There are two logging sectors in Ghana. One operates on a small scale, cutting logs with chainsaws and producing a wide range of goods for locals, from furniture to structural beams. The other operates on a much larger scale, cutting logs at established sawmills and exporting most of their goods to Europe, the U.S. and China. Both sectors operate in plain view; however, one is illegal and the other legal.
Log in to view the full article
There are two logging sectors in Ghana. One operates on a small scale, cutting logs with chainsaws and producing a wide range of goods for locals, from furniture to structural beams. The other operates on a much larger scale, cutting logs at established sawmills and exporting most of their goods to Europe, the U.S. and China. Both sectors operate in plain view; however, one is illegal and the other legal.
Essentially, it's a battle of David versus Goliath, according to a recent report authored by British journalist Fred Pearce and posted at Yale Environment 360. It's the smaller sector of the two that has been deemed illegal based on the perception that small-scale operators are the main reason the country's natural rainforest has almost disappeared. As a result, the small-scale loggers bribe police at about $750 a truckload to allow their goods to reach customers. The small-scale loggers also carry the stigma of being more wasteful than their large-scale counterparts based on estimates that the small-scale operators manage to capture just 30 percent of the timber they cut for production.
However, after consulting with forest experts inside Ghana, Pearce determined this perception is wrong. These misconceptions of small-scale loggers are proffered by environmentalists in Ghana who "are simply pandering to propaganda" from the bigger, legal logging sector, he wrote.
It turns out that, while the small-scale operators are inefficient at logging, their larger competition is nominally more efficient, capturing about 38 percent of what they cut down for production. Also, the smaller operations employ selective harvesting, "taking individual trees from farmers' land rather than ransacking natural forests" like large-scale loggers do.
Chainsaw-milled lumber production has been banned in Ghana since 1998. While local communities own surrounding forestland, the state "has legal ownership of the trees on that land," Pearce wrote. Attaining permits from the state, "The big companies just come onto our land and do what they want," Barfour Kwame Ackom, chief of Brakumans community near Asamankese, told Pearce. "We don't have any right to stop them. We want the government to legalize the chainsaw people because they are part of our community."
In 2008, Ghana entered into a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union (EU) as part of its Forest Law Enforcement, Governance & Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan. Like the U.S. Lacey Act, FLEGT, which is set to take effect in March 2013, will make it illegal to source illegally logged products from exporter nations like Ghana. Pearce wrote that FLEGT is "much more interventionist" than the Lacey Act so that the EU can seek to influence forest policy in exporter nations through the VPAs.
Still, it's unlikely Ghana's current arrangement-the marginalization of small-scale loggers to the benefit of larger ones-will change as a result of the VPA. "The [existing forest] governance regime has served the entrenched interests of an economic and political elite [that has] resisted any attempts at reforms that could threaten its favorable position," Jens Friis Lund, with the University of Copenhagen, told Pearce. "[The government's] attitude is that when the forests are gone, they will do plantations."
For the full story, visit Yale Environment 360.
