Firewood: Cause or consequence? Underlying drivers of firewood production in the South of Chile

Abstract

Chile's native forests are one of the world's 25 priority conservation ecoregions due to their high levels of endemism and anthropogenic pressure. Seventy percent of these forests are in private lands, and firewood is the main use for native woods (93% of the total timber extracted from native forests). Yet, drivers of firewood production have not been adequately studied. In this research we analyzed if firewood is a primary production goal (the cause of extracting timber from native forest), or it is more a consequence of other processes. 275 surveys with landowners were used to perform a cross-sectional analysis in the Los Rios Region. We found that the decision to produce firewood is positively related to native forest cover (%) in the farm and the presence of forest plantations, and negatively related to the proportion of off-farm income (%). These variables affect the options facing landowners and help assess whether firewood is either a primary part of the productive system, or an outcome from other activities (by-product). The results show that firewood producers are not very responsive to firewood prices and only a small proportion of farms engage in commercial firewood production as their primary activity (landowners are not really interested in firewood production). Further, a growing firewood supply from forest plantations implies a lower pressure on native forests. This suggests that firewood production is less likely to be a driver of forest degradation than the literature points out, although the context of firewood production does identify areas where harvesting activities could be higher, e.g. where there are fewer off-farm income opportunities for landowners, who have lower schooling levels and do not hold formal land tenure, and where governmental interventions could be targeted to reduce excessive pressure on native forests.