INFORMATION AND ANALYSIS FOR SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT: LINKING NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
Ma Qiang, Forestry Officer (Econometrics),
FAO Headquarters, Rome
Introduction
Globally, the dominant trends for forest products are an increasing demand for wood (resulting from increased populations and incomes) from a diminishing, or more restricted, forest supply base. As forests are cleared, degraded, or withdrawn from production for conservation purposes or other reasons, the burden placed on the remaining production forest increases commensurately. Questions consequently arise as to the capacity of forests to continue to meet consumption demands, and these can only be answered by increasingly detailed analyses of sources of supply.
The most important questions include:
How much wood will be available in the future?
What will be the impacts of sustainable forest management on wood supplies?
Where will future supplies of wood and fibre come from?
These challenging questions have important biological, economic, social, cultural and political aspects. During the past 5 years, FAO has made significant efforts to address these issues and begin to find answers to these questions. In all effort, they overwhelming constraint has been the absence of national level data - in almost all countries. Despite the interest in future wood supplies, information is scarce and forestry policymakers, particularly in the international sphere, are forced to set policy in what is largely a quantitative vacuum. Not only is much of the basic national forest inventory data (e.g. areas, species and growth increments) incomplete, inaccurate, obsolete or otherwise unreliable in many countries, but many of the other key variables (e.g. the impacts on roundwood production of intensified management regimes, and technological or methodological improvements) remain unmeasured or unreported. In particular, information about qualitative changes in forest resources remains highly elusive.
The Global Fibre Supply Model
In 1995, FAO initiated the Global Fibre Supply Model (GFSM) as a "first step" in more extensive and ongoing efforts to address fibre supply issues, particularly through regional and global outlook studies. The GFSM specifically endeavoured to provide some quantification of national and global wood supply potential. By wood supply potential we mean, the overall amount of wood and fibre that will be available to meet physical needs for wood products in the foreseeable future including wood for fuel, pulp and paper and solid wood products such as sawn timber and panels. This is normally done by developing scenarios of future annual wood production, making a variety of assumptions about key factors.
Along with a simple forecasting model that allows these assumptions to be modeled, the GFSM study includes a compilation of the most recent forest inventory statistics as well as recovered and non-wood fibre data. The focus is primarily on the sources of industrial fibre as raw material for the sawmilling, wood-based panels, and pulp and paper industries. Thus, the GFSM provides a repository for available statistics on forest resources that are relevant to wood supply modeling, as well as providing a simple wood supply modeling capacity.
In more general terms, the GFSM contributes to forest policy development by highlighting and underscoring the pressing need for reliable data, information and analysis on industrial fibre sources and their utilization, which will in turn support efforts to achieve sustainable forest management. FAO's work with the GFSM produces a range of alternative futures to 2050, which show there is significant potential to increase global wood production. In Asia, the modeling suggest the most significant increases are likely to come from maturing plantation resources.
Asia-Pacific Forestry Sector Outlook Study
Developing estimates of wood supply potential in the Asian region was one of the tasks undertaken by the Asia-Pacific Forestry Sector Outlook Study. Once again, uncertainties and difficulties with data obscured the results. In general, the message emerging from analysis of APFSOS results is that potentially there will easily be sufficient fibre available in the Asia-Pacific region overall to meet demand in 2010. The Study stressed, however, that scenarios were based on estimates of potential supply, and it is virtually certain that the full extent of the potential supplies will not be obtainable in many countries.
The Study proposed a need to improve utilisation of residues from processing and harvesting and significantly develop collection and utilisation of recovered material (mainly wastepaper) in many countries. In addition, a number of factors of uncertainty were identified, that may undermine the conclusion that potential supplies of wood and fibre will be adequate:
considerable uncertainty exists about the sustainability of the harvesting intensities currently used in the region. There is a high probability that in the future effective wood harvests will be markedly lower than those used in compiling the supply estimates for this study;
significant uncertainty persists over the extent of plantation resources. Much of this doubt stems from data compilation methods that often fail to account for mortality rates or are incomplete with regard to age profiles and intended management regimes. Consequently, both plantation areas and stocking ratios may be significantly lower than official statistics indicate for a number of countries in the region;
accurate statistics on trees outside forests are almost non-existent. Since these resources play a crucial role in meeting the proportionately dominant woodfuel needs, there remains scope for major errors in estimating the ability of non-forest lands to satisfy demands.
Once again the absence of crucial data leaves it difficult to draw solid conclusions, and contributes to the difficulties policy-makers have in making good decisions regarding forests.
Global Forest Sector Outlook Study: the potential wood supply and possible future market developments
In the future, there are likely to be different sources of wood and other fibres for production. In most countries, there will probably be a general move away from the use of forest resources for wood and fibre production towards other land-based sources and non-land-based sources of supply. The greatest change will be the increased use of wood processing residues and recycled fibres in the product input mix. Such secondary sources will probably be increasingly used in the more developed parts of Asia, while the decline in forest resources may mean trees outside forests will play a more important role in some of the world's less developed regions.
Future supply patterns are also likely to change within forests. Large areas of commercial short-rotation plantations will come on stream in the Southern Hemisphere. These plantations will provide the largest share of expected future growth in forest production potential.
Larger areas of natural forest will probably be placed into legally protected areas.
FAO Study on efficacy of removing natural forests from timber production as a strategy for conserving forests
The seventeenth session Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission (APFC) requested FAO to implement a "Study of the Efficacy of Removing Natural Forests from Timber Production as a Strategy for Conserving Forests" with objectives to:
investigate past and current experiences of Asia-Pacific countries in removing natural forests from timber production as a strategy for conserving forests;
assess the policy, economic, environmental, and social implications of implementing logging bans and timber harvesting restrictions; and
identify conditions necessary for the successful implementation of logging bans or likely to enhance successful implementation.
National consultants from China, New Zealand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam have carried out country case studies. These show that the experience of the countries of the region in implementing logging bans and harvesting restrictions has been mixed. While limited successful achievement of some natural forest conservation objectives is evident, disappointment and lack of effective protection continues widely within the region. Adverse economic and social consequences and impacts have occurred, further undermining the incentives for sustainable management, conservation and protection of non-timber values. Removal of natural forests from timber production has had significant impacts on the forest products sector (production, trade and consumption) and important and sometimes disruptive effects on neighbouring countries through both legal and illegal trade, timber smuggling, and market disruptions.
Pilot Study options examining wood supply potential
There are a broad range of pilot studies that might assist in improving information and data relating to future wood and fibre supplies. Pilot studies might focus on measuring simple growth capacities in either disturbed or undisturbed forests. For example, attempting to develop better growth and production models for particular forest types. They might also look at measuring changes in forest production capacities in response to policy and regulatory change. For example, FAO has been implementing a major study in a handful of countries examining the efficacy of implementing logging bans, or other harvest restrictions, and studies might usefully follow up work in this area.
Other studies might focus on measuring the potential for improving roundwood recovery at harvest, or measuring harvest residues. Residues and waste at processing facilities might also be studied, as well as supply potential studies relating to plantations, trees outside forests, and non-forest tree species. Some of the possible pilot study topics we have already talked about include:
measuring harvesting residue volumes in tropical forests;
measuring residue volumes in forestry processing facilities;
utilisation and waste of wood processing residues;
deriving national conversion efficiency ratios for processing facilities;
estimating national wood processing capacities;
measuring harvesting intensities in tropical forests;
surveying land ownership of log sources;
estimating "unmeasured" household consumption of industrial logs and poles;
reconciling roundwood production with production of wood products;
a survey system for forest products price data;
surveying recycling systems (formal and informal) for forest products;
specific inventory type work in natural forests;
measuring various aspects that determine plantation wood production;
examining impacts of changes in the nature of wood supplies (log sizes and species); and
examining the impacts of new techniques, such as reduced impact logging, on wood supplies.
We have already developed a good range of proposed topics and we look forward to hearing your further suggestions and views on these.
Thank you
