Chapter 7 Forestry: Reforestation, Natural Forest Management

Natural Forest ManagementBrief Description of SectorSustainable natural forest management is an effort to develop existingnatural forests as managed ecosystems that maintain the rights of theirowners (states, communities, individuals) to the benefits of commodityproduction, while ensuring biodiversity conservation and environmentalbenefits. Wood and non-wood forest products are extracted in ways thatfoster a sustained yield, assuring natural regeneration of trees affected byharvesting and avoiding depletion of the natural productive capital of theforest. Good management also upgrades the forest resources—in bothquantitative and qualitative terms—through thinning, culling and selectiveharvest.Natural forest management addresses several rural development needs andopportunities:• It represents a viable and productive land-use alternative that in manyinstances—using a variety of otherwise marginal sites—can contributedirectly to basic human needs, as well as providing a source of rawmaterials for wood and non-wood forest-based industries that createemployment, income and export earnings.• It offers significant economic advantages. By using such practices aslow-impact logging to avoid the environmental and social damageassociated with land degradation, it eliminates the high costs ofrehabilitating degraded forest areas, and is likely to provideopportunities for an earlier and steadier benefits stream.• Large-scale forest protection and management will be essential toenhancing the critical watershed function of forests needed to upgradefarming systems through irrigation, develop hydropower, and providepotable water supplies for growing urban populations.Over-exploitation of forest resourcesfor their products may threaten theirsurvival, at least locally. The yohimbetrees in this photo have been felledand stripped for their bark, valued asan aphrodisiac.• Rational, participatory forest protection, management and use offers thebest chance to engage local people in the stewardship and conservationof large areas of habitat that sustain the unique, globally importantbiological diversity of Africa.The forest resource base as a key to wise stewardship. Natural forestmanagement provides an important way to help people assign value to theresource base. Where local people or companies realize that they will benefitfrom the investment in forest management, protection and production, theyquickly realize that it is also in their best interest to protect the forests fromover-exploitation.Natural forest management—a proactive measure for biodiversityconservation. At one point, supporters of natural forest management,particularly those involved in logging, seemed to be in direct conflict withthe proponents of biodiversity conservation. In recent years, however,growing field experience has shown that natural forest management cansupport biodiversity conservation goals. While forest management does notprovide pure biodiversity conservation or absolute protection, it is muchEGSSAA: FORESTRY • March 2009 • download from www.encapafrica.org17 of 30