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SEIMA, Cambodia
Commercial Community Forestry
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and RECOFTC are working closely to develop the business plan for the Community Forestry enterprise and to establish links with possible market partners. Equipment for the harvesting operations has been identified and will be procured by the beginning of next year following the official approval of the harvesting plan by the Cambodian Forestry Administration (FA). The trial harvests are scheduled to commence by February 2013.
The Pre-harvest Inventory (PHI) training was provided by the FA, for 3 days in Seima, Mondulkiri. Currently PHI is being carried out in the field on 60 ha, with a plan for WCS staff to assess the community capacity to manage the future operations of the site. The PHI data processing and tree selection is expected to be completed by December, thus enabling FA to approve the site and the machinery to !$"(
be used. The FA will continue to be involved in the next steps of the project and will also provide a basic level training on logging methods in cooperation with our project staff.
The project’s importance is growing as a recent survey demonstrated that income expectations from commercial harvesting operations were very high among the community members and reached a daily peak of nearly US$50, which is unlikely to be achieved even with regular forestry operations. However, all villages have accepted a benefit sharing arrangement with the enterprises in order to address both the need of the community and social equity.
Cambodia SFM Project Cardamom Mountains
The project has expanded to additional pilot sites with further funding under a new and overlapping project, Sustainable Forest Management (SFM), implemented by RECOFTC and partners.
The first planning workshop for the project was followed by identification of 45 target Community Forestry sites, where subsequent baseline surveys were carried out. As a result, the ForInfo interventions will take place in 5 pilot communities were fuel wood supply and demand will be assessed in order to improve forest management plans. Enterprise development interventions in commercial fuel wood and charcoal production will be developed, taking into account the local fuel demand.
BOKEO PROVINCE, Lao PDR Teak Timber Collaterals in Microfinance
A teak timber survey is underway, in villages supported by the Lao Women Union (LWU). The organization supports current activities and monitors the performance of village saving groups. The survey will analyze possibilities to use teak stand inventories and financial valuation of smallholder teak plantations as micro- loan collaterals. Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office (PAFO) in Bokeo is fully committed to the project concept and the initial inventories and stand evaluations have been finalized. Identification of microfinance partners for using the stand evaluations as collateral will be finalized by the end of this year. Recently, talks were held between ForInfo and the German Cooperative and Raiffeisen Confederation (DGRV) on the possibility to support the financing of tree collaterals in Laos, further discussions are expected.
The methods developed for teak market value estimation are being tested in 20 smallholder plantations in Pakhta district. After a review of the calculations and assessments, the first 11 certificates were issued to plantation owners, and many more will be certified by the end of this year. The certificates will state the
commercial value of the plantation, the coordinates with a locality map, and recommendations to improve timber management and quality. These improvements will focus on maximizing growth and value of the plantation trees, thus providing a reasonable income that will be competitive with other agriculture based livelihoods in the region.
Bamboo Management
The first bamboo processing site and commercial scale pulp-processing plant is now operational. Bamboo harvesting, extraction and transportation demonstrations are scheduled to commence within the next two months. Field test sites were identified together with officers from the Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office (PAFO), the district authorities as well as the factories’ management.
During the planned demonstration trials, various techniques and methods to extract and transport green and dead bamboo from natural stands will be evaluated. The cost-benefit analysis and work efficiency of small-scale harvesting and transport technologies, like the ‘Iron Horse’ track crawler, and hauling by ‘Sulky’, will be compared to the present methods such as skidding by buffalo and regular extraction by hand.
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CHUMPORN, Thailand
Work on tree collaterals have expanded in cooperation with the Tree Bank NGO from Lampang province to Chumporn, Southern Thailand. A database will be developed containing smallholder tree plantation data. The Database will include: tree species, basal area and density, size/volume of the commercial logs, amount of sequestered carbon, current market value, and biodiversity relevance. The compiled data will provide the basis for issuing a plantation certificate.
The purpose of developing the tree database is to assist individual plantation owners to gain support from the Thai government to develop a recognized mechanism which provides tree growers with information needed to use their tree stands as collateral for a loan or debt management.
What’s ahead?
A second product planned under this cooperation is a manual on the Thai smallholder forestry plantation sector, which will elaborate on the laws and regulations, the gaps in management, utilization, harvesting, transportation, and processing of logs and sawn timber products from individual and private plantations. The manual will provide all the information required for landowners interested in growing tree crops. The manual aims to explain how to obtain all the necessary legal documentation for growing, harvesting and transporting exotic and non-exotic tree species in plantations.
areas’ watershed boundaries, carbon density, soil loss potential and biodiversity, among other such data.
The sets of ES function maps will be used for planning future ForCES activities and will inform local stakeholders in their future planning and land management activities. Copies of the maps can be accessed on the ForInfo webpage within the next couple of weeks. For more information visit:
http://ic.fsc.org/forces-pilot.129.htm
ForInfo Newsletter July – November 2012, Issue 2
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Vietnam
The global FSC/GEF project (ForCES) for certification of environmental services, conducted its annual project managers’ meeting and international steering committee meeting, in Lombok, Indonesia in early November. The need for an extensive Environmental Services (ES) market analysis and clear ES management plan at pilot site level were emphasized.
The Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), a ForInfo implementation partner in Vietnam, has developed environmental service maps for the Vin Tu and Huong Son pilot sites in close cooperation with ForInfo. The maps are available at a scale of 1:25,000 and 1:50,000. They illustrate key ES as identified by local stakeholders. ES include the target
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D o w n lo a d th e F o rIn fo b ro c h u re and access other information about the project from our website at:
