Forests for People

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governance in Ghana. The lack of governance has been

identified as a major factor in enabling illegal chainsaw

milling, charcoal production and bush meat trade. The

current level of exploitation is more than four times the

actual increment, leading to a high rate of deforestation

and forest degradation. The VPA, financed through the

NREG budget support programme, with its focus on

legal timber trade, will help Ghana to improve its forest

governance and achieve sustainable forest management.

The challenge of including the local market

Although VPAs are primarily concerned with interna-

tional trade, Ghana decided to include in its VPA the

production of timber for the domestic market, 84 per

cent of which is supplied by illegal on-site chainsaw-

milled lumber. Although chainsaw milling (CSM) has

been banned since 1998, illegal CSM is flourishing with

an estimated annual harvest of 2.5 million m

. There

is a large official timber sector, but it is predominantly

export-oriented and unable to fulfil the demands of the

less lucrative domestic markets.

To reach consensus on the inclusion of the domestic

market in the VPA and the role of CSM, TBI has facili-

tated a process of multi-stakeholder dialogue (MSD)

in Ghana since 2007, involving both legal and illegal

actors. This process is aligned with the VPA implemen-

tation processes and has the active participation of FC

and FORIG.

Studies of the CSM sector carried out by the group

have established that it enjoys significant public support

in Ghana. Compared with legal lumber from the formal

industry, chainsawn lumber is cheaper to produce and

is more diverse in terms of species and dimensions. The

product chain includes the rural poor as well as the urban

elite. The practice provides a direct income to almost

100,000 people, who are mainly living in rural areas where

employment is scarce. It supports the livelihoods of at least

Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH). More specifically, the timber chain

is supported in the context of FLEGT, which aims at facilitating trade

in legal timber and improving forest governance through initiatives

such as Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) between the EU

and timber exporting countries.

The Netherlands is supporting forest governance in Ghana through

sector budget support since 2008, together with the EU, World Bank,

DFID and France. An EU-funded chainsaw milling project which is

being carried out by Tropenbos International (TBI)

in collabora-

tion with the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana and the Forestry

Commission focused on the trade-offs between legalizing the timber

chain for EU export and promotion of local entrepreneurship for the

domestic market, to ensure local economic development in Ghana.

Changing forest landscapes in Ghana

Since the colonial era, the exploitation of timber for commercial

purposes has been an important part of the Ghanaian economy. But it is

only since the start of the Economic Recovery Program (ERP) under the

guidance of the World Bank and the IMF in 1981 that deforestation has

increased rapidly. The purpose of the ERP was to reduce Ghana’s debts

and to improve its trading position in the global economy. In practice,

it led to an annual rate of deforestation in Ghana of more than two per

cent, one of the highest in Africa, reducing Ghana’s rainforests by 90 per

cent in less than 50 years. The impact of deforestation is widespread,

affecting the livelihoods of local people and disrupting important envi-

ronmental functions of the original forest ecosystem.

Timber is Ghana’s third most important export commodity after

cocoa and minerals, but estimates suggest that 60-70 per cent of

logging has been illegal in recent years. The major buyers of Ghanaian

timber are countries in Europe and the FLEGT is enabling the EU to

address the problems posed by illegal logging. In November 2009,

Ghana was the first country to sign and ratify a VPA with the EU on

legal timber exports, including the domestic market.

Since 2008 the Netherlands, together with the EU, the World Bank,

the UK Department for International Development and France, has

provided sector budget support through Natural Resources and

Environmental Governance (NREG) to strengthen forest sector

Freehand chainsaw milling, which is not using more efficient equipment such as

frames for processing logs into lumber, is unhealthy and dangerous for operators

Image: Tropenbos International

A chainsaw operator crosscutting a log he just felled before

processing the log into lumber using the same chainsaw

Image: Tropenbos International