalism is high in the sector, as witnessed by the fact that the hat’s design has not changed since the Inca era. As a consequence, the sector has not evolved. This has resulted in low productivity, obsolete tools, poor working conditions and a lack of youngsters to rejuvenate the industry. The most striking problem is the absence of an effective structure to organise marketing and stimulate collaboration between craftsmen and general sector development. Bamboo handicraft is also a typical product of the same region along Ecuador’s Pacific coast, but is much less developed than the hat-weaving industry. The artisans lack the skills and refinement to work the bamboo although local bamboo species have similar fibre lengths to toquilla. In 2001, the INBAR set up a plan to harness the exclusive skills of these hat weavers and bring them into contact with bamboo craftsmen. In collaboration with several municipalities, workshops where set up at which Chinese bamboo-weaving artisans showed their techniques to Ecuadorian toquilla weavers and bamboo craftsmen. The project goal was to improve the marketing of regional handicrafts, diversify the weaving products, increase the skills of bamboo and toquilla weavers, and improve working conditions. All the participants appreciated the cross-cultural and sector exchange and confirmed the importance of promoting the regional handicraft sector in an integrated way. However, in the end there was no follow-up to the collaboration. The main reason was that there is no one agency that is trusted by all parties to take charge of disseminating new techniques, exploring the use of other fibres or presenting the sector as an integrated regional sector with cultural value. The workshop participants preferred their family-based structure without collaborating or giving responsibilities to an overarching structure. It is an indication of the fact that cultural preferences and sticking to tradition can become serious constraints to multi-sector partnerships. Production constraints and legal bottlenecks Some of the constraints on properly functioning partnerships for sustainable and pro-poor bamboo management have nothing to do with the partnerships as such, but are related to the product. In the case of bamboo, the main production constraints relate to restrictions in the production chain and to the unclear legal status of bamboo as a natural resource. Both these issues are addressed below. Constraints in the bamboo production chain There is a lack of basic biological knowledge about bamboo species in Ecuador and there are no experts at universities or governmental level with the required expertise. At this stage, no concluding taxonomic identification of the main Guadua species is possible. This is resulting in confusion and suspicion about the nature of the bamboo planting material sold and used in the plantations. The present method of vegetative reproduction results in a cheap and rapid multiplication of the seedlings, but can cause serious economic losses in the future because there is no certainty about the authenticity and genetic quality of the Guadua mother plants.
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The Guadua production chain has several deficiencies from harvesting level onwards. The present unsustainable harvesting floods the market with bamboo that is too young, making it susceptible to decay and insect attack, thereby lowering the average performance of bamboo in many applications and further degrading bamboo’s image in the country. There is no grading system for bamboo culms, so farmers and harvesters have no incentive to improve the quality of the culms because such a move would not be rewarded by being able to obtain increased prices. Consequently, culms with defects and irregularities are all sold for the same price as normal culms (Cleuren and Henkemans 2003). Currently, most bamboo in Ecuador is neither preserved nor dried according to specific procedures. As with the sale of young bamboo these poor raw material handling practices are degrading the properties and commercial reputation of bamboo as a raw material. The development and adoption of bamboo pole standards and certification could help ensure that the steps taken to provide a higher quality raw material are indeed rewarded through increased selling prices. In the processing stage, many of the constraints of the bamboo craft sector are related to the isolated conditions under which forest-dwelling communities live and the many stages of intermediate sales and processes that have to be passed through until the finished products are available. In remote areas, marketing is dominated by middlemen and the low productivity results in low margins for producers. There are many small groups that are producing rustic furniture and other handicrafts, but little appears to be exported. In general, product quality varies enormously and many products are marked by amateurism, low quality and design and there are few economies of scale, processing advances or product standardisation. While these businesses are slowly growing, they have limited export potential due to the small production volumes and relatively high prices (Dagilis and de Wit 2003). The deficient legal status of bamboo in Ecuador Ecuadorian regulations are unclear as to whether bamboo is an agriultural or forest resource. According to law, bamboo is not a wood product, despite the factual evidence of the woody (lignocellulosic) nature of tropical bamboos. Natural bamboo is considered wild in contrast to planted bamboo and is therefore subject to forestry laws. Bamboo in its wild state is therefore a non-wood forest product which cannot be harvested freely in Ecuador. The exploitation of natural stands is illegal without a registered forest management plan, harvesting licenses and transportation permits. Even the managed natural stands on the land of smallholders are subject to the same rules and require a detailed (and costly) forest management plan. Of special interest is the fact that planted bamboo is not subject to the forestry regulations outlined above because it is not a wood product and has been planted (Dagilis and de Wit 2003). Clearly, the majority of natural bamboo harvesting in Ecuador is currently conducted illegally, as forest management plans are rarely (if ever) prepared for bamboo management. The police demand transportation permits for all bamboo because there is no way to distinguish between plantation bamboo and wild bamboo. Therefore, transporters must obtain the transportation permits or pay bribes at the checkpoints, thereby adding to the already high transport costs. The control of the transportation permits is a mere cashing of bribes without stopping the indiscriminate clearcutting of natural stands, because the authorities do not monitor or control the forest management plans from which the transported bamboo culms originate. In this situation, smallholders are confronted with high transaction costs due to the hassle of the forestry department demanding management plans and transport permits for all naturally grown bamboo. This results in a low bargaining power for the bamboo growers relative to the intermediaries who take advantage of their monopoly on transport and their contacts with the forestry department to depress commodity prices. Ecuador’s legal framework relating to bamboo has not yet been properly established or clarified and requires reclassification. Plantations appear to fall into a grey area at this moment and a possible solution would be for bamboo plantation to be registered with the Ministerio de Agricultura (MAG; Ministry of Agriculture) as an agricultural activity free of charge. The MAG is showing an interest in helping the sector advance and has already
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supported the establishment of a National Bamboo Council that assists and organises the sector (CORPEI 2002; MAG 2003). Notwithstanding this positive initiative, the general line is that most government involvement in the sector is one of confused interference that hinders rather than helps the protection of the natural resource and the development of new bamboo plantations. Conclusions This chapter has painted a mixed picture of the viability of multi-sector partnerships in the Ecuadorian bamboo sector and has highlighted the crucial role of intermediary agencies as regards stimulating and monitoring deals. New developments in Ecuador’s bamboo sector show a number of opportunities but also drawbacks for partnerships. Especially partnerships that incorporate bamboo plantations into a mosaic of land use, including small-scale farming, could become a window of opportunity. They may offer economic benefits and increase livelihood security for smallholders and, at the same time, safeguard crucial environmental services. This guarantees sustainable utilisation of natural resources, combined with an equitable distribution of the benefits by closely involving local people. Out-growing schemes, where local people grow bamboo under contract to sell to processing plants based on a profitsharing agreement also have potential. The most promising market outlets are the banana industry that requires millions of supporting poles, the construction sector in urban centres and industries that manufacture bamboo floors. Smallholders can work on the low-end products and are interesting partners when it comes to supplying raw and semi-processed bamboo poles for further processing. However, this would require a conversion of the current system which is dominated by intermediaries who clearcut at low stumpage values and discourage smallholders from entering this business. A different kind of intermediary should step in with more equitable and sustainable motives than the cut-and-run strategy of the present group of traders. However, even with an ideal new broker in place, the out-growing schemes are not without risks for smallholders. The reason is that vertical integration is the final goal of private companies that invest in bamboo and they consider the supply by smallholders as a temporary risk-avoiding strategy for the time until they invest in plantations themselves. Contrastingly, the new partnership between farmers’ cooperatives and an NGO in Guayaquil that constructs houses for the urban poor is more balanced because both partners have an interest in maintaining the collaboration in order to guarantee a stable supply at fixed prices. An NGO also monitors the deal and trains and advises the partners with a view to strengthening the deal and to building up confidence. The volumes and profit sharing are perhaps not yet spectacular at this stage, but more durability and stability can be expected in the long run. The partnerships involving governmental institutions and individual farmers aimed at fulfilling environmental services such as carbon sequestration, riverbank protection and watershed management show considerable potential, but often lack concretisation and elaboration. The largest constraints are at Ecuador’s national governmental level where there is no funding or expertise and no proactive approach. As long as governmental agencies do not take their responsibility as regards creating an enabling policy and a clear legal framework, the time and energy required for rural people to engage in partnerships will be much too costly. It is therefore likely that large landowners rather than smallholders will obtain certificates and will be able to negotiate carbon emission credits. The policy level is, in general, a bottleneck for a smooth development of partnership initiatives and the bamboo sector as a whole. Forest protection regulations and a lack of flexibility regarding the trade of non-wood forest products cause obstacles for bamboo development. The plethora of rules, fees and restrictions related to harvesting, the transportation and marketing of bamboo represent a hassle, especially for the small producers, and this results in high transaction costs. Policy changes that improve the unclear legal status of bamboo would be the first important step to take, so that irregular taxes and prohibitive regulations can be ended.
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All the existing and potential partnerships discussed in this chapter suggest that, in the initial stage, a crucial role should be played by a governmental, non-governmental or international agency that fulfils the role of a broker and combines multiple capabilities. Firstly, such an agency is crucial with regard to building trust and should impart basic negotiation skills in order to overcome existing power imbalances. Secondly, the agency should be the first source of information with expertise about bamboo and the market, and have enough authority and legal means to settle internal disputes. Thirdly, a brokering agency requires political leverage to protect partnerships against outside attacks based on bureaucratic rules and competitors. A final thing to say is that bamboo production partnerships in Ecuador could grow as quickly as the bamboo itself. However, just as this giant grass requires a caring landowner, a broker is needed to take care of the deal. References Basri Hamzah, M. (2002) ‘Enrichment and Rehabilitation in the Permanent Forest Estate’, ITTO Tropical Forest Update, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 22-24. Chandrasekharan, C. Frisk, T. and Roasio, J.C. (1996) Desarrollo de Productos Forestales No Madereros en América Latina y el Caribe. Serie Forestal No. 10, FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Cleuren, H. and Henkemans, A. (2003) ’Development of the Bamboo Sector in Ecuador, Harvesting the Potential of Guadua angustifolia’, Journal of Bamboo and Rattan, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 179-188. Corporación de Promoción de Exportaciones e Inversiones (CORPEI) (2002) ‘Perfil de Producto de Caña Brava, Proyecto CORPEI-CBI, Expansión de la Oferta Exportable del Ecuador. Mimeo. Dagilis, D. and Wit, H. de (2003) Bamboo Value-Added Export Development: Opportunities for Ecuador. Guayaquil: Corporación de Promoción de Exportaciones e Inversiones (CORPEI). Diacon, D. (1998) Housing the Homeless in Ecuador, Affordable Housing for the Poorest of the Poor. Leicestershire: Building and Social Housing Foundation. Estrada, R. (2003) Request for International Assistance in Export Development of Bamboo Added Value Products. Quito: Corporación de Promoción de Exportaciones e Inversiones (CORPEI). Giraldo Herrera, E. and Sabogal Ospina. A. (1999) Una Alternativa Sostenible: La Gadua. Armenia: Corporación Autonoma Regional del Quindío. Gutierrez, J.A. (2000) Structural Adequacy of Traditional Bamboo Housing in Latin America. INBAR Technical Report No. 19. Beijing: International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR). Janssen, J.A. (2000) Designing and Building with Bamboo. INBAR Technical Report No. 20. Beijing: International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR). Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC) (2001) Censo Agropecuario del Ecuador. Quito: INEC. Jara, L.F. (2002) La Certificación de Carbono de Plantaciones Forestales: El Caso de PROFAFOR S.A. Memorias II Congreso Latinoamericano, Julio 31-Agosto 2, 2002. Ciudad de Guatemala. Judziewicz, E., Clark, L.G., Londoño, X. and Stern, M. (1999) American Bamboos. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Kirkby, C. (2001) The Distribution, Abundance, Clump Characteristics and Techniques for Managing Guadua angustifolia, Bambuseae, a Potential Non-Wood Forest Product in Madre de Dios, Peru’. PhD Thesis, The University of York. Kutty, V. and Narayanan, C. (2003) Greening Red Earth – Bamboo’s Role in the Environmental and Socio-Economic Rehabilitation of Villages Devastated by Brick Mining. Technical Report No. 22, Beijing: International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR).
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Ministerio de Agricultura (MAG) (2003) ‘Fibras Naturales y Información sobre BambuGuadua’ URL: http://www.sica.gov.ec/agronegocios/productos para invertir/bambu. Mantilla, O. (1985) ‘Inventorio de la Caña Guadua en la Region Litoral del Ecuador’. Ministerio de Agricultura (MAG), Programa Nacional Forestal, Proyecto AID-5180023. Mimeo. Moran Ubidia, J. (2001) Traditional and Current Uses of Bamboo in Latin America with Emphasis on Colombia and Ecuador. Quito: Escuela Politécnica Litoral. Parsons, J.J. (1991) ’Giant American Bamboo in the Vernacular Architecture of Colombia and Ecuador’, Geographical Review, Vol. 18, pp. 131-133. Ruiz Pérez, M., Zhong Maogong, Belcher, B., Xie Chen; Fu Maoyi and Xie Jinzhong (1999) ‘The Role of Bamboo Plantations in Rural Development: The Case of Anji County, Zhejiang, China’, World Development, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 101-114. Quelal, F. (2001) ‘Necesidad de Guadua en la Agroindustria Bananera Ecuatoriana’. Paper presented at the International Bamboo Congress, July 2002, Guayaquil. Sharma, D. (2002) The Kalahandi Syndrome: Starvation in Spite of Plenty, URL: http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Kalahandi-Syndrome-Sharma19apr02.htm. SNV (2003) ‘State of the Art Report on Bamboo in Ecuador’. Quito: Netherlands Development Organisation. Mimeo. Vantomme, P., Markkula, A. and Leslie, R.N. (eds) (2002) Non-Wood Forest Products in 15 Countries of Tropical Asia, An Overview. Bangkok: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Vasundhara, T. (2001) ‘Development Policies and Rural Poverty in Orissa. Report Prepared for the State Planning Commission’. Bhubaneswar. Mimeo. Viviendas del Hogar de Cristo (VHC) (2002) ‘Estadísticas y Perfil de los Usuarios de las Casas de Bambú’. Internal report. Mimeo. Zhu, Z., Jiang C., Zhong M. and Wang, H. (1998) Asia-Pacific Forestry Sector Outlook Study: Status, Trends and Prospects for Non-Wood and Recycled Fibre in China. FAO Working Paper No. APFSOS/WP/35. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Endnote 1
On average, a mature Guadua pole can be commercialised as two pieces measuring six metres in length, each with a farm gate value of approximately US$ 0.60 and a top that is used as banana prop with a farm gate value of US$ 0.20 (F. Botero, personal communication).
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PART II
Framing around Public-Private Partnerships
4. Partnership on Paper: Power Struggles and Strategic Framing around Industrial Forestry in Southern Costa Rica Heleen van den Hombergh*
In recent decades, the paper industry has been extending its influence further around the globe than ever before with a view not only to finding natural forests to exploit, but increasingly to using agricultural (or forest) lands to produce fast-growing pulpwood for their mills. Cheap land and labour, as well as climatic conditions which permit fast tree growth, lead paper companies to sign agreements with governments in the South to ‘reforest’ the rural landscape. One of these countries is Costa Rica, which is well-known for its protected areas but which, in the meantime, is being plagued by deforestation and is facing problems in remote rural areas. These problems are due to the impacts of structural adjustment and the crises in livestock and rice production which formed the most important commercial sectors of Costa Rican agriculture. The Osa Peninsula (Figure 4.1) is just such a remote area, in need of employment and agricultural alternatives. Stone Container Corporation (now part of Smurfit Stone Container) was one of the largest paper producers in the world and was in need of new sources of raw material when it entered this zone. A public-private partnership was created in 1989: Stone Container agreed to create a subsidiary, Ston Forestal S.A., and to sow 24,000 hectares of fast-growing Gmelina arborea pulpwood on farmlands. In return, the Costa Rican government agreed to facilitate the investment, among other things through infrastructure support and Free Trade Zone conditions for the company’s harbour and chip mill which were planned in Punta Estrella in the Osa Peninsula to process and transport the wood. The company acquired extensive land resources at very low prices through leasing agreements with farmers (a form of what were called company-community partnerships in Chapter 1). Not only did the leasing agreements affect the owners of the land, they also had an impact on their neighbours and further stimulated an already ongoing rural exodus. In addition, the planned infrastructure was expected to affect forest and marine biodiversity in and around the Golfo Dulce and Corcovado National Park, important tourism areas in southern Costa Rica. In order to stop this and with a view to demanding better conditions for the ‘partnership’ that the paper giant and Costa Rican government had established, farmers, tourism entrepreneurs, environmental organisations, lawyers and politicians joined forces and managed (to a certain extent) to negotiate a better nation-wide agreement with the company. The term ‘re(af)forestation’ proved to be a strong political concept in hands of the company to defend the establishment of pulpwood plantations on farmers’ lands. In contrast, biodiversity protection as a political concept helped the coalition oppose certain aspects of Stone’s investment. This chapter analyses the political processes involved in the conflict in the Osa Peninsula, focusing in particular on strategic framing or ‘selling the message’ by both the company and its opponents. It deals with issues of power struggle for agricultural resources and looks at how they interact with deliberate processes of strategic framing and attempts to resist and provoke change in the Stone Container project. Scientific framing plays a specific role in obtaining ‘strategic neutrality’ in this respect. Theory and methodology The observations outlined below were gathered during the course of a PhD project1 which included several fieldwork periods in Costa Rica between 1995 and 1999. The research centred around the questions of why and how coalitions were built to oppose the Ston Forestal *
Novib-Oxfam and University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 30919, 2500 GX The Hague, the Netherlands. E-mail:
[email protected];
[email protected].
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Figure 4.1 – Costa Rica and the location of Osa Peninsula’s major conservation areas industrial forestry project on the Osa Peninsula and also analysed the factors that contributed to the successes and failures of this opposition. The conceptual framework developed and used for this research, which we came to call a ‘transdisciplinary conceptual network’ (Van den Hombergh 2004), is derived from various strands of social movement theory on the one hand and land use and environmental science on the other. Being inspired primarily by Tarrow (1994, 1996) and McAdam et al. (1996), and on the basis of improvisations of their concepts, the study employs five major building blocks of movement or campaigning power, being (1) collective identity formation; (2) strategic framing or discourse development; (3) collective action; (4) the use and sustenance of mobilising webs; and (5) the creation and use of political opportunities (Van den Hombergh 2004). Political land-use science was applied to analyse the ground on which skilful leadership can build a bridge between these blocks, between aspirations and between outcomes of social struggle. Like political ecology-inspired researchers such as Blaikie and Brookfield (1987), Carrière (1990) and Redclift and Goodman (1991), this study’s explicit point of departure was the notion that a power struggle is both an undeniable and indispensable ingredient on the road to more egalitarian land use in Latin America and beyond. In this chapter, the focus is on discourse development or ‘strategic framing’ among both proponents and opponents to the Stone Container reforestation scheme in Costa Rica. In this respect it is relevant to distinguish between the terms partnership, coalition and alliance. Partnership is used in this chapter to indicate the official agreements or public-private partnership between the Costa Rican state and Stone Container Corporation (resulting in Ston Forestal S.A.) and the leasing agreements or company-community partnership between the Ston Forestal company and the farmers. Coalition as a term refers to the ad-hoc campaigning community with the common goal of opposing the industrial forestry
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project or the political chain of actors supporting it. Alliance is a term used for longer-term cooperation based on common ideologies and political projects. 2 The latter two fall under what were called political partnerships in Chapter 1. Background to the ‘reforestation partnerships’ Many protagonists of the global environmental movement(s) and the movements striving for egalitarian, democratic development are quite sceptical about ‘partnerships’, such as the public-private partnerships that the UN approved during the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. The increased powers of multinational corporations, which often transcend the reach of nation states, and the discourse of sustainable development they apply to gain the support of governments in developing countries, have made environmentalists alert to their moves. Partnership as a term masks the fact that, according to the critics, gaining access to cheap means of production and expanding their markets are the main driving forces of the companies involved. During the Earth Summit, Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) therefore awarded Greenwash Academy Awards or Green Oscars to the corporations that most elegantly masked their operations in ‘green’ discourse. In the 1990s, one of FoEI’s members, FoE Costa Rica, organised protests against the Chicago-based paper giant Stone Container Corporation that had come to do business in the country under the slogan ‘sow progress, harvest well-being’. As one of the largest paper producers in the world, Stone Container Corporation had provoked opposition because of its environmental impacts and the lack of measures being taken to alleviate them. As far as the company was concerned, the project in Costa Rica would not only provide cheap and fast raw material production for their pulp mills, but also prove its ‘environmental leadership’ to the shareholders and critics (see, for instance, Stone Container Corporation 1995 annual report). Costa Rican politicians had welcomed Stone’s initiative because they regarded its industrial forestry project as an attempt to diversify the country’s export and as an investment in the creation of employment in the poor area, and they argued that it was meant to support the reforestation of abandoned and unproductive agricultural lands. Because of this, the State saw the Ston Forestal project as a welcome investment in sustainable development and a potential source of political gain. Costa Rica has been praised for its conservation policies, but criticised for its deforestation outside the boundaries of protected areas. The improving of tree cover figures has indeed become an issue for decision-makers, especially in view of international attention (and finances) for their rich biological resources. What arguments were developed for and against the partnerships of Stone Container with the State and with the farmers, and how were they politically employed? Forest or pulpwood monoculture? Reforestation as a master frame ‘Esta compañía reforestadora’ (this re-afforesting company): the minister of Environment of Costa Rica kept using this expression when talking about Stone Container’s subsidiary Ston Forestal S.A. and their pulpwood project. ‘A pretentious transnational and its exotic monocultures’, reacted the ecologists. The development of discourse, or strategic frames, is a very important tool in conflict creation, transformation and campaigning. Framing and counter-framing, action and reaction, shape the discursive battlefield of sustainable development. Some frames are so well spread out and approved that they can be called a master frame (Snow and Benford 1992) or a master narrative (Harper 2001) – a well-known, frequently used expression to indicate a desired direction of society. Sustainable development may be referred to as such a master frame. Its vagueness is its strength and its weakness at the same time (Adams 1990); it allows for a diversity of ideological interpretations but does not provide for clarity and does not challenge the status quo of power relations as such. Reforestation may also be referred to as a master frame: apparently nobody can possibly be against it because of the logic ‘it means trees, trees mean nature, and nature is necessary’. Using this frame to describe and defend the pulpwood plantations of paper companies on farmlands in developing countries has proven to be a strong political tool to back the interests of the investors in many parts of the world (Lohmann and Carrere 1996; Kerski 1995). Even though these plantations, from a social or environmental point of view,
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may have detrimental aspects for the poor, for the general public and politicians they have an appeal that is hard to question. Gmelina as a symbol of progress or poverty? The ground for local resistance In southern Costa Rica, the pulpwood plantations were a catalyst for a rural exodus of medium-sized farmers in particular. This exodus had already been initiated by increasing orientation towards export markets for cattle and rice which provide relatively little employment and which led to declining productivity and disappointing returns. The cutting of subsidies on basic grain production that had earlier kept the producers of rice and beans in the countryside for so long also contributed to increasing out-migration. The exodus was, however, also stimulated by the occupation of a substantial part of the most fertile lands with pulpwood plantations. When Ston Forestal offered to farmers in the South of Costa Rica to lease their land to sow it with Gmelina arborea, many of them felt tempted to do so. Latin American land banks, such as the Costa Rican Instituto de Desarrollo Agraria (IDA; Institute of Agrarian Development), have had limited success with land reform and redistribution, particularly because access to land alone is insufficient and must be accompanied by access to other forms of capital, skills, infrastructure and markets (Gordillo de Anda and Boening 1999). This has led to a Central American trend in which farmers who lack capital to invest – including former beneficiaries of land reform – lease their land to agribusiness. What happened with the Stone Container project may be seen as a case in point. The company presented its project under the banner of ‘progress and welfare’ as a serious new land-use opportunity. It was, however, rather the crisis situation and the lack of alternatives that drove many farmers to lease their land to the Stone company. The most important push factors included indebtedness to the banks (due to failures in harvests and/or marketing), lack of capital, problems related to age, health and/or education (driving the population to migration/urbanisation), and the conditions of the land, including declining fertility and weeds (Van den Hombergh 1999). Leasing contracts were entered into for some 13,000 hectares, for a period of 6-18 years, allowing for one to three harvesting cycles of pulpwood. In the longer term in particular, Ston Forestal preferred flat terrain – often near the road and the industrial plant – with deep high quality soils and a potential for highly productive agriculture. These were offered to them on a silver platter for several years by out-migrating, indebted, or discouraged rice and cattle farmers. Ston Forestal acquired more than 16 per cent of the most fertile and arable lands on the Osa Peninsula to sow Gmelina and obtained the actual management of between 25-30 per cent of the farms (including forested and ill-drained lands) in this region. It was felt by many that the Company and the government which backed its investment with lucrative ‘partnership’ or investment agreement(s), abused the precarious situation of farmers in the area. For some farmers, especially larger ones with multiple livelihood strategies involving the urban sphere, this ‘partnership’ was a means of keeping part of their land out of the hands of the banks, or of suddenly having an amount of money to invest elsewhere. For others, however, the emergency exit from agriculture that the lease to Ston Forestal had meant, left them with no other choice than to move to the city and/or seek wage labour elsewhere. Many of the farmers who leased out their lands to the company regretted their decision and its long-term implications when they found out that no economic alternatives were available. This became painfully clear when rice prices started to increase and they were unable to re-cultivate their land. For many poorer farmers leasing out was not an option because they had only very small plots of bad quality land, but they did feel the effects of the out-migration of their larger neighbours who had previously offered them wage labour, machinery, land to work and rent, informal credits, transport to the city and linkages with politicians in the capital San José. In other words, for those who stayed behind, the project meant a certain loss of economic, financial and political capital (see Bebbington 1999), informal contacts and means of production. This informal economy had become increasingly important, precisely because of the withdrawal of state support from the countryside since 1985 because of Structural Adjustment. The farmers who stayed behind also feared a loss of natural capital because of
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the effects the plantations and their harvesting would have on the soils (fertility and structure), on the rivers (contamination and obstruction by waste wood) and even on their cattle (because of a fly they feared would proliferate on the waste wood). When squatters were forcibly removed from a piece of land that was to be sown with Gmelina, and a tractor destroyed their harvests and ranches, local organised resistance began to grow. Framing the anger The quote below reveals some of the indignation that was felt because of the company’s strategies. There was something that no Costa Rican could approve of, because the Guardia Civil, the Costa Rican police, helped Ston Forestal! I don’t see how they could do that against humildes campesinos, squatters! They didn’t care! They burned the houses of very poor people who had their pieces of land sown with plantain, vegetables and maize, and the like. And there was a small child that was burnt by the fire, you see, and his father started proceedings against Ston Forestal. He was about to win but then they visited him at his house and offered him money to withdraw his complaint. (…) These things hurt, while we receive tourists here with kindness, respect and love, foreign investors simply come to Costa Rica and exploit us. Well, although we are humble people, in a group we were strong enough to defend ourselves and we were able to win some victories over them (communal leader in Osa Peninsula, March 1996). Several frames are employed in this expression of anger: the policy and politicians are supposed to protect Costa Ricans and not foreign investors. Humildes campesinos (humble peasants) needed that land for food and they – and certainly one of the children – should not have been dealt with violently. Humildes, or humble, is a very positive Costa Rican value, indicating somebody as being non-elitist, not arrogant and dignified. In this case it means above all uneducated. Thus, according to the communal leader, a foreign company and the State abused the uneducated and dignified citizens while backing a foreign company. State violence is not easily accepted in Costa Rica at all, especially not against people in need of land resources. Southern Costa Rica had been the scene of huge resistance against land speculations and the expelling of gold seekers from the forest before – conflicts in which foreign companies also played a role (Camacho 1993; Christen 1994; Van den Hombergh 1999). A structural scarcity of resources (Homer-Dixon 1999) is an important factor that contributes to conflict. It refers not only to land scarcity, but also involves limited access to various sources of capital, infrastructure, markets and information, all of which affect rural livelihood security. Structural adjustment measures, even more than the availability of arable land, constituted the major obstacles to agricultural production in southern Costa Rica. This is in line with the picture sketched by Thiesenhusen (1995), who argued that capital has become a much more limiting production factor than land throughout the Latin American region. This led to one of the protesters arguing: If you can’t produce anything, the bus can stop in front of your house to take your children to the university, but they don’t have any shoes to wear (…) We have to find an agricultural alternative, development that starts at the base, through a production system that would permit the people to produce enough for self-sufficiency and have money for their community (…) I think what is going to happen is that the land is given to large-scale companies that produce whatever they want, while the rest of us will be their paid wage workers. And I don’t know what will happen next … Democracy without ownership is no democracy (deputy and activist from the Osa Penisula against Stone Container until 1994, February 1996).
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The lack of state support for farmers, the aspiration of many of them to work their own fields and the vision that agriculture should be at the base of sustainable development in the region and in the country as a whole, were important motives for agricultural and communal leaders to oppose the Ston Forestal project and important ingredients of the local strategic framings against it. In fact, capital assets to guarantee sustainable agriculture in the area are very limited, but not only because of state policies. Some ‘endogenous’ problems experienced by producers in Osa also contributed to this, such as institutional weaknesses and lack of social coherence and cooperation – factors that were partly a result of various immigration waves into the Osa Peninsula from other Costa Rican areas and Central American countries. In order to stimulate the integration of the farmers into non-agricultural production, the ‘partnership’ agreement signed between the government and Stone Container Corporation in 1989 included the intention to transfer the technology of Gmelina production to farmers. This failed to materialise, however. What also failed to occur was the creation of significant employment. While the sowing required quite a lot of low-skilled labour from the area, the plantations required very little tending once they had been established. Compared to (even) cattle ranching and mechanised rice cultivation, the net loss of labour caused by the plantation establishment was considerable (Van den Hombergh 1999). Evolving framing orientations against the project In the years of the open protest (1992-1995) the coalition of Stone’s opponents developed a broad-based critique against the plantations on the Osa Peninsula, encompassing three framing orientations or discursive tools: a social one (‘Ston Forestal doesn’t treat people with respect’), an economic one (‘The plantations displace agriculture from a place where it is needed’) and an ecological one (‘The plantations are harmful for the natural resources’). These frames, to which the ecologist organisation Asociación Ecologista Costarricense (AECO; Costa Rican Ecologist Association) and their colleagues from the Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace added several elements, were suitable for the creation of a broadening base of resistance against the plantations on the Osa Peninsula, and to some extent to find allies among socialist politicians and decision makers in San José. However, in general, most politicians from both major parties tended to embrace the new types of investments in forestry rather than keep to their old promise of protecting the campesinos to help them carry on producing in the countryside. During the campaigning years, the Gmelina plantations proved to have a high resistance to any sort of criticism, despite there being grounds to question their impact on soil fertility, soil structure, surrounding biodiversity and socioeconomic conditions of the farming population. Most scientific material about Gmelina arborea, at least until 19963, focuses on growth figures and environmental influences on these, and not on their own environmental impact. However, a number of forestry and soil scientists who were interviewed (Van den Hombergh 2004) were able to mention a number of risks involved in the production system Ston Forestal employed. These included soil exhaustion because of the fast growth and limited fertility measures taken, splash erosion because of the big leaves and lack of undergrowth, compaction because of the mechanised harvesting system, and invasion of the species in Osa’s natural ecosystems because of the proximity of biologically very rich areas. Despite this, the frames ‘sustainable development’ and ‘reforestation of the forest cover’ proved sufficient ammunition in the hands of the company and their supportive politicians to almost force the protest coalition to deny their criticism of the plantations, in order for them not to lose political credibility and the opportunity to request changes to the project. The company and its proponents were able to use the ambiguity and conceptual confusion over the term re(af)forestation, and the old connotation of ‘restoring the forest cover’ that the word reforestation has, to convince policymakers that the plantations would even help combat deforestation and should by no means be questioned. The fact that tropical deforestation and the harvesting of pulpwood are performed by different actors and concern other product chains, and are therefore hardly connected, did not influence the strength of the reforestation frame at all. Lohmann and Carrere (1996) demonstrate in their book with case studies of pulp plantations from all over the world that this was no exception and that the same ‘discourse of defence’ is applied by
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coalitions of industrialists and their supporters everywhere. In the case of Stone, the major actors in this coalition were the industrialists seeking cheap wood fibre, tax exemptions and symbolic green capital, and Costa Rican policymakers seeking foreign investment, political gain and donor attention by improving the reforestation figures in their country. However, there was another issue that was suitable for the development of a discourse to oppose the Stone Container project on a national and international scale, namely the potentially harmful effects of industrialisation for the rich and unique biological diversity of the area. Strategic neutrality: science as an asset in conservationist framing The ‘struggle over scientific territory’ as Blaikie (2000) rightly argues, is directly related to the struggle for natural resources. Scientific argumentation has always been an important driver behind biodiversity conservation, and biodiversity an important political asset in Costa Rica as regards keeping its donor countries interested despite its relatively high income per capita. The threat of a negative impact of industrialisation on the biodiversity of Osa Penisula’s forests and marine resources therefore proved a science-based discursive tool with political appeal. This meant arms for the protest coalition in their quest for change, albeit not without fierce resistance of many policymakers. During the campaign, AECO had to frame their message more and more in legal, technical and conservation language to be able to create and seize political opportunity for a change in the design of the Ston Forestal project. Science as common ground for argument Science plays a very important role in environmental campaigning because much of the information about ecological processes is regarded by decision-makers as ‘not knowable’ without science. Science is the key to a successful representation of nature in the event of conflict because it cannot speak for itself (Yearly 1994, 1996; Dobson 1990). In this, employing ‘strategic neutrality’ has the highest political impact. Strategic neutrality of course is a contradiction in terms, but was introduced to illustrate the fact that, for strategic reasons, apparently neutral scientific arguments are often needed to give political weight to environmental campaigning. This applies equally to many other conflict situations where arguments are needed that are, or seem, sufficiently neutral for decision-makers to be used for the framing of their choices, without them running the risk of being accused of making unfounded choices or of making choices under pressure from certain groups. In order to ensure they had a political impact, AECO and their coalition partners had to run to the media, politicians and legal institutions and in all cases scientific evidence against the industrial forestry project was demanded. Generally speaking, two themes were under discussion in scientific terms: first, the benefits and threats to be expected from the Gmelina plantations and second, the benefits and threats to be expected from the industrial infrastructure on the shore of the Golfo Dulce (a plant and harbour installations meant to chip and transport the wood respectively). One could say that the first discursive territory was won by the Stone Container coalition, having ‘reforestation’ on their side as a winning frame to defend the Gmelina plantations, while their opponents could not get hold of sufficient scientific material to prove their harm. The second territory became occupied by the ecologists who successfully applied the ‘biodiversity protection frame’ to defend Osa’s nature against industrialisation. There were specific grounds to argue that the rain forest and the Gulf should be protected. These grounds included their uniqueness as ecosystems and habitats of a high species diversity, but also their peaceful scenery which had a high potential for sustainable longer-term income generation through tourism most of all. An important reason for the protest coalition to focus on the frame of biodiversity conservation, and not on the criticism of neo-liberal agrarian and forestry policies, were the increasing international political opportunities related to biodiversity conservation for Costa Rica as a donor-dependent country (Silva 1994) and the decreasing opportunities for national protectionist agrarian and social development for Costa Rica as an IMF-dependent country (Carrière 1990). The fact that AECO and its allies increasingly concentrated on the biodiversity frame was also influenced by the dominance of conservation pur sang as a
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strategy within the Northern/US environmental movement. The most conservationist strands of this movement influenced Costa Rican environmental policy considerably until the early 1990s (Rains Wallace 1992; Rodríguez Cervantes 1993). Thus, in order to find national and international allies to defend Osa’s resources against the pulpwood project, conservationist discourse had to be applied. However, if biodiversity conservation was necessary to mobilise national and international pressure to change the Stone Container project, it was not free of controversy from a social point of view. The lack of land-use opportunities was the local ground for resistance, and in addition to declining state support for agriculture, the establishment of National Parks had also played a role in this. There is a real historical opposition between the interests of small-scale producers and the in situ conservation of biodiversity in Corcovado National Park and the adjacent Forest Reserve. Scientific arguments – specifically from US biologists – played an important role in the argumentation to shut down the Park for all local use (Christen 1994). Moreover, the restrictions to forest cutting and other local use in the Golfo Dulce Forest Reserve – which serves as a buffer zone between the National Park and the agricultural zone – met with fierce local resistance. The way the Park and the Reserve were established reflects the widespread top-down approach to biodiversity conservation: fencing it off from local people who hardly participated at all in its management and benefits (Utting 1993; Douma et al. 1993). Conservation has severely limited agricultural use, forest use and hunting and has directly threatened the livelihoods of gold seekers. However, as is increasingly recognised by local residents, the forests do fulfil a soil and water conservation function which is crucial to agricultural activities. Deforestation in the Forest Reserve has already led to floods in the rainy season. Furthermore, as regards their involvement in tourism as guides, cabina holders and the like, local dwellers are dependent on the forests and the diversity of ecosystems, habitats and species. In other words, despite the historical clashes, there was sufficient discursive space to integrate the conservation frame in local concerns and create the collective identity of defenders of the natural resources among inhabitants of Osa. Moreover, the emotional, affective attachment to Osa’s beauties among long-term local residents should not be denied. Strategically, however, as regards expressing their worries about the Ston Forestal project in general, local actors were dependent on the science-based biodiversity frame for the government to listen to their plea. The biodiversity frames and their political impact Various conservationist frames were used by the protesters against Stone’s industrial work. The spills of oil from boats and other wastes from the industry in the most ecologically vulnerable spot of the Golfo Dulce would harm its unique pristine character, its biodiversity, local fishery and the scenery. The spoiling of the scenery, in turn, would harm tourism development in the area. The intense truck traffic involved would cut off a biological corridor between Corcovado National Park and its Esquinas sector, and thus threaten the survival of biodiversity of the last remnant of tropical rain forest of the Pacific side of Central America. Last but not least, the Free Trade conditions under which the Stone Container project was to operate would attract more industry, and therefore increase the level of environmental disturbance in the area. The destruction of biodiversity would also affect the future livelihoods of Osa’s inhabitants and the future of biological research in the area (Greenpeace Centro America 1994). The Golfo Dulce had a pristine character, not only in biological terms, but also in discursive terms. Its biodiversity had hardly been studied and debated before. This resulted in the fact that there was no authority available in the pro-Stone coalition which was able to deny the recent scientific findings on the Gulf’s unique fjord-like ecosystem characteristics and biological wealth. These recent scientific findings were, in part, gathered and produced especially for the sake of the campaign, in order to obtain material for the strategic neutrality needed in the debate while also serving to strengthen the campaigners’ position. A respected oceanographic researcher from Europe (Hartmann 1993, 1995) was able to convince the evaluators and the decision-making institutions involved in the assessment of Ston Forestal’s industrial plans, such as the General Comptroller (1994) and a specially installed Government
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Committee (1994), that the Gulf was a unique (fjord-like) ecosystem, of which there were only four in the world and that it was so vulnerable it could not cope with disturbance or contamination. This led the committee to recommend that Stone Container should move their industrial infrastructure to another location. Moreover, the oceanographic and biologist knowledge was ‘democratised’ among the local protest coalition, which echoed elements of it in their frames during interviews in the years afterwards (Van den Hombergh 1999, 2004). Only one of the main arguments of the environmentalists, that the traffic and industrial plant involved in the operation of the Ston Forestal project would harm the biological corridor between two National Parks, was contested with some success by the pro-Stone coalition. While the ecologists and scientists insisted on the actual natural function of the biological corridor, policymakers in pro of the company denied its existence because no legal measures had been implemented to make the corridor official. The directions in which the State sought solutions to control the environmental risks involved in the Stone Container project show a similarity with a worldwide tendency. In the 1980s, a strong belief prevailed in Environmental Impact Studies and in this context the Costa Rican government created institutional means of having such studies carried out and evaluated. Stone Container also had to submit such a study before being able to construct their industrial and harbour facilities in Punta Estrella on the Osa Peninsula. As a result of international pressure and the scientific arguments of the protesters, this Environmental Impact Assessment was, however, severely criticised by the General Comptroller in the end for its failure to provide insights into the ecological harms of the plant. In the 1990s, it became clear on a worldwide scale that control over the execution of the promises made after such impact assessments was often lacking. This increased the quest for environmental auditing which featured more regular controls. In line with this, as part of a marketing and political strategy, Stone Container thus voluntarily asked a scientific institution to study its project in order to obtain a ‘green certificate’ for the sustainable management of its plantations. The doubts about the ecological impact of the industrial infrastructure among the projects’ certifiers, who had been convinced by the protesters, was an extra incentive for the company to let go of their idea of an industrial plant on the Osa Peninsula, in exchange for the desired green seal. A new partnership between Stone and the Costa Rican government was created in 1995. The industrial plant was to be constructed in a less vulnerable spot. Moreover, it was also laid down in black and white that if any environmental harm occurred, Stone Container as the mother company would be fully responsible to pay for the costs. As an extra condition, it was decided that a monitoring commission should be installed, in which citizens from the environmental movement in the area would participate. Reflections on the conditions of partnerships Public-private partnerships What would be the conditions for partnerships between Latin American states and land-use related companies to contribute to egalitarian development, poverty reduction and nature conservation? Below we present some elements for discussion, which would also apply to partnerships between companies and local land users – most of them nothing new in the thinking about conditions for development, but nevertheless important principles that need to be underlined. Partnerships can be clear tools for goal alignment of a variety of stakeholders, if the following issues are taken into account: 1. In the design of such agreements, rights, not stakes, should be the first guiding principle when seeking solutions. The most important principle is the basic right to a sustainable livelihood, which means that not only respect for the country’s legal system, but also the socioeconomic rights of the poor should serve as a basis. Threatening survival in the countryside of the poorer categories among the ‘beneficiaries’, without alternative livelihood options being available, should not be the effect of a partnership for sustainable development. Therefore, not only the environmental but also the socioeconomic benefits
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of interventions for a variety of rights and stakeholders (especially the poorest) should be properly thought through and not taken for granted. 2. Frames such as ‘partnership for sustainable development’, ‘reforestation of wastelands’, ‘socioeconomic benefits for the local communities’ and ‘biodiversity conservation’ should be duly deconstructed. What are the real environmental and socioeconomic consequences involved? To whose benefit and detriment? Both with regard to the State and land users, ‘partnerships’ should not be a cover for the emergency sale (or lease) of their natural resources. Partnerships only have legitimacy if resource use can be sustainable and lucrative for the poor countries or land users in the long run. 3. Differential interests and responsibilities between so-called ‘beneficiaries’, such as those according to gender, qualitative and quantitative resource availability, resource-use strategies and ethnicity, should be addressed in the problem analysis and design of the partnership-project. The analysis should include the scale of (potential) impact of the project interventions (be it forest exploitation or conservation) on environmental and social conditions of these different categories. 4. The responsibility for environmental and social (health) damage should be arranged in the partnership agreement. Meaningful project monitoring mechanisms should be in place with real participation of the most vulnerable categories to monitor such processes. Civil society coalitions Critical watchdog groups will always be needed to monitor public-private partnerships. They may confront States and companies with their own political slogans or frames to make sure they keep their promises, making use of social (and) scientific arguments and the political opportunities available to address the concerns of nature conservation and egalitarian development. Conclusions In principle, the frames of ecologist movement builders or social movement organisations contain elements of the master frames of environmental and social justice. However, the kind of framing orientations developed and whether these are radical or reformist in nature depends on the political opportunities and the specific structures and webs where coalition partners are to be found. Different framing orientations were employed and developed by the protesters on the Osa Peninsula and on a national and international scale. 1. On a national scale, legalistic, reformist frames prevailed which demanded changes to the conditions of the partnership agreement, without the protesters being able to question its neo-liberal assumptions, and its assumptions concerning ‘reforestation’. 2. On a local scale, a holistic critique of neo-liberal development and its adverse socioeconomic and ecological effects was dominant. 3. Conservationist framing of rain forest and biodiversity protection evolved to create opportunity for gaining political ground and allies on an international scale. The ecologists’ holistic criticism of the Ston Forestal project, primarily concerning the inequality inherent in the neo-liberal agricultural policy and its potentially devastating consequences (supporting monocultures instead of conservation), led mainly to political closure. In contrast to the issue of the industrial harbour infrastructure, the issue of the pulp plantations was not suitable as a focus for strategic framing and coalition-building in the environmental campaign on a Costa Rican national scale. Most scientists, including those specialised in forestry issues, left out the issue of potentially adverse environmental and social effects of the Gmelina plantations in their final position about the project. This was not necessarily because they agreed with them but because – as discussed – they did not have the scientific material to sustain a position against it, or because they did not want to have their fingers burnt scientifically, economically or politically. Ston Forestal’s project would probably not have suffered any political harm from the local protests of farmers in Osa – whether or not defended by AECO and their international coalition partners – if it had not included an industrial plant close to high value conservation areas in its design.
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AECO’s loyalty to the inhabitants of Osa and their concerns did not cease and was mainly expressed by a continuously intensive cooperation and educational work in Osa. However, their ‘bargaining’ with a view to reaching a political objective also had its price in that they were forced into public compliance with the Gmelina plantations to which they seriously opposed, thus losing out the more radical wings and (only discursively) ‘betraying’ the farmers’ critique. This was said to have been an issue of serious debate within AECO itself and at the international coordinators’ meetings. After the campaign was closed down in 1995, because a new partnership agreement had been signed arranging the replacement of the chip mill, many former activists in Osa, especially farmer and community leaders said that they felt the struggle was ‘only half’ completed. This was because, even though their extension had been slowed down, the Gmelina plantations were still in place and the company was a direct competitor for fertile arable land. Although it was certainly an improvement on the previous agreement dating from 1989, the final agreement between Stone and the Costa Rican State of 1995 still did not meet most of the conditions outlined here and in the introductory chapter for equitable, povertyeradicating and nature-conserving partnerships. However, the protest coalition had, without doubt, made land users more conscious of the potential effects of their land-use choices in the longer run and had made politicians more aware of their countervailing power versus foreign investors. In the end, the industrial plant was not built at all. The backlog the project had suffered from the protest, the new responsibility it had to bear, the economic crisis in the paper sector which forced Stone Container to merge with Jefferson Smurfit (a company which had less of a need for such a showpiece project) meant that Ston Forestal was sold to Costa Rican and Honduran entrepreneurs in the early 2000s. They changed its objective and from then on the Gmelina wood was used for pallets, pencils and furniture. Only a small part of it seems to have been exported as raw material for pulp. Thus, in the end, the campaign, that had focused on halting the harbour and industrial plant, had also slowed down and (unexpectedly) transformed the plantations. References Adams, W.M. (1990) Green Development. Environment and Sustainability in the Third World. London: Routledge. Bebbington, A. (1999) ‘Capitals and Capabilities: A Framework for Analyzing Peasant Viability, Rural Livelihoods and Poverty’, World Development, Vol. 27, No 12, pp. 2021-2044. Blaikie, P. (2000) ‘Geography, Environment and Conflict’. Speech given at the Conference Geography 2000, 3 November 2000, University of Amsterdam. Blaikie, P. and Brookfield, H. (1987) Land Degradation and Society. London and New York: Routledge. Camacho, M.A. (1993) ‘Regional Planning and People’s Participation in Costa Rica: A Case Study at the Natural Protected Area of the Osa Peninsula, Brunca Region’. Unpublished dissertation University of East Anglia. Carrière, J. (1990) ‘The Political Economy of Land Degradation in Costa Rica’, New Political Science, No 18/19 Fall-Winter. Christen, C. (1994) ‘Development and Conservation in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula 19371977. Unpublished PhD Thesis John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Dobson, A. (1990) Green Political Thought. London: Unwin Hyman. Douma, W., Hombergh, H. van den and Wieberdink. A. (1994) ‘The Politics of Research on Gender, Environment and Development’, pp. 176-186 in W. Harcourt (ed.) Feminist Perspectives on Sustainable Development. London and Rome: Zed Books/Society for International Development. General Comptroller (1994) ‘Posición de la Contraloría General de la República ante el Contrato Suscrito por la Corporación Zona Franca de Exportación, el Ministerio de Obras Publicas y Transportes y la Empresa Ston Forestal S.A. Oficio 10904 de 7 septiembre
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1994, suscrito por Lic. Roberto Gamboa Chaverri y Ricardo Chavarria Espinoza (San José, Costa Rica). Gordillo de Anda G. and Boening, F. ( 1999) ‘Latin American Land Reforms in the 1990s’. Paper presented at the CEDLA–WAU-CERES Workshop on Land in Latin America: New Context, New Claims, New Concepts. Amsterdam, 26-27 May 1999. Government Committee (Comité de Replanteamiento) (1994) ‘Informe Final de Comité de Análisis y Replanteamiento de la Autorización Concedida a Stone Container y sus Subsidiarias. Ministerio de Recursos Naturales, Energía y Minas (MIRENEM)Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes (MOPT)-Ministerio de Comercio Exterior, 16 de agosto. Greenpeace Centro América (1994) ‘Un Puerto Astillero en el Golfo Dulce. Las Consecuencias de Largo Plazo y la Posición de Greenpeace (Unpublished document). Harper, K.M. (2001) ‘The Environment as Master Narrative: Discourse and Identity in Environmental Problems’, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 74, No 3, pp. 101-103. Hartmann, H. (1995) ‘The Golfo Dulce Marine Environment: Review and Assessment’. Unpublished paper Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand, France. Hartmann, H. (1993) ‘The Golfo Dulce Marine Environment’. Unpublished paper. Hombergh, H. van den (1999) Guerreros del Golfo Dulce. Industria Forestal y Conflicto en la Península de Osa, Costa Rica. San José/Amsterdam: Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones (DEI) (Colección Universitaria) and University of Amsterdam. Hombergh, H. van den (2004) No Stone Unturned: Building Blocks of Environmentalist Power versus Transnational Industrial Forestry in Costa Rica.(PhD Thesis University of Amsterdam) Amsterdam: Dutch University Press. Homer-Dixon, T.F. (1999) Environment, Scarcity and Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kerski, A. (1995) ‘Pulp, Paper and Power. How an Industry Reshapes its Social Environment’, The Ecologist, Vol. 25, No 4, July/August 1995, pp 142-49. Lohmann, L. and Carrere, R. (1996) Pulping the South. Industrial Tree Plantations and the World Paper Economy. London and New Jersey: Zed Books. McAdam, D., McCarthy, J. and Zald, M. (1996) Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements. Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures and Cultural Framings. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Rains Wallace, D. (1992) The Quetzal and the Macaw. The Story of Costa Rica’s National Parks. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Redclift, M. and Goodman, D. (eds) (1991) Environment and Development in Latin America: The Politics of Sustainability. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rodríguez Cervantes, S. (1993) ‘Conservation, Contradiction and Sovereignty Erosion: The Costa Rican State and the Natural Protected Areas (1970-1992)’. PhD thesis University of Wisconsin-Madison. Silva, E. (1994) ‘Thinking Politically about Sustainable Development in the Tropical Forests of Latin America’, Development and Change, Vol. 25, pp. 697-721. Snow, D.E and Benford, R. (1992) ‘Master Frames and Cycles of Protest’, pp. 133-155 in A. Morris and C. McClurg Mueller (eds) Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Stone Container Corporation (1995) Annual Report. Chicago: Stone Container Corporation. Tarrow, S. (1994) Power in Movement. Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrow S. (1996) ‘Social Movements in Contentious Politics: A Review Article’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No 4, December 1996, pp. 874-883. Thiesenhusen, W.C. (1995) Broken Promises: Agrarian Reform and the Latin American Campesino. Boulder (CO): Westview Press. Utting, P. (1993) Trees, People and Power. London: Earthscan. Yearly, S. (1996) ‘Nature’s Advocates: Putting Science to Work in Environmental Organisations’, pp. 172-190 in A. Irwin and B. Wynne (eds) Misunderstanding Science?
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The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yearly, S. (1994) ‘Social Movements and Environmental Change’, pp. 150-168 in: M. Redclift and T. Benton (eds) Social Theory and the Global Environment. London and New York: Routledge/Global Environmental Change Programme.
Endnotes 1 2 3
Supported by NWO/WOTRO and carried out for the University of Amsterdam. Note differences with Scholtz’ contribution to this volume (Chapter 13). In that year we performed a review on the basis of bibliographical sources of CATIE, Turrialba, Costa Rica and Wageningen University.
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5. Partnerships for Sustainable Timber Production in Trinidad: Dealing with Social and Ecological Dynamics James Fairhead** and Melissa Leach**
Trinidad, part of the twin-island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in the eastern Caribbean, has extensive areas of tropical humid forest, most of which lie in government-held reserves. While small island states have received relatively little attention in international and Latin American regional debates about sustainable forestry, Trinidad is something of an exception, having acquired a rare international reputation for the sustainability of its natural forest management (Synnott 1989). The systems developed by the government Forestry Division in partnership with international organisations since colonial times are the oldest in the region. Their apparent success would appear to support international proponents of natural forest management as a viable way to reconcile timber production with other forest values (see, for example, Harcharik 1997), as against those who would argue for setting aside natural forest for conservation, focusing timber production on plantations. They have attracted the attention of international organisations interested in developing and testing criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management (Guenter 1998). Trinidad’s natural forest management systems are also held up – by government foresters at least – as examples of important, productive partnerships between communities and the state. Local participation is claimed to be integral to the success of forest management that might thus be expected to fulfil the social, as well as ecological, criteria and indicators that have become so central to global discourses about sustainable forest management (for instance, Simmula and Oy 1999). In both ecological and social respects, national and international attention focuses particularly on Trinidad’s ‘Periodic Block System’ PBS); a ‘blueprint’ system for selective logging in demarcated forest blocks in cycles of 25-30 years in the forests to the South and east of the island. The operation of the system depends on partnerships between government foresters and small-scale artisanal operators known locally as ‘woodworkers’, who purchase timber under licence, fell the trees, deliver them to the roadside and sell them from there to sawmillers. Woodworkers are amongst the few people in Trinidad still to have forest-based livelihoods, given the island’s recent history of collapsing plantation agriculture and rapid industrialisation and urbanisation associated with the oil boom of the 1970s. Reliant on their timber-felling revenues for family subsistence and cash income, yet living in rural settlements and towns where people have diverse rural and urban occupations, the woodworkers hardly represent a typical ‘forest-dependent community’. Yet they have, since 1964, been organised within a Woodworkers’ Association, which acts both as a union to represent their rights and interests, and works with the state to regulate timber exploitation. This chapter, which draws from our larger work on science and policy around forest and environment in Trinidad (Fairhead and Leach 2003), traces the development of Trinidad’s PBS both as a system for managing forest ecology, and as a system of social relationships. However, in doing so, it questions some of these claims about its success as an exemplar of sustainable forest management – or rather re-casts how ‘sustainability’ should be conceived. In particular, definitions, criteria and indicators of sustainability used both internationally and in the PBS assume stability and predictability in ecological and social systems and that forests and people will respond to rational management in rational, predictable and known ways. Yet management practices have been responding continually to unpredicted ecological **
Department of Antropology, Arts C128, University of Sussex, Falmer, BN1 9SJ Brighton, UK. Email:
[email protected]. ** Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Falmer, BN1 9RE Brighton, UK. E-mail:
[email protected].
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developments such as failures of regeneration and fire events, as well as to socioeconomic and political instabilities. As woodworkers have borne the brunt of these, tensions have emerged in their relationships with government foresters. Despite Trinidad’s international and professional reputation for sustainable forest management, many Trinidadians have become deeply concerned by the state of the forest and the degradation which seems to have accompanied so called ‘sustainable’ practices. Recent perspectives in forest ecology and climate history cast new light on these dynamics and unpredictable responses, and help explain these contradictions. However, national foresters and their international sponsors who, not surprisingly, are frustrated when things do not work out as planned, have not taken this up. This case suggests, more broadly, that if sustainable forest management and effective partnerships for it are not to remain an illusory goal, it is time for non-equilibrium dynamics to be taken more seriously within national and global debates. The emergence of Trinidad’s Periodic Block System Timber in Trinidad currently derives from a range of sources and land types: state forest reserves, plantations on reserved and unreserved state land, forest re-growth on abandoned private agricultural land, private areas of natural forest and new planting on private land. The PBS has developed and been applied within state forest reserves in the Southeast, a highlyforested region dominated in parts by an astonishingly gregarious natural forest tree, Mora excelsa. This species accounts for 60-80 per cent of all plants and still more of the upper canopy. Mora is a high quality timber, used for shipbuilding in the 1800s and subsequently in house building, bridge construction and as railway sleepers (Forest Department 1933).
Figure 5.1 – Trinidad with the Victoria Mayaro Forest Reserve
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In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Trinidad imported much of its timber. While the original impetus to establish forest reserves derived from concerns over climate and soils, discussions in the 1920s instigated a shift towards managing state forests for timber production to offset imports and generate exports (Marshall 1925; Troup 1926; Robinson 1926). The greatest timber resources lay in the two large Mora forests of Mayaro and Matura Figure 5.1). These were hardly used until the establishment of Trinidad’s first major sawmill in the Southeast, whereupon it became the most heavily cut timber in the colony (Trinidad and Tobago 1934, 58) – although nothing approaching the estimated potential annual production. From 1918 the colonial Forest Department developed and applied a succession of management systems. First ‘selection felling’ was introduced, which prescribed that trees under a certain girth could not be felled without authorisation, and trees meeting the girth requirement could be felled only if another tree of its species over 3 foot in girth was growing within 300 feet – to ensure future seed (Marshall 1925, 12). Then the ‘Open Range System (ORS)’ followed, in which ‘Individual licensed loggers are licensed to cut a specified volume or number of trees and may select them anywhere in the reserve or range as defined and approved by the Forest Department’ (Synnott 1989). Both systems proved unsatisfactory. It was difficult for foresters to police felling over scattered areas, so in practice loggers creamed the best trees with little regard to regeneration (Marshall 1925, 11; Synnott 1989, 93). While the ORS remains operational to this day in certain reserves, foresters have also been proposing improved systems, frequently adapting practices in use elsewhere in the tropics. Marshall (1925), for instance, suggested a ‘Periodic system’ similar to those long in use in India and Burma (Troup 1926, 3), through which a mixed wood of uneven-aged trees would be converted into even-aged woods of a pure crop. To achieve this, felling by licensees would be limited to annual coupes within a given block for a twenty year period, with all timber disposed of. In theory, a block of even-aged timber would regenerate (Marshall 1925, 11). A variant of this system was introduced in 1929 into Trinidad’s Arena forest reserve. The cutting cycle was also reduced from an expected sixty year monocycle to a thirty year polycycle. 1 It is the ‘polycyclic’ selection system which became referred to locally as the Periodic Block System (PBS). It was not until the 1960s – following a series of internationally-influenced, and ultimately unsuccessful, experiments with clear felling and pine plantation (Chalmers 1981, citing Bell 1969/71) – that the PBS was applied to Trinidad’s Mora forests. In the Southeastern Victoria Mayaro Reserve where it was first introduced, timber management is now almost completely under the PBS – although only 20 per cent of the land there is managed for production, with the rest set aside within on-shore oil concessions, a wildlife sanctuary (Trinity Hills) or as a strategic timber reserve. Forest management practices in the PBS The PBS emerged as a set of practices attempting to integrate the control of Mora forest ecology with the regulation of timber users. At first it was not such a radical departure from the Open Range System, involving a similar practice of maintaining ‘replacement’ trees (‘take one, seize one’), although felling was confined to and monitored within annually-demarcated blocks. In the early 1970s, an important innovation occurred in the introduction of ‘silvicultural marking’. In theory: ….stems are selected for sale by a team of highly skilled markers who go through the block systematically and physically mark trees that should be removed. In principle, the trees that are marked are those which in the next thirty years would not do as well as others that they are shading, or competing with. They may either be mature, or faulty or likely to become so (Clubbe and Jhilmit 1992, 5). Within a few years, silvicultural marking became an established part of the PBS and was taken over by a separate specialist branch of the Forestry Division – the Forest Resource Inventory and Management section (FRIM). Marked trees were sold to licensed woodworkers, who had to buy licences permitting them to fell 500 cubic feet of timber over a
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two-year period, after which the block would be closed from sales and allowed to regenerate for the cutting cycle of thirty years. In principle, one or two blocks (each of 200 ha) would be opened each year. With the shift to silvicultural marking, the PBS became directed not only towards sustainable extraction from the Mora forest, but also to more active ecological management. The Mora tree is often so dominant as to constitute an almost-pure stand. The intent is to harvest the increment from each twenty-five year period and to increase quality up to about 80 per cent sound trees. To achieve this, when each block is opened the FRIM would first conduct an inventory of all species above 20 cm diameter, and commercial species above 10 cm, recording basal area2 and estimated volume of timber in each block. The block is then compartmentalised, and trees marked for felling by two FRIM officers, each accompanied by a daily paid worker. After marking, the FRIM makes a logging operation plan detailing vehicle routes and collection points, recalling those from earlier cutting cycles. The FRIM then hands over a master list of the marked trees to the local forestry staff who work as sales officers, allocating and selling trees to licensees. Trees are marked on the basis of whether they would be better felled now or in twenty-five years time. ‘Better’ refers to the balance of a number of criteria in a process that FRIM officers describe more as an art than a strict science: one where personal judgement and experience count.3 Criteria include crown form and position, tree size in relation to the officer’s knowledge of the species, indicators of decay (for instance, hollow echo when tapped or active low branching), location (even an unsound or mature tree may be left standing on a river bank or steep slope), form of bole, species rarity and diversity of valuable timber species. Further selection criteria balance timber production with wildlife conservation: trees that are sheltering burrows or nests, certain fruit trees for food, and vines for animal shelter are left unmarked. A key aim is to avoid opening up the forest too much to let in pioneer species which would impoverish the forest. The knowledge and skills involved in silvicultural marking and in balancing these criteria are seen by forest officers as able to be acquired only through experience and practice, although they would like to create a handbook to ensure maintenance of these accumulated skills. Social relationships in the PBS The PBS also developed through, and now depends on, a range of social relationships, especially between foresters, woodworkers and sawmillers. While the PBS and its system of licences was originally intended to control and regulate timber extraction, from the earliest it involved relationships of support between the Forestry Division and woodworkers.4 By selling timber to them at a low price, the state in effect subsidises the woodworkers who find purchasing wood under licence from the Forestry Division more profitable than obtaining it from other sources. The Forestry Division staff describe this as a deliberate form of social policy, contributing to the social sustainability of the PBS in this economically impoverished area. Through the PBS, the Forestry Division also, at least in theory, protects the rights of woodworkers to access timber in relation to larger lumber operators. The Woodworkers’ Association now also works directly in partnership with the Forestry Division to determine the allocation of timber to woodworkers, in a context in which woodworkers’ demands usually exceed timber availability. There are currently seventy-two licensed woodworkers. The order in which licensees feature on the list – strictly by length of licenseeship – is crucial, dictating which woodworkers can enter the block first to choose the trees they will fell. Frequently, those after about twentieth on the list will obtain little wood of value. Because of these aspects of partnership and social support, as well as appreciation of the forest protection involved, representatives of the Woodworkers’ Association have a generally positive view of the PBS, with which their organisation has co-evolved. As the Association’s President put it: ‘Without the PBS the whole area would become savannah and our children would not see forest. The PBS is good for both the small man and the state.’ Nevertheless woodworkers critique the actual practice of the PBS, at least in recent years, on several grounds. Woodworkers have developed their perspectives and critiques not
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only in relation to the Forestry Division, but also to sawmillers, within a changing politicaleconomic context. Sawmillers in Southeast Trinidad range from small operators working niche markets (for instance sawing lowest grade timber for disposable pallets) to large-scale lumber industrialists who import timber from Guyana and distribute it throughout the country. First, woodworkers critique the ways that foresters balance what to fell and what to leave, complaining that the quality of timber made available to them is very low. This is accentuated by instances where – despite the Forestry Division’s formal policy of protecting woodworkers’ rights – certain sawmillers have gained priority access to blocks, ‘creaming’ the best timber before the block is opened to woodworkers. Worse, once sawmillers have the wood they require, woodworkers have no market for theirs. Sawmillers frequently gain such access through direct orders from government departments for construction timber, allowing sawmillers to purchase timber directly from the state, without having to buy it from the licensees. Woodworkers see these ‘government orders’ as a mechanism by which certain sawmillers with high-level political connections can subvert the authority and market control of the Woodworkers’ Association.5 Moreover, while woodworkers once enjoyed good relations with smaller sawmillers, these have increasingly been pushed out of business by a handful of lumber industrialists, which are the main beneficiaries of privileged state timber access. These ‘big boys’, as woodworkers understand it, are also close to the powers of the present government, which is relatively unsympathetic to woodworkers. The government, in turn, is supported by international consultants who have recommended a rationalisation of sawmillers for economic efficiency, and to reduce overcapacity (Chalmers and Faizool 1992). Second, woodworkers complain about delays and time lags in Forestry Division bureaucracy. Licensees are required to pay their license fees up-front, but the Division is then frequently slow to open the block. Woodworkers sometimes have to provide free labour to ensure that blocks are opened. Even once the trees are felled, it can take a year before paperwork and measuring by forest officers is complete and the woodworkers are free to remove the trees. During delays such as these, woodworkers’ money is tied up, and they are frequently left indebted. Furthermore felled trees become hard to find as they have become buried in undergrowth. A third area of complaint refers to radical changes in procedure following forest fires. The major ramifications of these for woodworkers and their livelihoods will be discussed after considering the broader questions of sustainability raised by these fires, and their implications for how Mora ecological dynamics might be understood. Ecological dynamics and unpredictabilities The management of Mora forest under the PBS is geared towards maintaining a stable state of productive forest: a kind of equilibrium. Yet a major shock – in the form of extensive forest fires in 1987 – forced system adaptation. The fires, linked to a particularly deep and prolonged dry season, burnt about 20,000 ha of good forest, 10,000 ha of which under the PBS.6 In response, the Forestry Division re-planned block rotations, promoting the productive use of the fire-burned blocks through ‘salvage cuts’ and holding back the opening of what came to be called ‘green’ blocks. When explaining the fire event, foresters image it as a one-off external variable to an otherwise stable system over the longer term. Such explanations and management practices accord with the equilibrial perspectives which have long dominated work on forest ecology in the Latin American region and internationally. Yet Trinidad experiences very high interannual variability of rainfall and dry season length, and in this context one could expect major fire risks to occur several times in the course of a century – as indeed forestry records reveal. Moreover recent scientific perspectives – embracing non-equilibrial dynamics (for instance Sprugel 1991) and increased attention to climate variation and the legacy of historic land use – would question such equilibrial views. In contextualising fire events as part of a pathdependent history of forest disturbance, in effect as part of the system, they question both the premise of stability in Mora forests and the conceptualisation of sustainability and management implications which flow from this.
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The studies of early ecological scientists in Trinidad themselves suggested that over a long timescale, Trinidad’s vegetation was not usefully understood in relation to equilibrium. Marshall (1934, 1939), for example, noted that Mora was an invasive tree, while the failure of Mora boundaries to correspond to obvious soil or physical features and the presence of saplings in neighbouring associations suggested its progressive march into these (Beard 1946, 181). Beard deduced from present distribution and rates of natural advance that Mora arrived 30-50,000 years ago. Studies of climate history and palaeo-archaeology in mainland tropical America, however, suggest that non-equilibrium conditions may also apply over much shorter timescales, linked to a major dry phase 4-6,000 years ago, recovery since 2,000 BP, and unstable climatic conditions since then (Tardy 1998). Furthermore, recent research on Amerindian population history and land use – minimised in earlier studies of Trinidad, where Carib and Arawak Indians were all but eliminated following fifteenth century European conquest – suggests that this may significantly have influenced the evolution of vegetation. Historical studies now suggest that relatively large Amerindian populations were shifting cultivators of bitter cassava, sweet potatoes, cotton and a great variety of other crops, in an economy locked into wide reaching water-borne trade networks which stimulated the settlement of major river valleys, as well as the coast (Boomert pers. comm.). These recent perspectives might lead to an interpretation of Trinidad’s forest vegetation as a scar tissue, two or three generations of trees old, following sixteenth century Amerindian depopulation, building on a pre-Columbian vegetation history of a complex of anthropogenic management and vegetation response to climate re-humidification from about 2,000 years ago. The formations found today may not be as long-lived and stable as assumed, and – more importantly – may respond very unpredictably to major disturbance. Quite plausibly, the apparent difficulty Mora has in regenerating following fire could be interpreted as a manifestation of this. Notably, though, the archaeological studies which would be required to verify population estimates and the anecdotal evidence of dense inland settlements have not been carried out (Newson 1976, see also Boomert 1984, 144-5), nor have the vegetation histories and paleo-ecological studies which would provide actual data on pre-Columbian vegetation. The absence of focused study of long-term vegetation patterns in Trinidad, and the related absence (or minimisation) of non-equilibrial perspectives on ecology, in turn relates – at least in part – to the powerful co-production of science, policy and management around views of stability. In the meantime, ad hoc management changes to cope with unpredictability have been among the factors provoking tension between woodworkers and the Forestry Division. Socio-political dynamics and tensions between woodworkers and the Forestry Division Woodworkers argue that they have borne the brunt of changes in PBS management in response to ecological dynamics – geared ever more towards restoration and improvement following the fires. They complain that the Forestry Division has not kept to its stated policy of opening up two blocks per year. Moreover, long delays of up to twelve years have occurred between the burning (in 1987) and the opening of fire-burned blocks. As a result, much of the timber is rotten, with larger trunk-hollows. FRIM officers are well aware of these critiques.7 They acknowledge that more ‘virgin’ blocks could be brought into the system, but argue that the licensees cannot be satisfied; to give them a little more would be the thin end of a wedge of expanding, insatiable demand. Given this perception, forest officers feel that it would be inappropriate to attempt to close the gap between demand and supply. This in turn allows them to operate on the precautionary principle in forest management and conservation, taking a highly cautious approach to the release of new blocks and guarding large areas of Mora forest unexploited. Unpredictable ecological events also affect the course of the forester’s work, and in interaction with the exigencies of labour and resource availability this places further demands on woodworkers. Demands to perform unexpected timely operations, such as surveying fire-
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burned areas and substituting for absent labourers, interrupts the normal flow of forestry work. Foresters’ performance varies with the weather and the equally fickle availability of workmen and surveyors. In this context, forest officers see the current Forestry Division system of performance-related salaries and promotions linked to a pre-agreed work programme as invidious. It fails to acknowledge the day-to-day and year-to-year flexibility required to respond to ecological and social contingencies, and the initiative foresters must frequently take to cope with unpredictable field conditions. Foresters’ responses frequently create extra delays and place extra calls on the labour of woodworkers who must assist forest officers in their own work. At the same time, there is a sense of common purpose between local representatives of the Forestry Division and the woodworkers. This is partly because local forestry staff, too, feel vulnerable to many of the political-economic processes of which woodworkers complain. As one forest officer explained, the government originally aimed to provide employment for rural people, and woodworkers are justified in their claims that sawmillers are now taking their rights.8 This officer is due to speak for the Forestry Division in a court case brought by licensees against the Division’s priority allocation of felling rights to sawmillers. He finds himself highly sympathetic to the woodworkers’ plight. Furthermore, large sawmillers are now pushing to be granted forestry concessions of around 400 ha. Local forest officers are concerned about the sustainability of timber production under such conditions, given the profit orientation of big business. In this way they see support to the woodworkers and their unionisation as important for maintaining the integrity of the forest and the PBS. Forestry field staff, moreover, frequently feel threatened by large operators. As one put it: ‘A small forest officer may take them to court, but because of their [political] connections, you find yourself in difficulty and you get a transfer.’9 Policing the activities of well-connected large sawmillers only magnifies the more general difficulties foresters now face in policing timber theft. Following a recent Ministerial ruling, officers are required to take all forest offences to court: ‘But unfortunately they find that if they do not have all the evidence and know all the rules, the prosecution case will fail. Moreover, magistrates do not value the environment, consider forests to be wasteland and might impose a trivial US$ 50 fine and a reprimand.’10 Conservancy forest officers are thus vulnerable and powerless in relation to processes operating at higher levels and in the capital, Port of Spain. In some respects it is better for them to work with those less powerful than they, such as licensees. Woodworkers, to a certain extent, acknowledge these conditions, seeing local forest officers as conduits for orders and ‘political interference’ from above. Indeed their major calls for change are to higher-level policymakers. Yet other remarks and instances suggest persistent tensions between woodworkers and forest officers. Foresters are suspicious that woodworkers set the 1987 fires, for example. Woodworkers question the motives of foresters: for example the Forestry Division had planned to open a block near the Trinity Hills Wildlife Sanctuary, and went as far as silviculturally marking the trees. The Director of Forestry forbade the extraction, erring on the side of wildlife conservation. Woodworkers reinterpret this, claiming that the Forestry Division wanted to give sawmillers half and woodworkers half of this block and that when the woodworkers successfully objected to this allocation, the national Forestry Division withdrew the block to ‘get back at them’. This instance, and others like it, illustrate a general perception that the Forestry Division uses arguments about conservation and sustainability as a ‘greenwash’ to hide their real political-economic interests; interests which both local and national forest officials are seen to have in developing good relationships with large sawmill operators, and from which they benefit economically or politically. For example the slow opening of blocks, justified on the grounds of fire damage and sustainability, is seen by woodworkers as an excuse for
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foresters who want to ‘weed the licensees out of the system’ and build up their relationships with the ‘big boys’. 11 The sense of woodworkers being squeezed out is easily understood given that a decade ago there were ten Woodworkers’ Associations in the country, but now there are only one or two in the Southeast; and whereas the Nariva-Mayaro Woodworkers’ Association now has only seventy-two members, it once had 600. ‘The forest used to provide bread in this region, but now this is only for a few’.12 Woodworkers who cannot make a livelihood from timber are forced to turn to other occupations: to temporary construction work, hunting, squatting or semi-legal activities. In the Woodworkers’ Association-Forestry Division relationship, then, some degree of alliance coexists with considerable and mutual lack of trust. To a certain extent, each side blames problems in the operation of the PBS on the other side’s supposed links with politicians, and sees its claims about inappropriate PBS scientific practice as masks for ‘unreasonable’, individualistic profit-seeking behaviour. While at one level, then, the PBS can appear as a ‘blueprint’ system of sustainable forest management, it is at the same time a field of social and political struggle. In this, actual management practices (which trees are marked, when and how; which blocks are opened, when and how) may be responses to the more day-to-day dilemmas forest officers face in their social relationships with woodworkers, sawmillers and politicians, and in dealing with ecological unpredictabilities. The ‘system’ as it emerges on the ground is partially an unintended product of these socio-political practices, even while national foresters continue to portray it as a pre-designed, rational blueprint. Conclusions The development of Trinidad’s PBS has drawn on and reproduced framings of stability in social and ecological systems. The premise of stability is important to the institutions involved in forest policy in a number of ways. First, it iconises a form of scientific professionalism in forestry which has long been central to the Forestry Division’s image and claims to institutional authority within Trinidad, and is increasingly so as multiplying conservation-focused institutions compete for national and international funds and attention. Second, the system is a means to justify the continued use of state forest reserves for timber production against critical NGOs and others who would prefer them devoted to other uses – such as biodiversity protection. Third, casting the relationship with woodworkers as a form of community forestry and state-community partnership is useful to the Forestry Division’s image with NGOs and international donors. In short, in a world of multiplying local, national and international actors and partnerships in the forestry field, the image of stability in the PBS has acquired major institutional importance, both within Trinidad, and in placing Trinidad as an exemplar on the international stage. In contrast, both foresters working at field-level and the woodworkers acknowledge the ecological and social unpredictabilities of the system. They make flexible adaptations to felling practices and agreements that continually subvert the system’s ‘rules’, yet are necessary for it to work. These practices of adaptive management remain unformalised and unacknowledged within the larger forestry bureaucracy, with its image of scientific professionalism and its strong hierarchies. The economic dependence of the woodworkers also places them in a weak position to challenge the reality that they absorb much of the work and cost of coping with unforeseen events. These issues of unpredictability compound broader questions about the actual sustainability of Trinidad’s natural forest management system. First, while woodworkers continue to value their relative autonomy, studies suggest that their incomes are lower – as well as more variable – than those of waged workers in teak plantations, Trinidad’s other major timber production system (Guenter 1998). Squeezing out the woodworkers may break down the sustainability of the system. International consultants have proposed that an increase in profitability and efficiency would be possible if there was a rationalisation of sawmillers (to five), enabling improved capacity for state regulation of sawmillers, and to proceed with
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this regardless of implications for livelihoods – for example those of woodworkers who may be undermined. But if it is the case that (a) they are self-exploiting at present; (b) have borne the brunt of improvement; and (c) have been cooperative with the PBS, will their eradication help sustainable practice? There must be serious doubts about this. Larger, more powerful millers may easily be able to apply political pressure to gain concessions – as they have been attempting – and may not be prepared to bear the costs of improvements. This might lead to increased profitability at the loss of such sustainability as there is. Moreover, in as much as woodworkers have contributed to the present quality of PBS forest through their own work, there must surely be a serious ethical question that they should be its beneficiaries. Second, there must be real questions as to whether the PBS, if properly costed, would be economically sustainable. The Forestry Division depends on heavy state subsidisation from Trinidad’s oil and gas-rich revenue base, and has arguably been able to develop natural forest management systems such as the PBS – rather than focusing on economic forestry – only because it has not had to be financially autonomous, enabling its science and practice to continue in particular ways. One of them has been to invest heavily in PBS management over a relatively small area where management requirements are large (although costings do not appear to have been conducted). Moreover, revenues to the forest service, which is effectively subsidising woodworkers, are low. Third, there is pressure in Trinidad from environmental lobbies to stop logging all state forested land due to the impact that it has had on national forests. The argument is to shift all timber production to plantations and private land. In response, foresters have drawn on the PBS to suggest that natural forest management can balance timber and other (conservation) objectives on state land. Indeed the PBS serves as icon of scientific professionalism (and indeed of participation, in co-evolution with woodworkers), in an otherwise vulnerable forest division, saddled with an embarrassing history of poorly performing plantation forestry and a less than participatory ethos. Yet the extent to which the PBS in Mora forests, even as presently operating, can really ensure ‘maintenance of the ecological functions and integrity of the forest’ can still be questioned, despite the clear advantages of the system and its capacity to endure to date. The recent history of the PBS suggests that the more chaotic aspects of ecological dynamics may disturb not only the ecological integrity of the system, but also – as managers adapt – its socio-political integrity. As we have argued here, tensions between the Forest Division and the Woodworkers are in part the result of such disturbance, as woodworkers interpret management adaptations as working against their favour. The socio-political struggles so generated may further compromise the sustainability of this dynamic socio-technical system, at least in so far as sustainability is understood in equilibrial terms. Such interlocked dynamics also make it clear that issues of ecological and of social sustainability should not be considered apart. International debates and attempts to harmonise criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management do incorporate attention to issues of social and economic sustainability, along with ecological sustainability (Simmula and Oy 1999; WCFSD 1999). To date, however, they have included very little recognition of non-equilibrium perspectives and their implications for forest management. If sustainable forestry is not to be an illusory goal, or if the costs of dealing with unpredictabilities are not to create persistent tensions in forestry partnerships, then non-equilibrial ecological and socio-political dynamics need to be addressed and accounted for more fully in international, as well as national, forestry debates. References Beard, J.S. (1946) ‘The Mora Forest of Trinidad, British West Indies’, Journal of Ecology, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 1946. Bell, T.I.W. (1971) Management of the Trinidad Mora Forests with Special Reference to the Matura Forest Reserve. Port of Spain (Trinidad): Trinidad Forestry Division/ Government Printers. Boomert, A. (1984) ‘The Arawak Indians of Trinidad and Coastal Guiana, ca. 1500-1650’, Journal of Caribbean History, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 123-188.
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Chalmers, W.S. (1981) ‘Forests’, pp. 78-104 in St. G.C. Cooper and P.R. Bacon (eds) The Natural Resources of Trinidad and Tobago. London: Edward Arnold. Chalmers, W.S. and Faizool, S. (1992) ‘FAO/CARICOM Tropical Forestry Action Programme: Trinidad and Tobago National Forestry Action Programme’. Report of the Country Mission Team. GCP/RLA/O98/UK. Clubbe, C. and Jhilmit, S.(1992) ‘A Case Study of Natural Forest Management in Trinidad’, Unpublished paper presented to ‘Wise Management of Tropical Forests’ Oxford Forestry Institute, 1 March 1992. Fairhead, J. and Leach, M. (2003) Science, Society and Power: Environmental Knowledge and Policy in West Africa and the Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forest Department (1933) Trinidad Mora. Port of Spain (Trinidad): Government Printing Office. Guenter, M. (1998) Report on the Implementation and Testing of Social Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management and Development in Small Island States. Port of Spain Trinidad): UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Harcharik, D.A. (1997) ‘The Future of World Forestry: Sustainable Forest Management’, Unasylva, Vol. 48, No.190/191, pp.4-8. Marshall, R.C. (1925) Report on Forestry in Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain, Trinidad: Government Printing Office. Marshall, R.C. (1934) The Physiography and Vegetation of Trinidad and Tobago:A Study in Plant Ecology. Oxford Forestry Memoirs 17. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marshall, R.C. (1939) Silviculture of the Trees of Trinidad and Tobago, British West Indies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Newson, L. (1976) Aboriginal and Spanish Colonial Trinidad: A Study in Culture Contact. London: Academic Press. Robinson, R.L. (1926) ‘Report on Forestry in Trinidad and Tobago by Captain R. C. Marshall’, pp. 5-6 in Forests: Despatch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 22/12/1925, relating to the Report on Forestry in Trinidad and Tobago by the Conservator of Forests. Trinidad and Tobago Council Paper 8, 1926. Port of Spain, Trinidad: Government Printing Office. Simmula, M and Oy, I. (1999) ‘Certification of Forest Management and Labelling of forest Products: Discussion Note on Main Issues’, Paper prepared for the World Bank Group Forest Policy Implementation Review and Strategy Development: Analytical Studies. Sprugel, D.G. (1991) ‘Disturbance, Equilibrium and Environmental Variability: What is ‘Natural’ Vegetation in a Changing Environment?’ Biological Conservation, No. 58, pp. 1-18. Synnott, T. (1989) ‘South America and the Caribbean’, pp. 75-116 in D. Poore (ed.) No Timber without Trees: Sustainability in the Tropical Forest. London: Earthscan. Tardy, C. (1998) Paleoincendies Naturels, Feux Anthropiques et Environnements Forestiers de Guyane Française du Tardiglaciaire a l’Holocène Récent: Approches Chronologique et Anthracologique. Thèse, Université de Montpellier II. Trinidad and Tobago (1934) ‘Report of the Committee Appointed to Consider and Report on the Report of the Conservator of Forests on Forestry in Trinidad and Tobago’, Trinidad and Tobago Council Paper, No. 56, 1924. Port of Spain, Trinidad: Government Printing Office. Troup, R.S. (1926) ‘Note on Captain R.C. Marshall’s Report on Forestry in Trinidad and Tobago’, pp. 3-5 in Forests: Despatch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 22/12/1925, relating to the Report on Forestry in Trinidad and Tobago by the Conservator of Forests. Trinidad and Tobago Council Paper, No. 8, 1926. World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD) (1999) Our Forests: Our Future, Summary Report of the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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Endnotes 1
2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Most sustainable forest management systems employ polycyclic felling; the term polycyclic referring to the fact that only larger trees are cut during the initial harvest so that smaller trees may provide another crop in 25-40 years. The basal area is a measure of tree density, defined as the area, expressed in m2 /ha, of the cross section of the stem of a tree at breast height (1.4 m above ground level) inclusive of its bark. Group discussion with FRIM staff and local forest officers, Victoria Mayaro Reserve, 30 June 1999. Interview, President of Woodworker’s Association, Rio Claro, 29 June 1999. Group discussion, Woodworker’s Association, Rio Claro, 5 July 1999. Interview, FRIM forest officer, Rio Claro, 28 June 1999. Group discussion with FRIM staff and local forest officers, Victoria Mayaro Reserve, 30 June 1999. Interview, Forester I, Rio Claro, 29 June 1999. Interview, FRIM officer, Rio Claro, 30 June 1999. Interview, FRIM officer, Rio Claro, 30 June 1999. Interview, President of Woodworker’s Association, Rio Claro, 5 July 1999. Interview, President of Woodworker’s Association, Rio Claro, 5 July 1999.
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PART III
Company-Community Partnerships
6. Partnerships between Forestry Companies and Local Communities: Mechanisms for Efficiency, Equity, Resilience and Accountability Sonja Vermeulen and James Mayers††
The international wood fibre industry is increasingly global in character. Forest products form the third largest category in international trade and the ten largest companies produce forty per cent of global turnover. But globalisation of markets, capital flows and technology is countered in some places by increasing ‘localisation’ brought on by demands for greater decentralisation and democratic local governance. Twenty-five per cent of the global forest estate is now owned or controlled by indigenous and rural communities (White and Martin 2001). One response to the simultaneous pulls of globalisation and localisation is the emergence of partnerships for the production of wood fibre between multi-national forestry companies and local community groups or individuals. At least twenty-two countries around the world now have one of more examples of company-community forestry partnerships for wood fibre production1 (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002). These kinds of partnerships are being promoted through international development discourse, such as the 2002 Earth Summit, as a key mechanism for making progress towards sustainable development on a global scale. Globalisation has brought greater international mobility of trade, investment and information – but not labour or land. For communities with forest resources, a globalising economy increases opportunities for local groups to exploit their particular comparative advantages (for instance proximity to the resource, competitive labour costs and integration within local economies; Scherr et al. 2003) and to gain technology and market access. At the same time, it creates pressure to produce forest products at the lowest possible cost, often rewarding management that lacks adequate social and environmental investments. A political economy view characterises multi-national agribusiness as subject to two contradictory aims: appropriation of local land and labour and substitution of more profitable secondary processing and distribution activities for less profitable primary production (Singh 2002). Forestry, with a long-cycle crop, should be less vulnerable than agriculture to hit-and-run tactics by large companies and thus may offer better chances of developing working partnerships. At best, company-community forestry partnerships hold promise of new and equitable livelihood opportunities for local residents along with secure, cost-effective primary production for industries with commitment to social and environmental outcomes. Achievement of these ideals will depend to a large extent on how far the partners are able to overcome the practical difficulties of establishing and maintaining multi-scale arrangements. This chapter reviews the operational features affecting the immediate efficiency, equity and durability of a broad typology of company-community forestry partnerships, with a focus on key practical challenges and solutions from actual experience, based on a global review of forestry partnerships coordinated by the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002), which builds on key earlier publications on this topic (Roberts and Dubois 1996; Arnold 1997; Desmond and Race 2000). Research methods and terminology This chapter draws primarily from a three-year research project on company-community forestry partnerships coordinated by the IIED. For clarity, ‘partnerships’ here refer to the range of relationships and agreements that are actively entered into, on the expectation of benefit, by two or more parties. This chapter uses the term partnership to describe a very wide ††
Forestry and Land Use Programme, International Institute for Environment and Development, 3 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H 0DD, United Kingdom. E-mail:
[email protected];
[email protected].
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spectrum of deals, contracts and informal arrangements between companies and communities, with third parties playing important supportive roles (Table 6.1). ‘Companies’ are defined here as formal organisations set up to make profit. ‘Communities’ include individual smallscale tree-growers or landholders, but also other local residents and institutions. ‘Forestry’ refers to the management of trees and forests for goods and services, with a focus in this chapter on the management of planted and natural forest for the production of wood fibre. Table 6.1 – Typology of company-community forestry partnerships by partner COMMUNITY PARTNERS
C O M P A N Y
Forest product buyer, processor (large-scale)
Individual land owners / tree growers Out-grower schemes for timber, pulp, commodity wood or NTFPsa
Individual tree users
Group of tree users
Product supply contracts
Group of land owners / tree growers Out-grower schemes
Farmer outprocessing
Joint venture for timber or pulp
Community processing or farmer outprocessing
Corporate social responsibility project
Farm forestry support and crop share arrangements
P A R T N E R S
Product supply contracts
Contracts by communities – commodity wood Group/ community certification with company support
Forestry concession or plantation owner (large-scale)
Land leased from farmers
Small local production/ processing enterprise
Credit/product supply agreements
Co-management for NTFPs
Concessions leased from communities
Co-management for NTFPs
Corporate social responsibility project
Environmental service company a Non-timber forest products.
Product supply agreements
Credit/product supply agreements
Product supply agreements
Joint ventures Forest environmental service agreements
Source: adapted from Mayers 2000. The purpose of the research on partnerships was to examine ways in which large- and smallscale private sector wood fibre enterprises can work together with communities, so that both get what they need out of forest resources. The research aimed to test two main linked hypotheses: 1. Partnerships between companies and communities can produce environmental and social forest goods and services as well as fibre.
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Table 6.2 – Overview of key country case studies of company-community partnerships Country
Land tenure context
Types of schemes reviewed • Out-grower schemes for non-timber forest products and pulp • Corporate social responsibility projects • Joint ventures – pulp
South Africa
Some community land; some large private plantations; many smallholdings – land redistribution is taking trend away from large-scale towards smaller-scale
India
Many smallholdings and some commons; by law companies do not have any access to large tracts of land for plantations so they must source raw materials from small-scale growers
• Farm
Indonesia
About 75 per cent of land is classified as state forest and under government control though most is contested; otherwise smallholdings
• Out-grower
Papua New Guinea
97 per cent of land is held under customary ownership – companies must negotiate with communities to operate logging concessions or plantations
• Concessions
Ghana
Most land is under customary tenure – companies must reach government-sanctioned arrangements with local owners
• Corporate
Canada
80 per cent of forest reserves are under customary tenure with varying splits of rights between customary groups and central government – companies often have to negotiate with both
• Joint
forestry support – commodity wood and pulp • Farm forestry cropshare – pulp
scheme – commodity wood • Co-management for non-timber forest products and service contracting
leased from communities • Potential joint ventures • Contracts from communities – commodity wood and out-grower scheme social responsibility policy
ventures, cooperative business arrangements and forest services contracting
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Notable features Big companies run schemes providing significant local livelihood benefits; scheme-management in part contracted out to NGOs; cooperatives and unions also established as alternatives to big company partners; and communities forming trusts to enter into joint ventures Rapid evolution of partnership schemes from free seed supplies, through bank loan contracts to looser buyer arrangements with companies concentrating on developing high quality tree clones Schemes dependent on high levels of government support which is not always forthcoming; some progress now towards revenue sharing in the long-established tenant farmer (taungya) schemes Communities are able to register as companies but there are problems with accountability; novel legal mechanisms exist to foster forestry development on customary land Workable system for participatory planning of company (and community) social responsibility built into tender process for logging permits Communities are able to register as companies; wide-ranging deals have allowed business diversification for both partners
2. The conditions can be identified under which partnerships are, and are not, efficient, equitable and sustainable. This chapter focuses on the second of these hypotheses, in particular the operational conditions that bring desired outcomes to both companies and community partners. It seeks to identify the key operational constraints to company-community forestry partnerships in achieving efficiency, equity and sustainability, and the operational innovations that may overcome these constraints. Two facets of the complex concept of sustainability are explored: resilience, taken to mean capacity to mitigate risk and withstand shocks, and accountability, taken to mean capacity to respond to legitimised systems of recourse and control. The research investigated partnerships in a wide range of countries selected in three ways. First, a review of literature and undocumented experience was garnered from companies and collaborating organisations in Australia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Philippines, Portugal, Solomon Islands, Thailand, the USA, Vanuatu and Zimbabwe. Second, long-term country studies were carried out by partners in four countries – China, India, Papua New Guinea and South Africa – chosen to represent a range in policy environment, community rights and structure, company profiles, forest resource value and prevailing types of forestry for fibre production. Finally, three case studies were conducted in countries hosting particularly educative contexts and partnership types: Canada, where indigenous communities have been able to operate as companies themselves and to form joint venture arrangements with other investors in forest management; Ghana, where legally obliging social responsibility agreements have been successfully developed as part of timber utilisation contracts; and Indonesia, where a long history of company-community relationships reveal much about the contexts under which conflict and cooperation arise. For an overview of the main characteristics of these case studies see Table 6.2. Efficiency and equity: transaction costs and power sharing One of the major challenges for companies is how to deal with a large number of scattered farmers or groups – not only how to collect or distribute raw materials and products efficiently, but also how to negotiate, determine roles, reach agreements, establish costbenefit sharing mechanisms (with groups and within groups) and continually review the arrangements. Communities of course suffer from similar problems of scale that beset companies. As individuals, they have limited ability to negotiate efficiently and effectively, or to access affordable services such as transport. Companies tend to favour simple, replicable models for dealing with transaction costs, based on standardised contracts and a clearly delimited set of extension services and channels for communication (Table 6.3). The simplicity in itself may be an asset in attracting farmers and communities but may also be at the expense of the flexibility required to make deals suit local circumstances and bring benefits to local livelihoods. More effective company strategies devolve power and budgets to local staff, particularly those field staff who take most responsibility for outreach and operational management, while maintaining core principles of partnerships (a ‘loose-tight’ model of management). Third parties can also be crucial in spreading the costs of transaction. In China, government forest bureaux play a useful brokerage role between groups of farmers and multinational forestry companies (Wenming et al. 2000). For communities, the key solution is to create economies of scale by joining or forming farmers’ groups, cooperatives and other associations. Even small associations can improve efficiency significantly, as cooperatives of women out-growers have discovered in South Africa (Cairns 2000). Locally based, smaller organisations may offer better services to communities: Indian out-growers have found that cooperative banks process loans much more quickly than the bigger commercial banks (Saigal and Kashyap 2000). Potential solutions that have not yet been widely tested centre on taking advantage of existing systems such as government extension services, rural development NGOs, agricultural market channels and agribusiness out-grower schemes. Similarly, existing farmer associations could work as a
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starting point, such as local sellers’ groups and cooperatives, or integrated pest management groups and national networks. Table 6.3 – Efficiency and equity in company-community forestry partnerships: examples of key constraints and successful innovations Constraints High transaction costs for growers / communities In the Picop pulp out-grower scheme in the Philippines, those with smaller land holdings could not afford to invest their time. High transaction costs for companies Pioneer Tobacco, Ghana, invests in an unprofitable teak out-growers’ scheme and in equally unprofitable social responsibility projects to mitigate the negative image of the tobacco industry. Forestry contracts with First Nations (native aboriginal clans) in Canada stumble due to high demands on company staff time.
Too many site-specific factors to replicate model schemes Single model approaches have limited widespread uptake of pulp out-grower schemes in Thailand.
Poor bargaining position and policy influence by small tree-growers In spite of strong community land rights, national policy in Papua New Guinea reflects the interests of elites only.
Innovations Cooperatives and working groups In India, local cooperatives help with small-scale loans and affordable transport. The Jant Limited wood chipping operation in Papua New Guinea sub-contracts reforestation to local small enterprises. Contract out / establish models In joint ventures for pulp plantations in China the government forestry bureaus take on a brokering role between foreign companies and farmers, while in out-grower schemes, joint ventures and corporate social responsibility with two pulp-processing companies in South Africa management is sub-contracted to NGOs. Model joint ventures can subsequently be more cheaply replicated, as in the case of Australian Newsprint Mills’ risk-sharing joint venture for plantation forestry with farmers. ‘Loose-tight’ management approaches Aracruz Cellulose in Brazil offers three types of flexible contract to pulpwood out-growers; Border Timbers in Zimbabwe offers individually negotiated contracts and local co-management between company and landholders for the production of poles from eucalypt woodlots Formal groupings and organisation South African small growers are now represented alongside big companies in nationallevel private sector forestry associations.
Source: Mayers and Vermeulen 2002. Experience across a range of partnerships suggests that shared decision-making, based on differentiated but comparable sets of powers and responsibilities for each partner, will increase not only equity but also efficiency (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002). Dealing with a more equal partner reduces conflict and allows access to acknowledged systems of recourse such as company law. A recent review of partnerships between civil society organisations and industry concluded that sharing of power was critical not only for equity but for the resilience of the partnerships (Ashman 2001). In spite of the clear advantages of equity within partnerships, forestry companies continue to resist power sharing and the onus rests on community partners to raise their own bargaining power (Cairns 2000; Gunawan and Muhtaman 2000). Alliances2, ranging from small-scale growers and sellers groups to national-level federations and trade unions, are fundamental not only to lowering operating costs but also to amalgamating the bargaining power of community partners in deals with large companies. Unfortunately, to date there is little evidence that farmers’ groups in either forestry or contract farming (Baumann 2000) have become platforms for collective action, either to negotiate with companies or to organise around other issues. Well-organised representation of the interests of community partners has occasionally emerged in deals, but it does not appear that the existence of deals is what promotes development of bargaining power among community groups. The best progress has been made in countries that already have strong traditions of 85
political and labour organisation, such as Canada and Mexico (Bray et al. 2003). Another good basis for bargaining power is effective control over resources of importance to the company. A pertinent example comes from Indonesia, where the tourism cooperative Kompepar in Kuningan used this power to negotiate a management deal with the company Perhutani, effecting a win-win outcome in which revenues increased for both sides (Gunawan and Muhtaman 2000). Successful partnerships can go on to use their cooperation as a foundation for bargaining with third parties. For instance, the pulp and paper companies Sappi and Mondi in South Africa have used their out-grower schemes to lobby government for more rural roads (Cairns 2000), and the Canadian Babine Forest Products – a joint venture between two private companies and the Burns Lake Native Development Corporation, owned by five local First Nations – won a substantial government research grant on the basis of its partnership (Babine 2001). In the USA, as in Japan and Europe, farmers’ associations have successfully used tactics such as petitions to governments and development of alternative markets to improve their own policy influence (Welsh 1997). In South African forestry, there is a convincing argument that growers’ associations may achieve greater equity within partnerships and better market standing through lobbying of government than through direct bargaining with industry (Cairns 2000). Resilience: coping with risk Forestry is a long-term and uncertain business, and dependence on a partner adds another element of risk. Paradoxically, a primary motive for both company and community partners to enter into forestry partnerships is mitigation and sharing of risk (World Bank 2001). Largescale wood fibre companies favour out-grower schemes as a means of avoiding production risks. Small-scale tree-growers, who bear the risks of production, are attracted to contractual deals to pass market risk onto the company. In the agricultural sector, Warning and Soo Hoo (2000) observe a tension between large agribusinesses’ preference to reduce transaction costs by dealing with larger scale farmers versus the more stable arrangements that are possible with smaller scale farmers who tend to be more risk-averse. Resilience in the face of risk and shocks can be built into the contractual arrangements between company and community. Capability to resolve uncertainty and cope with risks may be improved where schemes are introduced and modified in mutually reviewed phases, with both sides keeping ambitions simple at first, according to a ‘learning cycle’ philosophy. Out-grower schemes in Indonesia and Australia have benefited from renegotiation of contracts as market conditions have changed. Similar flexibility can be built into the more technical aspects of tree-growing partnerships in order to reduce associated risks. A persistent problem in South Africa has been out-growers harvesting immature trees and thus losing out on profits, simply because they panic about mounting debts to the partner company. A solution to this is to design farming systems to include early revenues from trimming trees, partial harvesting or intercropping (Table 6.4). Third parties in company-community partnerships also face considerable uncertainty. Civil society organisations that play important roles as representatives, managers or mediators are in practice often financially vulnerable due to an over-dependence on a single source of funding (Ashman 2001), rendering the partnership itself vulnerable. Government may take on a share of financial risk by underwriting investment or offering soft loans, as seen in Indonesia and Canada, but this can render partnerships overly dependent on external funding rather than internally generated revenues. An alternative governmental investment could be to improve business services such as access to market information (Scherr et al. 2003). Risks will also be mitigated if company-community deals consider and take advantage of the trade-offs and compatibilities between forest goods and services, and between forestry and other land uses. Local groups seek multiple benefits from forests for different purposes. Emphasis on single commodities in forest areas has historically been associated with community disenfranchisement and poverty after a short boom. Simple forestry models, as opposed to accommodating mixed land use, may prejudice against local livelihoods by encouraging broad-scale transformation of rural landscapes to forestry, and a
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Table 6.4 – Resilience in company-community forestry partnerships: examples of key constraints and successful innovations Constraints Poor predictions of yields / markets Farmers’ loans outweigh their eventual profits so they remain in debt to the company, for instance in the crop-sharing deal with paper manufacturer Ballarpur Industries Ltd, India. Farmers enter into land lease contracts for timber with companies with little information as to whether pine plantations are the best use of land in Georgia, USA. Over-dependence on a single product with a volatile market Spectacular market crashes led to the demise of eucalyptus growing for wood fibre in parts of India. Poor prices led to demise of pioneering Picop pulp out-grower scheme in Philippines.
Absence of non-forestry alternatives in the local economy Landholders in China are stuck in low profit wood fibre production due to lack of nonforestry options locally. Lack of access to insurance for small-scale tree growers South African pulp out-growers harvest early and lose profit due to lack of security; arson has been a problem.
Innovations Flexible contracts and shared learning philosophy Renegotiable arrangements are key to durability for Australian Newsprint Mills and wood-fibre producer Wirakarya Sakti, Indonesia. Westvaco, a large pulp and paper company in the USA, offers joint planning and monitoring to landowners with whom it has entered into a purchase agreement. Multi-cropping and multi harvesting Best practice schemes encourage intercropping, for instance with fruit and vegetables in the informal sawlogs growing scheme of Kolombangara Forest Products, Solomon Islands, or multi-stage harvesting, for instance the Jant Limited wood chipping operation in Papua New Guinea, Papua New Guinea. Entry into secondary processing, service industries, or environmental service markets First Nation companies in Canada have branched into wood processing, haulage, road building, NTFP production, eco-tourism, mapping and managerial services. Group insurance packages or contractual insurance Insurance cover or minimum price assurance can be provided by insurance companies, the company, or government, for instance in the case of Andhra Pradesh, a former pulp out-growing scheme in India.
Source: Mayers and Vermeulen, 2002. type of forestry based on single species and single products. When markets are dominated by economies of scale, farm-forest landscapes are unlikely to be condoned or profitable. Under pressure from community partners, some companies have conceded better terms for multi-purpose forest management in agreements with out-growers and tenant farmers. For example, allowing agroforestry in teak and pine plantations has long been a labour strategy for commercial forestry operations in Indonesia. More recently the stateowned company, Perhutani (presently in the process of privatisation), which manages the forests of Java for maximum production of teak (Tectona grandis) and a small number of other species, has allowed wider spacing of timber trees and a greater variety of both tree and crop species to suit local preferences (A. Aliadi, personal communication). In South Africa, companies have found that intercropping with legumes in the first two years not only gives growers early income, but also improves soil fertility (Cairns 2000). Where markets for raw materials are more competitive, as in India, small scale producers of wood fibre are not controlled by minimum hectarages under trees and are able to divide land among multiple uses, sometimes confining trees to small strips along field boundaries (Saigal and Kashyap 2000). Adaptability and increased diversity of production systems can be enhanced where both companies and communities consider activities other than tree growing. Large corporations tend to favour secondary processing, distribution and marketing over production, which is less profitable. Community partners have increased their returns where they have been able to break into secondary processing, on either a revenue-sharing basis (for instance South Africa, Indonesia) or through direct participation (for instance Canada). Service 87
industries, non-timber forest products and ecotourism have also proved profitable in various contexts, but particularly where community partners are able to establish a formal business entity, such as cooperatives in Indonesia (Gunawan and Muhtaman 2000) or small-scale share-based companies in Canada (Institute on Governance 1998). Emerging markets for the management of forests for environmental services such as watershed protection, carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and landscape amenity offer promising future options (Landell-Mills and Porras 2002). The typical business approach of coping with risk through financial insurance is a missing ingredient from company-community deals because small-scale farmers are unable to secure insurance policies (Table 6.4). Like the banking sector, where smaller scale cooperative banks have turned out to offer more reliable and efficient services to communities than larger banks have been able to provide (Saigal and Kashyap 2000), small local insurance services may find a niche as a service provider to company-community forestry collaborations. Small-scale farmers and community groups could also benefit from using growers’ associations or other groups to provide an attractive business option for agricultural insurance companies. Accountability: conflict, recourse and public policy Defaulting on contractual agreements can bring considerable costs to both company and community partners over and beyond the immediate financial losses or gains that accrue from taking business elsewhere. In India, small-scale tree growers filed 550 court cases against the Western India Match Company (Wimco) Limited, based either on dissatisfaction with the technical assistance or on attempts to make the company responsible for the loan default proceedings. Meanwhile, the company got involved in 2,332 arbitration cases in an attempt to recover its dues for seedlings and technical services from the farmers (Saigal and Kashyap 2000). More flexible contracts and payment at actual market prices can reduce the likelihood of broken contracts (Table 6.5). Other solutions include agreement within the contract itself on conditions for arbitration and pre-defined penalties for defaulting for both sides. However, contracts cannot be the only or entire means of coping with defaulters. Contracts are interpreted very differently by different contractees (Singh 2002) and can hold inherent disadvantages. In Papua New Guinea, for example, the contract process in the ‘lease, lease back’ system3 that has been developed in the oil palm industry as a legal mechanism to allow foreign companies more secure long-term access to customary land was long and expensive (Hunt 2002). Even the most productive of partnerships incorporate some conflict, and as relationships move forward new sources of conflict arise and need to be managed. Conflict can arise from many issues; often the basic problems of limited resources and differences in outlook are the underlying problem, exacerbated by perceptions of inequitable treatment or violations of rights. Usually these tensions have deep historical roots, often long-standing conflicts over land, as in Canada and Indonesia. Furthermore, both sides make mistakes. For instance, inaccurate price forecasting at the beginning of out-grower schemes is more likely to be an optimistic error than a deliberate ploy by companies to lure farmers into unsound land uses (Nawir et al. 2002). Dispute resolution mechanisms need ideally to be built in from the start of any arrangement between companies and community partners. In practice, finding a mediator legitimised as ‘neutral’ by both parties can be prohibitively expensive, for example where local third parties are already too involved in partnership dynamics (Table 6.5). Central government taking on a leading role in setting overall terms for conflict resolution and providing mediation services has been a solution in China and South Africa. In cases of violent conflict, the governments of the USA and the UK have developed a set of voluntary principles on security and human rights, which has been adopted widely by multi-national companies domiciled in those countries (US State Department 2001). The desire of companies to demonstrate corporate social responsibility, because it is good for business, is among the primary reasons for many companies to pursue forestry partnerships with local communities in the first instance. However, internationally the forest
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Table 6.5 – Accountability in company-community forestry partnerships: examples of key constraints and successful innovations Constraints Farmers renege on agreement to sell to company Major losses to company when farmers sell trees elsewhere, as occurred for instance to the Western India Match Company (Wimco), India, and the Phoenix Pulp and Paper Company, Thailand. Companies renege on agreements with farmers /communities US timber giant Boise Cascade abandoned a five year forestry revenue-sharing and capacitybuilding deal with land-owning ejidos communities in Mexico after pressure from environmental groups in USA. Dispute resolution mechanisms too expensive Hundreds of small claims by and against Wimco in India went to court. RAPP-APRIL Fibre Supplies in Indonesia was unable to find neutral mediation at an affordable price. Corporations not answerable to local grievances Voluntary ‘corporate responsibility’ is inadequate to address environmental and social concerns, as shown by the Iisaak joint venture logging operation between the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council and the Macmillan Bloedel forestry company at Clayoquot Sound, Canada, and the taungya scheme between Perhutani and local farmers, Indonesia.
Innovations More flexible contracts / Pay market price Companies respond to competition by paying the market price to keep growers loyal, for instance Aracruz Cellulose, Brazil, and Swiss Lumber, Ghana, or even over the market price to guarantee supplies, such as in the case of Wanda Bamboo Products, China. Increase community investment security Smurfit Cartón de Colombia – an established company with a reputation it cannot afford to lose – makes long-term contracts with outgrowers who receive all plantation rights and benefits if the company pulls out. Avoid dispute through ‘marriage guidance’ South African government set up the Forest Enterprise Development Office as a pilot to act as a broker, adviser and firewall between communities and potential private sector investors. Government policy incentives in addition to corporate and civil action Canada has kick-started partnerships but avoided over-reliance on government funding. Novel land-leasing policy in Papua New Guinea stimulates new forestry land uses.
Source: Mayers and Vermeulen, 2002. industry is divided by competition, pricing power and the processes of acquisition and merger. Corporate responsibility initiatives are inadequate for two major reasons, because they allow corporations to win at the expense of smaller livelihood-oriented enterprises, and because they cannot address the deeper systemic problems of corporate power. Voluntary corporate approaches are insufficient to provide the incentives for business to adopt more socially and environmentally positive practices (Christian Aid 2004). Where the market is unable to deliver an acceptable balance between costs and benefits, or distributes the costs and benefits unfairly, efforts should be focused on generating sufficient strength in public policy to set effective frameworks (Table 6.5). In reality, many partnerships continue to encounter problems with the public policy environment. Devolution of responsibility to communities without corresponding building of capacity to make informed decisions and trade-offs between long-term sustainability and short-term gain is not likely to foster sustainable forest management. Much enabling governmental policy, such as mechanisms for small-scale company registration, remains opaque or difficult to access by community partners, while they may bear a disproportionate load of regulation relative to large companies (Bass et al. 2003), particularly multinationals that are able to avoid compliance to national laws. Well intentioned but overcomplicated bureaucracies have stymied development of forest ecotourism projects in South Africa (Ashley and Ntshona 2003). These ongoing concerns are countered by evidence of a wide range of successful, innovative policy initiatives. Several governments around the world have developed specific policies to encourage company-community deals. Social responsibility agreements in Ghana 89
are enshrined in legislation governing timber utilisation contracts (Yeboah 2001). In South Africa the rules set to govern the process of privatising publicly owned plantations require successful bids to demonstrate that communities have some stake in ownership (Cairns 2000). Canada has a programme to develop First Nation business initiatives through partnerships with better-established companies (Institute on Governance 1998). These kinds of policy changes have been fundamental to creating an appropriate climate for deals to develop. They do not entail forestry policy alone, but much broader considerations such as land distribution and titling, domestic and international trade and national agendas for food versus cash crop production. Conclusions and recommendations An initial hypothesis proposed that the conditions under which partnerships are, and are not, effective in terms of efficiency, equity and sustainability can be identified. Certainly, for the operational factors that form the subject of this chapter, it is possible to identify sets of conditions that militate against effectiveness – constraints – and conditions that overcome these constraints to favour effectiveness – innovations. But these conditions based within the structures and processes of partnerships are insufficient to predict the full suite of outcomes from any one multi-scale forestry partnership. Historical and cultural factors, both within and around any company-community partnership can be overriding determinants of outcomes (Singh 2002) and partnerships are always strongly subject to prevailing public policy and market contexts. Analysis of conditionalities and success factors for multi-scale partnerships is more likely to be useful if designed to address the form, function, history, culture and context of each partnership. Such holism makes generalisation across contexts difficult, but general lessons are useful to prospective partners and the third parties who support them. With this in mind, a set of possible principles for developing company-community partnerships can be derived from the lessons learned about failure and success: 1. Mutual respect of each partner’s legitimate aims. 2. Fair negotiation process where partners can engage and make informed, transparent and free decisions. 3. Learning approach – allowing room for disagreement and experimentation, treating deals as learning processes. 4. Realistic prospects of mutual profits – requires work to accurately predict and secure partner benefits commensurate with their contributions. 5. Long-term commitment to optimise the returns from deals – as strategic commercial, as well as socio-cultural and environmental, ventures (for instance overcoming short term risk aversion caused by rises and falls in pulp markets) – since both trees and trust take a long time to develop. 6. Equitably shared risks – accurate calculation and sharing of risks in production, market, social and environmental terms, planning for a mix of short, medium and long term benefits and a range of low, medium and high risk investment opportunities, to attract both cautious and bold partners. 7. Sound business – practical business development principles at the core, not exploitative relationships, not public relations exercises. 8. Sound livelihoods – relationships focused on increasing capital assets of the poor, securing local rights and responsibilities, developing the capacities and comparative advantage of local institutions, and incorporating flexible and dynamic implementation paths. 9. Contribution to broader development strategies and programmes of community empowerment, and integration of partnerships within wider national and local land use and development frameworks. 10. Independent scrutiny and evaluation of partnership proposals and monitoring of progress. Generalised and voluntary principles are not enough to secure efficient, equitable and sustainable company-community forestry partnerships. Nonetheless, they can provide guidance and set standards for partners and third parties. In operational terms, ways forward for all parties hinge to a great extent on their ability to use one another’s languages: to express
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business objectives in terms of local development and poverty reduction outcomes, or livelihood objectives in terms of enterprise opportunities and impacts. The anticipated future of company-community forestry partnerships is a greater diversity of more sophisticated deals and a better balance between the partners. References Arnold, J.E.M. (1997) Trees as Out-Grower Crops for Forest Industries: Experience from the Philippines and South Africa. Rural Development Forestry Network, Network Paper 22a (Winter 1997/98). London: Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Ashley, C. and Ntshona, Z. (2003) Transforming Roles but not Reality? Private Sector and Community Involvement in Tourism and Forestry Development on the Wild Coast. London: Overseas Development Institute and Cape Town: University of Western Cape. Ashman, D. (2001) ‘Civil Society Collaboration with Business: Bringing Empowerment Back’, World Development, Vol.29, pp. 1097-1113. Babine. (2001). ‘About Babine First Nations Participation’. URL: http://www.babineefmpp.com/babine/index.html. Bass, S., Mayers, J. and Vermeulen, S. (2003) ‘Forest Policy and Practice since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development’, pp. 227-246 in T. Bigg (ed.) Survival for a Small Planet: The Sustainable Development Agenda. London: Earthscan. Baumann, P. (2000) Equity and Efficiency in Contract Farming Schemes: The Experience of Agricultural Tree Crops. ODI Working Paper 139. London: Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Bray, D.B., Merino-Perez, L., Negreros-Castillo, P., Segura-Warnholtz, G., Torres-Rojo, J.M. and Vester, H.F.M. (2003) ‘Mexico’s Community-Managed Forests as a Global Model for Sustainable Landscapes’, Conservation Biology, Vol.17, pp. 672-677. Cairns, R. (2000) Outgrower Timber Schemes in KwaZulu-Natal: Do They Build Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and What Interventions Should Be Made? Pretoria: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Christian Aid (2004) Behind the Mask: The Real Face of Corporate Social Responsibility. London: Christian Aid. Desmond, H. and Race, D. (2000) Global Survey and Analytical Framework for Forestry Out-Grower Arrangements. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Gunawan, G. and Muhtaman, D.R. (2000) A Case Study on a Forestry-Based Corporate Community Partnership in KPH Kuningan, West Java, Indonesia. Bogor: Lembaga Alam Tropika Indonesia and London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Hunt, C. (ed.) (2002) Production, Privatisation and Preservation in Papua New Guinea Forestry. Port Moresby: National Research Institute and London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Institute on Governance (1998) Exploring the Relationship between Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian Forest Industry: Some Industry Perspectives. Ontario: Institute of Governance. Landell-Mills, N. and Porras, I.T. (2002) Silver Bullet or Fools’ Gold? A Global Review of Markets for Forest Environmental Services and their Impacts on the Poor. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Mayers, J. (2000) ‘Company-Community Forestry Partnerships: A Growing Phenomenon’. Unasylva, Vol. 51, pp. 33-41. Mayers, J. and Vermeulen, S. (2002) Company-Community Forestry Partnerships: From Raw Deals to Mutual Gains? London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
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Nawir, A.A., Santoso, L. and Mudhofar, I. (2002) Towards Mutually Beneficial CompanyCommunity Partnership in Plantation: Lessons Learnt from Indonesia. Bogor: Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Roberts, S. and Dubois, O. (1996) The Role of Social/Farm Forestry Schemes in Supplying Fibre to the Pulp and Paper Industry. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Saigal, S. and Kashyap, D. (2000) Review of Company-Farmer Partnerships for the Supply of Raw Material to the Wood-Based Industry. Delhi: Ecotech Services and London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Scherr, S., White, A. and Kaimowitz, D. (2003) A New Agenda for Achieving Forest Conservation and Poverty Alleviation: Making Markets Work for Low-Income Producers. Washington: Forest Trends and Bogor: Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Singh, S. (2002) ‘Contracting Out Solutions: Political Economy of Contract Farming’, World Development, Vol. 9, pp. 1621-1638. US State Department (2001) Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Washington DC: US Department of State. URL: http://www/state.gov/g/drl/rls/2931pf.htm. Warning, M. and Soo Hoo, W. (2000) ‘The Impact of Contract Farming on Income Distribution: Theory and Evidence’, Paper presented at the Western Economic Association International Annual Meeting, 30 June 2000. Welsh, R. (1997) ‘Vertical Coordination, Producer Response and the Locus of Control over Agricultural Production Decisions’, Rural Sociology, Vol. 62, pp. 491-507. Wenming, L., Caihong, Z., Shuai, Y., Yuanzhu, W., Fawen, Y. and Xiufeng, T. (2000) Company-Community Deals – Some Emerging Experiences. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). White, A. and Martin, A. (2001) Who Owns the World’s Forests? Forest Tenure and Public Forests in Transition. Washington DC: Forest Trends. World Bank (2001) A Globalised Market – Opportunities and Risks for the Poor. Global Poverty Report 2001. Washington DC: World Bank. Yeboah, R. (2001) ‘Short Report on Social Responsibility Agreements in Ghana’. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Endnotes 1
2
3
This chapter is restricted to forestry partnerships in which the core business is wood fibre production, mainly for the pulp and paper industry. Company-community partnerships in other forest market sectors, such as NTFPs, ecotourism and environmental services, are not explored. The term ‘alliances’ refers here to institutions for collective action (by timber producers), whereas ‘partnerships’ refers to describe arrangements between companies and timber producers. Under the ‘lease, lease-back arrangement’ the government leases land from customary owners and then leases it back to a legal entity formed by members of the same clan. This provides the customary owners with a negotiable title over the land that can be negotiated with a third party (for instance a bank, company or individual) to arrange finance for development, or to sub-lease on whatever terms and conditions are agreed upon. At the expiry of the term of the lease by the state, the land reverts back to the customary landowners.
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7. Do Partnerships between Large Corporations and Amazonian Indigenous Groups Help or Hinder Communities and Forests? Carla Morsello∗ and W. Neil Adger** Brazilian Amazonia is rich in multi-scale company-community partnerships, particularly those related to the commercialisation of non-timber forest products. But who gains most and who loses from such partnerships? Empirical evaluations of changes in livelihoods and forest conservation are still scarce. This chapter presents results of research on the effects of the integration of the indigenous A’Ukre-Kayapó community into fair trade markets through the production of Brazil nut oil. It examines cash income and its distribution from such agreements, impacts on traditional practices, power imbalances within partnerships and forest conservation. The chapter concludes that partnerships imply both benefits and problems, while information is needed on institutions that may guarantee successful outcomes. New company-community partnerships Globalisation is changing the landscape of trade and resource use. Companies increasingly respond to a complex set of stakeholders and geographies. New pressures from these diverse stakeholders have, for example, encouraged corporations in several sectors to develop niche markets and implement voluntary corporate social responsibility practices. Globalisation has, nonetheless, been accompanied by the contrary force of localisation. Localisation is a societybased response to increasingly distant decision-making and encompasses several mechanisms that attempt to empower civil society and to return control to local groups (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002). In forestry markets, civil society influence is demonstrated by a portfolio of actions that operate through exercising individuals’ discriminatory purchasing power, such as certification schemes, buyers’ groups or boycotting. Yet, alongside forces operating in production and consumption markets, we also observed even stronger political pressure to transfer forest control to local communities. Presently, a quarter of the world’s forests are controlled by indigenous and rural communities (White and Martin 2002). The combination of these apparently contrary forces has resulted in the development of new forestry schemes, such as the establishment of trade agreements between forest communities and corporations, often portrayed as partnerships (Vermeulen et al. forthcoming; see also Vermeulen and Mayers, this volume). Partnerships are broadly referred to as the variety of formal or informal relations between two or more partners (Vermeulen et al. forthcoming; Warner 2003). In this chapter they are defined as the informal or formal relations established between medium to large companies and forest communities, whose stated minimum aim is to benefit both partners. Although still comprising a minor percentage of markets in forest products, the number of corporate-community partnerships is growing, in particular in the pulpwood trade (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002) and, in some regions, in the trade in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) (Anderson and Clay 2002). In Brazilian Amazonia, in particular, partnerships for NTFP trade are becoming common, while timber exploitation through corporate-community deals is still rare (Vidal and Donini 2004). In Brazilian Amazonia, corporate-community agreements on NTFP trade are a result of the combination of globalisation and localisation forces, stimulated by a local context that stimulates the conservation of biological and cultural diversity. In this regard, trade in NTFPs ∗
School of Environmental Sciences and CSERGE, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom, Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades da Universidade de São Paulo (EACHUSP) and Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciência Ambiental, Universidade de São Paulo (PROCAMUSP). E-mail:
[email protected]. ** School of Environmental Sciences, CSERGE and Tyndall Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom. E-mail:
[email protected].
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has been promoted and implemented in several settings as a strategy that may allow forest conservation while improving the livelihoods of forest communities (Clay 1992; Counsell and Rice 1992). While, initially, commercialisation was primarily promoted by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), corporations now dominate the scene, having been encouraged by increased demand for environmentally and socially responsible products. Ongoing initiatives in Amazonia involve local, national and international companies which deal with a variety of products such as essential oils, medicinal plants, fibres and resins and various sectors, including the automobile industry (see Otsuki, this volume). These corporate-community deals have attracted the attention of local and international NGOs, as well as national and regional government departments, which are all engaged in promoting them as an alternative to reconciling forest conservation and as a way of improving local well being. It is not difficult to see why the win-win nature of partnerships has attracted so much attention. However, while the concept is appealing, there is scant empirical evidence on whether these initiatives help or hinder either the communities or the forests in which they live. Most studies in recent literature focus on wood fibre production (for instance Mayers 2000; Mayers and Vermeulen 2002; Vermeulen et al. forthcoming; Nawir et al. 2003; Vermeulen and Mayers, Chapter 6 of this volume). Far fewer studies focus at least partially on NTFP extraction (Anderson and Clay 2002). Hence, this chapter explores the least studied segment of corporate-communities agreements relating to NTFP trade and evaluates the likely benefits and problems that can be derived from them. We examine one of the most famous and probably oldest examples of partnerships in the Brazilian Amazon, namely the agreement between a UK-based cosmetics company, The Body Shop, and an indigenous community, the A’Ukre-Kayapó. After briefly explaining the methodology for data gathering in the following section, we examine the underlying forces in the establishment of corporate-community agreements in Brazilian Amazonia. Thereafter, we present the case of the A’Ukre-Kayapó and The Body Shop agreement. We then evaluate whether such an agreement can improve the livelihoods of indigenous communities in terms of cash incomes, impacts on traditional activities and power imbalances. After that, we explore the assertion that such agreements are an appropriate mechanism for reducing deforestation. We end by discussing the approaches and actions that may guarantee successful outcomes and present the main conclusions. Methodology Evaluation of the impacts of the trade agreement at A’Ukre relies on quantitative and qualitative data collected over 14 months of fieldwork (2000-2001). For the impacts on social differentiation, data was gathered via a survey of all households (N = 23) and individuals (N = 230) in the village. For the evaluation of labour trade-offs, data was gathered from the household survey, from time allocation observations (123 observation days; 4,385 observations) and from an evaluation of agricultural plots (42 plots over two years). In addition, qualitative data came from 30 unstructured interviews with A’Ukre residents, four semi-structured interviews with two cosmetic company representatives and two Kayapó leaders involved in managing the trade. The data analysis is based on a series of bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques. Detailed explanation of the techniques and statistical results are presented elsewhere (Morsello 2002). Here we discuss the main findings and conclusions with a view to illuminating the policy implications in the light of inevitable tradeoffs between corporate needs and the resilience of indigenous societies and resource-use strategies. Partnering up In the last decade, forestry partnerships have spread in developed and emerging economies (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002). Brazilian Amazonia is being influenced by global trends and yet is also subject to local forces which determine a peculiar configuration in the establishment of partnerships’. Similarly to global trends, a large proportion of the region is under the control of indigenous and extractive communities. One fifth of Brazilian Amazonia is enclosed within indigenous lands, another 4 per cent consists of protected areas where some
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forms of resource use are permitted (Lentini et al. 2003) and an even larger percentage is subject to informal regimes of forest communities’ management and land ownership. Brazilian Amazonia is also undergoing a process of growing social identity, arising from a broad social movement which started in the late 1980s with the emergence of the rubber tappers’ movement whose objective was to create extractive reserves (Allegretti 2002; see also Rosendo, this volume) and social movements in support of indigenous rights (Fisher 1994). The proliferation of small-scale commercialisation is in many cases a result of a novel model of socio-environmentalism brought about by social struggles, which put local communities, their knowledge and traditional resource use at the forefront of development strategies. Current initiatives to foster community commercialisation are supported by international initiatives, the Brazilian state and federal governments and especially by the actions of local and international NGOs (Becker and Léna 2002). The expansion of company-community partnerships is also a product of trends in specific corporate sectors. Chief among these is the cosmetics industry which is progressively shifting from industrial to natural sourcing, from animal to vegetable-based products and which is increasingly adopting corporate social responsibility practices. High rates of growth in the sector – phytotherapics markets in Amazonia are growing by 12 per cent a year – also attract Brazilian and international cosmetics companies such as The Body Shop, Aveda and Ives Rocher. The pharmaceutical and food industry’s interest in the Brazilian Amazon is also increasing. While none of the 250 most important pharmaceutical industries were engaged in either research or commercialisation activities in the area fifteen years ago, this is now the case for half of them (Enríquez 2001). The Amazonian appeal to the global society is another important driving force behind the establishment of corporate-community agreements. As announced in the best selling Brazilian magazine Veja, the Amazon is now ‘chic’ and therefore sells well (Cavalcanti and Eichenberg 1998). Companies are therefore benefiting from Amazonian appeal and are using the region as their chief trademark. The situation regarding NTFPs nonetheless contrasts with the timber sector. Community forest management of timber is still rare in Brazilian Amazonia and corporatecommunity agreements are even rarer (Vidal and Donini 2004). The reasons for this are unclear land rights associated with a lengthy and complicated process to secure land tenure (Lentini et al. 2003), the time it takes the Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (IBAMA; Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) or the Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI; National Foundation for Indigenous Affairs) to approve management plans (partly due to a lack of expertise) and, last but not least, competition with illegal logging (Vidal and Donini 2004). The A’Ukre-Kayapó and the trade agreement The Kayapó are a group of about 4,000 indigenous peoples from south-eastern Brazilian Amazonia. The social organisation is based on nuclear and extended families, besides age sets which structure society, subsistence duties, ritual and currently market activities (Turner 1979). The Kayapó are considered semi-nomadic due to their traditional involvement in treks for considerable periods of the year (Werner 1983). Trekking, however, is a shrinking practice in most villages. The study site, A’Ukre village (Figure 7.1), is one of the two out of eighteen Kayapó villages that engaged in Brazil nut oil trade with the UK cosmetics’ company, The Body Shop. It is also the only village to be still involved in the trading activities (Morsello 2002). The trade agreement was signed in 1991, following an invitation by A’Ukre village leaders to the company founder during the Altamira protest of 1989 (Turner 1995). With a population of about 230 people, A’Ukre controls approximately 310,000 ha within the 3.3 million ha of the indigenous territory Área Indígena Kayapó, which encompasses another five Kayapó villages comprising an overall population of 2,000 people (Figure 7.1) (Zimmerman et al. 2001). The village is very isolated – it can only be reached by small planes– and is 220 km, or an hour’s flight away, from the nearest town of Redenção. No permanent roads lead to the village and
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Figure 7.1 – The Kayapó area in the state of Pará, Brazil
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rapids make fluvial transportation to local towns very difficult. Local conditions explain why the community is still only at the early stages of market integration and why new market activities may have a significant impact.Having adopted policies of social responsibility, the Body Shop created a specific department to organise trade with socially and economically marginalised producers. In effect, the company became a pioneer and icon of the revitalised fair trade movement, which progressively included more and more corporations. The agreement with the A’Ukre-Kayapó relates to the trade in Brazil nut oil, which is used to produce cosmetics. Cash income and its distribution The Body Shop pays US$ 35/kg for the oil produced in A’Ukre, a considerable premium price. When the agreement was established in 1991, there was no commercial price for the oil. In spite of this, the price was undeniably a substantial amount by local standards and far above the revenue the community could receive from selling nuts. After a decade, standard oil prices became available. For instance, the only industrial producer in Brazil by then, Brasmazon, sold Brazil nut oil at an average price of US$ 8/kg in 2001 (Enríquez et al. 2003). In another fair trade project in Peru, the Brazil nut oil price was US$ 4/kg (Collinson et al. 2000). The amount paid in A’Ukre was maintained even when prices for unshelled Brazil nuts dropped by about 40 per cent in 2001 (Enríquez et al. 2003). When the Brazilian Real was devalued in 1999, the company tried to convert the payment into Brazilian currency, but dropped the idea at Kayapó’s insistence. Consequently, the purchase power of the Kayapó with the same amount of Brazil nut oil sold has increased. Incomes received from producing Brazil nut oil are therefore substantial if local conditions are taken into account. The amount of oil sold is, however, too small to increase incomes radically. In A’Ukre, The Body Shop arranged to purchase a maximum of 2,000 kg of oil per year. Although rather small, in practice the yearly production has averaged 1,500 kg and surpassed the 2,000 kg mark only once (in 1998), a year of both high Brazil nut productivity and access to temporary logging roads. The company purchased the excess production itself. With regard to impacts at village level, an often-criticised aspect regarding trade deals with isolated indigenous communities is that new activities can contribute to local inequalities amongst individuals and households. This is an extremely important attribute since the surviving lowland Amazonian societies often exhibit pluralistic and egalitarian characteristics. In general, however, this is not the case with the Brazil nut oil agreement in A’Ukre. In the village, the majority (70 per cent) of adults over 15 years old received income from oil production in 2000-2001. The breadth of access to incomes derives mainly from the characteristics of both stages of oil production – collecting and processing – which rely on skills widely distributed and traditional to the Kayapó society and therefore allow a high rate of engagement. Despite widespread access, Brazil nut oil incomes do vary (mean = US$ 277; sd = 317; range = 0-1,388). These differences are a consequence of (i) how revenues are accounted for at different phases of oil production (collecting, shelling and processing); (ii) which subgroups are allowed to work in each phase; and (iii) differences in payments according to age and sex. The community itself is responsible for these decisions. Women and youngsters are particularly disadvantaged. Fewer women receive income from collecting or processing than men (around 50 per cent of the women and over 85 per cent of the men) and their mean annual income of US$ 110 (sd = 122; n = 60) is US$ 350 lower than that of men (US$ 467; sd = 350; n = 60) (t-test = -7.4; d.f. = 117; p
