WHO IS A FOREST PRODUCER?
If well answered, this question can explain the issues, problems
and solutions behind the infamous exploitation of the Mukula
tree. In a country where the myth of abundance of natural Godgiven forests is still large, this question may not even make sense!
A market value chain analysis of the exotic timber trade in Zambia
clearly defines a forest producer. The producer is easily
recognizable, well placed and regularized in the chain of custody.
This protects the producer and consequently, the resource itself.
However, a value chain analysis of indigenous timber trade clearly fails to answer the question at
hand – the producer is not well defined; not traceable and misplaced. Hence, his/her role in the
distorted market chain is marred by irregularities, informalities and illegalities.
Conservation of natural resources must follow the natural pattern of a food chain and biological
succession in an ecosystem. Producers are always at the base forming the largest pool of the
resource. In some instances, secondary producers follow in their rightful place. Whatever the
pattern, primary producers will always outnumber the consumers. Hence it is natural to have more
impalas than lions in a particular system; more insects than lizards; more grass than cattle.
In many cases, consumers are usually high species occupying the top most level of the food chain.
In no ways therefore, would the consumers be of equal number or even outnumber the producers.
Such a system creates a self-regulating balance of nature – so successful that natural process does
not require human law to govern it. If the opposite of the normal chain be the case, the ultimate
impact is extinction of the resource.
The exotic timber chain, mainly from ZAFFICO and some few farmers, is logical in that the producer
is protected in his position due to security over the resource. The secondary producer, who in
most cases, is a timber merchant or a saw miller is also well defined and placed well in relation to
the producer and the consumer. This typifies a natural food chain.
The indigenous timber chain on the other hand is distorted; marred with irregularities,
informalities and illegalities because it made up of a mixture of different players wrongly placed
in the chain of custody. Large scale timber concessionaires, many of whom are foreigners, have
lodged in the forests using the local forest-dwelling people to do the work meant to be done by
the locals themselves. This is increasingly creating an inverted food chain in an ecosystem which
should ideally produce a resource using natural processes. Basically, the lopsided indigenous
timber value chain is caused by the misplacement of consumers in relation to producers in the
forests. The situation creates a very unsustainable business environment which could also explain
the near-extinction of Mukwa (Pterocarpus angolensis).
Local communities are not economically competitive enough to position themselves as primary
producers in the wealth of their own resource. They are rather alienated from the true market
value of the resource around them. They are too incapacitated to manipulate the social, cultural,
political and economic factors that influence the exploitation of the resource. This explains why
youths from such resource-rich environments have flooded the streets of our cities as job-seeking
paupers instead of building forest enterprises in their own localities.
With their desire, the know-how and capacity to bit the odds, regulatory procedure and its
requirements does not make it easy for these producers. Rather, it sidelines them as by-standers,
spectators and laborers in a market chain that should naturally root them as primary producers.
Foreign entrepreneurs in the indigenous timber value chain have taken advantage of this inherent
weakness among the primary producers – explaining why there are so many irregularities,
informalities and illegalities in the indigenous timber market chain.
If we have to sustainably curb the illegal exploitation of Mukula trees, (God knows which other
indigenous trees will be next), the forest producers must be well defined first of all; empowered to
take their rightful position in the value chain where they receive the necessary protection and
recognition of rights around the resource. Regulations must seek to empower the producers
instead of disempowering them; enable them to play the natural role of a producer in the natural
value chain of indigenous trees. Logically therefore, ecology will be seen to inform economics and
not vice versa.
Environmental law must be seen to follow and protect natural processes by supporting the
enhancement of production. In the case of our indigenous timber, this process must be rooted in
defining, protecting and supporting the primary producers who are the local communities of
women, youths and indigenous people of the forests.
Makweti Sishekanu
Manager –Gender, Environment and Forestry
Zambia National Farmers’ Union HQ.