Smallholder tree-farmers and forest certification in Southeast Asia: alternative approaches to deliver more benefits to growers

ABSTRACT

The smallholder tree-farm resources of Southeast Asia are generating substantial benefits for growers and support many successful domestic wood processors. They could provide even greater benefits at all levels of the supply and value chains if they enjoyed a sympathetic policy framework; technical and specialised support and training to promote productivity gains; and greater knowledge of market trends and access requirements. This paper reviews current forest certification systems as applied to smallholder tree-farmers in Southeast Asia, with a focus on the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Thailand and Viet Nam, and questions whether perceived benefits match operational realities. A critical issue in any form of transactional relationship between two or more people or institutions is to answer to mutual satisfaction the question, ‘Who benefits?’ This is particularly important in transactions between relatively weak and vulnerable and relatively strong and powerful individuals and groups, such as the relationships between smallholder tree-farmers in Southeast Asia and purchasers of certified wood products. We explore factors that drive certification and how they intersect with salient characteristics of smallholder tree-farms restricting the adoption of certification. We argue that new approaches are required to deliver the benefits necessary to expand smallholder participation in wood production supply chains, such as national codes of practice for small-scale forestry and agreed standards that encourage mutual recognition between verification systems. Innovative approaches should be adopted to deliver a fair, equitable and inclusive model that is relevant, practical, feasible and cost-effective for smallholder tree-farmers. As currently practised, certification has many positive aspects for some types of forests and wood producers but rarely for smallholder tree-farmers. A new approach to smallholder forest certification is required to ensure that the answer to the question, ‘Who benefits?’ is, ‘All participants in the supply and value chain, including smallholder tree-farmers’. To achieve this outcome, certification organisations and forest products businesses should remove existing barriers to smallholder participation and develop initiatives to more fairly link smallholder tree-farmers with others in the supply chain, based on enabling and mutually supportive partnerships.

KEYWORDS:

• smallholders
• Southeast Asia
• forest certification
• social licence
• profitability

Acknowledgements

We have been privileged to receive a wide range of comments and some challenging suggestions from many well-informed and committed proponents of smallholder forestry, including smallholder tree-farmers, manufacturers and consumer advocates, and from professionals in industry, government and universities. We are grateful to many people who generously shared their time during the preparation of this paper and offered a great deal of information based on extensive direct experience and field interactions with smallholders. Among these helpful people, several made extended and valued contributions and deserve special thanks:

• in Viet Nam – Dr Vu Tan Phuong from the Vietnamese Academy of Forest Science;

• in Lao PDR – Mr Peter Fogde from Stora Enso (Lao), and Lao and Australian colleagues from the VALTIP Project funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research and, in particular, Mr Richard Laity (PEFC) through his project research work in Lao PDR and Viet Nam;

• in Thailand – Dr Pasu Kongapai, Academic Manager, and Rungnapa Wattanavinchian, Manager, of the Thailand Forest Certification Council; and

• in Australia – Dr Neil Byron, Dr Sadanandan Nambiar and Dr Chris Harwood from CSIRO, and Dr Keith Barney and Dr To Xuan Phuc from the Australian National University.

We are also grateful for the opportunities to share experiences through active participation in a PEFC meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2016 and the FSC Meeting, ‘New Directions Initiative’, in Bangkok, Thailand, in February 2017.

Finally, we acknowledge the continuing support provided by Professor Peter Kanowski, Australian National University, in the development of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We recognise differences in the meaning of ‘supply chain’ and ‘value chain’ but, for the sake of simplicity, we use ‘supply chain’ throughout this paper.

² http://www.euflegt.efi.int. Accessed 8 October 2019.

³ See, for example, https://info.fsc.org/certificate.php for the FSC and https://www.pefc.org/what-we-do/our-approach/what-is-certification/for/the/PEFC. Accessed 16 September 2019.

⁴ http://www.fsc.org. Accessed 16 September 2019.

⁵ http://www.ecolabelindex.com/. Accessed 15 January 2019.

⁶ http://www.euflegt.efi.int/vpa. Accessed 9 December 2019.

⁷ http://www.etfrn.org/file.php/348/side-bar-the-impacts-of-eco-labelling-schemes.pdf. Accessed 15 November 2019.

⁸ https://www.fsc.org/sites/fsc.org/files/2019-08/Media%20Kit%2BBio.pdf. Accessed 16 October 2019.

⁹ https://www.pefc.org/projects/knowledge/trees-outside-forests. Accessed 2 January 2020.

¹⁰ https://english.vov.vn/economy/vietnam-sets-to-have-15000-effective-agricultural-cooperatives-372596.vov. Accessed 12 January 2020.

¹¹ https://www.eomf.on.ca/. Accessed 20 December 2019.

¹² https://fsc.org/en/news/fsc-certified-wood-and-products-fetch-higher-prices. Accessed 5 November 2019.

¹³ Based on an analysis of both public and confidential financial reports under the Responsible Asia Forestry & Trade Partnership 1 and 2 subprojects (http://www.responsibleasia.org/) and the Luang Prabang Teak program (https://www.slideshare.net/mrlgregion/luang-prabang-teak-program-presentation). Accessed 16 September 2019.

¹⁴ https://www.earthworm.org/fr/news-stories/luang-prabang-update-1?token=w3yxxH0Ed-lwmjavsrgXQtgTlCTENW4Q. Accessed 22 April 2020.

¹⁵ https://www.ikea.com/ms/en_JP/about_ikea/our_responsibility/partnerships/ikea_and_wwf_conservation.html. Accessed 10 September 2019.

¹⁶ https://www.holmesreport.com/latest/article/provoke19-how-ikea-earned-its-licence-to-operate. Accessed 20 September 2019.

¹⁷ https://strategicmanagementinsight.com/mission-statements/ikea-mission-statement.html. Accessed 22 April 2020.

¹⁸ http://info.fsc.org/certificate.php#result. Accessed 16 September 2019.

¹⁹ The first group is managed by the Forest Sector Development Project and supported financially by the World Bank, with 852 ha certified under group certification for smallholders in four provinces (Binh Dinh, Quang Ngai, Quang Nam, Thua Thien Hue), including 323 smallholders. The second group is managed by the Association of Quang Tri Smallholder Forest Certification Group, closely supported by WWF Viet Nam and funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, with a total of 1392 ha (up to the latest audit in 2016). The project started in December 2007 and is still going. The number of households increased from 108 in 2007 to 516 in 2016 (FSC Database 2019).

²⁰ http://www.fao.org/3/x6720e/x6720e28.htm. Accessed 22 August 2019.

²¹ https://www.industry.gov.au/regulations-and-standards/reducing-technical-barriers-to-trade. Accessed 22 August 2019.

²² http://www.fao.org/3/x6720e/x6720e28.htm. Accessed 22 August 2019.

²³ http://www.fao.org/3/AC135E/ac135e0a.htm. Accessed 4 September 2019.

²⁴ https://accountability-framework.org/. Accessed 4 September 2019.