Policy support for enhancing economic returns from smallholder tree plantations using carbon credits and other forest values

摘要

The developing countries have a very large number of small landholdings in which tree planting may fetch better economic returns to the owners. The expectation of the smallholder tree planter would be that his income should be high, waiting period reasonable, access to market easy, the risks manageable and that his asset liquidity should not be lower than what it would be under agriculture. Enhancement of income would result from production of more goods and services like carbon sequestration, soil and water conservation and aesthetic services that can start yielding early and increased demands and better prices for these products. Higher demands for wood products would result from policies disfavoring wood substitution by high energy consuming products like cement, steel and aluminum. Policy interventions should result in creation of explicit demands for these goods and services, remove bottlenecks in meeting these demands, lead to easier financing for both the growers and the purchasers and create carbon trade opportunities. Risk lowering could conic from a long-term certainty about the investment climate, sharing of responsibility by the state for losses on account of illegal felling and encroachments, higher allocations for research in control of forest diseases and fires and lowered premium on insurances. The problem of asset liquidity will have to be tackled by ensuring that the tax burden on transfer of landholding on account of tree wealth on the land does not increase and also by ease of transfer of liabilities for providing ecological goods and services to the purchaser of the assets.