Natural Hazards: Causes and Effects - Disaster Management Center ...

can quickly ruin a new plantation. Community involvement then is not just an ideologically
appealing goal; it is a practical necessity if rural forest needs are to be met. Popular
participation is important for economic reasons too, for in most countries the costs of the
needed plantings and upkeep would be prohibitive if local residents did not pitch in generously
with their labor.
Issues in Reforestation
Another major need is for the improved management of natural woodlands in order to increase
their output of useful products. Recent “reforestation” schemes in semiarid West Africa have
sometimes been a mixed blessing, entailing the clearing of rich and diverse woodlands to make
room for plantations of fast-growing exotic species. The multitude of nonwood products that
local people glean from the forest are thus lost—and the productivity of exotic plantations in the
Sahel has often turned out to be far lower than expected.
But simply increasing the area planted with trees will not necessarily do justice to social and
environmental concerns. With forestry, as with all development activities, who does the
producing and who gets the benefits are as crucial as what gets produced. The management of
a village woodlot can be designed in ways that help or hurt the rural poor.
Another issue in reforestation is that it can become a multijurisdictional problem, i.e.
deforestation in one area may produce flooding downstream in another area of the country or
perhaps in another country, thereby requiring both national and international efforts.
Disaster Mitigation
To reduce the damage done by areas already denuded, mitigation procedures such as catch
dams and terraces can be implemented. For more information see the chapters on floods and
desertification.
Conclusion
Desirable approaches to forestry differ from place to place. But probably no country lacks the
physical resources to meet its most urgent rural forestry needs. Villages virtually everywhere
have unused or misused lands on which fast-growing woodlots can be planted. Individual
farmers are often willing and able to grow more trees in and around their fields when given the
means to do so. In watersheds, the raising of crops, trees, and livestock can be integrated in
new ways that protect soils as they provide extra benefits for people. Agroforestry systems can
give shifting cultivators a stable, productive life. Idle lands along roads and canals and around
fields can be planted to trees that produce food, fodder, timber, traditional medicines, and
industrial raw materials as well as a more hospitable environment. Cheap, efficient cooking
stoves that cut family woodfuel needs in half can be distributed.
Community forestry, as the new approach is known, has begun to catch on over the last
decade. U.N. agencies have begun promoting the concept, and the world’s major aid institution,
the World Bank, announced in 1978 a marked shift in its forestry program, with emphasis on
fuelwood and small-scale activities replacing the former preoccupation with large-scale timber.
Having lent nothing for firewood projects in the early 1970s, the World Bank loaned $1 billion for
this purpose in the first five years of the 1980s. Other aid agencies have also shown new
interest in people-oriented forestry.
Whether the issue is the maintenance of timber output, the protection of ecological stability, or
the growing of fuel, a host of workable forestry technologies are known and await wider