Tamm Review: Re-imagining forestry and wood business: pathways to rural development, poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation in the tropics

Millions of people are dependent on tropical forests for livelihood. However, their dependence on meagre incomes from nontimber forest products (NTFPs) and payment for ecosystem services (PES) are leading to continuing poverty. It is doubtful if the program, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD + ) has yet achieved much in its primary goal of forest conservation, and the chance of it helping to alleviate rural poverty is slim. Forest conservation per se hardly creates economic opportunities, beyond survival, for rural people. Our efforts for conserving forests and their biodiversity will remain less effective as long as there are so many enclaves of trenchant poverty within and around them in the landscapes and we continue to by-pass practical routes to poverty alleviation. Poverty can be alleviated only if local actions spur economic development in which local communities have a rightful and fair share and can earn rewards for their entrepreneurships. Wood is a renewable, recyclable, versatile and sustainable natural resource. The demands for wood products are rising in developing countries, as their economies grow. They also face endemic wood deficits. This provides opportunities to pro-actively develop commercial forestry as a path to rural development and poverty alleviation. That would also assist national climate change mitigation measures, because forests sequester carbon, wood products are largely carbon positive and timber- based options are on hand to substitute for high emission materials such as concrete, steel and aluminium used to build our living environments. To move along this path, the businesses of tree growing by small-growers and local value adding should be strengthened, catalysing the entrepreneurial spirits of local people. Central to this is the need to put in place strategies to improve the productivity of and value from small scale enterprises; yet there is a serious lack of research and application to serve this key need. Among other constraints faced by small-growers include, lack of transparent and legal rights to land ownership in several countries, layers of bureaucratic regulations and the current international forest certification systems which are cumbersome and unaffordable for small-growers. Actions are possible and needed for simplifying or removing road blocks on all these fronts, along with, importantly, the development of markets for diverse products. Growth of the forestry sector as an engine for rural development warrants far greater recognition and investment than has been the case so far. We need to reimagine and strengthen the role of forestry including commercial wood business - green growth - as an effective path to rural development and poverty alleviation.