Forests play very critical roles in Malawi. Over 90% of the country’s energy requirements are fuelwood-based. However, Malawi, like most Sub-Saharan African countries, presents a case of policy dilemma in sustainable forest management. With its growing population and the resultant contraction of per capita land area, coupled with the ever increasing fuelwood demand, the challenge is to sustainably manage the forests without alienating the majority of rural communities whose livelihoods heavily depend on the forests. There is therefore need to fully understand the forest-reliant people if the goal of sustainable forest management is to be achieved. The aim of this desk study is to characterize the forest-livelihoods-poverty alleviation links and their impact on households’ choice of livelihood strategies. By synthesizing relevant theoretical and empirical literature, the study demonstrates that the links between poverty and forests are complex. For example, while there is evidence that it is the poor that rely more on forests, the reverse causality, though rare in literature, is also possible, i.e. forest reliance can act as a poverty trap. Understanding the livelihood status of forest-reliant households is therefore a necessary condition to sustainably manage the forests in particular and other environmental resources in general.

1. The Dynamics of Forests, Livelihoods and
Poverty Alleviation Relationships – Implications
for Household Strategy
Thabbie Chilongo
Centre for Agricultural Research and Development (CARD)
Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR)
Bunda Campus
10 October 2014

2. The Dilemma
• Population:
 Over 13 million
Population density of 139/sq. km
Growth rate: 2.8% p.a.
Pressure on arable land and forests
• Policy Dilemma
Population pressure vs Fuelwood Demand vs Sustainable
Forest Management
Need to study forest-reliant people

3. This Presentation…
• A synthesis of theories and empirical studies
• To explore the forest-livelihoods-poverty alleviation
links and their impact on households’ choice of
livelihood strategies.

4. Presentation Outline
• Definitions of Key Terms
and Concepts
2. Livelihoods-
Environmental
Framework
3. Forest-
Poverty
Link
4. Implications for
Household
Strategies and
Policies
1. Context
5. Concluding
Remarks

5. Dynamics, Forest
• Dynamics
• Changes over time
• Understanding what drives change, patterns of change,
etc.
• Forest
• “Land with a tree canopy cover of more than 10% and
area of more than 0.5ha” (FAO).
• Trees reaching minimum height of 5m
• Includes woodlands and plantations.

6. Poverty Alleviation:
Prevention, Reduction or “Painkilling”?
Poverty Reduction
Time
Poverty (e.g. income)
B
A
“Poverty Painkilling”
Poverty Prevention
Poverty Line

7. Poverty Alleviation…
• In this presentation, poverty alleviation is loosely
applied as an inclusive term, encompassing:
• poverty reduction,
• poverty prevention, and
• “poverty painkilling”

8. More Contexts…
• This presentation focuses mostly on:
• The role of non-timber forest products (NTFPs)
• Developing country context
• Mostly Sub-Saharan Africa
• Income/consumption as a measure of poverty
• Forests sometimes discussed together with general
environmental frameworks

9. Dynamic Livelihoods-Environmental Framework
Household Food/Livelihood Security Objective in Period 1
1. Livelihood Assets
(Natural, physical, human, financial, social)
2. Conditioning Factors
(markets, prices, institutions, productivity, seasonality, shocks)
3. Livelihood Activities or Strategies (set of activities)
4. Environmental Consequences and Livelihood Outcomes
Natural Resources and Other Assets Available in Period 2
Source: Adapted from Reardon and Vosti (1995) ; Ellis (2000)

10. Poverty-Forest Link: Which Direction?
Forest Poverty
Other Factors

11. Forest-Poverty Links
• A. Forest Poverty Link
• Poverty as endogenous [wrt forest]
• Why are forest-reliant people poor?
• Are forests poverty traps?
• B. Poverty Forest Link
• Poverty as exogenous [wrt forest]
• Why are poor people more reliant on forests?
• Safety nets, income smoothing, gap filling
• Use forests as employer of last resort
• Lack of viable alternatives

12. Forest as Employer of Last Resort: Model and the Dynamics
Households (#)
$
HF2 HF0 HF1
EF2
EF1
EF0
EF = Equilibrium forest income
HF = Households involved in forest activity
HH opportunity cost of labour
Average forest income
Source: Adapted from Angelsen and Wunder (2003) and Chilongo and Shively (2014)

13. Empirical Evidence:
• Poverty Prevention & Painkilling
• Supplement current consumption and safety net
• Evidence: Reardon and Vosti, 1995; Cavendish, 2002; Angelsen and
Wunder, 2003; Jumbe and Angelsen, 2007; Yemiru et al., 2010; Rija
et al., 2011; Chilongo, 2014)
• My own thesis
• Safety net and gap-filling roles questioned by Wunder et al. (2014)
• Poverty Reduction
• Pathway out of poverty; relatively little evidence
• Some exceptions: asset poor households do better than expected by
using forest resources: Dokken and Angelsen, 2014; Ainembabazi et
al. 2013; Shackleton et al. 2007

14. Implications for household strategies
• How may households better use
forests to alleviate poverty?
• Extract more forest products
• Seek new markets (higher
prices)
• Processing and value-adding
• Charcoal vs. firewood
• While these strategies may be
individually (at household level)
optimal, but are they sustainable or
socially optimal?

15. Overuse: Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin, 1968)
Overuse
Marginal Cost
(opp.cost of labour)
Average Income
Marginal
Income
Market
Solution
Optimal
Solution
Forest Harvest
$

16. Concluding Remarks

17. 1. Can Poverty Alleviation Reduce Forest Degradation?
• The links between poverty and forests are complex hence no
“one-cup-fits-all” solutions to poverty and forest degradation
problems.
• Reducing poverty can reduce forest degradation where poverty
is driving extensification into forests.
• However, reducing poverty will not necessarily reduce
forest degradation if households invest or shift to other
forest degrading ventures, e.g. livestock, chainsaws
(Reardon and Vosti, 1995)

18. 2. Can Forest Conservation Help the Poor?
• It depends on:
• The way forest conservation done
• The context
• It can alleviate poverty, where for example, forest
degradation is affecting livelihoods, e.g.
• limiting large scale logging with few local benefits
• protecting a river used for irrigation
• It can increase poverty, where the poor are denied
access to forests they depend on for survival

19. 3. If forests cannot reduce poverty, why bother?
• Understanding how household assets and
conditioning factors are linked to poverty and
household behaviour may help to reduce poverty
and enhance resource base (incl. forest).
• Policy can then target such revealed relationships to
come up with context-specific solutions.
• This is where the livelihoods framework become handy.

20. 4. Are we not asking too much from the forests?
• Forests already play many roles
• Safety nets
• Seasonal gap filling (income smoothing)
• Supporting regular consumption
• Expecting forests also to be a major pathway out of
poverty is probably asking for too much!
• Low value of NTFPs makes them less likely to become a
meaningful pathway out of poverty (Angelsen and
Wunder, 2003).