Smallholder tree-farmers and forest certification in Southeast Asia: productivity, risks and policies

ABSTRACT

In Southeast Asia, smallholder tree-farmers make a substantial contribution to supplies of commercial wood. It is likely this will continue, largely because in these crowded rural landscapes there is limited potential for establishing large contiguous commercial plantations. There is a critical need to promote and increase the productivity of smallholder tree growing to ensure long-term sustainability, and improve household livelihoods and resource security. Improving smallholder productivity is constrained by limited access to land and resources, and numerous types of risks, and we suggest ways in which these constraints could be addressed. This paper briefly reviews the roles and contributions of smallholder tree-farmers in and across regional supply chains, and the regulatory compliance, voluntary verification and market access environments in which they operate. Smallholders are subject to a suite of regulatory controls and private market mechanisms that are often promoted by third parties outside local supply and value chains. National regulations and administrative procedures for smallholder tree value chains are frequently onerous and complicated, and severely hinder smallholder efficiency productivity; these should be minimised and simplified. Imposition of additional compliance and verification systems, such as forest certification, upon smallholders is inappropriate given that risk profile assessments demonstrate that their operations are inherently low risk when appropriately managed and when assessments incorporating scale and intensity criteria are applied. We suggest alternative compliance and verification approaches that are more appropriate for smallholders, and more likely to support their successful participation in wood value chains.

KEYWORDS:

• productivity
• risk management
• forest certification
• Southeast Asia
• smallholders
• tree farmers
• plantation

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the informed thoughts and generous contributions of several colleagues who share an interest in smallholder tree farming in Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, Dr Ha Huy Thinh and colleagues from the Vietnamese Academy of Forest Sciences; in Lao PDR, colleagues from the Faculty of Forestry, National University of Laos; and, in Australia, colleagues and research partners from several projects supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), including Dr Chris Harwood, Dr Sadanandan Nambiar, Dr Neil Byron, Ms Dao Midgley and Mr Richard Laity. We also acknowledge the continuing and active support and mentoring role of Professor Peter Kanowski in the development of this paper and whose insights proved invaluable.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Exchange rate used was US$1.00 = 22 306 Vietnamese Dong (VND).

² See https://theredddesk.org/sites/default/files/viet_nam_forestry_development_strategy_2.pdf). Accessed 20 October 2018.

³ Source: https://blogapac.fsc.org/about-2/forests-in-asia-pacific/.

⁴ Source: https://www.pefc.org/projects/markets/asia-promotions-initiative.

⁵ These terms are used to describe a process by which individuals or organisations identify, consider and address the potential for illegal or unregulated or unapproved timber or other forest products to enter the supply or value chain. These processes extend the principles detailed within international agreements by specifying prescriptive compliance measures. Initiatives include the United States Lacey Act 1900, the European Union’s FLEGT Action Plan and Regional Programming for Asia (including Regulation No. 995/2010); and Australia’s Illegal Harvesting Prohibition Act 2012.

⁶ Source: https://ic.fsc.org/en/what-is-fsc-certification/controlled-wood/risk-assessments.

⁷ Source: au.fsc.org/download.visy-annex-2-risk-assessment.173.pdf.

⁸ Source: https://ic.fsc.org/en/what-is-fsc/what-we-do/empowerment-of-people/new-approaches-to-smallholder-certification.

⁹ The authors note that certification systems incorporate requirements to ensure Full Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), but this is rarely obtained from smallholder growers when developing the standards they are expected to follow. This may be a contributing factor to the general failure of smallholders to comply with, or adopt, these systems.