0533-A2
Luc C. Duchesne1
Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are emerging as ideal tools for community forestry both in industrial and non-industrial countries. The NTFP industry has shown to be beneficial to biodiversity conservation, socio-economic development, and cultural preservation both in aboriginal and settler communities. However, despite remarkable inroads in the development of the NTFP industry, it is still perceived by some as a means for subsistence living with little or no bearing on global issues. Our target should be to move from subsistence harvest to economic security through steady income generation. In recent years, various fields of science have been engaged in the development of the NTFP industry as an effort to promote and mainstream community forestry, increase resource-use efficiency by industrial forestry as well as preserve cultural values of rural and First Nation communities. In practice, we need to: 1) manage NTFP stocks through monitoring, inclusion in industrial forestry, agro-forestry, or agriculture; 2) modify the research agenda to suit the needs of communities and landowners; 3) integrate the traditional knowledge of indigenous people and settlers in NTFP research and management, and actualize this knowledge to the new reality of global markets; 4) implement favourable land tenure, taxation and legislative systems; and, 5) develop a global economic reporting system. Together these steps will ensure the mainstreaming of NTFP in community forestry systems that will help eliminate poverty and become showcases for other resource sectors.
Non timber forest products (NTFP) are growing in acceptance as a global means to generate economic stability for small entrepreneurs, young and old, men or women alike. NTFP include all botanical commodities, woody or not, generated from forests (Duchesne et al. 2000; FAO, 1995).
Already, numerous international agencies have shown that NTFP can be a powerful tool against poverty (see Anderson et al. 1999 for a list of 25 organizations). NTFP enterprises have the potential to make forest use more sustainable, both because they extend the range of forest benefits and also because gathering and processing activities can be performed by the communities near the forest resource, with a likelihood of end-product revenues returning toward communities (Taylor, 1999). Many people and interest groups have placed a great deal of hope on the NTFP industry. Hence, university, government, industrial and private organizations and scientists have undertaken research to address the economic, social, legislative, and biological issues to assist and promote the development of the NTFP industry. However, scientists and practitioners assume that supporting the emerging NTFP industry with research alone will suffice. Far from it! Without cultural changes the NTFP industry may fall easily under the pressures of economic and cultural Darwinism. History is replete with great cultural traditions, knowledge and wisdom that fell to the wayside and were replaced by often less sophisticated and more pragmatic systems. In fact, the use of forests uniquely for fibre is a recent phenomenon in human history and took place because of economic forces that rose during the industrial revolution in western countries.
Past efforts at raising the profile of the NTFP industry at the international level have helped its development both in industrialized and non industrialized nations (see for example Saastamoinen, 1999; FAO, 1999; CIFOR 2002; Duchesne et al. 2001; Jones et al. 2002). However, the NTFP industry remains at the edge of our mainstream cultural consciousness and without appropriate measures it may never get to contribute its full potential.
The objective of this paper is to discuss problems and solutions for main streaming the NTFP industry on a global basis.
The likelihood of a long term economic stability of NTFP enterprises correlates with the intensity at which NTFP are managed. Historically, most starting NTFP businesses have relied on the harvest of wild stocks from forests or lands surrounding communities. Typically, harvesters were made aware of local, regional or international markets for materials that were available to them from the wild. But this type of harvest is a precarious economic activity as it is subjected to biological constraints (reproductive success, growth rate and minimum viable populations) as well as external economic forces controlling demand and pricing. Therefore, harvesting wild stocks is the least sustainable NTFP management strategy even though it is almost always the starting point of NTFP businesses. Experience shows that unregulated commercial harvest leads to abuse which ultimately results in the quick rarefaction or even extirpation of resources. Populations of highly valuable wild stocks are quickly decimated when there is no coordination among pickers as to intensity of harvest. In practice, it means that intense harvesting operations lead to rarefaction beyond the point of minimum viable populations which equates to local extirpation. To make matters worse, wholesale buyers have been known to move their theater of operations from one geographic region to the next as wild stocks became over exploited. In this case the NTFP industry becomes a conduit for the decline of biodiversity and poverty.
Governments are getting increasingly aware of the necessity to monitor and regulate wild NTFP stocks in order to ensure their sustainability. This is a critical issue at the community level as economic security can only be derived from an abundant and sustainable resource. As well, in places where forests are in high demand from various types of users, governments and communities must ensure coordination between NTFP harvesters and other industries. For example, in Canada there is a growing concern that the NTFP industry will compete with the timber harvesting industry for forest resources. However, new research shows that little effort is needed to implement strategies that: increase the abundance of NTFP to meet market demand, resolve the problems associated with harvesting wild stocks, and reduce conflicts among forest users (Duchesne and Wetzel, 2002).
Cultivating NTFP becomes necessary when the demand for products exceeds the natural limits of wild stocks. In the past, research and traditional knowledge have demonstrated the usefulness intensive NTFP management systems based on silvicultural, agroforestry, and agricultural techniques. In practice, selecting a management system for a particular NTFP species depends on community needs, availability of land, and auto ecological requirements together with consumer and market trends. For example, in Canada research is underway to create silvicultural systems that permit the coordination of the NTFP and the timber industries (Duchesne and Wetzel, 2002). Especially, there is interest in using NTFP revenues to subsidize early plantation management costs.
Research shows that intensive management of NTFP resources should also be integrated with the timber harvesting and processing industries. A broad range of commodities that can be generated from the waste products of the forest industry (Mohammed, 1999). In fact, "industrial wastes" is a misnomer for materials unused during logging operations, saw milling and paper making. These materials have been used for the fabrication of pharmaceuticals, fuels, essential oils, garden and landscaping products, fertilizers, and nutraceuticals to name a few. Waste products as sources of NTFP have been neglected and deserve promotion for two reasons: 1) their manufacturing will increase employment in forest communities, and 2) utilizing them will reduce wastes generated from industrial forestry operations.
Science's greatest problem is that it tends to focus on itself, and it often fails to address societal needs. Unfortunately, past NTFP research tended to be disengaged as it has emphasized knowledge rather than the needs of communities. At this point in time there is a need to create and support research that integrates the ecological, social and economic aspects of the NTFP industry.
Much can be gained by tailoring NTFP research after new trends in medical research. Namely, over the past decades medical research has striven to gain relevance to society by addressing both directed basic and implementation research in order to resolve specific illnesses (Latour, 1998). But NTFP research is still compartmentalized in different disciplines which act independently of each other and ultimately fail to meet the need of the industry from a lack of integration. Future NTFP research will need to integrate biological, social, economic and legislative questions that are needed for economic stability.
Creating sustainable communities is like assembling a chain with several links where each link represents a scientific discipline. Given that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it is imperative to bridge the gaps between social, biological and economic sciences. This can be achieved by formulating research questions that are common to each discipline and creating real partnership with joint publication and technology transfer.
Communities themselves must be allowed to become a link in the chain of research. But for this, scientists must respect the right of communities to dictate and control the research agenda in order to suit their needs, values, cultures and visions. For example, there are long-standing practices among indigenous people of the world who have made use of effective management tools such as insects, fire, flooding and plant propagation (Davidson-Hunt and Berkes, 2001). The Ojibways of Canada and the Kayapo of Brazil made extensive use of fire to manage berries and wildlife (Chapeskie, 2001). Scientists must endeavor to joining modern science and technology together with traditional knowledge in order to generate mutually beneficial results from development projects (Emery, 2000). For this, however, scientists need to recognize and appreciate the expertise of the people of the forests, the so called "bush PhD" whose knowledge and wisdom have been acquired over generations in ways that disagree with the scientific method.
Scientists must also train communities to seek new knowledge. Even if NTFP harvesting often draws from long standing cultural traditions, this knowledge may not be adequate to tackle the reality of mass production and international markets. Indeed, market globalization creates demands for products and mass production strategies, which are foreign to many indigenous cultures around the world. For example the Pikangikum of northern Ontario has never engaged in the harvest of wild mushrooms. And so, Pikangikum elders will have access to little or traditional knowledge to help them manage the wild mushroom harvest. Worldwide there are many such examples where traditional knowledge is not sufficient to provide for the evolving needs of communities. In practice, communities need to be empowered with the ability to seek knowledge from scientists as well as other communities with similar interest.
There is a need for policy revision with regard to NTFP as land tenure, government regulations regarding value-added processing, and taxation systems can become impediments to the NTFP industry. The goal of governments should be to create incentives for people to engage in NTFP management and value-added processing at the community level. Legislative support that addresses land tenure, value-added product regulations and taxation are critical for communities with vested interest in the NTFP industry. First, people must have long term agreement, either through community leases or ownership, that guaranty continuous and safe access to the lands under management. This will create an incentive for communities to invest time and money into NTFP management as well as processing and transformation facilities. Second, communities must not be restricted by national and international regulations from processing NTFP into value-added products. And thirdly, taxation systems must create incentives for harvesters to harvest wild resources and to process them. For example, in Finland revenues from NTFP harvest are tax exempt (Saastamoinen, 1999), which stimulates the industry while bypassing the troublesome job of securing fiscal revenues from harvesters.
A solid demonstration of the economic potential of NTFP at the global level is a critical milestone in achieving recognition and stimulating the growth of the NTFP industry. In the past, the focus of the NTFP industry was to support subsistence living. However, for the NTFP industry to move to economic stability (Anderson et al. 1999), there is a need to understand its global economic contribution and potential.
Current economic data on NTFP is scanty, disparate and sometimes contradictory. Data on the global trade varies between $1 and $20 B/year (e.g., Cook and Clap, 2002). Some have reported on the value of international trade of specific products (e.g. Ciesla, 1998), others have reported on the value of national trade of a limited range of products (e.g. Duchesne et al. 2000). This is further complicated by the fact that some of the data reported deals with the revenues paid to harvesters whereas other data pertains to the value of shipments after value-added processing.
To date the best attempt at capturing the global contribution of NTFP came from The Montreal Process, which emphasized non-wood forest products as an indicator of Criterion 6: Maintenance and enhancement of long-term multiple socioeconomic benefits to the meet the needs of the society. One of the conclusions was that national-level data was difficult to assemble because of a lack of regional data (The Montreal Process, 1997).
In future, we need to develop an adequate reporting tool that will assist policy makers in understanding the economic role of the NTFP industry. We lack data that captures and segregates information from: 1) the community level (gains by harvesters and gains generated by processing); 2) gains to intermediaries in the course of regional trade and commerce; and 3) in those case of cross-border exports, the values of revenues generated by international trade.
Civilizations since time immemorial have depended on forests for food, shelter, heat, clothing and medicine. Nowadays more than 1.6 billion people rely directly on forests for parts of their livelihoods (Mayers and Vermeulen, 2002). However, increased pressures on forests create an impetus for new research and development to better suit the need of forest communities. On the one hand, society must recognize that people, either from indigenous or from settler communities, are better served when they have control of their own environment than when they are not involved in environmental decisions that concern them. On the other hand, we need to acknowledge that many cultural traditions have evolved around the availability of NTFP as sources of food, medicines, spiritual artifacts, and fibre for thousands of years. Therefore, preserving the cultural identities of the indigenous people of the world is aided by promoting the NTFP industry.
At this point in time, we must recognize the importance of active NTFP management if the NTFP industry is to meet the need of the people and turn economic determinism into an instrument of cultural and economic freedom.
Poor people and communities from all over the world have demonstrated that NTFP are tools against poverty by initiating various types of businesses. But these people, and those who wish to emulate them, need to be supported in many ways in order to thrive. With proper planning and adequate research the NTFP industry has the potential to become a global tool against poverty. Its growth and success are contingent on innovation in many academic disciplines as well as the recognition of its potential at the global level.
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1 Natural Resources Canada-Canadian Forestry Service, 1219 Queen St East, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. P6A 2E5 Canada. [email protected]