The activities of the 3M Arrondissements Village and Individual Woodstock Project consisted of two phases. These are:
The formal goals of the first phase were to develop village woodlots with local people. Firewood and building poles were to be produced in the lots to meet villager demands for these products. During the second phase, in addition to firewood and building poles, the range of goals was expanded to include (1) production of edible forest products (leaves, fruits) which would enhance the local diet, (2) use of trees through in-field plantings to improve agricultural productivity and (3) improvement of overall quality of the local environment.
The common pool woodlots of the first phase were created in a top-down fashion, after negotiations between representatives of the International Development Research Center (Canada) and the Nigerien Forestry Service. During the design phase, village officials were consulted briefly and were considered to have approved the project. The approach adopted firmly established a pattern of professional control by a forester over the woodlots, with villagers executing his commands, rather than shared decision-making about woodlot management. The relatively authoritarian manner in which the first-phase woodlots were created, managed and harvested increased the difficulty of developing a system of participatory management in the post-project period.
It will require sustained discussion between foresters and local people to establish rule frameworks for participatory management of the common pool woodlots in the concerned villages. It is not clear that, from the villagers' perspective, the required effort is worthwhile. The transactions costs involved in managing the woodlots -- patrolling them, dealing with infractions of use rules, resolving disputes and organizing the harvesting and disposition of wood and other forest products -- can be significant.
By contrast with collective woodlots, management of individual woodlots involves lower transactions costs. The woodlot owner has a clearer claim to the trees. He is fully responsible for culturing the trees. This eliminates the discussions about who is responsible for what, an issue which often plagues collective woodlot activities. Furthermore, the owner does not have to coordinate his management activities with other villagers.
Despite the nominally greater autonomy enjoyed by owners of private woodstocks, the Matameye forester has exercised the same tight control over the individual woodlots as he has over the collective ones. As of late 1987, owners of individual woodlots were still requesting his permission to carry out management activities (thinning and cutting).
This situation highlights two important facts. First, the impact of the Matameye forester's heavy involvement in the development and management of the system must not be underestimated in analyzing the IDRC woodlot projects as they have evolved in Matameye Arrondissement. Second, the determining powers concerning tree tenure which foresters enjoy under the working rules of woodstock management in Niger can be expanded to control nominally private, or local jurisdiction activities. An energetic forester committed to closely controlling woodstock use in his jurisdiction can exercise impressive determining powers. He can compel tree planter/ owners to get his permission before they harvest wood and he may be able to impose fines on "owners" who cut without his authorization. In consequence, rural people feel their liberty to exploit wood that they have planted is severely limited and their reciprocal duty to avoid cutting without authorization is very substantial.
This section analyzes the first -- collective -- phase of the IDRC woodlot project using the four categories of the analytic framework, that is, attributes of goods and services, institutions, interactions and outcomes. It then relates the outcome of that analysis to the initiative of the second -- private --. phase of the IDRC woodlot project.
Technical aspects of woodstocks are a critical element in determining the feasibility of local participation in their management. The IDRC Matameye woodlots are limited-product operations. They were planted with neem trees (Azadirachta indica), which can be cultured to produce firewood, building poles or construction beams.
Preparation of the woodlot area (surveying, enclosure, and digging holes) and planting can be handled by short bursts of relatively intense activity, usually undertaken by villagers as a group. During the first two or three years when the trees are being established, they must be weeded occasionally. This task can be handled by periodic, short spurts of collective activity or as a costless side benefit of taungya (alley-cropping) cultivation by individual farmers. Later, the increasingly dense shadow which the growing trees cast automatically limits competition from weeds.
Animals must be physically kept out of the woodlots, either through adequate fencing, by posting a guard or by requiring that all livestock be either herded, staked or stabled. The IDRC woodlots are enclosed with expensive, fully subsidized, imported barbed wire fencing with mesh or with mesh fencing alone.
Given a fence maintained in good condition, management actions required to develop and harvest the woodlots are simple and episodic. When the first set of trees have attained useable size, they should be coppiced (cut off just above ground level). Regeneration can then be managed to promote desired products, such as the following:
If protection against livestock damage could be assured by a live hedge, regular management would consist of periodic checking to ensure that the fence was not breached during the period of regeneration following a coppice cut. Furthermore, fencing might be required only' during the establishment phase, when the trees are producing both roots and branches. After the trees are well established, the roots can supply water and nutrients for very rapid growth. If trees are coppiced just before the rainy season, the shoots will be protected for roughly six months by the general prohibition against letting stock wander during the growing season and harvest period. In most years there is enough grass and crop residues for several months of forage after the harvest. By the time the best grasses are exhausted, the shoots of neem regrowth will be big enough and covered with sufficiently tough bark, to withstand animal pressure, for example, goats which might gnaw on new bark.
An alternative silvicultural approach is to pollard established trees (top them at the height of the first branches, generally above the browse line). Wandering animals, camels excepted, cannot reach regrowth and so fencing is no longer necessary to prevent animal damage.
Protecting woodlots against livestock is a major problem only during the establishment phase. The IDRC project dealt with this problem as far as the collective woodlots were concerned by donating high quality fencing to participating communities. The high cost of such fencing makes replicability of the collective woodlots problematic. Either an effective and legal local alternative.form of fencing must be identified, or communities must somehow organize a reliable system of woodlot protection or ensure that all animals are herded.
The production of the woodlots is quite limited by comparison with needs at the village level. Many people probably believe they will not get any benefits and so discount the value of the woodlots. A forester knowledgeable about neem silviculture in Niger estimated that, given local soil conditions, the Saouni village woodlot in Matameye Arrondissement would produce a cubic meter of wood per hectare per year. On a three-year rotation, the two-hectare woodlot would produce about six cubic meters. Estimated annual firewood consumption is about a cubic meter per capita in rural areas.28 In a village of 700 inhabitants, with a firewood requirement of 2,100 cubic meters over the same period, a woodlot managed solely for firewood would cover a little more than a quarter of a percent (0.285 percent) of the demand. A better primary use of the woodlot would seem to be production of building poles and construction beams which are hard to find in the natural woodstock.
To summarize, the wood produced in the first phase collective lots, (1) viewed in isolation from the working rules governing access and use, and (2) given the technology financed and made available to villagers by IDRC and the Forest Service, has the character of a private good rather than a common pool resource. It is both subject to exclusion and consumed separably. Animal access can be controlled by the heavily subsized wire fencing used to enclose the collective woodlots. Human access can also be somewhat restricted as long as the fence is maintained. All wood products produced in the lots are consumed separately. Firewood goes into individual fires, beams into individual roofs, and posts into private hut walls and fences. Thus the first phase wood has the essential characteristics of a private good (see Figure 10 on page 46).
The first phase project designed and implemented the woodlots as common property resources. The formal rules governing their use stipulated that the wood would belong to each village whose residents gave land, cleared and prepared it, planted, nurtured and protected trees, and produced wood. The project document stipulated that fencing, seedlings and technical advice on silvicultural issues would be provided to participating villagers by the Nigerien Forest Service in the three southern Zinder Arrondissements of Mirriah, Magaria and Matameye. The foresters explained the formal (project) rules of woodlot management to the villagers at the start of the first phase as follows:
IDRC PROJECT
First phase -- Common pool woodlots
Attributes of goods and services given technology without rules
EASE OF EXCLUSION | ||
Difficult |
Feasible | |
If fencing not maintained* |
If fencing maintained* | |
Joint CHARACTER OF CONSUPTION Separable |
Public- goods and services |
Toll goods and services |
That field owner will always prevent unauthorized harvesting of protected tree species on his field |
To prevent any harvesting of protected tree species from his field without forest service permit | |
Common pool goods and services |
Private goods and services | |
- beams - poles - firewood |
- beams - poles - firewood | |
The authorized relationship of the villagers concerning woodlot wood, as local people in all three arrondissements saw them, involved a formal, positive duty to maintain the trees. They also had to prevent animals and people, their animals and themselves included, from damaging the wood. Villagers believed that at best they would enjoy only highly restricted liberty of access to the woodlots. If they did think the foresters would eventually accord them liberty to use the trees, most felt they would be heavily exposed to the equal liberty of fellow villagers to exploit the woodlots, because rights and duties within the village community of potential users were so ill-defined. Villagers did not place much value on the production of the woodlots because they assumed their chances of receiving any wood were quite limited.
Taungya cultivation (interplanting crops between the rows of seedlings) was authorized for a period of two years after the woodlots were started. Generally the individual who gave land, or someone he designated, was authorized to do this. It is not entirely clear, but it appears that the owner of the land donated for the woodlot often thought he was responsible for doing taungya cultivation during this period to ensure that the seedlings were properly weeded and so reduce competition for water and improve initial survival rates.
For these reasons, villagers involved in the activity concluded that the woodlots did not belong to them, but to the foresters. The woodlots were widely referred to as dawan gwamna ("government forests"). This term reflected the villagers' belief that they were being forced to provide land and labour to produce wood from seedlings supplied by the government. Despite assurances to the contrary, villagers felt they had no real claim to ownership of the trees and certainly no legal standing to sue for ownership. In some Matameye Arrondissement villages this situation persists today despite the fact that assurances of local ownership were subsequently honoured in many villages where the wood was cut and turned over to villagers for distribution as they saw fit.30
In Mirriah and Magaria, where surviving woodlots planted during 1974 to 1978 have still not been harvested even a first time, local people have less and less reason with each passing year to believe that the wood belongs to them. Those who surrendered land for the fields have received nothing. The woodlots in Mirriah and Magaria Arrondissements have produced no tangible local benefits.
Given villagers' starting assumptions about the woodlot, it is surprising that many woodlots succeeded as well as they did. Villagers generally countered the foresters' formal rules with a strategy of benign neglect. Their working rule could be translated as, "We get by with a little help from our goats." The village chief, or whoever else felt most exposed to pressure from the forester, occasionally checked on the woodlot. Most villagers, however, did nothing to prevent breaks in the fence. Animals got into many woodlots during the first year and destroyed most of the seedlings. The foresters at first insisted the villagers repair the fences and replant.
However, in Mirriah Arrondissement and in some Magaria communities, foresters eventually got the message of popular disinterest after several years and simply gave up on those villages. By contrast, in many Magaria and most Matameye jurisdiction villages despite villager reticence, foresters maintained enough pressure so that the trees were protected and survived to the point where fencing was no longer indispensable. From that stage on, the villagers had little to do with the lots. They had more or less fulfilled their duties to protect the wood and avoid using it without authorization. They believed their rights to wood, and liberties of exploitation, were non-existent. At best they could ask the foresters to authorize a cut. Some eventually did this.
The Matameye head forester approved and closely supervised cuts in his arrondissement31 at the beginning of the second phase of the project from 1982 to 1984. He retained strict control over the operation until his transfer out of the district in early 1988 after 13 years residence. No villager interviewed during field work said he would cut a tree without first obtaining permission from the forester.
Harvested wood was turned over to villagers, who allocated it according to several different schemes. Construction timbers and building poles were sold locally, often at sharply reduced prices. Some also sold firewood derived from the cut by the same method. Others systematically distributed the firewood among all households in the town or allowed interested parties to take what they wanted. The proceeds of the sale were used in several cases to finance activities of general public interest (village school repairs, well repairs and restocking of the first-aid kit with medicines). In others, both the sale and the little money which resulted were poorly managed, but it is clear that villagers considered the wood valuable.
The first cuts in Matameye convinced many people that the working rules governing "project" woodlots were not entirely what they had expected. They saw the promised rights of local ownership confirmed, as far as authority over allocation of cut wood was concerned. Villagers received the benefits and non-villagers in principle were not allowed access without payment. Furthermore, the villagers' own liberty to exploit the common property woodlot is clearly limited by their duty to avoid cutting wood in the lot without the forester's permission. All of this, however, reflects only forester Issa Kokari's exercise of his determining powers. His successor may change the working rules of woodlot use.
The interactions described above can be evaluated in terms of at least two criteria. Development occurs more rapidly if resources are used efficiently. Local people are more likely to support development activities if they believe interventions are organized so that costs and benefits are distributed fairly. This section presents a cursory evaluation of the IDRC common pool woodlots in Matameye.
The efficiency of the collective woodlot management system is problematic. The Matameye forester's exercise of his determining powers to regulate cutting dates and practices means that he controls use of the woodlots, at least in terms of their prime value to villagers. The transactions costs to villagers of arranging cuts are considerable because the forester has full determining power to decide when, how and by whom cuts will be carried out. On the other hand, because the woodlot trees have matured and can better resist animal pressure, and because the Matameye forester has maintained such tight control, villagers now invest less time and effort in managing their common property woodlots, thus gradually increasing efficiency.
Village leaders in well-organized communities where respect for outside authority is strong do not have to invest time and energy in making and enforcing their own management decisions. They merely support the forester's decisions. Where the village is less structured and residents are more prone to ignore local and outside authorities, greater local investment in management might be necessary. In one village, Zane, informants reported that a good deal of wood was being removed surreptitiously from the common pool woodlot. There is no evidence in the lot of wholesale cutting. However, if no one asserts management authority the woodlot could be converted into an open access resource and destroyed through overuse.
Because local decision-makers cannot control or do not wish to control distribution of the wood to achieve perfect equity, the fixed-price sale technique adopted in Saouni may be quite appropriate in the sense of being cost effective.32 But the incentives created by this distribution system may not be of a nature to build long-term, broad popular support for a local system of participatory management, especially in light of the restricted size and production of the woodlot.
If the collective woodlot operation results *in more, cheaper or better quality wood being generally available to all who want it, or if proceeds from wood sales finance public goods generally available at the village level, such as better infrastructure or health services, villagers may conclude the woodlot is a positive development. They may arrive at this evaluation even if they do not personally need wood at the moment of the cut, or better first aid, or have children attending school in anew building. However, if the religious or politically powerful, or the well-to-do, obtain more than their share of woodlot products, other villagers may conclude that the operation will not function in an equitable manner, and therefore they should avoid investing in it because chances are so slim that they will derive a benefit.
The most difficult aspect of the woodlot activity for villagers to organize is protection. This is especially true if woodlots are to be established without fencing provided through outside assistance. Protection means ensuring seedlings are guarded against wandering livestock that browse during the dry season on any available greenery. Local fencing materials might be adequate if farmers could legally cut enough to make a snug enclosure or reinforce a live hedge. If not, someone must guard each woodlot. If the woodlot is close to the village, people can see animals in the woodlot as they go about their daily activities. If those who see stray animals systematically chase them out, this system can work well. If people ignore stray livestock, however, or if the woodlot is located too far from the village center for easy surveillance, then it will be necessary to post a guard.
Guards could be furnished by quarters on a revolving basis, by the official village youth group or by any other local organization. This system will likely be unreliable over time because guards have little or no incentive to do the job correctly. The share they as individuals will receive of woodlot production is insignificant in light of the time and effort the job requires. A salary will probably be required to ensure that the job is done correctly. Guards might work on commission (for a percentage of the harvest), but the three years required for a rotation is a long period to work without pay.
These activities may, however, be too limited in time and scope to merit the creation of a special management committee. A cost effective alternative might be provision of management services through the local general purpose jurisdiction. The village headman might appoint an individual both to organize the intermittent silvicultural activities and to ensure that the protection system worked effectively.
Villagers have no legal collective financing mechanism at the local level. This makes it difficult to pay someone as a full- or part-time guardian, which in turn undermines the value of a woodlot management committee. The transactions costs of organization evidently outweigh the benefits.
Production of management services (protection, weeding and harvesting) might be contracted out locally on a share or commission basis. Various rules could be developed to give the manager a solid incentive to do his job properly, for example, a third of the production or profit and penalties which would deduct losses from his share of the product at the rate of 25 to 50 percent. To avoid his selling off the wood in secret, some sort of regular, for example monthly, supervision would have to be provided at the level of the providing (village) jurisdiction.
The role played by an energetic, authoritarian forester during the first (common property woodlots) phase continues to have important impacts in the second (individual woodlots) phase. Peasants understand that the Matameye head forester frowned on uncontrolled cuts, that is, those undertaken without his prior approval. He worked in the arrondissement, first as an assistant and then as head forester, for 13 years from 1974 to 1987. This suggests that the Forest Service supports his approach, since field posts are highly desirable. His regime has now come to an end, however: His replacement's position on community forestry could be an equally important influence on the future of participatory woodstock management in Matameye Arrondissement, depending on how he exercises his determining powers.
This section analyzes the second -- private -- phase of the IDRC woodlot project, again using the four categories of the analytic framework, that is, attributes of goods and services, institutions, interactions and outcomes.
The individual woodlots, (1) analyzed from the perspective of consumptive uses and purely as physical phenomena without regard to the working rules governing their use, and (2) given technology available to farmers, have the characteristics of open access goods (exclusion is difficult and the good is rivalrous in consumption). Owners cannot easily exclude others from access to trees planted in open, unfenced fields where people and animals wander at will from after the harvest to the beginning of the next growing season. Costs of enclosing trees with imported, manufactured fencing are prohibitive. Rural people could use the thorny bushes and tree species which are abundant in many areas as fencing materials. However, they avoid doing so because Forestry Code restrictions, depending on how the local forester exercises his determining powers, sharply limit or forbid harvesting many of the best thorn species without a permit. In terms of consumption, once wood is cut, it is subject to individual use.
In addition, trees cultured or planted in windbreaks or hedgerows, or scatter-sited on fields, also serve on-site uses. Certain of these exhibit the characteristics of public goods (exclusion is difficult and consumption is non-rivalrous or joint). Others have the characteristics of common pool goods (not easily subject to exclusion within the user group, but rivalrous in consumption) or private goods (subject to exclusion and rivalrous in consumption). Illustrations follow.
Public, common pool and private goods. As long as trees and bushes remain in place, alive and uncut, they produce environmental protection benefits available to all within the domain of the good. They screen soils against wind erosion, improve air quality and facilitate water infiltration to recharge local aquifers. It is difficult to exclude others in the immediate area from enjoying the benefits of soil conservation and better air quality. Ground water use may be organized as a private or common pool good, depending on whether the well is a public or private facility. Consumption is separable and, in times of shortage, distinctly rivalrous.
Private goods. When trees or bushes pump nutrients back to the surface from subsoil layers, they produce a private good which can only be captured through farming (agriculture and stock raising). Typically, the individual who cultivates the area immediately under and around the tree reaps the most direct benefit in increased harvests. Figures 11a and 11b (see pages 52 and 53) illustrate the seasonally changing attributes of individual woodlot goods and services.
The forestry code rules create a bias against using local materials as fencing. The code declares anyone who wishes to use wood from any of fifteen protected species, many of which produce thorns excellent for fencing, has a duty first to obtain authorization from a forestry agent. Without permission trees in this class can only be trimmed up to the height that a man standing on the ground can reach with an axe. By contrast, all unprotected species are subject to use "according to traditional practices", that is, they are open access resources which anyone is at liberty to harvest. The converse also holds, however, that everyone is exposed to the liberty of everyone else to cut unprotected species.
IDRC PROJECT
Second phase -- Individual woodlots and plantings
Growing season:
Owners work in fields near planted trees
EASE OF EXCLUSION | ||
Difficult |
Feasible | |
As costless side benefit of crop cultivation and harvesting | ||
Joint CHARACTER OF CONSUPTION Separable |
Public- goods and services |
Toll goods and services |
(on-site) - improved air quality - protection against wind erosion |
||
Common pool goods and services |
Private goods and services | |
Open access (on-site) - acquifer recharge |
(on-site) - nutrient pumping (consumptive products) - firewood - poles and beams - browse | |
IDRC PROJECT
Second phase -- Individual woodlots and plantings
Dry season:
Owners not in fields near planted trees
EASE OF EXCLUSION | ||
Difficult |
Feasible | |
Unless patrolled full time (local thorn fencing not available) |
||
Joint CHARACTER OF CONSUPTION Separable |
Public- goods and services |
Toll goods and services |
(on-site) - improved air quality - protection against wind erosion |
||
Common pool goods and services |
Private goods and services | |
Open access (on-site) - acquifer recharge - shade for livestock (consumptive products) - firewood - poles and beams - browse |
(on-site) - nutrient pumping | |
The results of these code rules are high transactions costs for legal use of protected species -- or flat legal prohibition on use, depending on how the forestry agent exercises his determining powers -- and legal inability to limit use of unprotected species. Protected species may be subject to very strict state regulation and backed up by fence-riding foresters who will fine peasant landowners found building or reinforcing fences with branches of protected species without proper authorization. There are no clear property rights in unprotected species, and therefore no one is burdened with a duty to avoid cutting them.
As available bush areas are eliminated through agricultural land clearing, and as the growing population gradually increases the demand for wood for all purposes, this imbalance between supply and demand should lead to the creation of private rights in unprotected species. That has not yet happened.
The individual woodlots were created under special rules. The project document stipulated that the trees would belong to those farmers who planted and nurtured them. The project did not provide fencing materials. However, the Matameye Arrondissement forester exercised his determining powers to impose certain duties on individuals who, by planting trees under the programme, gained title to them as individuals or family members. These duties restrict owners' liberty to use the planted trees as they see fit. The forester unilaterally declared that farmerplanters could not cut the trees until they were authorized to do so by the foresters. This sharply reduced the liberty of the owners to exploit their own trees, and acted as a disincentive to investing in trees for consumptive uses. However, the forester's working rules in this case also created a pro-planting incentive: his close control of individual woodlot use served to distinguish woodlot trees from those in the open access, unprotected woodstock. Thus, even though the trees are planted in open fields without fencing they have not been disturbed much. The planters' right that others avoid using or destroying their trees was expanded and their exposure reduced by the forester's obvious interest in those trees. Implicit in that interest was a willingness to exercise his determining powers to punish anyone convicted of taking wood without permission.
The second phase -- family woodlot project -- was undertaken in six villages per year, over a period of three years starting in 1982. Three villages per year were drawn from those in Matameye Arrondissement which had participated in the first -- collective woodlot -- phase of the project. Each year three other villages were selected which had not previously been involved in forestry activities.
The family "woodlots" were created in three stages: first stage, seedling production in village nurseries; second stage, plantation on family or individual lands, such as, fields and gardens; and third stage, protection. Exploitation, a fourth stage, has not yet been started because most of the trees have yet to reach harvestable size.
In each village, a volunteer was recruited by the forester to participate in a short course in nursery techniques at the Arrondissement headquarters nursery in Matameye. The course included instruction in seed selection, preparation of potting soil mixtures, planting, watering, transportation and planting-out techniques. Once these volunteers completed the course, they returned to their home villages to organize nurseries.
Nursery operation varied among the three second-phase villages visited (and presumably in others as well). In one village, Zane (first and second phases), the nursery volunteer ended up carrying out most of the seedling production work himself, contributing his labour as a free good to tree planters. He is a relative of the chief, who may compensate him in other ways (support, status and protection). In the second village, Soma (second phase only), the volunteer organized fellow villagers to prepare potting soil and dig holes in a series of lots cited on adjacent family fields, but watered the seedlings alone until they were ready for planting out. In the third village, Dadin Kowa (first and second phases), the volunteer organized the nursery, but village youth organized by quarter took turns watering the plants.
Tree species planted in the second-phase village nurseries were selected by local people. Although other village nurseries may have produced some additional species, the range in the three second-phase villages visited was quite restricted and quite practical:
The second stage -- planting out -- seems to have been organized in a fairly ad hoc manner. Volunteers were recruited to plant trees on their own lands in Saouni. In Zane and Dadin Kowa, those who wanted seedlings requested them and planted them where and as they chose. In Zane, many people reportedly planted seedlings at scattered sites in their field. Large numbers of seedlings where also planted along paths and the road into the village. In Dadin Kowa, people planted as they wished. In Soma, which the Matameye forester considered a successful secondstage village, most trees were planted the first years by five or six individuals whose fields are contiguous and fairly close to the village. Those trees which were planted in 1982, with the exception of several lines planted as windbreaks, were nearly ready to be harvested for poles.
The third stage -- protection -- was handled initially in the three villages by constructing small, loose wicker cages that were placed over the seedlings to keep animals away from them. That worked inadequately in Zane even in years of reasonable rain and adequate supplies of forage: animals knock over the cages during the dry season to get at the young green leaves. In bad drought years, most seedlings simply don't survive, so protection is a moot point.
While it may still be too early to make a judgment on the outcome of the second phase, it would appear that many participants consider their individual plantings an improvement in efficiency terms over the collective woodlots of the first phase. Producers who commented on this aspect indicated they preferred the clear allocation of responsibility for the preparation, maintenance and protection of "woodlots" that is inherent in the private ownership rules of tree tenure adopted for trees planted by individuals during the second phase. However, it remains to be seen whether those ownership rights will be respected by non-owners and, in future cases of dispute, upheld by the Matameye foresters.
The equity consequences of the new arrangement were not evaluated during the brief visit to the Matameye area. It is to be expected that the individual plantations will result, over time, in withdrawal of a certain amount of biomass from the village open access woodstock. However, existence of new, artificially created increments of supply should contribute at least marginally to production of the local public good of environmental maintenance. A slight increase in supply should also moderate price rises in the future, if open access supplies are seriously depleted. This should ease the burden on those who have most difficulty getting access to wood for domestic energy and building purposes. Such an outcome might well be considered crudely "equitable".
28 Isabelle Bloas, a French Volontaire de Progrès working on improved stove diffusion in Zinder since July 1987, says the family size No. 2 stove costs 650 CFA (US$ 2.25) and reduces urban wood consumption from 800 to 600 grams per day on on average. With very careful use, economies of 50% can be achieved or 400 to 300 grams per day per capita.
29 Just exactly who would get what from woodlot production was not clearly defined until the first harvest. The village headmen typically became responsible, by default, for management of the woodlot in his village.
30 It is difficult to say whether the version of the distribution process described by Issa Kokari reflects the reality experienced by villagers. Intervillage variations in distribution mechanisms suggest, however, that villagers did play a real part in determining distribution mechanisms.
31 To date cuts have been authorized by the forest service only in Matameye Arrondissement. Most of the Mirriah Arrondissement woodlots now contain nothing but grass and volunteer Acacia albida seedlings -- which are better suited in any case to the sandy soil conditions prevalent there. In Magaria, trees in a number of woodlots should be harvested and the wood turned over to villagers for allocation as they see fit to demonstrate to them the productive value of the experiment and to encourage them to participate on an individual basis in similar activities.
32 It is clearly difficult to determine whether equity is being achieved in a particular instance. Those who don't buy may not need wood at the moment, or they may have access to wood which others buy, through obligations owed them by family relations, or they may in effect be gaining political or social "credits" by not bidding against those who want the wood. All of these factors nuance the view of equity neglected which the Saouni operation appears to present. The appearance, however, may be accurate.
