During the past decade, forest sector specialists and forestry institutions world-wide have increasingly recognized the 'major importance of minor forest products'. FAO's decision to adapt its prior terminology and refer to 'non-wood' as opposed to 'minor' forest products reflects this significant change in perspective. In the early 1990s, the FAO Forestry Department launched a programme to support national efforts to increase knowledge, develop activities, and adapt policies for more systematic and sustainable use of non-wood forest products (NWFPs). FAO's programme aims to contribute better to sustainable management and conservation of both NWFPs and tropical forest ecosystems.
Combined with similar initiatives by other institutions, the availability of information regarding NWFPs in general - and their utilization, trade, and management in particular - has begun to increase substantially. Yet there is little question that most foresters still consider NWFPs to be of secondary importance compared to timber. An enormous amount of work remains to create broader acceptance and a more comprehensive understanding of the benefits, needs and specific approaches for sustainably managing NWFPs. Continuing compilation and dissemination of this information will enable policy makers to target support, incentives and disincentives that are more effective at impelling wise and sustainable forest use, recognizing the full potential and significance of NWFPs.
This Outlook Study provides an overview of the significance of NWFPs in the Asia-Pacific region. It examines current trends and projects their likely future impacts on NWFPs in terms of product availability and management, the importance of NWFPs to people and economy, and the effort to develop and achieve sustainable forest management in the region.
The study notes that despite considerable progress during the past decade, data regarding NWFPs are often scant, conflicting and unreliable, even for major commercial species such as rattan, bamboo and tree resin. It is nonetheless clear that NWFPs provide important sources of livelihood products and employment for tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of people in the region. Many of these products are traded commercially, but it is the residents of forest areas who are most dependent upon NWFPs to fulfil a wide assortment of subsistence uses. These uses include: food, spices, edible oils, medicines, fodder, forage, stall bedding, green manure, construction material, household utensils, fibre, ornamentation and rituals.
Access to NWFPs is vital to the livelihood strategies of millions of poor forest area people. For the poorest and most dependent people, reduced access to NWFPs - as primary or supplemental sources of food, medicine and income - can constitute a serious threat to their survival. Collection and processing of NWFP raw materials into finished products provides employment for millions of Asia-Pacific region people. For example, some 10 million people are said to be employed in collecting and processing tendu leaves into bidi cheroots. Precise data are lacking regarding the total number of people in the Asia-Pacific region who derive income from NWFPs 1. But the number of people in the region who collect, process and trade NWFPs could be well over 100 million.
1
For an assessment of whether NWFPs are an effective source of livelihoods, see Fisher et al (APFSOS/WP/27) (Editor).
National revenue derived from the export of NWFP raw materials and finished products is also prodigious. The total value of rattan exports from Indonesia in 1989 alone was US$ 17 million 2. The value of forest plants used as herbal medicines and as raw materials for production of modern pharmaceuticals is estimated to be several billion dollars.
2
The value is important in relation to other NWFPs but relatively small compared to other exports of the country, including wood products (Editor).
Biological "prospecting" and a trend toward increasing use of natural medicines and cosmetics is likely to expand international demand and trade in these products. Several studies suggest that the value of sustainable NWFP harvest could exceed that derived from harvesting timber from a similar area of forest. This argument has begun to provide compelling economic rationale for forest management systems based on long-term sustainable utilization of NWFPs as opposed to short-cycle timber extraction.
National, regional and international demand for NWFPs is likely to grow, creating potential for increased revenue generation. But this has parallel negative implications with respect to sustainable resource management. Adverse ecological impacts on forests from over-harvesting target species could disturb species interrelationships that are vital for maintaining ecosystem integrity and stability. Intensive selective harvest of NWFPs can cause chain-reaction effects that spread from point sources to the larger forest ecosystem. The long-term effects of improper NWFP harvest - though much less readily apparent than those associated with large-scale timber extraction - can be nearly as detrimental to forest ecology.
Much of what we know about sustainable NWFP management comes from indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) that is the result of centuries of experimentation by traditional and indigenous peoples who are dependent on forests for livelihood. Until recently, ITK regarding NWFPs and their sustainable management have largely been overlooked. Rapid social, cultural and economic changes associated with the modernization currently sweeping the Asia-Pacific region have begun to penetrate even the deepest forest recesses. This has a profound affect on traditional forest-dwelling people, as they are exposed and gain access to modern technologies and consumer products.
Influx to forest frontiers by an increasing number of lowlanders has contributed to changing local perceptions and behaviours with respect to forest utilization and management. The overall results of these changes have been predominantly detrimental to NWFP resources, as well as on the lives of traditional forest area inhabitants. At the same time, increasing trends in the availability and use of synthetic substitutes for NWFPs, domestication and cultivation on agricultural lands, as well as alternative employment options have reduced pressures on NWFP resources in some areas.
The study notes that the overall trend is toward depletion of NWFP resources. This is due to inadequately regulated off-take and increasing market demand for commercially popular species. There is also a growing demand for endangered plants and animals purchased as trophies and medicines by the region's growing number of affluent consumers. The vast majority of NWFP collectors and local traders receive low prices for sale of raw materials. But growing speciality markets for natural products, and for 'socially and environmentally sound' rainforest commodities, have created new opportunities. While outside entrepreneurs monopolize much of this business, many programmes assisted by government and non-governmental agencies are helping the traditionally underprivileged to gain access to these emerging niche markets. Fair trade organizations, which have emerged for many agricultural commodities, may become important mechanisms in the future to ensure that NWFP collectors and processors receive a premium for products that are sustainably managed and harvested.
Some commercially valuable NWFPs can be cultivated on farms and plantations. When there is strong market demand, the trend is toward domestication and cultivation rather than collection from semi-depleted forest stocks. When this trend begins to predominate, as has already occurred in some areas, harvest pressures on remaining natural stocks are reduced. Examples of increasing cultivation of NWFPs include: rattan in Malaysia; Chinese medicinal herbs in Vietnam; and, to a lesser extent, fragrant aloewood (Aquilaria spp.) in Lao PDR. Potential to expand the area devoted to NWFP cultivation appears considerable for these and other forest species including ornamental plants (e.g. orchids), vegetables and mushrooms of high market value.
Forest policy is changing in many Asia-Pacific countries. Governments are grappling with the need to adapt existing policies to the economic, environmental and social changes rapidly taking place. Government spending cutbacks combined with increasing recognition of the potential for involving rural communities in sustainable forest management have become driving forces behind recent policy initiatives. This trend appears likely to increase given the need to adapt to changing mandates, and in response to growing confidence in the capacity of forest dependent rural people to manage natural resources wisely and responsibly.
There are many keys to catalyzing the vast and largely untapped potential for rural communities to play active roles in sustainable forest management. These include: provision of land and resource tenure to individuals and communities; collaborative planning by stakeholders to determine procedures, responsibilities, and benefit-sharing arrangements; and integrated conservation and development programmes that build local capacity to capitalize on forest product development and market opportunities, create economic alternatives to natural resource-based income generation, and set in place a system to organize and monitor local responsibility for sustainable landuse, sustainable forest utilization, and protected area conservation.
