0179-C1

Cross-Sectoral Policy Impacts in Forestry

Jeremy Broadhead^[1] and Yves C. Dubé

ABSTRACTS

This paper presents a summary of results from a survey of cross-sectoral policy impacts between forestry and other sectors. The aims of the survey were to unearth and collate examples of cross-sectoral policy impacts involving forestry and to test a theoretical framework for classifying the examples. The survey was held in summer 2001 through interviews and questionnaires and forms part of a work programme of the FAO Forestry Department Policy and Institutions Branch that will culminate in a substantive forestry paper in 2003. The survey revealed that public policy from nearly all areas has impacts on forestry. It is therefore clear that forestry should engage with all relevant sectors and policy areas to achieve its goals. The results also suggest that the main factors determining the effects of public policy on forests at the national level are the abundance of forest itself, national income and the level of institutional capacity and political support for sustainable forest management. It is therefore recommended that policy-makers and foresters increase awareness of the multiple functions that forests perform for multiple stakeholders and of the close interdependence with sustained production in other sectors. In addition to greater management integration, the need to identify policy instruments and institutional arrangements to better promote non-commodity outputs of forests is also stressed. Finally, more studies are recommended to better understand practical problems facing sustainable forest management and cross-sectoral integration in order to develop policy instruments and institutional arrangements that allow efficient, equitable distribution of benefits to multiple stakeholders.

INTRODUCTION

This article presents a summary of results from a survey carried out in summer 2001, in which staff working within and outside of FAO were asked to provide examples of cross-sectoral policy impacts involving forestry^[2]. The aims of the work were to unearth and collate examples of cross-sectoral policy impacts involving forestry and to test and develop a theoretical framework for classifying the examples. The methodology used for the survey and the results derived from application of the framework are presented here.

The survey forms part of a work programme of the FAO Forestry Department Policy and Institutions Branch which will culminate in a substantive forestry paper on “Cross-sectoral Policy Impacts between Forestry and other Sectors in 2003”. The objectives of the work are to improve understanding of intersectoral linkages, enhance formulation and implementation of forestry policies, improve institutional linkages and partnerships, and to develop mechanisms to evaluate externalities of sectoral policies.

METHODOLOGY

The majority of examples were gathered through interviews with staff involved with policy and/or planning at FAO headquarters in Rome. A simple questionnaire was also used for FAO staff outside of Rome and participants working with other organisations. Examples were requested of current or recent occurrences of:

1. Public policy with positive or negative impacts on forests or forestry, or

2. Forestry policy with positive or negative impacts on other areas.

Further information on each example was collected using literature provided by interviewees and through Internet searches. A minimum set of information on each example was collected according to a framework based on the work of Schmithüsen et al. 2001^[3]. The information for each example included the location, forest type, policy area involved, areas impacted upon and national income (GNP per capita), forest area and population density.

For the summary analysis, levels of national income^[4] and forest cover^[5] were used to classify the examples; in both cases two categories, high and low, were used. To simplify analysis, policies with effects across more than one income or forest cover class were counted once for each combination of income and forest cover involved.

Three main policy groups each containing several sub- groups were used to divide public policy (see Table 1). Impacts of public policy upon forestry were categorised into sub-groups according to the systematic position of the process affected; positive or negative scores were attributed to each area according to short-medium term impacts. The areas were as follows:

· Inputs ® Forest resources/cover (deforestation/afforestation) ® Forest alteration (including biological diversity, productive capacity, health and vitality of forest ecosystems) ® Processors of forest products.

· Processes ® Management capacity/application of policies.

· Outputs ® Forest products supply during term of policy activity ® Soil and water resources ® Socio-economic situation of forest dependent people, and

· Markets and demands for forest products.

· For forestry policy affecting other areas, the categories were limited by the number of examples and were not intended to cover the full potential range of effects but simply to classify the results as found.

As many of the individual examples included several concordant policies aimed at a common goal, for example, rural development policy including transport and agricultural components, the summary focuses on the most important classes only.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Impacts of public policy upon forestry

Overall, the main policy areas of interest to forestry are associated with cash crops, subsistence crops and livestock, energy, transport, the environment, nature protection and several policy areas associated with institutional frameworks, as shown in Table 1. The results show that in high-income countries a greater proportion of impacts are associated with special economic sectors than in low-income countries, where policies establishing the institutional framework are relatively of greater importance. Furthermore, individual special economic sector policies in low-income countries were more commonly aimed at extending agricultural activities than in higher income countries. These results demonstrates the relative stages of development of high and low income countries: in low income countries priorities often lean towards installing a framework on which to base future socio-economic activity, whereas in high income countries priorities have generally switched to economic growth itself. For high income/low forest cover countries the results differed by the small number of impacts and the relative predominance of environmental and nature protection policies. This undoubtedly results from the opportunity wealth provides to reduce demands on forests and finance externalities with longer term benefits.

Of the areas of possible impact listed in the previous section, the most commonly affected were related to forestry inputs (forest resources, forest alteration and processors of forest products) and outputs (forest products supply, soil and water resources and forest dependent people). Forest resources and forest dependent people are focussed on here, as the patterns of impacts on forest alteration and forest products were similar to those for forest resources and there were no clear patterns in the impacts on soil and water resources.

Table 1. Percentage of policies affecting forests in high and low income and forest cover countries (zero values removed for clarity).

N.B. Totals may not tally with column values due to rounding errors.

Seventy-six percent of the policy examples collected had impacts on forest resources and 79% on forest dependent people; a summary of the impacts is shown in Table 2. In contrast to impacts on forest resources, where only a third of examples had positive impacts, over two thirds of the examples had positive impacts on forest dependent people. The importance of forest rights was demonstrated by the predominance of positive impacts associated with privatisation and the role of the state; this was in contrast to most other policies associated with establishing the institutional framework, which had negative impacts on forest resources. With respect to forest dependent people, however, all institutional framework policies tended to have positive impacts except those associated with macro-economic policy (e.g. removal of fuel subsidies, low payment of civil servants) and trade policies (e.g. market liberalisation stifling high-priced producers). These policies were, however, often aimed at longer-term benefits and negative impacts were generally short term.

Economic sub-sectors associated with agriculture (cash crops, subsistence crops and livestock) were the most important to forest resources, having mainly negative impacts, although a number of positive examples were associated with the promotion of wood energy, watershed protection and subsistence cropping (e.g. genetic modification of crops, land amelioration through tree planting and the removal of agricultural land from production). In contrast, almost all policies associated with special economic sectors had positive impacts on forest dependent people; this is perhaps unsurprising given the strong relationship between economic productivity and standard of living (Mankiw 1998). The development policies with positive impacts on both forest resources and forest dependent people were all associated with either environment policy or nature protection.

Table 2. Percentage of policies affecting forests in high and low income and forest cover countries with respect to impacts on (a) forest resources and (b) forest dependent people.

N.B. Totals may not tally with column values due to rounding errors.

The results in Table 2 demonstrate relationships between the balance of positive and negative impacts in both forest cover and income. In both high and low income countries with high forest cover, there are more policies with negative than positive impacts on forest resources. Furthermore, although the balance between positive and negative examples is nearly even in low income, low forest cover countries, in high income, high forest cover countries there are more policies with positive impacts. This suggests that forest cover itself, and income, are determinants in depletion of forest resources, and that forest scarcity provides stimulation for public policy that more frequently has positive than negative impacts on forest resources. The positive effect is less pronounced in low-income countries where demands on natural resources are often greater and responses are limited by insufficient resources or capacity. The results also show that in both high and low-income countries nearly all public policy affecting forestry has positive impacts on forest-dependent people (this is probably only true at local level and in the short/medium term). In high forest cover countries, this is more at the expense of forest resources than in low forest cover countries where public policy impacts are nearly all positive on both forest resources and forest dependent people. These results suggest that negative impacts on forest resources are often due to the lack of policy instruments or institutional mechanisms to promote the multifunctionality of forests as well as to the higher prevailing discount rate of future consumption in low-income countries.

Impacts of forestry policy on other areas

Only 16 examples of forestry policy impacting on other areas were gathered, far fewer than for public policy affecting forestry. As well as reflecting the infrequency of impacts, the relative lack of examples also resulted from forestry related externalities being taken for granted and therefore not stated by participants.

The majority of examples were from countries with high forest area. In contrast to examples of public policy affecting forestry, the largest group of examples were from temperate and boreal forests in industrialised countries, followed by lowland forest in the humid tropics (results not shown). The predominance of examples with positive impacts from countries with market economies suggests that, in contrast to developing countries, forestry institutions are stronger in more developed countries and thus have greater influence.

The natural environment was the area most commonly affected by forestry policy with 12 of the 16 examples having an impact. The policies responsible for the negative impacts both on other forest users and other economic sectors (Table 3) were almost all associated with prohibition of development in forest areas for either conservation or land control purposes. Positive impacts on other forest users were mainly due to species conservation measures and granting of forest access and resource rights whereas the positive effects on other economic sectors were related to economic liberalisation, grazing access and road development. These observations point to the requirement for greater management integration in order to realise simultaneous benefits for multiple stakeholders.

The positive effects of forestry on soil and water resources resulted from erosion and siltation control through afforestation, whereas benefits to the natural environment were related to biodiversity and conservation of forest dependent species.

Table 3. Percentage of forestry policies by area affected, national income and forest cover.

N.B. Totals may not tally with column values due to rounding errors.

CONCLUSION

The results of the survey produced several findings and revealed a number of points of use in future efforts. Firstly, that public policy from nearly all areas has impacts on forestry. It is therefore clear that forestry should engage with all relevant sectors and policy areas to achieve its goals. The smaller number of examples of forestry policy affecting other areas probably resulted both from the fact that the impacts of forestry are often taken for granted, in particular with respect to environmental services, and also because forestry policy less frequently impinges on other areas in a negative way. The results also suggest that the main factors determining the effects of public policy on forests at the national level are the abundance of forest itself, income level, the lack of institutional capacity and political support for their sustainable management.

It is recommended therefore that policy makers and foresters increase awareness of the multiple values of forest resources, their differing functions for multiple stakeholders and the close interdependence with sustained production in other sectors. These factors point towards the need for greater management integration to optimise benefits across sectors associated with forestry. This may be assisted by analysis of the full of effects of the policies having impacts on forestry to locate allied sectors with which a stronger case for expansion or alleviation of impacts can be made. There is also the need to identify the policy instruments and institutional arrangements that most likely are to be successful in promoting non-commodity outputs of forests. In situations where policies are pursued with full knowledge of negative impacts on forests or forestry the role of the forestry sector is first to assess whether changes do indeed make long term economic sense and secondly to ensure that any costs associated with negative impacts are charged to the offending sector so that forestry may advance in other areas. Finally, more studies are recommended to better understand practical problems facing sustainable forest management and cross-sectoral integration in order to develop policy instruments and institutional arrangements which allow efficient, equitable distribution of benefits to multiple stakeholders.

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