Industrial Concessions Research Articles

Community and industrial forest concessions: Are they effective at reducing forest loss and does FSC certification play a role?

This paper examines the role of community forest management coupled with mandatory forest certification in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR). Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification aims to promote sustainable forest practices and increase economic returns for harvesting certified timber through price premiums gained through eco-labeling and specialized access to international markets. Guatemala established community and industrial forest concessions in the reserve as a way to stem rampant deforestation in the region in the 1990s. Concessions are required to obtain FSC certification to maintain their harvesting rights to the forest. The communities that manage the concessions vary across a number of cultural and socio-demographic characteristics, such as income, educational attainment, and previous forest experience. Some community concession members have lived in the region for multiple generations and have historically depended on the forest for their livelihoods, while other groups are comprised of more recent migrants that come primarily from agricultural backgrounds. The differences among the community forest groups, along with the private industrial concessions, allow for a robust examination of the impact of forest certification across different institutional approaches to forest management. Using Hansen’s forest loss data from 2000 to 2017 for Guatemala, we employ a random effects model to compare the effectiveness of the community and industrial concessions in reducing deforestation compared to a matched control group. Additionally, we test whether the benefit of increased market access that comes with FSC certification further decreases deforestation. Our findings suggest that sustainable forest management practices have continued to reduce forest loss in the MBR, just as well, if not more so than the industrial concessions, but the impact varies based on community characteristics. The market access component of FSC certification also impacts deforestation, although the effect is small.

Land access rights in minerals’ responsible sourcing. The case of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Artisanal miners' access to economically and geologically viable lands in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)'s Copperbelt region is a core limitation to responsible cobalt sourcing programs. First established to respond to sourcing risks such as child labor and poor working conditions, responsible cobalt sourcing programs need to increase their scope to root causes. In this article I argue that with the increased attention on responsible sourcing of cobalt, actors across the supply chains should address land access rights issues to effectively tackle reputational risks. These risks affect the image of brand companies which then trickle the responsibility of addressing them down their supply chains. Commodified lands, distributed to private actors through concession-making, led to a highly competitive relationship between artisanal and industrial miners. The absence of available land now prevents the establishment of sustainable responsible sourcing programs. Building on Hilson, Sauerwein and Owen's concept of autonomous coexistence and recognizing the importance of context-sensitivity, I introduce the possibility to define autonomous cohabitation as an avenue for ensuring that artisanal miners securely access economically and geologically viable areas on industrial concessions in the DRC. I argue that companies involved in responsible sourcing programs should aim to develop autonomous cohabitation between ASM and LSM, in which long-term agreements, secured by the DRC state and its newly establish monopoly, the Entreprise Générale du Cobalt (EGC), ensure that land could be shared under specific legal terms, while the production would be sold to the monopoly established by EGC. Taking the example of two responsible sourcing programs, the Mutoshi Pilot Project (now inactive) and Better Mining, I argue that the current interest in visible risks hinders the capacity of these programs to successfully tackle root causes, including land access rights.

On the Source Parameters and Genesis of the 2017, Mw 4 Montesano Earthquake in the Outer Border of the Val d’Agri Oilfield (Italy)

On October 27, 2017, an Mw4 earthquake occurred close to the municipality of Montesano sulla Marcellana, less than 10 km external to the concession of the largest European onshore hydrocarbon reservoir—the Val d’Agri oilfield (Southern Italy). Being a weak event located outside the extended monitoring domain of the industrial concession, the relevance of this earthquake and the possible links with the hydrocarbon exploitation were not extensively discussed. Actually, the analysis of shallow seismic events close to subsurface exploitation domains plays a significant role in the definition of key parameters in order to discriminate between natural, triggered, and induced seismicity, especially in tectonically active regions. The study of weak-to-moderate earthquakes can improve the characterization of the potentially destructive seismic hazard of this particular area, already struck by M > 6.5 episodes in the past. In this work, we analyze the source parameters of this Mw4 earthquake by applying advanced seismological techniques to estimate the uncertainties derived from the moment tensor inversion and identify plausible directivity effects. The moment tensor is dominated by a NW–SE oriented normal faulting with a centroid depth of 14 km. A single ML2.1 aftershock was recorded and used as the empirical Green’s function to calculate the apparent source time function for the mainshock. Apparent durations (in the range 0.11–0.21 s, obtained from S-waves) define an azimuthal pattern, which reveals an asymmetric bilateral rupture with 70% of the rupture propagation in the N310°W direction, suggesting a rupture plane dipping to the SW. Our results tally with the activation of a deeper fault segment associated with the Eastern Agri Fault System close to the basement as the origin of the Montesano earthquake. Finally, the Coulomb stress rate induced by depletion of the oilfield is calculated to quantify the trigger potential estimated for the Montesano earthquake yielding relatively low probabilities below 10%. Our analyses point toward the conclusion that the Mw4 event was more likely due to the local natural tectonic stress, rather than induced or triggered by the long-term hydrocarbon extraction in the Val d’Agri oilfield.

Does oil palm certification create trade-offs between environment and development in Indonesia?

Environmental and social problems triggered by rapid palm oil expansion in the tropics have spurred the proliferation of sustainability certification systems such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). While the RSPO aims to improve the impact of oil palm production on people and environments, its effect on local development, environmental quality, and, especially, potential trade-offs between these outcomes remain unclear. Here, we evaluate whether RSPO certification of large-scale industrial concessions has promoted village development and supported environmental quality in Indonesia, the top global palm oil producer. Using a panel dataset with observations from 11 000 villages in Kalimantan and Sumatra from 2003 to 2014, we apply rigorous quasi-experimental methods to quantify the RSPO’s impacts on village development and environmental outcomes. In the short-run, RSPO contributed to environmental conservation, but had limited development outcomes. On average, relative to villages with non-certified concessions, RSPO certification reduced deforestation and protected primary forests in Sumatra and lowered the incidence of village-reported land pollution in Kalimantan. RSPO certification also increased the number of private educational facilities in Kalimantan, but had no statistically significant impacts on other development indicators. However, the trade-offs and complementarities between conservation and development vary by slope, a proxy for ecosystem fragility and oil palm profitability. On gentler slopes, we generally find complementarities between conservation and development outcomes. In Kalimantan, certification increased the number of private educational facilities and reduced deforestation and the incidence of land pollution on slopes < 2°. In Sumatra, certification retained more primary forests, decreased deforestation and the incidence of water pollution on slopes < 1°, along with a decrease in population density. Higher slopes in both locations were associated with environment and development trade-offs. We highlight the need to better understand the mechanisms behind the impacts of RSPO and emphasized how the outcomes of certification depend on the communities’ bargaining power and the profitability of the land for oil palm production. Thus, we provide insights into understanding these mechanisms behind the impacts of RSPO, which is a prerequisite for improving the design of certification systems and their impacts on the ground.

Addressing Potential Conflict Using Participatory Mapping: Collection of Forest Foods From Timber Trees Around Industrial Concessions in Cameroon

Extensive areas of Africa’s humid tropical lowland forests have been allocated to timber concessions, but are also inhabited by villagers who obtain resources from the forest. Approximately 61% of timber species in the Congo Basin also yield locally used non-timber forest products (NTFP). Among these are fruits and oil from Moabi (Baillonella toxisperma), and edible caterpillars from Sapelli (Entandrophragma cylindricum) and Tali (Erythrophleum suaveolens). Participatory mapping was used to understand whether logging affects the availability of these food resources to men and women in villages near timber concessions in two areas of Cameroon. Mapping of collection trees and interviews of 20 male and 20 female collectors, in four villages near two logging concessions showed that during one-day collecting trips people walk an average of 2.7 km (± 1.42) to trees where they collect these resources. Food resources are typically collected by both men and women, but men travel further to specific trees, sometimes combining this with hunting excursions further into the forest. Only 15% of the collection trees were located within the logging concessions. However, 72% of Sapelli, 81% of Moabi and 100% of Tali trees from which food resources were collected were larger than their legal felling diameters, meaning that logging could jeopardize the supply of foods from these species. Prioritizing food values over timber values of trees within a certain radius of villages, and excluding them from logging, would safeguard villagers’ access to these food resources. Already, negotiations between villagers and concessionaires have been successful. Many of the mapped collection trees occurred in agroforestry areas delineated by the concessionaire for the use of villagers; another concessionaire had suspended felling of Moabi trees in response to requests by the villagers. However, an extensive and expanding local logging sector on community forests and other lands outside of industrial timber concessions means that negotiations are also needed even within communities, to address the conflicts between obtaining either a one-time financial windfall from felling a tree (usually a male interest); and ensuring ongoing periodic harvests of foods (typically a priority of women, but also of local Baka pygmies).

Fires, Smoke Exposure, and Public Health: An Integrative Framework to Maximize Health Benefits From Peatland Restoration.

Emissions of particulate matter from fires associated with land management practices in Indonesia contribute to regional air pollution and mortality. We assess the public health benefits in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore from policies to reduce fires by integrating information on fire emissions, atmospheric transport patterns, and population exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5). We use adjoint sensitivities to relate fire emissions to PM2.5 for a range of meteorological conditions and find that a Business‐As‐Usual scenario of land use change leads, on average, to 36,000 excess deaths per year into the foreseeable future (the next several decades) across the region. These deaths are largely preventable with fire reduction strategies, such as blocking fires in peatlands, industrial concessions, or protected areas, which reduce the health burden by 66, 45, and 14%, respectively. The effectiveness of these different strategies in mitigating human health impacts depends on the location of fires relative to the population distribution. For example, protecting peatlands through eliminating all fires on such lands would prevent on average 24,000 excess deaths per year into the foreseeable future across the region because, in addition to storing large amounts of fuel, many peatlands are located directly upwind of densely populated areas. We also demonstrate how this framework can be used to prioritize restoration locations for the Indonesian Peatland Restoration Agency based on their ability to reduce pollution exposure and health burden. This scientific framework is publicly available through an online decision support tool that allows stakeholders to readily determine the public health benefits of different land management strategies.

Toward "Concessions 2.0": articulating inclusive and exclusive management in production forests in Central Africa

Industrial forest concessions cover about 45 million hectares in Central Africa. This paper discusses the weaknesses of the current concession model and initiatives for helping it evolve; it then proposes a new type of concession, entitled 'Concessions 2.0', adapted to the future challenges presented by the overlapping among the rights and modes of the harvesting of multiple resources. This proposed model is based on four features: (i) mapping and recognition of the customary territories within and around the industrial concession, (ii) timber revenue sharing indexed on the extension of the customary territories and contractual management agreements within the communities, (iii) allowance of commercial exploitation of non-timber resources by entitled claimers under the supervision and/or in association with the concessionaire, and (iv) inclusive governance for the management of overlapping rights over the concession area. (Resume d'auteur)

Towards concessions 2.0 in Central Africa. Managing overlapping rights between industrial concessions and community forestry

En Afrique centrale, les concessions forestieres industrielles et les aires protegees occupent l'essentiel de l'espace forestier et les forets communautaires sont cantonnees aux marges. Cette dissociation ignore la realite de droits fonciers et d'usage superposes ainsi que le besoin d'une gouvernance associant differents usagers sur des espaces utilises en commun. La cartographie des droits fonciers locaux pose les bases pour un partage des revenus du bois et pour le developpement de nouvelles activites economiques associant exploitants industriels et communautes. Un partenariat fonde sur les droits entre exploitants industriels, communautes et autres operateurs economiques conduirait a un nouveau type d'institution de developpement territorial, que nous nommons Concession 2.0. Ces concessions repensees pourront cotoyer les concessions communautaires et interagir avec elles. Ces dernieres devront rester des espaces forestiers d'exercice de droits exclusifs pour un developpement communautaire autonome.

‘The dramatic idea of justice’: wrongful conviction, documentary television, and The Court of Last Resort

This article explores the history of a little-known, true crime television program from the late 1950s entitled The Court of Last Resort. Initially, the program’s creators had hoped to produce the show as a series of investigative documentaries exploring individual cases of wrongful conviction, but practical industrial concessions forced them to hire actors, fictionalize the real stories and compromise with an esthetic that they called ‘fiction with the illusion of reality.’ The producers had hoped that this style would be a sort of provocative mimesis in which viewers would still be able to see the social reality underlying the recreation, but ‘fiction with the illusion of reality’ ultimately had ethical and ideological implications regarding how truth was to be represented in wrongful conviction narratives, cases where truth is already obscured. Authenticity is particularly vital to the representation of subjects in these cases because wrongful conviction narratives are fundamentally about uncovering hidden truths. And yet, The Court of Last Resort’s scripted format produced an ontologically confused object: although certain formal elements tried to evoke the real-world referent from which these stories were to have been drawn, the end result obscured this connection and troubled any claims it might have made to represent ‘authentic’ stories of injustice.

A Review of Performance Bonding in Forest Policy Settings

Forest policies have typically relied on prescriptive standards to mitigate various nonpoint negative externalities, whereas more recent approaches have focused on the use of incentive-based policies, such as payments for environmental services (PES), to encourage activities associated with positive externalities. We provide a general review on the current state of knowledge concerning prescriptive standards and incentive-based policies in the context of nonpoint and point source externalities that are typical in industrial and nonindustrial forestry. Our specific focus is on reviewing and assessing the current and future applications of performance bonding in forest policy. We argue that bonds can be viewed either as an enforcement mechanism to achieve compliance with standards, or alternatively, as a deposit-refund instrument that imposes a tax on harmful activities while subsidizing beneficial ones in the form of a refund. Four forest policy settings are considered: best management practices (BMP) for protecting the integrity of water resources, reduced impact logging (RIL) standards in industrial concessions, fire-fuel mitigation in wildland-urban interface (WUI), and carbon sequestration in standing forests and soils. Unique challenges that the successful design of performance bonding present are used as motivation for future research.

Mapping selective logging impacts in Borneo with GPS and airborne lidar

Reduced-impact logging (RIL) is a promising management strategy for biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration, but incentive mechanisms are hindered by inadequate monitoring methods. We mapped 937ha of logging infrastructure in a selectively harvested tropical forest to inform a scalable approach to measuring the impacts of discrete management practices (hauling, skidding, and felling). We used a lidar-derived disturbance model to map all skid trails and haul roads within 26months of the selective harvest of six blocks of dipterocarp forest in five industrial concessions in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Lidar maps of logging impacts (220ha) agreed well with ground-based maps (total of 217ha, RMS error of 6ha or 3%), but skid trail positions agreed only 59% of the time. Due to rapid forest regeneration, total lidar-derived haul road area was 31% smaller than road area measured in the field; agreement was higher for lidar collections within a year of the harvest. Maps of carbon density generated from Fourier transforms of lidar height profiles estimated skidding and felling biomass losses to within 1–5% of ground-based measurements. Lidar-derived skidding and hauling impact zones covered only 69% of the permitted harvest area; the remaining areas showed no signs of logging disturbance, and available biophysical data did not explain their location. These results emphasize the need for more extensive mapping of logging infrastructure to capture spatial variability in skid trail density and hitherto undetected no-impact zones. While a ground-based GPS is recommended as the most affordable method for wide-scale infrastructure mapping, aerial lidar is an effective tool for remotely quantifying the extent of logging impacts in tropical forests.

Towards concessions 2.0 in Central Africa. Managing overlapping rights between industrial concessions and community forestry

In Central Africa, industrial forest concessions and protected areas occupy most of the forested space while community forests are confined to the margins. This separation ignores the reality of land rights and overlapping uses, as well as the need for governance involving different users of the same space. The mapping of local land rights lays the foundation for sharing timber revenues and the development of new economic activities involving industrial operators and communities. A partnership based on rights between industrial operators, communities and other economic operators would lead to a new type of institution of territorial development, which we call Concession 2.0. These redesigned concessions would cohabit and interact with community concessions. The latter would remain forest landscapes offering exclusive rights for autonomous community development.

Relative Contributions of the Logging, Fiber, Oil Palm, and Mining Industries to Forest Loss in Indonesia

AbstractIndonesia contributes significantly to deforestation in Southeast Asia. However, much uncertainty remains over the relative contributions of various forest‐exploiting sectors to forest losses in the country. Here, we compare the magnitudes of forest and carbon loss, and forest and carbon stocks remaining within oil palm plantation, logging, fiber plantation (pulp and paper), and coal mining concessions in Indonesia. Forest loss in all industrial concessions, including logging concessions, relate to the conversion of forest to nonforest land cover. We found that the four industries accounted for ∼44.7% (∼6.6 Mha) of forest loss in Kalimantan, Sumatra, Papua, Sulawesi, and Moluccas between 2000 and 2010. Fiber plantation and logging concessions accounted for the largest forest loss (∼1.9 Mha and ∼1.8 Mha, respectively). Although the oil palm industry is often highlighted as a major driver of deforestation, it was ranked third in terms of deforestation (∼1 Mha), and second in terms of carbon dioxide emissions (∼1,300–2,350 Mt CO2). Crucially, ∼34.6% (∼26.8 Mha) of Indonesia's remaining forests is located within industrial concessions, the majority of which is found within logging concessions (∼18.8 Mha). Hence, future development plans within Indonesia's industrial sectors weigh heavily on the fate of Southeast Asia's remaining forests and carbon stocks.

Regulating industrial forest concessions in Central Africa and South America

Tropical countries face special specific problems in implementing sustainable forest management (SFM). In many countries, questions are raised on whether tropical forests should be publicly, commonly or privately owned and managed in order to enhance sustainability. Other debates also focus on whether small-scale enterprises are better positioned than large-scale industrial concessions to reduce poverty and attain sustainable management. In countries where large tracts of forest are state-owned, concessions are viewed as a means of delivering services of public and collective interest through an association of private investment and public regulation. However, the success of an industrial concession model in countries with large forest resource endowment to achieve multiple goals such as sustainable forest management and local/regional development depends on two critical assumptions. First, forest functions and services should be managed and maintained as public goods. In many cases, additional uses – and corresponding rights – can take place alongside logging activities. Industrial concessions can be more efficient than other tenure models (such as community-based forest management and small-scale enterprises) in achieving SFM, add value to raw material and comply with growing environmental norms. This is especially the case in market-remote areas with low population density and poor infrastructure. Secondly, to achieve these different outcomes, any concession system needs to be monitored and regulated, especially in contexts dominated by asymmetrical information between regulating authorities and concessionaires. New institutional responses have recently been put forward in several countries, providing valuable materials to design a renewed policy mix which associates public and private incentives. This paper provides a survey of the experience of forest concessions in several Central African and South American countries. The concession system is examined in order to clarify the issues involved, the problems encountered, and what can be learned from the shared experience of these countries in the last decade. This paper argues that despite a sometimes patchy record, concessions can help promote SFM so long as they are packaged with a certain number of specific measures.

The potential impact of abolishing company tax in Ciskei

The purpose of this paper is to examine the likely effect of the abolition of company tax on the Ciskeian economy. After considering the case for and against a corporate tax exemption, the issues involved are analysed on two levels. Using aggregate data, drawn from available census data, we find that most firms seem likely either to prefer the existing package of industrial concessions to the tax holiday, or to be indifferent to either option. Similarly, a recent survey of manufacturing enterprises in Ciskei indicated that the majority would prefer the incentive package. Firms that might be attracted by the tax‐free option are likely to be relatively profitable, subsidiaries of multinational companies, and enjoying a higher turnover per worker than firms opting for the incentive package.

U. K. Grain Agreement: Format for an International Grain Agreement?

Including agriculture in the Kennedy Round of GATT negotiations so that effective reduction of nontariff trade barriers can be achieved is a difficult and controversial task. The current position of the United States government is to favor an access agreement of the general type recently concluded with the British government. This agreement, signed on April 15, 1964, is analyzed for its effectiveness in reducing nontariff barriers to more liberalized agricultural trade. Evaluation of the agreement indicates an absence of specific provision for reduction of trade barriers. The agreement encourages postponement of adjustment toward lower artificial production incentives until sufficient resources have been invested in agriculture to cause increased production. This does not appear to represent a significant reduction in agricultural nontariff barriers in return for U. S. industrial concessions and could present some dangers to liberalized world trade.