Introduced by Bodyshop founder, Anita Roddick, Earth Report returns in the New Year where it left off.  Razing the world's tropical forest makes no long term economic sense.  In Out of the Woods we feature stories from Africa, Latin America and S.E. Asia where local communities - of their own accord - are safeguarding their trees for their own welfare.

Coconuts to Cars

The Amazon - the world’s biggest and richest rainforest. And a place to live and work for millions of people. Belem, population 2 million, rises from the banks of this river highway.

The city may be thriving but surrounding forests have been heavily exploited and degraded. And without forest resources rural communities slide quickly into poverty. Now a regional partnership, Bolsa Amazonia, is helping reverse the trend by protecting rural incomes and the environment.

Bolsa Amazonia looks at the whole life cycle of a particular resource - from raw material to selling the finished product. It analyses research on sustainable land use from a nearby University to work out local needs and limitations.

One resource is fibre from coconut husks. For years this was a useless by-product. Now it’s used in luxury cars.

Soaked husks are shredded, washed, sifted, and then twisted into rope.  The ropes are delivered to another village where they are sterilised and packed into trays.  It’s all then compressed in a mould to create the right density.  Before you know it, the coconut husks have been transformed into car seats.

The factory outside Belem was set up in co-operation with Daimler-Chrysler, the government, the Amazon Development Bank and Para University. It turns out 120,000 cars seats a month as well as garden products and matting - all made from coconut fibre and latex.

It employs around 50 people and will soon source materials from 8 communities.  Meaning the drive for local production will continue.

Background Information
 

Made in Miombo

Zomba, Malawi - once this Zomba plateau looked out across indigenous miombo woodland. What’s left is shrinking faster than any other deforestation in Southern Africa.

Now an agroforestry project run the Research Institute of Malawi and backed by Britain’s Department for International Development, encourages farmers to grow wild fruit trees… to boost nutrition and their incomes.

For as long as anyone can remember, the forest has been a natural larder, with over 50 species of edible fruit, picked and sold at the roadside.  For the first time farmers are being encouraged to plant trees and make more money.

To make sure farmers plant trees systematically, researchers aim to increase their market value by coming up with new forest fruit products.  Many species of fruit are good sources of iron, zinc and vitamin A.  And they’re naturally drought resistant.  Uapaca juice is one success story and is a popular candidate for commercialisation.

Once the trees are grown in nurseries, the fruit can be available out of season. Their rareness means they are highly sought after, ensuring a good market for growers.

At first farmers were put off by the long time lag before fruits appear … now a solution has been found - grafting.  Grafting is the technique of carefully attaching a branch from a mature fruiting tree to a young sapling, dramatically reducing the amount of time the young plant takes to produce fruit.

Conservation of some of the tree species that are in threat of extinction is also being helped by the growing scheme.  All in all, it’s good for the local economy and the local ecology.
 

Forest Pharmacy

India - its forests support many thousands of different plant species. And there's centuries-old knowledge of their medicinal benefits. The growing reliance on modern medicines by local communities means traditional knowledge of the healing properties of forest plants could disappear.

Shamlie village is trying to reverse this trend.  Working with a local NGO they’re aiming to preserve the forest and its plants by reviving local use of traditional herbal medicines.  They’ve been so successful that they, too, have been recognised by the Equator Initiative.

They’ve even formed a joint committee with local forestry officers - an unusual step since people have traditionally regarded forest protection as the duty of the government. Even though forestry officers invariably had little idea of the value and uses of forest plants.

Folk healers pooled their knowledge with botanists. Together they charted the plants and their uses, and made an inventory of both scientific and local plant names. There are around 8,000 species of medicinal plants in India. Many have proven therapeutic value and are much cheaper than modern alternatives.

But harvesting plants can be destructive, especially since traditional recipes rely on root tubers.  To avoid depleting plant supplies in the forest, they decided to grow extra plants in herbal nurseries.  The nurseries supply the village and earn extra cash selling seedlings to other communities.

The strong involvement of the community means the medicinal plant conservation area is well protected, ensuring conservation of biodiversity as well as livelihoods for local people.

Background Information
 

Smart Hives

Beekeeping is widely practised in rural Tanzania and can be a good earner.
However, it can be risky and difficult work.  African honeybees have notoriously bad tempers and can swarm at the first sign of trouble so smoke from burning elephant dung must be used to keep them calm. Harvesting normally occurs at night because the bees are too dangerous during the day.  A traditional Tanzanian beehive is hung from a tree to protect against predators so scaling the tree is also a necessity to collect the honey.

Working at night and risking injury from falls and bee stings means it is a dangerous business and a painstaking process. An average hive yields honey with a market value of just twelve dollars.  Unfortunately, most beekeepers in Tanzania cannot afford to use modern beekeeping methods.

This is where the Njiro wildlife centre comes in.  This research centre has developed top bar hives, a kind of hive developed to suit the requirements of Tanzanian bees as well as farmers. The bonus is that they can be made very cheaply.

Top bar hives involve several innovative design features. The top bars encourage bees to build individual honeycombs. Sides sloping at 10 degrees stop honeycombs attaching to the main frame of the hive. 8mm holes drilled into the side regulate bee access.

The hive’s design is meant to minimise disruption of the volatile bee colony.  And a good position to smoke the bees is provided once the single top bar is removed.  This kind of hive is important to farmers because it is easy to construct, easy to manage, and means less risk of bee attack.

Now many women are also taking up the beekeeping challenge.  Honey isn’t the only useful bee product they end up with - candles, skin ointment, and beauty cream can be made from the beeswax.  Anything remaining can be eaten by cows!  Everyone profits from the improved way to do this traditional line of work.
 

Measure for Measure

Flores, gateway to the Guatemalan rainforest, once the centre of Mayan civilisation. Beyond Flores, the virgin forest of Peten an area of great biodiversity. Peten covers almost a third of Guatemala yet has less than 3% of its population.  But recent moves to colonize the country’s final frontier have led to waves of settlers invading the forest and clearing enormous tracts of land.

To halt the destruction the Government declared much of Peten a biosphere reserve. Concessions for extracting forest resources were to be granted only to commercial interests. But, fearing for their livelihoods, the communities formed an organisation called ACOFOP, which cut a deal with the government to reverse the policy. One of the conditions of the agreement was to give concessions to communities living in the multiple use zone and that they should preserve the environment that they have traditionally inhabited for decades.

Tree surveys were carried out to help locals manage the forest sustainably.  ACOFOP succeeded in gaining concessions for 19 communities. From 900 hectares, approximately 2 trees per hectare are taken per year, ensuring that forest re-growth is in line with what is removed.

Timber is certified with the Smartwood label, guaranteeing it’s been harvested in an ecologically sound way that benefits local communities.

Offcuts from the timber yard are used by local cottage industries that profit from the tourist trade. In many remote forest communities non-timber forest products, such as woodcarvings, are also used to earn precious income.

Another important achievement is that many people formerly involved in illegally exploiting the forest now participate in sustainably managing the forest.  This shows it is called the largest certified community managed forest in the world for good reason.

Background Information
 

Urban Jungle

London, England - Europe’s biggest city and home to over 8 million people. Croydon is London’s second largest borough.  Yet this concrete jungle is also home to thousands of trees. Taken together, Croydon’s street trees and woodlands have been labelled the world’s first urban forest.

In a unique partnership between Croydon council and an ecological enterprise, the borough’s trees are being managed to provide jobs, conserve wildlife and produce sustainable energy.

The borough is also home to several ancient woodlands, which the council manages with techniques used since ancient times.  Coppicing is a traditional way of managing woodland whereby the under story is cut in a 7 year cycle rotation.  It’s just one way of getting diversity back into the woods.

Only part of the trees cut can be sold as timber or firewood. Both coppicing and street tree maintenance produce huge amounts of wood waste, creating a problem – or opportunity - for the council.  Leftover wood used to be burnt or sent to landfill but can now be used to make valuable by-products.

A charcoal kiln uses a very simple process of heating wood in the absence or near absence of oxygen.  The end product can be used for barbeque charcoal.

Waste wood chips are also used for fuel by Bedzed, a futuristic new housing complex.  The chips are vaporised in a small power plant, supplying residents with a renewable source of energy. Bedzed is also the hub of an eco-enterprise working alongside Croydon Council.

Bioregional Charcoal is finding new markets for firewood and charcoal made by small-scale producers.  The products can then go full circle from street side, to local charcoal kiln, to nationwide home improvement chain, and onto the barbeques in the local community.