Developing partnerships between CIFOR and
the private plantation sector
New Generation Plantations Annual Summit
Cape Town 18-19 June

Why CIFOR – private sector partnerships?
Industry needs science for improving management
(in broad terms)
CIFOR needs access to research sites and have results
applied
CIFOR has broad expertise: social science, GIS, silviculture,
ecology… and supervises external resources with new skills
CIFOR can bring additional financial resources

Labor
Assessing the trend in labor intensity, contracts, productivity
Questioning the economist view (« Lewis path »)
How / Can we / Do we want to move towards more labor-
intensive practices (learning from agriculture)
The impact of rising energy prices: private perspective (saving
money) and public perspective (reducing emissions)
Labor complementarities with local core activities
More generally-speaking: recycling labor

Company-community partnerships
Access to land might need increasing involvement of local
populations for pragmatic and political reasons
Diversity of partnerships are possible with various outcomes
Governance of these partnerships also involves internal
governance for community groups

Other emerging issues
• Plantations productivity and ecosystem services
• Identify, quantify and value ecosystem services from
planted forests
• Stand -> landscape scale
• Plantation water use
• Restoration of degraded/abandoned land for multiple
ecosystem services
• Cross-country case studies and knowledge sharing

Bullock et al. (2011)
An example from South Africa - can this be applied to large
scale ?