Three communities for special chainsaw project

A 2.7 million euros ($751.4 million) five-year project to curb illegal chainsaw milling, reduce conflicts and promote sustainable forest practices in Ghana and Guyana was launched yesterday at the Cazabon Room, Hotel Tower.

This project is 80% funded by the European Commission and 20% by the partners and is being implemented by Tropenbos International (TBI) which is based in the Netherlands, through two local partners in Guyana: Iwokrama and the Forestry Training Centre Incorporated (FTCI).

In Ghana the partners are the Ghana Forestry Commission (FC) and the Forest Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG).

The monies will be spilt between communities in Guyana and Ghana.

Three pilot communities in Guyana – Orealla, Ituni and the Makushi Yemekun Cooperative of the North Rupununi – are dependent on chainsaw lumbering and will be targeted. Eight communities will benefit in Ghana.

Head of Guyana Forestry Commission James Singh said monitoring of the large static portable mills are relatively easy, but chainsaw milling poses a different challenge since thoise who do it operate under a soft licence and have no fixed place of operation. Because of this, it is believed that operators are involved in illegal harvesting and the wastage of resources.

However, Commissioner Singh emphasized that illegal harvesting by chainsaw operators is not as rampant here, because the industry is now regulated and operators have greater access to forest lands.

There are some 17 chainsaw milling associations, employing 4,250 persons, according to Godfrey Marshall, director of the FTCI. There is also growing evidence of chainsaw operators salvaging more from their logs, according to the commissioner. He expressed the hope that this project will provide information to the GFC and the government so as to inform future policy development.

The overall goal of the project is to reduce the level of conflict and illegality related to chainsaw lumbering by local communities while key objectives include reducing poverty and the promotion of viable livelihoods in forest-dependent communities, reducing the occurrence of illegal logging and promotion of the sustainable management of tropical forests in developing countries.

Marshall said some of the outcomes from the project would be to secure scientific information on chainsaw milling, to identify interna5tional best practices, discuss chainsaw lumbering issues, try to have a national consensus in terms of policy, and regulating the communities dependent on chainsaw lumbering.

The representative from Orealla, Joseph Peneux, said his community was “fortunate to be selected out of the many communities.”

Orealla residents, he explained, are dependent on the forest resources to earn monies to feed their families and to send their children to school. He listed concerns such as marketing, lumber prices, restrictions by the GFC, trespassing and the wastage of the resources. Peneux said they are sensitive to the importance of sustainable harvesting and mentioned what he described as a bad experience in his community, regarding the dwindling of certain species. He remarked it is often said, “There is no second crop of logging.” Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud said he recognized that this type of milling and form of conversion would continue some time into the future. He pledged to intensify the monitoring of forest concessions in 2008 and to ensure strong enforcement. “There is no favourite company in this sector,” he said.

Present at the launch as well were European Union representative Giampiero Muci and Sietze van Dijk, project team leader, Suriname Tropenbos International, and Dr Raquel Thomas, director, Resource Management and Training, Iwokrama.

According to a press release from the stakeholders, the project will focus on the broad theme of forest governance in countries with a high incidence of chainsaw milling, and review the situation in Ghana and Guyana respectively.

In many local and indigenous forest dependent communities, chainsaw lumbering is an important means of livelihood.

It was also noted that the simplicity of chainsaw milling also facilitates illegal operations leading to conflict with legitimate forest users. Chainsaw lumbering is currently banned in Ghana.

The project is expected to build on prior work to identify what factors promote chainsaw milling and document its social, economic and environmental impacts. Further, the project will bring together stakeholders to discuss innovative approaches that reduce negative impacts and enhance the positive effects on incomes and livelihoods in hinterland communities.