Smallholder Tree Growing in South and Southeast Asia - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 19

1.8.4 Instruments Facilitating Sustainable Smallholder

Tree Growing

Concerns about the fragile relationship between forest use and natural functioning
forest ecosystems have led to the establishment of the Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC) in 1993. The FSC developed a set of global principles and criteria for envi-
ronmentally and socially responsible forest practices to be audited for compliance
by third parties and certify those operations with a positive audit result (Cashore
et al. 2006). The question is, however, to what extent such standard for forest certi-
fication is applicable to smallholder tree growing operations. Reports are made of
smallholders facing various constraints in their effort to achieve forest certification
(Higman and Nussbaum 2002). Moreover, it is questionable whether forest certifi-
cation will facilitate their excess to markets for wood products. A more recent ini-
tiative launched by FSC in 2002 to increase access to certification for Small and
Low Intensity Managed Forests (SLMF; FSC 2002) may offer a more relevant
instrument within this context. The initiative is directed at woodlot owners, farmers
growing trees on farms, family forests, small non-industrial private forests (NIPF),
small forest enterprises (SFE), some community forestry operations and non-timber
forest product harvesters.

Acknowledgements The topic is based on the international seminar on tree growing in agricul-
tural landscapes, April 11-14, 2005, hosted by Isabela State University Cabagan Campus and co-
organized by the Cagayan Valley Programme on Environment and Development, a joint
undertaking of Leiden University (CML) and Isabela State University (ISU), and the World
Agroforestry Center of the Philippines (ICRAF-Philippines). The seminar took place within the
frame work of the Junior Expert Programme funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the
Netherlands. The latter programme formed an extension of the Cagayan Valley Programme on
Environment and Development and concentrated on two specific fields of research, i.e., agrofor-
estry and indigenous people.

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